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.