The smoke from big black cigars supercharged the sticky heat of the basement cafeteria in Chicago's Wabash Avenue Y.M.C.A. A well-dressed, pipe-smoking Negro rose to address the third annual conference of the Negro Newspaper Publishers Association. His 75 listeners, full of fried chicken and Pepsi-Cola, were still wrought up about the issue of their press and their race.
Pegler. The publishers were smoking mad at ''that archtraitor Westbrook Pegler." In his April 28 column Pegler had damned the two biggest Negro papersthe Pittsburgh Courier (circ. 130,000) and the Chicago Defender (circ. 83,000)for exploiting...