Box 18, Folder 30, Document 1

Box 18, Folder 30, Document 1

| Civil Rights Cause Loses A Friend

SIR:

I am opposed to any; cause they were random mem

further extension of civil rights| bers of a hated group, was bar

to Negro
they may be entitled to them.

I would strongly hope that this
sen comes as a shock to
the Negro community, and par-
jticularly to my many Negro
friends of years’ standing, for my
credentials over the years as a
civil rights advocate are unas-
sailable,

I was a member of the N.A.A-
C.P. in 1945, when few white
‘persons would siand up and be
counted on the subject of civil
rights, while at the same period |
I was both anti-Communist enough ;
fto be called a red-baiter by)
some friends, and anti-McCar-'
thy enough later, when he came}
along, to have been the author of |
a practical joke denouncing him
upon the occasion of the unveiling |
of a monument in his honor in|
Baltimore city at the height of his
popularity. I am a longtime mem-
ber of the A.C.L.U. Legal Panel,
and have been a member of the
Legal Assistance Committee of
the N.A.A.C.P. I live in a three-
quarter Negro block, next to a
Negro slum, and happily send my
children to a 50-50 integrated
elementary school, which happens
to be the best in town; I have
tun for public office on a slate
headed by our present Negro
State Senator, Verda Welcome,
and I was invested with important
responsibility in the campaign of
Henry Parks. I have, as a law-
yer, represented civil rights
demonstrators in the courts,
and I have most recently raised
the question, with apparent im-
mediate success which should cul-
minate in a rapid correction, of
the long-standing evil in Baltimore
city of petit jury panels inherently
discriminatory against Negroes.

But the Watts riots disgusted
's. and sickened me as a human
heing. The inhumanity of un-

maiming and kill-
ing by Negruee of human beings
who bad performed no specific
plas against any Ne;zro, but who





citizens, no matter that”
‘bloody enormity of the Wotis



tke attacked, and butchered,
pi, ¥s, only be-

barism at its worst. The ful!

occurrence is beyond exaggera-|
tion.
I eannot accept then, as a
human being, the manner in
which Negro leaders have drawn
the Watts carnage to their bos-
oms; and have declared it to be.
not their shame, but their
glory. So be it. I have heard
Germans boast of Dachau, also.

But 1 wish such persons to
know that they will not, until
killing has been forsworn as a
political weapon, have my sym-
pathy or my support, or my good
will,

I will not be moved by the
threat of harm to myself, my
loved ones and my possessions. |
to yield up anything to those,
who threaten me—no matter what- |
ever whether or not I am entitled |
to hold back that which I will not |
yield. To yield to threats of |
horror is both, immoral artl dan. |
gerous. ‘ |

I would believe that tears and
remorse would be the fitting re-|
action of Negro leadership to the |
terror and death consciously per-
petrated by colored persons in
the course of despoliation of}
Watts. I will not accept the in-'
human savagery, the simple af-!
front to human dignity, the unholy
evil of having rioting and harm
brandished at me, or at anyone,
as an alternative to giving way. |

I, for one, wil! not give way. I
have seen the social and political
condition of the Negro advance,
during the later years of my
adulthood, more by far than they
advanced in all of the previous
years since the Civil War.

1 have worked for it, I have
wanted this, and as a human
being I would want it to con-
tinue.

But, gentlemen of the Negro
community, by expire sing pale.
complacency, OF sa‘ ® tn '-
the Watts riois, you »a-eim= ©

LEONARD J. KERPELMAN

Baltimore.