National Affairs: Living Room Chat

In the Washington suburb of Chevy Chase, the modest neighborhood of Barnaby is inhabited by citizens whose salaries mostly range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year. Nonetheless, the substantial red-brick house at 3122 Tennyson N. W., home of R.F.C. Counsel Claude E. Hamilton Jr., with its green shuttered windows and cement walk much like its neighbors, was one evening last week the scene of history in the making. A Diamond Taxi drove up to 3122 Tennyson, and stopped. Out of the taxi stepped Lawyer Hamilton and Associate Justice Hugo LaFayette Black of the U. S. Supreme Court. With his hat pulled over his eyes and two packages of Chesterfield cigarets in his hand, Hugo Black marched through the garage and into the house by the cellar door in order to broadcast to the U. S. people his reply to the accusation that he belonged to the Ku Klux Klan.

In the street four newsreel cars and 250 people—reporters, cameramen, and bareheaded neighbors were lined up. At the house next door Mrs. Margaret H. Cox was giving a “Black radio party” with 18 guests, obligingly sent out her maid with coffee for the press. Daniel Goodacre, 13, begged the used flash bulb from a photographer who snapped the arriving Justice, explaining: “This is the biggest thing that’s ever happened out here, even counting the time a man shot himself in his garage and that big brush fire we had.”

The biggest thing that ever happened in Chevy Chase was also easily the biggest thing that happened in the U. S. last week. For an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court to broadcast on any controversial subject was unprecedented. For an Associate Justice to deal with the topic that awaited Hugo Black was wildly sensational. When he arrived in Norfolk, Va. last week after a tour of Europe and told newspaper reporters that he would not speak for fear of being misquoted (see p. 50), his prospective broadcast instantly became radio’s biggest attraction since Edward VIII’s abdication. Wildly delighted with such a victory over the press, the broadcasting companies arranged a national hook up. At 9:30, when the broadcast began, there was practically nothing else on the air throughout the U. S.

Centre of the enormous invisible web was a table in the Hamilton living room, set with microphones, wires and a glass of water. Hugo Black sat before it on a straight-backed, plush-seated dining room chair. The other guests of the Hamiltons, seated in the dining room across the hall, enjoyed a familiar view of the great man in his hour of trial. During it, there were three unprescribed noises not all of which were fully audible to the nation. Once little, Julie Hamilton, 5, came to the head of the stairs in her nightie and called “Daddy.” Again with a sudden hum the Hamiltons’ electric refrigerator switched on and radio technicians gritted their teeth. Finally as Hugo Black finished talking and reached for a cigaret, one of the guests in the dining room applauded.

Few would-be orators will study the 1,054 words which Hugo Black spoke in 11 of the 30 minutes allotted to him. He began his speech by alleging that the criticism of his former Klan connection was a “concerted campaign” to fan the flames of religious prejudice. Said he, in a nasal Southern drawl: “If continued, the inevitable result will be the projection of religious beliefs into a position of prime importance in political campaigns and to reinfect our social and business life with the poison of religious bigotry. . . . To contribute my part in averting such a catastrophe in this land dedicated to tolerance and freedom, I break with precedents of the past to talk to you tonight.”

He ended his speech by saying: “I formed one of the most valued friendships of my life with a son of the Jewish faith.”* Sandwiched between was the declaration for which the whole U. S. had been waiting:

“The insinuations of racial and religious intolerance made concerning me are based on the fact that I joined the Ku Klux Klan about 15 years ago. I did join the Klan. I later resigned. I never rejoined. What appeared then, or what appears now, on the records of the organization, I do not know.

“I never have considered and I do not now consider the unsolicited card given to me shortly after my nomination to the Senate as a membership of any kind in the Ku Klux Klan. I never used it. I did not even keep it.

“Before becoming a Senator I dropped the Klan. I have had nothing whatever to do with it since that time. I abandoned it. I completely discontinued any association with the organization. I have never resumed it and never expect to do so. At no meeting of any organization, social, political or fraternal, have I ever indicated the slightest departure from my steadfast faith in the unfettered right of every American to follow his conscience in the matter of religion.”

This was hardly news to anyone, for if Hugo Black had never joined the Klan he would obviously have denied doing so a month ago. It could hardly have been news to Franklin Roosevelt or any member of the Senate, for Senator Borah said last week: “Justice Black stated the matter of his relationship with the Klan as I understood it to be when I spoke on the subject in the Senate.”

Nonetheless Justice Black’s carefully worded admission and disclaimer was interesting for the points it did not cover: it did not deny in any major point the statements made in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s articles about his Klan connections. It did not say whether his original resignation from the Klan was bona fide or merely a 1926 campaign gesture. It did not explain why he had accepted the “unsolicited card” or whether he had tried to give it back. In particular it did not deny the effusive speech attributed to him at a Klan klorero after the unsolicited card had reached him. Most of all it did not tell whether he joined the Klan out of hatred for non-Aryans, and later dropped it in a new spirit of tolerance, or whether he took one or both actions for political expediency.

His decorous concluding words were: “When this statement is ended my discussion of the question is closed. I believe the character and conduct of every public servant, great and small, should be subject to the constant scrutiny of the people. This must be true if a democracy serves its purpose. It is in this spirit that I now bid those who have been listening to me goodnight.”

If Associate Justice Black hoped by ending his discussion of his membership in the Klan last week to end the U. S. discussion of it, he was sorely disappointed. What followed his speech was a clamor fully matching the uproar that had preceded it. Except in the South newspapers almost without exception found it totally unsatisfactory.

As predicted last month this criticism affects the New Deal far more seriously than it does Hugo Black who is presumably safe from the vicissitudes of politics. When Justice Black was broadcasting last week, Franklin Roosevelt, inspecting Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, Wash., (see p. 15), had just stepped out of a closed car equipped with a radio into an open car without one. So far as the public was concerned, -the President heard nothing, thought nothing, said nothing.

*For his Supreme Court office staff Associate Justice Black last week got Leon Smallwood, a Negro Catholic, as his messenger, chose Anne Butt, a Catholic, for his secretary. Day the Court convened (see p. 17), Jerome A. Cooper of Birmingham was appointed his law clerk. A statement issued through the Supreme Court mentioned that Lawyer Cooper “is of the Jewish faith.”