Safety in Schizophrenia

As New York's Governor Averell Harriman flew into Denver to spark a meeting of the Western Conference for Harriman, Democrats were busy last week deciphering Ave's stand on civil rights. Four months ago Harriman was demanding that the President act on the Supreme Court's desegregation decisions. Testing the tenor of his camp at that time, a spokesman for the Southern wing reported back: "They're ready to send B-52s over the South." In May, for the edification of the Americans for Democratic Action, Harriman (who likes to be thought of as another Franklin Roosevelt) imagined what F.D.R. would have done. "He would have had a fireside chat and rallied men and women of good will together to work together to carry out this difficult decision."

But right after Ike's intestinal operation, as Adlai Stevenson was glowing over moderation's harvest of convention votes, Harriman also decided moderation had some appeal. Appearing on Meet the Press, he saw desegregation as a matter for the Supreme Court and "not an executive responsibility." Last week in Denver Harriman told newsmen that Oklahoma Governor Raymond Gary's "moderation" and his own "zeal" were the same commodity. Shrugged Ave: a question of semantics. Harriman said further that he "admires what Governor Gary has done in his state." Gary, elected chairman of the Harriman Western Conference by 150 representatives of eleven states attending, explained that some Oklahoma school districts want separate white and Negro schools, some want integrated schools. Under the Gary plan, each district gets what it wants.

Southerners politely applauded Harriman's retreat from antimoderation, hoped that it signified that the Harriman forces were abandoning their plan to disrupt the platform-writing sessions in Chicago with an unequivocal demand for a strong civil-rights plank. But Southerners were still cool and suspicious toward Candidate

Harriman, although his lieutenants wooed them assiduously. Said one Democratic politician: "There is a basic schizophrenia in the Harriman camp that just defies explanation." Actually the explanation was simple: as it must to all active Democratic candidates, the segregation issue had caught up to Averell Harriman.

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