Front Page Revolution

Unlike the great planters and white trash farther north, the white men of southeastern Alabama are neither very rich nor very poor, work harder than their Negro help and run to rugged individualism. In that section is the drowsy market town of Dothan (pop.: 16,000) and the combustible newspaper family of Hall which won the Dothan Eagle three generations ago in a draw poker game. Slim, red-headed Editor Julian Hall, 33, is a first-rate newspaperman, an Alabama "character," a humorist of distinction. Under the Dothan Eagle's heading, Editor Hall daily prints the Biblical quotation: For I Heard Them Say, "Let Us Go To Dothan."-- Genesis 37: 17, referring to the village in ancient Palestine where Joseph's brothers stripped him of his coat of many colors.

Last month practically every Alabama newspaper including the Eagle was calling on jolly Governor Bibb Graves to veto an antisedition bill, just passed by the Legislature, making it a misdemeanor to advocate the overthrow of the government by violence or to own more than one copy of a publication doing so.* The newspaper howls turned to cheers when Governor Graves finally vetoed the bill. Last fortnight the cheers turned back to howls when it appeared that the Governor had waited one day too long to veto the bill which had automatically become the law of Alabama. Other Alabama editors just howled, but not the Dothan Eagle's young Editor Hall. On his front page appeared an editorial to make Dothan citizens rub their eyes. It ran:

". . . We advocate the overthrow of Alabama's government by violence. We urge the citizens to arm themselves with shillalahs, set out for Montgomery and whale Hell out of members of the Alabama Legislature. . . .

"After these ex-statesmen are thoroughly subdued, we advocate that the government of Alabama be changed from a so-called democracy to one of communism. Blood will be shed, of course, but capitalism and the curse of private profits must be destroyed, all property seized by the people, to be owned by the people, and all profits to be shared alike by every one--white, black, old, young, competent, incompetent, Christian and heathen. . . ."

Nobody in Alabama thought for a second that Editor Hall meant it. However, to reassure Dothan whites, he explained that all he wanted was a test case on his right to advocate sedition or anything else. Then he sat back to wait for the police. The police never arrived because the Legislature had already moved to repeal the offending antisedition bill. It had, furthermore, put through a bill drafted by Editor Hall and sponsored by Dothan's Representative, exempting newspaper men from contempt of court sentences when they refuse to reveal news sources in judicial investigations. Several States have similar laws in behalf of the Press. Last week Governor Graves, far from sending police for nervy Editor Hall, looked about for some way of showing Young Julian his admiration and affection, gladly signed the Eagle's immunity bill.

*In Lowndes County, Ala. State police last week raided the headquarters of a Negro sharecroppers' union whose striking members had ganged non-union Negro sharecroppers. Police claimed to have found "a pile of Communistic literature." A mob of white farmers mistook Newshawk William Bennett of the Montgomery Advertiser, whose redheaded editor is Julian Hall's Uncle Grover, for a "Red agitator." The mob thoroughly manhandled Bennett before he could identify himself.

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