Some of the commentary yesterday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, focused on what sometimes is called the "whitewashing" of Dr. King's memory and message. In other words, the tendency, especially among white folks, to focus on peace and love while downplaying the then-radical nature of his calls to action and the fight for equality.
That tendency in turn gives those who would have despised Dr. King 50 years ago --- including our current president and Iowa's own Steve King --- permission to invoke his memory with a feel-good quote or two (although Steve King's 2019 Twitter quote apparently wasn't a quote at all).
So I got to wondering how Dr. King had been covered in Chariton newspapers during the 1950s and 1960s, then took to the searchable digital archives to see if I could find out. These search engines are far from fool-proof, but the answer seems to be --- hardly at all. That's not surprising, considering the nature of weekly newspapers and the somewhat insular nature of places like Chariton.
I did find an interesting series of letters to the editor published in early November 1963, however --- written after a long and decisive summer: John F. Kennedy's landmark civil rights speech and call for legislation on June 11 (the same day Alabama Gov. George W. Wallace made his "stand in the schoolhouse door" in Tuscaloosa); the June 12 assassination of Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi; the massive Aug. 28 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; and the Sept. 15 bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four young girls.
The first of the letters was published in The Herald Patriot of Nov. 7, written by the Rev. W. LaRoy Anderson (1919-1995), then pastor of the Chariton Bible Church --- a fundamentalist congregation that no longer exists although its building still stands at the intersection of Roland Avenue and North 15th Street. Here's the text.
Dear Mr. Editor,
In recent issues of our local papers, articles pertaining to the civil rights of the Negro race have been presented from the angle of the present day incidents of violence and abuse.
I as an American citizen am for the Negro people having good schools, churches, training and employment that they can and will qualify for filling. However, there is a picture behind the scenes that we must face in looking over the past history, how much has been gained by mob violence? More can be accomplished by calm, clear-headed reasoning and planning.
The leader of much of this internal strife is Dr. Martin Luther King, a Negro and Pro-communist. He is president of the Southern Leadership Conference. He has 60 communist front citations, as documented by Karl Prussion, ex-FBI counterspy for 22 years, who says, "King is a member of more communist front organizations than any communist in the U.S." (Coped from the Sawdust Trail, Oct. 27, 1963, issue.)
God help us to be loyal citizens of our beloved land and not be swayed in thought or action by one who has been proved to be affiliated with the enemy of not only Democracy of America but of the Eternal God.
We as a nation have been blessed of the Living God, who created the universe, and by his help we have been a land of freedom and a haven from the tyranny of persecutions of other lands. "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and ALL the nations that forget God." (Psalm 9:17)
Most sincerely yours for the upholding of Constitutional Americanism and for the counteracting of Godless Communism."
Rev. W. LaRoy Anderson, Pastor
Chariton Bible Church
Chariton, Iowa
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A second letter in a similar vein was published in The Leader of Nov. 12, this one written by a layman who, unlike the Rev. Mr. Anderson, was not a public figure. It contained a more direct suggestion that Chariton's newspaper editors (Brace Owings of The Herald-Patriot and John Baldridge of the Leader) were King sympathizers and a longer and more detailed list of the alleged subversives with whom Dr. King was supposedly affiliated.
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A response was published in The Herald-Patriot of Nov. 14, written by Ronald E. Roberts, a Chariton native and graduate of both Graceland College and Drake University who was working on his master's degree that fall at the University of Louisiana, Baton Rouge. He would join the University of Northern Iowa faculty in 1969, teach there until retirement in 2001 and write extensively about, among other topics, the coal mining industry in and around his hometown, Lucas. Here's the text of his letter:
To the Editor
I recently read a letter in the Open Forum that disturbed me greatly. The Rev. LaRoy Anderson took it upon himself to call Dr. Martin Luther King a "pro-communist" and communist."
I trust the reverend informed the proper authorities of his great discovery. It is strange that Dr. King has been cleared by 1. federal courts, 2. the FBI and 3. the United States Justice Department. Obviously, Anderson knows more than these agencies, as he reads "The Sawdust Trail," a combination fundamentalist-John Birch type publication. Dr. King is perhaps one of the greatest Christian activists in the county today. He sees discrimination, prejudice and centuries of violence committed against his people and attempts to solve these problems even if it means confinement in Southern prisons.
It is indeed unfortunate that our "christian" churches have not taken a stronger stand on civil rights. It seems obvious to me that a man should have the right to vote, to live where he pleases, or to sit down at a lunch counter regardless of the amount of pigmentation in his skin. Unfortunately others disagree with this.
I picked up a southern newspaper last night which accused President Kennedy of being a "card carrying communist." It went on to say that he was "stirring up the negroes."
I have lived in the deep south for over a year now and have learned to expect stupid and irresponsible statements from the wild eyed segregationists. I hardly expected to hear the same thing from the state and county in which I was raised.
I intend to participate in every civil rights movement that I can at the risk of being called irresponsible names by irresponsible people.
Sincerely,
Ronald E. Roberts
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
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The Sawdust Trail was a publication, popular among Midwest fundamentalists of the day, issued by the Billy Sunday Memorial Tabernacle (now Morningside Bible Church) in Sioux City.
After this brief exchange, there are a few scattered references to Dr. King in Chariton newspapers during the balance of the 1960s, but nothing that gives any idea how Lucas Countyans were responding to news of the civil rights movement.
It's generally thought that Dr. King had a disapproval rating of roughly 75 percent among white Americans during his lifetime. That disapproval rating might have edged a little higher in Lucas County, I'm guessing --- and I'll bet that if you poked and prodded a little it still would be able to find folks here who consider this towering human rights pioneer nothing more than a communist troublemaker.
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