11 Victory for the People"

In his 16 years as president of Atlanta University (for Negroes), Rufus Clement has become known to almost everyone in town. An ordained minister, he is a kindly, soft-spoken man, who has long been considered one of the top Negro educators in the U.S. But when Clement announced his candidacy for the city's Board of Education, many Atlantans gasped. Not since reconstruction days had a Negro even come close to such a post.

Some members of Atlanta's Democratic Party Executive Committee decided to make sure that Clement would not come close. The first thing they did was to write to Washington for any information the House Un-American Activities Committee might have. Finally, last week, just two days before the primary election, they burst into print: Clement had been a member of the Civil Rights Congress, the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, and the Southern Negro Youth Congress --all three listed by the House committee as Communist-front. The anti-Clement forces figured that that should finish him.

The same night, the executive committee hastily called a meeting to broadcast the charges against Clement. To his enemies, the fact that he had resigned from these organizations before they were listed made no difference; neither did the fact that he had never been anything but a fervent antiCommunist. "Once a Communist," cried Committeeman Watson Gary, "always a Communist"--and the majority of his colleagues seemed to agree. When a motion was proposed that the charges be dropped, the committee voted 5 to 4 to keep them. Only at the last minute did one member get cold feet.

"I'm changing my vote, but not my mind," said he. The result: 5 to 4 for Clement.

To all intents and purposes, the anti-Clement forces had done their job: it hardly seemed possible that a Negro could live down the bad publicity Clement had received. But on election day itself, the citizens of Atlanta apparently felt that Clement had had a raw deal. By an CANDIDATE CLEMENT Before the vote, a last gasp.

8,000-vote majority, they elected him to the school board. Said he on hearing the news: "It isn't a personal victory. It's a victory for the people. I've been feeling for some time that the people of the South are far ahead of what some think they are."

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