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60 Land of the Free and the Hungry A group of English City Council women, led by Mrs. Theresa Russell of Newcastleon -Tyne, has started an airlift of free baby food for Negro children in New Orleans, Louisiana. These Negro children have been purged from the state welfare rolls by a new law against “immorality.” In reality, as these Englishwomen and most Americans know, the purge is motivated by a Dixiecrat determination to stop at nothing to cripple the southern Negroes’ drive toward integration, now reaching the stage of desperate conflict in Louisiana.* Not only is the food being welcomed with open arms by the hungry children and their mothers. It is hailed by many Americans as a Marshall Plan in reverse, since unlike the State Department’s Marshall Plan, this airlift is not for the purpose of gaining power or prestige but only to help those who are denied the elementary necessities of life in a country that boasts of plenty. Meanwhile, in Cleveland, Ohio, Jim “Mudcat” Grant, the young Negro pitching star of the Indians, has been suspended from the team by manager Jimmie Dykes. It all came about this way. While players and spectators were standing and singing the National Anthem before a recent game, Grant said the words, “This land is not so free, I can’t even go to Mississippi” in place of the usual “Land of the free and home of the brave.” The rhyme was not so good but the sentiment was indisputable. However, he was overheard by Coach Wilks, who called Grant a “black so and so.” Grant retorted that Texas is worse than Russia and walked off the field. Dykes’s reason for suspending Grant was that Grant had left the field during a game. Legally, Dykes was within his rights but the rights Grant was singing about go much deeper. In a country the size of the United States incidents like these may be shrugged off as minor. Certainly the politicians who are making the spectacular speeches wish they would go away. But they are not minor and they will not go away. All the talk of American greatness and all the talk at the UN about American readiness to help underdeveloped nations are only encouraging Negroes to fight to make this country truly the land of the free and the home of the brave. [ October 8,1960 ] * In the summer of 1960, the all-white Louisiana state legislature passes a series of bills ostensibly aimed at curbing illegitimacy but were clearly part of a counterattack launched by the most extreme segregationist forces in state politics against the movement for civil rights.The laws criminalized common-law marriage, made it illegal to have more than one child out of wedlock,and ended state welfare payments to the parents of illegitimate children. By July, 23,000 children (most of them children of color) had been dropped from the state’s Aid to Dependent Children Program.The laws also restricted voting rights, disenfranchising people in common-law marriages and parents of illegitimate children (along with several other categories of people) and requiring prospective voters to pass both a literacy test and a constitutional interpretation test. —Ed. Ward.indb 60 12/21/10 9:27 AM ...

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