The Press: Cut & Spite

North Carolina’s Wilmington Morning Star (circ. 17,866) went to press with a front-page picture of four Marine witnesses in the court-martial of Sergeant Matthew C. McKeon (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). As soon as the paper hit his desk, the editor on duty gulped and stopped the presses. He had failed to notice, in the shadowy impression on the Associated Press mat that supplied the picture, that one of the marines, Private Eugene W. Ervin of Bridgeport, Conn., was a Negro. The deskman met the crisis by ordering a pressman to take hammer and chisel to the press plate. Next morning Private Ervin’s ragged ghost haunted the spot (see cut) where the Morning Star cut out the Negro and spited its front page.