Hurt Pride in Memphis

The rancorous Memphis garbage strike that led to the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. ended last week, but all was not peaceful. Negroes started picketing the two daily newspapers, the Commercial Appeal and the Press-Scimitar, in protest against their coverage of the strike. Handbills were distributed listing grievances against the papers. A boycott was mounted to prevent Negroes from buying the papers T placing ads in them. "They are racist papers," complained the strike's leader, the Rev. James Lawson. "They have attacked and vilified Martin Luther King. They have to share responsibility for his death."

To the editors of the two papers both owned by Scripps-Howard, it is almost incomprehensible that they are the targets of such criticism. Ever since the 1954 Supreme Court decision banning segregation in the schools they have urged upholding the law of the land. Press-Scimitar Editor Edward J. Meeman was a champion of Negro rights from the 1930s until he retired in the early '60s. Both current editors Frank Ahlgren of the Commercial Appeal and Charles Schneider of the Press-Scimitar, are members of the city's biracial commission, which has tried to smooth the way for peaceful desegregation in Memphis.

The strike, however, caught the papers off guard. Memphis, as they boasted perhaps too often, had never had a serious racial disturbance. Partly because of this, the papers were rattled when it finally occurred. At first they tried to portray it as simply a labor issue, though the fact that 95% of the sanitationmen are Negroes obviously gave it a racial complexion. They covered the strike with reasonable thoroughness but tended to play up acts of violence. They regularly attacked King, saying he had no business in Memphis. They ignored Negro militants leading the strike; for a while, the Commercial Appeal even banned Lawson's name from the paper. It also ran a tasteless cartoon showing a Negro striker perched on top of a garbage can from which fumes were pouring.

The Commercial Appeal's strike coverage focused attention on other aspects of the paper that had long been commonplace. Negroes began complaining about segregated features of the newspaper such as the classified-ad section. They charged that Negroes are identified by race for crimes but whites are not. They also took exception to a daily cartoon titled "Hambone's Meditations," in which a shambling old Negro delivers such bromides as "Mos' folks, dey loses at de mouf whut dey teks in at de ears."

The papers have not been much hurt financially by the Negro boycott: circulation of each is down only some 7,500. But their pride has been hurt. The racial amity they thought they had achieved has dissolved. What seemed reasonably liberal yesterday is denounced as paternalistic today. But if the Memphis papers have been unfairly singled out for attack, the grievances are small enough to have been remedied long ago. The shame is that it took a bitter strike and an assassination to bring them to attention.

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