Boiling Over

The nation was good and mad at Communists--home-grown as well as the U.S.S.R. and North Korean varieties--and here & there its temper not only boiled up but boiled over. Items: P: In Detroit, the common council forbade sidewalk news vendors to sell "subversive literature," gave the commissioner of police the job of determining what was subversive. The Detroit Newspaper Guild protested that they disliked Commie publications ("They are dismal examples of journalism. They have shown a constant disregard for the truth.") but didn't believe in suppressing them. The council decided to think it over for a week. P: In Birmingham, Ala., big, blustery Police Commissioner Eugene ("Bull") Connor, who had been arresting Communists on charges of vagrancy, thought there ought to be a more specific charge. He pushed a new ordinance through the city commission, banishing Communists from Birmingham on pain of a maximum $100 fine, 180-day jail sentence and constant rearrest. A Communist, said Bull's ordinance, was anyone caught talking to a Communist in a "nonpublic place," or anyone who passed out literature that could be traced, even remotely, to a Communist hand.

P: In Columbus, Ohio, police juvenile officers warned teen-age clubs to beware of "Communist agitators," and be suspicious of "any new member of a group whose background is not an open book." P:In McKeesport, Pa., the city council readied an ordinance requiring registration of "anyone who engages in activities destined to promote the principles of Communism." Maximum penalty for violation: a $100 fine, 30 days' jail, or both. P: In Houston, Texas, a marauding gang laid down a midnight rock barrage on the apartment of James J. Green, state secretary of the Communist Party, accidentally pelting the neighbors as well. Next day, Green's landlord asked him to move. P: In suburban Los Angeles, a World War II veteran named Frank Zaffina, 32, rounded up a posse for a "crusade against Communism," pounced on a half-dozen astonished workmen as they came out of the gates of the Chrysler assembly plant. After three had been badly mauled, Zaffina was surprised to learn that among his victims were included a fellow Navy veteran and another with a South Pacific Air Force record. "I guess it isn't right," he mused next day, "to take the law into your own hands."

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