THE
Michigan Daily
Edited and managed by Students at the
University of Michigan
Friday, July 12, 1974
News Phone: 764-0552
The mountain asses
IF RICHARD NIXON STANDS, as Hunter Thompson
said, for "all that is corrupt and venal in American
politics," than Earl Warren stood firmly entrenched in
the bedrock of the Constitution. For as Nixon has per-
verted that national charter, Warren upheld it in his dis-
tinguished 16-year tenure on the Supreme Court.
Warren was a compassionate man who could even
forgive the criminal gaucheries of John Mitchell, who, as
attorney general, tried to privately influence the court's
decisions. As Eric Severaid put it, "He just figured Mit-
chell to be a new boy in town who didn't know his way
around."
The High Court was quickly stamped with the label
of the Warren Court" as decision after decision plowed
new ground for racial integration, equal voting rights
and procedural guarantees for criminal defendants. His
decisions fanned the smoldering anger of the Right, and
"Impeach Earl Warren" was a rallying cry of the ultra-
conservative John Birch Society. But Warren refused to
budge, pausing only to ask in cases before the Court: "Is
it fair?"
FARL WARREN UNDERSTOOD the Constitution and
the doctrines outlined therein. He was a firm believer
in the doctrine of separation of powers; but he also rea-
lized that it did not give the executive branoh the power
to treat its co-equals in Congress and. the Court with con-
tempt and scorn. He realized that the Constitution does
not give the executive license to steal, burglarize, condone
perjury, and obstruct justice.
Warren was appointed to the High Court in 1953
after having served as Governor of California-ironically,
the post that Ronald Reasan now holds. He was a life-
long Republican with such liberal views that former
President Harry Truman once said "he's really a Demo-
crat and doesn't know A." Warren labeled himself a "pro-
gressive conservative."
He was twice an avowed contender for the presiden-
tial nomination, and ran on the losing ticket with Thomas
Dewey against Harry Truman in 1948. When Truman
pulled a stunning uset victory, Warren graciously wrote
off the defeat as the "will of the people."
A LAWYER BY PROFESSION, Warren had never served
as a judge of any kind prior to his appointment as
Chief Justice of the highest court in the land.
By the time Warren had retired on June 23, 1969, ad-
mirers ranked him with such judicial giants as John
Marshall. Roger Tsnev and Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Warren was, above all. a man who understood his
function as a member of the High Court. In his farewell
radio and television address to Californians prior to his
investiture as the 14th Chief Justice. Warren called theI
Supreme Court "the interpreter and defender of the Con-
stitution." During his tenure on the Court, Warren was
exactly that - an interpreter and defender of the Con-
stitution.
It is perhaps ironic that Warren passed away while
the Supreme Court is in the midst of its most historic
deliberation to date. (The Court is deciding whether
President Nixon should turn over 61 White House tapes
to Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski), for Warren believed
that the law applies to all men-presidents and kings
notwithstanding.
WHEN BENJAMIN FRANKLIN emerged from the Con-
stitutional Convention, a woman anproached him
and asked: "What do we have, Mr. Franklin: a republic
or a monarchy?" "A republic, madam-if you can keep
it," he replied.
Richard Nixon would have us be a monarchy. It is
up to the successors who have inherited Earl Warren's
judicial mantle to trv keep us a reublic. It is the most
fitting tribute that can be paid to him.
-GARY THOMAS
Summter Staff
JUDY RUSKIN.
EiHtor
MARNIE IEYN
Editorial Director
KEN FINK
Arts Editor
GORION ATCHESON........Night Editor
CHERYL. pSLA'rE ..................... ....., Night Editor
JEFF SORENSEN. .... . . .Night Editor
BARBARA CORNELL. ..... Ass't. Night Editor
DELLA DTPIETRO........Aso't. Night Editor
BILL HEENAN... .....As't Night Editor
ANDREA LILLY........Asst. Night Editor
STEPHEN HERSH..... ......................Ass't. Night Editor
DAVID WH.ING ...... Asst. NightgEditor
KEN FINK .............. 1... ,:..., Photographer
STEVE K A GA N . ..... . . ... ..'. . . .. . .,.,.,..... .. Photographer
MLARCS FSLDMAN
Sports Editor
CLARKE COGSDILL . _... . ..,............ . Contributing Sports Editor
GEORGE HASTINGS ............. .............. Executive Sports Editor
JOHN KAHLER ............................ Associate Sports Editor
ROGER ROSSITER ...............:............. Managing Sports Editor
Carolina in mry tm min d
By DAVID STOLL
ALEIGH, N.C.: Four days before Governor
James Holhouser had proclaimed a state-
wide day of "prayer and reconciliation" to calm
furor over the issue, but before leaving town
to make a traditional round of patriotic speech-
es, he had also placed 1,100 National Guards-
men on stand-by alert. That's just the way things
are run in North Carolina, where on July Fourth
some 6,000 protestors marched past grim Central
Prison in the capital city of Raleigh. Inside, no
less than 42 prisoners, most of them black, await
execution.
The march was probably the largest in the
South since the assassination of Martin Luther
King in 17968. Organized by Angela Davis's Na-
tional Alliance Against Racist- and Political Re-
pression, the marchers were demanding more
than an end to the state's recently reinstated
death penalty. The campaign against capital pun-
ishment, a well-developed issue in North Caro-
lina, was being used to challenge the state's
entire progressive reputation.
AMONG MARCH demands were freedom for de-
fendants in several controversial criminal pro-
secutions; an end to forced sterilization of poor
women; an end to harrassment of blacks, Indians
and labor unions; and a halt to the opening of
a new behavior modification corrections center.
"This is only the starting point," Ms. Davis said
in a speech delivered before the state capitol, of
a national civil rights effort "to fulfill the legacy
left by the civil rights movement of the 1960s."
Organizers tried to inflate the turn-out to 10,000,
but the demonstration in fact attracted people
from a wide range-of civil rights and left organi-
zations.
As one Alliance staffer from Minnesota put it,
black leaders who previously "couldn't have been
in the same room for 405 minutes without hav-
ing a fight" had been brought together. Among
those taking the stage with Communist Party
member Davis were Raleigh's black establishment
Mayor Clarence E. Lightner, who apologized to
the audience for having spoilt their holiday by
coming to the rally; Lawrence Little of the Win-
ston-Salem Black Panther Party, flanked by three
bodyguards; the Rev. Abernathy of the South-
ern Christian Leadership Conference; and Imari
Obadele of the Republic of New Africa.
IN WHAT might be called a re-emergent rain-
bow trend in the ideologically and racially splint-
ered left, militant black voting people from North
Carolina's medium-sized industrial cities march-
ed alongside Indians, Chicanos and Puerto Ric-
ans. Other blacks and white middle class radicals.
from Chapel Hill, northern states and the West
Coast were also there in strength. The peripate-
tic Clyde Bellecourt' of the American Indian
Movement showed up, as did Che Valazquez of
the Puerto Rican Socialist Party and representa-
tives from militant UAW and AFL-CIO locals.
They hadn't come for the heat, which was
stifling. Although marchers linked arms, clapped
hands and sang "We Shall Overcome" as had
marchers in the civil rights actions of a decade
ago, the rhetoric was different. The state etab-
lishment in North Carolina, according to a re-
crring phrase heard during the day, was a
"laboratory for racism and repression."
The reference to the laboratory is no mere
metaphor. Scheduled to open this fall at Butner
in a new $13.5 million federal "correctional re-
search center." There prisoners from across the
country will be experimented upon with psycho-
surgery, chemotherapy, electroshock, sensory de-
privation and aversive conditioning.
NORTH CAROLINA also apears to have more
'politically motivated criminal prosecutions, at
least one of them directed from John Mitchelln
Justice Department, than any other state in the
union except perhaps California.
Two civil rights leaders, Rev. Ben Chavis
of the Commission for Racial Justice and Dr. Jim
Grant of the Southern Conference Educational
Fund, have been subjected to a particularly ten-
acious series of prosecutions. With every appeal
exhausted, Grant is now serving a 25 year sen-
tence for allegedly burning down a stable in 1968.
The only -evidence against him was the testimony
of two men who were granted immunity from
prosecution in order to talk. It was revealed by
the Charlotte Observer this spring that the Jus-
tice Department had also paid the men at least
$4,000 each, and probably much more, to secure
their testimony. Specific approval of the payments
had been given by the U.S. -assistant attorney
general Robert Mardian, currently under indict-
ment on charges of conspiracy to arrange hush
payments to the Watergate burglars.
IN THE -CASE of the Wilmington 10, Chavis
and nine others have ben sentenced ta 29-34
years in prison on charges stemming from the
1971 disorders in Wilmington in which w h i t e
vigilantes laid siege to the black community. They
are currently out on bond pending an appeal.
Some fifty Tuscarora Indians have been in-
dicted on charges stemming from attempts to
gain control of their schools and orgaiize a
political movement. They are variously in jail
on convictions, awaiting trial or out on bond pend-
ing appeal.
In the case of the Ayden Eleven, black teen-
agers were sentenced to a total of 133 years in
prison for allegedly setting off a bomb in a
school lavatory which injured no one, although
it did occur during protests against the killing
of a handcuffed black farm laborer by a white
policeman. There was no evidence linking the
accused to the incident, but each was induced
to confess during police interogations.
Thursday afternoon in Raleigh Sister Angela
was obviously pleased by the crowd, having spent
the previous month making what often seemed
unsuccessful attempts to drum up support for
the march, "We may be politically powerless but
our will to struggle is fierce," she told marchers
in the elegant diction which she delivers, rising
and failing in pitch, like a female war .ry. "We
are rich in spirit and we are determined to get
our freedom."
ABERNATHY EXHORTED the crowd in a
manner reminiscent of his old chief, the Rev.
Martin Luther King, Jr. "We are sick and tired
of our people dying on death row," he chanted.
"We know the real criminals in American are
not in jail. They're on the outside.' He called
North Carolina "one of the most, if not the most
repressive states in the union" and paid tribute
to Davis as a "former political prisoner."'
Since the acquittal in 1972 which freed her
from immediate government pressure, Davis has
been stumping the country on behalf of others in
the same situation. On the initiative of the An-
gela Davis Defense Committee, the National Al-
liance was organized in May 1973 to defend move-
ments and their leaders from "growing repres-
sion" by the government. It first came to North
Carolina in February at the invitation of state
groups and activists.
ALTHOUGH THE ALLIANCE was established
as a defensive measure, it may be performing
an integration function as well. It is deeply in-
volved in the Attica and Wounded Knee Trials
and in the California prisons, as well as in North
Carolina. When an attempt to organize a similar
national rally in the state was made a year and
a half ago, it floundered largely because blacks
were unwilling to work with whites. At last
week's march most of the banners carried the
names, not of the groups from which participants
were originally drawn, but of the state alliance
chapters with which each is affiliated.
Organizers had been firmly committed to o
peaceful action, in part because the coalition
could not have sustained confrontation, but also
because authorities had reportedly sustained con-
frontation, but also because authorities had re-
portedly promised death if the line of march
came within 75 yards of the prison. When the
strictly marshalled marchers passed the h u g e,
menacing red-brick fortress, atop which waved
a United States and a North Carolina state flag,
a strategically placed double line of boxcars was
blocking any nearer approach. The demonstra-
tors raised their fists and kept on. Hidden behind
the boxcars were 150 riot-equipped state police.
THE ONLY TIME the marchers grew angry
was as they passed a dozen white supremacist
pickets standing behind a protective cordon of
police. As about thirty members of the media
squeezed in. Jubiliant blacks and 'noe nakedly
malevolent middle class whites crowded around,
directing an overwhelming torrent of buse at
them.
"We got 'em. We got 'em."
"Hey boy. Boyl This man's name is boy. We're
gonna call him boy."
- "We got the main KKK guy here, and he can't
do nothing!"
"Well boys, you can all go back to your cage
now, we done looking at you."
Besides three helmeted and arm-banded Amer-
ican Nazis, a Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon and
a Grand Califf in their robes, the group also
included LeRoy Gibson, head of the Rights of
White People, an organization best described as
rightward of the Klan. Gibson, who called hund-
reds of armed men into Wilmington during the
1971 disorders and faces assorted bombing charg-
es, turned out to be a short, dumpy loudmouth
under a crewcut.
"WE ALL OBEY the laws, don't we boys?" he
said, just a trifle nervously, as thousands of
militant blacks and what he called "white trash"
formed up the street. "The days when these nig-
gers get out to march and demand things are
just about over," he then confided.
But from the number and range of people
who turned out to denounce the state establish-
r ment in North Carolina last week, that doesn't
seem too likely.
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