Fly Time

It was an extremely trying week for Georgia's pretender--Governor Herman ("Hummon") Talmadge.

Ever since he grabbed office four weeks ago, he had been talking up the good points of his white-primary bill. He had pointed out that the bill was not undemocratic ; it simply kept the Negro from hurting his own cause by voting. But when the State Senate held a public hearing on the measure, Hummon heard from all sorts of people he'd never suspected were against him.

White-haired Mrs. Helen Dortch Longstreet, widow of famed Confederate General James Longstreet, cried: "Bury it [the bill] too deep for resurrection. Thus you can announce to all the world and to millions yet unborn that the old Georgia, the great Georgia of Hill and Stephens and Toombs, when Kennesaw Mountain was a peak of fire and Chickamauga a field of blood, still lives to claim an honorable place in the sisterhood of 48, constituting one nation, one people, America indivisible and unconquerable. . . ."

Things also went wrong with Hummon's hopes for settlement of his feud with Lieutenant Governor M. E. Thompson over their respective claims to the governorship. In Rome, one Judge Claude Porter, hearing a suit brought by Thompson to get records from the state parole board, ruled that Hummon had no right to office.

Hummon hollered like a bull in fly time. "The Rome case was brought as a ruse by agreement between all parties to it," he said. "I am informed that as soon as the case was presented to him the judge reached into his pocket and pulled out an opinion he had already written."

But even this backfired. Judge Porter said Hummon's protests reminded him of a story: "An Irishman was kicked by a jackass and someone asked what he was going to do about it. 'Nothing,' the Irishman replied, 'I just consider the source.' "

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