Rumpus over Rowan

"You should ship Carl Rowan to Russia," a small-town attorney angrily urged the Minneapolis Tribune (circ. 212,873). The Tribune's prizewinning Reporter Rowan (TIME, March 4) was raising tempers all over Minnesota last week. When somebody invited him to make a speech in one rural community, the town fathers promptly refused use of the school auditorium. Jeered a rural editor: "If Rowan visited a town where a funeral and a wedding were taking place simultaneously, he'd go straight to the funeral."

The rumpus over the Tribune's 32-year-old Negro star arose from an explosive, eleven-part series reporting that funeral bells are in fact tolling for whole communities throughout predominantly agricultural Minnesota. Assigned to look into economic and social conditions in depressed farm towns, Rowan returned from a 90-day tour convinced that scores of communities will have to shift gears or perish. He found that a long-term drop in the state's net farm income (down $97 million since 1949) was aggravated by an agricultural revolution that is eliminating the country town's longtime function of marketplace and supply center. Yet, he reported, bigwigs in many rural communities are more interested in keeping out unions than bringing in industrial payrolls that would give their towns economic balance.

In the statewide clamor stirred by his series, more than half the 300 readers who had bombarded the paper with letters last week plainly agreed with Rowan. Though rural papers split evenly over Rowan's "soul-searching" report, none challenged his facts. To one farm-belt editor who accused him of exaggerating his conclusions, Carl Rowan replied: "Sure, the truth hurts, and if I have spiked some tender toes--well, I'm not sorry. I viewed my job much like that of a doctor diagnosing an ailing patient. It would be a silly doctor who spent two hours telling the patient how pretty his teeth are, how strongly his heart beats, how good his reflexes are, only to add a postscript as the patient walks out the door: 'By the way, you may have cancer.' "

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