Newspaper Page Text
Friday, October 17, 1958
THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
Page Fire
On Guard
A policeman at right stands on
the alert before the magnificent
facade of the Temple, symbolizing
the aroused community spirit
which found expression in a
hundred different ways— offers
of facilities by Atlanta Public
School System, by various
Christian congregations,
offers of rewards and thousands
of official and unofficial messages
of sympathy and support relayed
to the congregation officials via
mail, telephone, telegrams and
spoken encounters.
Not the least of these public
reactions has been the outstanding
and courageous coverage of the
two Atlanta newspapers, Journal
and Constitution—from which the
material on this and the next
pages is reproduced.
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RALPH
McGILL
A Church,
A School—
From Atlanta Constitution
Tuesday, Oct. 14, 1958
Dynamite in great quantity
Sunday ripped a beautiful Tem
ple of worship in Atlanta. It
followed hard on the heels of
a like destruction of a handsome
high school at Clinton, Tenn.
The same rabid, mad-dog
minds were, without question,
behind both. They also are the
source of previous bombings in
Florida, Alabama and South
Carolina. The school house and
the church are the targets of
diseased, hate-filled minds.
Let us face the facts.
This is a harvest. It is the
crop of things sown.
It is the harvest of defiance
of courts and the encouragement
of citizens to defy law on the
part of many Southern politi
cians. It will be the acme of
irony, for example, if any one
of four or five Southern gover
nors deplore this bombing. It
will be grimly humorous if cer
tain state attorneys general issue
statements of regret. And it will
be quite a job for some editors,
columnists and commentators,
who have been saying that our
courts have no jurisdiction and
that the people should refuse to
accept their authority now to de
plore.
It is not possible to preach
lawlessness and restrict it.
To be sure, none said go bomb
a Jewish temple or a school.
Gates Opened
But let it be understood that
when leadership in high places
in any degree fails to support
constituted authority, it opens
the gates to all those who wish
to take law into their hands.
There will be, to be sure, the
customary act of the careful
drawing aside of skirts on the
part of those in high places.
“How awful," they will ex
claim. “How terrible. Something
must be done.”
But the record stands. The ex
tremists of the citizens’ councils,
the political leaders who in terms
violent and inflammatory av
repudiated their oaths and stood
against due process of law have
helped unloose this flood of hate
and bombing.
This, too, is a harvest of those
so-called Christian ministers who
have chosen to preach hate in
stead of compassion Let them
now find pious words and raise
their hands in deploring the
bombing of a synagogue
You do not preach and en
courage hatred for the Negro
and hope to restrict it to that
field. It is an old, old story. It is
one repeated over and over again
in history. When the wolves of
hate are loosed on one people,
then no one is safe.
Hate and lawlessness by those
who lead release the yellow rats
and encourage the crazed and
neurotic who print and distribute
the hate pamphlets, who shriek
ed that Franklin Roosevelt was
a Jew; who denounce the Su
preme Court as being Commun
ist and controlled by Jewish in
fluences.
The Harvest
This series of bombings is the
harvest, too, of something else.
One of those connected with
the bombing telephoned a news
service early Sunday morning to
say the job would be done. It
was to be committed, he said,
by the Confederate Underground.
The Confederacy and the men
who led it are revered by mil
lions. Its leaders returned to the
Union and urged that the fu
ture be committed to building a
stronger America. This was par
ticularly true of Gen. Robert E.
Lee. Time after time he urged
his students at Washington Uni
versity to forget the War Be
tween the States and to help
build a greater and stronger
union.
But for too many years now
we have seen the Confederate
flag and the emotions of that
great war become the property
of men not fit to tie the shoes
of those who fought for it. Some
of these have been merely child
ish and immature. Others have
perverted and commercialized
the flag by making the Stars
and Bars, and the Confederacy
itself, a symbol of hate and
bombings.
For a long time now it has
been needful for all Americans
to stand up and be counted on
the side of law and the due pro
cess of law—even when to do so
goes against personnal beliefs
and emotions. It is late. But
there is yet time.
MEMO TO A BOMBER: THE CHILDREN
DIDN’T SING THEIR
Atlanta Constitution,
MEMO TO A DYNAMITER:
It was too dark at the time of the blast to see
what it did to the inside of the Temple. This is
what it did.
It buried the little sky-blue robes of the chil
dren’s choir under glass and plaster dust. The
white collars lay gray and torn in water from
broken pipes.
It blew from the vestibule wall and buried a
bronze plaque commemorating men of the con
gregation who were killed in the military service
of the United States flag.
It shattered a little glass display case set up
by the sisterhood of the congregation and spilled
its contents onto the wet rubble. The contents lying
there consisted of bathinette covers and fuzzy little
baby bibs sewn by the women.
It toppled Menorahs from a broken shelf and
left those symbolic candle holders lying bent and
tarnished under wreckage.
It broke open a children’s book case and tore
a red-backed reader entitled “Jeremy’s ABC
Book.”
A small record album on one damaged shelf
was named, “Thank You, God.”
In the water on the floor below the book case
lay a picture book named “Davy Crockett.”
There was to be a dance Sunday night in the
blasted meeting room for seventh, eighth and
ninth-grade children. They had put up some deco-
SABBATH SONGS
Monday, Oct. 13, 1958
rations. They had cut out round disks from col
ored paper and pinned them to the walls in the
shape of records. They had labeled these little
records with song names such as “Hula Hoop”
and “Tears on My Pillow.”
But they didn’t hold the dance because chunks
of the ceiling and pieces of the light fixtures clut
tered the floor they were going to dance on. A
piano in the corner had plaster dust on it and all
the windows were smashed. Fragments had scarred
the walls as if a shell had burst, and some of the
round disks clipped from colored paper were no
longer in the right places.
Did you know The Temple did not begin as a
religious congregation at all, but a society which
devoted itself, a century ago, to feeding and cloth
ing and caring for released Confederate prisoners
as they hobbled home from the war?
Walking back across the small blue choir robes
in the debris and through a shattered door into
the sanctuary, it would have been interesting to
ascend behind the great golden Ark and read the
page at which the prayer book was open when the
dynamite exploded. You had to brush aside the
plaster dust in order to read the words very well,
but they said this:
“O God, may all created in Thine image recog
nize that they art brethren, so that, one in spirit
and one in fellowship, they may be forever united
before Thee.”
Mene, Mene, lekel, Upharsin’—Daniel
Atlanta Constitution, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 1958
Decent citizens will feel better knowing the
Federal Bureau of Investigation is at work in the
investigation of the dynamiting of the Atlanta
Temple early Sunday. They are grateful to Presi
dent Eisenhower for ordering the FBI on the job.
Clues are few. The depraved, callous men who
placed the heavy load of explosives at the back
of the Temple were without question experts in
dynamiting. For them it was a simple job. In their
hands the work of destruction could be done with
out much likelihood of leaving clues.
But it is safe to say the investigation will be
relentless and thorough. We somehow believe that
the luck of these evil persons in escaping will run
out. There is no doubt but that the bombing of
schools and churches is being directed by one
group. They have committed these acts of vio
lence in Tennessee, in North Carolina, Florida
and Alabama. The search will go on. One day it
will end with the arrest of the guilty.
The community is ashamed. It is distressed and
shocked by the dynamiting of the Temple. It is
distressed because the state’s political leadership
has been of the sort which has created a climate
of incitement to fanatics and extremist persons,
many of whom are neurotic to the point of mental
instability. The record on that is clear,
Meanwhile, those who feel impelled to make
some tangible expression of their feelings might
well do so by sending a contribution to the Tem
ple.
There is a simple, yet touchingly symbolic story
about the dynamiting. The inner light, which burns
always with the symbol of eternity, was not blast
ed out by the tremendous explosion which broke
a glass window in a neighboring house.
Whether one calls it an accident or a meaning
ful thing, it is a symbolic fact. The light of truth
continues to burn. Public officials may encourage
the mob and cause dynamiters to dare to vent
their brutal attitude toward religion and educa
tion. But the eternal verities remain.
The mob, which is hate, always strikes at the
church and at the school.
This they now have done here. They likely will
strike again. Murder and destruction are in their
hearts. But for them and the leadership which
has encouraged the golden calf of lawlessness, the
hand-writing is on the walls:
“Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.”—Dan. 5:25.
Baltshazar didn’t live out the night.
It is night now, in Atlanta, and it may be a
long one.
But the dynamiters will not live it out,