Golden Rule

While Southerners in recent years have become increasingly impatient of Northern reporters who write stories criticizing segregation in Dixie, one of North Carolina's most influential citizens is a sharp-tongued Yankee newspaperman who unabashedly derides discrimination in any form. His name is Harry Golden. A one-time promotion man for New York's Daily Mirror and evening Post, rumpled, roly-poly Golden, 54, has published the bimonthly Carolina Israelite (circ. 11,500) since he settled in Charlotte, N.C. 15 years ago.

Golden is consulted constantly by Southern officials concerned with racial issues, many of whom have even learned to treasure his irrepressible wisecracks. At a press conference with North Carolina's Governor Luther Hodges, Golden quipped: "How does it feel to be governor of a state where one-third of the population is embittered?" Chuckling, Hodges turned to other newsmen and said: "Gentlemen, I think Harry Golden is one of the most valuable citizens of this state." Golden maintains that his barbs are not treated seriously because he is Jewish. "Most Southerners," he explains, "think of Jews as surrogate Negroes. Everyone knows where I stand, but they laugh with me and at me." Golden's favorite boast is that since he is also a Yankee and a self-styled "radical," he is "a member of three minority groups."

Seatless Schools. In actual fact, Golden's Israelite does not appeal predominantly to Jews, Northerners or radicals, but to readers with such varied views as Harry Truman and Chief Justice Earl Warren, Adlai Stevenson and Thomas Dewey. Golden has no room for news stories, pictures or headline type. Instead, he fills the 16-page paper with witty, erudite discourse on subjects ranging from Dr. Johnson's recipe for oysters (baked in a flour-and-water batter) to Cato's hangover cure (raw cabbage leaves).

But the Israelite's keenest fillip comes from Golden's saucy good sense on issues affecting racial and religious minorities. Last summer, while the North Carolina legislature was concocting elaborate legal stratagems to preserve segregation in the public schools, Harry Golden devised a painless formula for desegregation, based on his observation that deep-seated racial prejudices disappear when Southerners stand up. Explaining his Golden Vertical Negro Plan in the Israelite, Golden deadpanned: "The South, voluntarily, has all but eliminated vertical segregation. The white and Negro stand at the same grocery and supermarket counters, deposit money at the same bank teller's window, pay phone and light bills to the same clerk. It is only when the Negro 'sets' that the fur begins to fly." Urged Golden: "Provide only desks in all the public schools of our state; no seats." Though the lawmakers passed up Golden's suggestion, readers ordered 10,000 reprints of the Vertical Negro editorial.

Waterless Fountains. Last week Golden proudly disclosed an even more ambitious formula for desegregation: the Golden Out-of-Order Plan. In Charlotte, whose population is 27% Negro, he persuaded a department-store manager to hang an "out-of-order" sign on the drinking fountain reserved for white customers. In a few days, reported Golden, white and Negro customers were cheerfully sharing the "Colored" drinking fountain. "It is possible," he concluded, "that whites may accept desegregation, if they are assured that the segregated facilities still exist, albeit 'out-of-order.' My key to the plan is to keep the sign up for at least two years. We must do this thing gradually."

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