Mea Culpa

Manhattan's Communist Daily Worker had done it again. Teetering on a party line that is constantly being re-rigged by Moscow, it had slipped, right in front of all 63,000 of its Sunday readers. Last week, it printed a notable example of the crawling, breast-beating apology that the party expects of authors, artists, scientists, musicians and even sportwriters (TIME, Jan. 9) who are caught straying from the Kremlin's innermost thoughts.

In a big, two-column headline the Worker cried: WORKER EDITORS OFFER

APOLOGY FOR WHITE CHAUVINIST ERRORS.

The grievous errors, explained the Worker, were committed in running two illustrations and a short story last February and April. One picture showed a Negro minister "with distorted features ... an example of the false and vicious slanders against the Negro people, which portrays them as animals." Another illustration showed Negro men dancing with white women, but failed to show Negro women too, thus reflecting "one of the mean slanders" against the Negro race. As for the short story, the author (Lillian Long) had failed to answer "slanders" uttered by one of her characters. Concluded the Worker's abject editors: In . . . uncompromising opposition to ... racist ideas, we publicly criticize their appearance. At the same time, we recognize our responsibility and our grievous fault . . ."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.