RACES: Blackshirts v. Blackmen

Last month in Atlanta, Ga., birthplace of the (second) Ku Klux Klan and Order of the Supreme Kingdom, there came into being an “American Facist [sic] Association and Order of Black Shirts.” Its organizers were Holt J. Gewinner and Joseph Wood, onetime Klan candidate for governor. In petitioning the Fulton County Superior Court for a charter (not yet granted) the association claimed its purposes were “white supremacy,” “charity,” “patriotism” and assistance to members in finding jobs. Dues: $1. The Black Shirts prepared to run Negroes out of jobs, replace them with unemployed “Facist” members. Atlanta stores advertised black shirts at reduced rates. The Atlanta newspapers were silent on the new organization, printing little or nothing about its mushroom growth to a membership of over 21,000. Fortnight ago the Black Shirts paraded in Atlanta to thwart a Communist Sacco-Vanzetti memorial meeting.

Last week the new order came in for a sound drubbing at the hands of the potent Macon Telegraph (by reputation the best-edited paper in Georgia). In a signed front-page editorial headed “Crack the Head of This Newest Nasty Thing,” able Editor William Thomas Anderson declared:

“… What have the Atlanta newspapers been doing that they have permitted a thing like this to blossom and flourish . . . and never a line about it? . . . The Telegraph is of the opinion that the more quickly a bad matter is brought to the light . . . the sooner it will be dissipated. . . . If the kluxing effort had been shown up to start with, thousands of good Georgians would never put on a mask or a nightshirt at $10 for a 35¢ garment and the order would have died aborning. . . .

“The Black Shirts . . . want to run all the Negroes out of their jobs and give these to white people. . . . Here we have been thinking all these centuries that if we could only get the Negro to go to work, to hold his job, all would be well with the white man. . . . Now that the Negro has gone to work, up jumps an order to put the white man to work again. We don’t think the thing is going to be popular for very long. For if the Negro doesn’t work and make his living, the white man must work and make it for him. A fine program the Black Shirts have mapped out! . . . We have Atlanta and her newspapers to thank for this, as publicity in the beginning would have prevented their getting 2,100 members, instead of 21,000.”

Editor Anderson’s blast produced results in Atlanta. The Constitution broke its silence, reported that the Federal Grand Jury would soon inquire into the Black Shirts. Basis of the investigation: charges that “Facist” committees had called on Atlanta employers of Negroes, ordered them, under threats of violence, to discharge their black help and hire jobless Black Shirts, in violation of a Federal statute providing ten years in jail and a $5,000 fine for persons who “conspire to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate any citizen in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the constitution or laws of the U. S.”