from Russ Stetler The past week's news from the United States shows further evidence of the hardening of forces most opposed to the Afro-American freedom movement, In Mississippi, an overt white supremacist who backed Senator Goldwater in the 1964 Presidential election has won the nomination for Governor, The securing of the nomination is tantamount to victory in the ultimate election, since the Democratic party exercises overwhelming control throughout the American South, Elsewhere in Mississippi, Mr. Hop Barnett, a man indicted for murder in 1964, won election to the office of sheriff. The victories of these two racists follows months of active campaigning and voter registration by moderate Negro organisations in Mississippi. All of the Negro candidates for local offices were defeated by their white opponents. Attempts by Negroes to work through constitutional channels have thus been thwarted: the segregationists not only maintain their dominance in these institutions, but brazenly solidify their ranks by installing the most extreme racialists in office. Efforts by the Federal Governnent to rectify racial injustices continue to be feeble, A typical token gesture is the appointment of a Negro to the Supreme Court. Justice Thurgood Marshall's appointment has been ratified by the U.S, Senate, and much publicity has attended this individual's achievement as a victory for black Americans. That it fails even to touch the social nature of racial problems is acutely obvious,
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The National Guard, meanwhile, has taken important steps in the field of public relations, hiring a Madison Avenue advertising firm to 'repair' its image. Largely composed of inexperienced, trigger-happy forces, the National Guard is known to have cost many lives in recent ghetto uprisings. Full-page advertisements have already begun to appear in The New York Times and the Washington Post. The National Guard appeals to the hysteria which has been manufactured in America about black power and ghetto violence in order to describe its activity as nothing more than the restoration of order, Indications of black solidarity also appeared, There was a strong suggestion that American Negro athletes would refuse to participate in the Olympic Games to be held in Mexico next year, thus depriving the USA of the leading contenders in the 100, 200 and 400 metre races, the high hurdles and the high and broad jumps. Mr, Stokely Carmichael travelled from Havana to Hanoi, where he expressed the solidarity of Afro-Americans with the Vietna- > mese people, Back in the U.S.A., Mr. Rap Brown, commented in a speech 4 calling for self-defence under present conditions in the ghettoes: 'It is : no accident that 22% of the casualties in Vietnam have been: black people e who are fighting brown people for the white man's cause,!' In Milwaukee, a white Catholic priest led an Open Housing March into a poor white ghetto, where they were greeted with a barrage of bottles»and rocks, Freedom House, the headquarters of .the Milwaukee group, was burned out, The Mayor of the city then banned all demonstrations, but further activity continued undeterred, And in Cleveland, Ohio, Dr. Martin Luther King advocated a rent strike against ghetto landlords, The priority of housing needs and problems was thus indicated in both places.