Page:Columbia Journalism Review volume 2 issue 3 (fall 1963).djvu/40

AROUND THE MAP

equal application of the laws to all citizens. In 1946, during the trial of whites charged with killing a Negro. she was found in contempt of court for interviewing his widow. In 1954, she protested editorially the sheriff's brutality and shooting of Negroes, and was sued for $57,500. Later in the year, a jury awarded the sheriff $10,000. But in November, 1955, the Mississippi Supreme Court threw out the judgment-affirming Mrs. Smith's right to print the facts. This has been but one of many such incidents she has had to fight out. One of the losses was the dismissal of her husband from his job as hospital administrator in 1956.

Although Mrs. Smith has received national publicity and awards, her pressing concerns have been close to home. By 1957, local advertising volume was down 50 per cent, a loss only partly compensated for by the continuance of such outside advertisers as utility companies, including Mississippi Power & Light and Southern Bell Telephone. She has also received other encouragement in Mississippi-a commendation by the Mississippi State Press Association and, a gradual increase in the circulation of her papers, which are now near 5,000. This gain came despite the founding in 1958 of a rival weekly in Lexington, the Herald, supported by the local White Citizens Council.

Now, in 1963, Mrs. Smith continues the fight. Amid all the lodge-meeting notices, school news, and chitchat typical of the small weekly, she continues to report on injustices and to taunt racists. Here is a sampling of recent comment:

Editorial, June 20, 1963: Do Mississippians today, as Sir Winston [Churchill] put it so beautifully, have "the habit of liberty?"

There was a time, almost a decade ago, when we Missisi pians were free... we did have the habit of liberty. Newspaper editors were free to write editorially about anything in the world, giving our honest opinions, and there was no fear of economic reprisals or boycott. Today a newspaper editor thinks a long time before he writes anything that can be construed as controversial. .....

The editor of this newspaper has opposed the racist Citizens' Council from the very beginningnot because we oppose racial integrity and constitutional government they now claim to foster-but because in 1954 we recognized it as a serious threat to the personal freedom, peace and security of every living Mississippian - and its potential as a real Gestapo to take over the state. It is the individual. freedom of our friends and readers we have been and are fighting for.....

Our personal opposition to the Citizen's Council (although we have a large number of personal friends who belong to it) has been vindicated time after time in the past nine years as one after another good Mississippian has has been smeared, lied about and given the CC treatment many of them now living in other communities or other states.

That we have survived at all is a miracle that we attribute only to God-but if He is for us we know it makes no difference who is against us.

God willing, we shall endure.

Letter to the editor of the Meridian, Mississippi, Star, printed in the Advertiser of June 26, 1963:

I was shocked and appalled to see a false and libelous circular which is being passed undercover by certain members of the Lexington Citizens' Council around Lexington and other towns in Holmes County....

The Lexington Advertiser "Principles and Men Truth-the Weapon e vr in their Defence"

People who saw the picture of the circular thought it had been printed in the Meridian Star. Both the picture and the cutlines under it gave a completely false and misleading impression. You know, and I know, the picture did NOT appear in the Star, but that it was taken by one of your staff members and later sold by Frank Long, your then state editor, to Paul Tardy, editor of the Holmes County Herald, for $25.00, and paid for by a check which was cashed in your office. The cutlines under the picture presumably were added by Tardy or some of his associates and/or conspirators....

What I am asking now... is that you publish a disavowal [of the circular] in the Star, saying The Meridian Star had nothing to do with its preparation, printing or distribution, either in Holmes County or elsewhere in the state...I believe your own sense of decency and fairness will call for these corrections. ... [EDITORS' NOTE: The Star did not make the correction.]

Editorial, same issue: Some editors and newspapers, who seek responsibly to do their jobs, have been called integrationist, scalawag, nigger lovers, pinkos, communist, and a wide variety of less printable epithets. We have been called some of them ourselves. But saying it I doesn't make it so.

Most of us, including this editor, will continue to write and print what we believe will add to the general knowledge and understanding of our readers, thereby serving the general welfare of our communities and state. If what we print, either in the of way news or editorial comment, helps our readers to just a little better understand what is happening in our world today, then our efforts have not been in vain.38 Columbia Journalism Review