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¶Voicing the religious conviction that prompts many Southern churchmen to risk their careers, 644 Nashville area ministers judged church and synagogue dynamite threats: "The bombers, in their frenzy, have sensed a truththat the church and the synagogue are the ultimate enemies of evil and hatred. Our faith is built upon the rock of conviction that all men are created equal because they are created in the image of God." ¶Attorney General William P. Rogers called a federal grand jury to investigate the arrest last month, on trumped-up "vagrancy" charges, of three Negro ministers from Montgomery, Ala. who went over to talk civil rights with Birmingham Negro leaders. Republican Rogers' target: Birmingham's ham-handed Police Commissioner Eugene ("Bull") Connor, leader of Alabama Dixiecrats' 1948 march out of the Democratic convention, who refused to talk to the FBI. ¶ One of the two surviving Confederate soldiers, Houston's Colonel Walter ("Old Reb") Williams, celebrated his 116th birthday by reminding today's implacables of the Civil War's wastes: "It was the final act of divided men, too sick and tired to set things straight. There were bitter people on both sides who wanted war. They were a minority, but they led the majority to war."
