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The Reverse Switch. The Falstaff Brewing Corp. of St. Louis got into trouble late last year, after it bought for one of its Negro salesmen a $500 life membership in the N.A.A.C.P. on the theory that it would help him in his dealings with Negro customers. The White Sentinel, a sewer sheet published in St. Louis by John Hamilton, an ex-Communist, printed a photograph of Falstaff's Vice President Karl Vollmer handing the check to an N.A.A.C.P. official. Squawked the White Sentinel: "When you drink Falstaff beer, you are aiding the integration and mongrelization of America." White Sentinel copies were circulated in Mississippi's Delta region, where Falstaff sales were cut. Vice President Vollmer flew to Jackson to say publicly: "No officer of Falstaff has ever commented favorably or otherwise on the principles of the N.A.A.C.P." After that, officials of the Jackson Citizens' Council declared the company innocent of the charges against it. Now Falstaff sales are back up—except that some Memphis Negroes, angered by its explanation, have switched to other brands. Philip Morris has had trouble partly because of a false rumor that it contributed to the N.A.A.C.P., partly because, like a great many other companies, it employs Negro salesmen. Snarled the White Sentinel: "The owners of Philip Morris may discover that their cigarettes are just for Negro consumption." A Philip Morris executive traveled to Montgomery and said: "Neither Philip Morris Inc. nor any of its subsidiaries has made a contribution to the N.A.A.C.P. The rumor possibly results from the fact that we, along with other leading tobacco companies, contributed to the Urban League." The Urban League, which works toward improved race relations, is a Community Chest member in Louisville and Rich mond, where Philip Morris has plants.
Economic boycott is a two-way street, and Negro reprisal efforts are by no means limited to the Montgomery bus strike. A persistent report—as persistently denied —that Coca-Cola bottlers had contribut ed to White Citizens' Councils caused a sales drop around Orangeburg, S.C. (where a Coca-Cola machine in a Negro-owned service station carried a sign saying, "This machine has economic pressure. It is dangerous to insert money").
In Florida Gulf Life Insurance Co. (which does about $6,000,000 a year in business from Negroes) was threatened by boycott after one of its directors, Sumter Lowry, filed as a race-baiting candidate for governor. Lowry was swiftly dropped from the Gulf directorate, and the threat eased. But C. Blythe Andrews, publisher of a Tampa Negro weekly, says: "If, after the first primary or later, we find General Lowry has been put back on the board, the insurance company will be in for trouble."