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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."