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Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967)

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Summary

The June-July 1967 issue of the SNCC Newsletter (Vol. I, No. 4, Atlanta, Georgia) is an eight-page newspaper whose cover, reporting and editorial frame police violence against Black communities across the United States — Houston, Atlanta, Prattville, Boston and elsewhere — as one campaign, and which launches, on printed p.4-5, a recurring international feature, Third World Round Up, whose first instalment, The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge, presents thirty-two numbered documented facts, in the feature’s own terms, arguing that Zionism, backed by Britain, the United States and other white western colonial governments, created Israel by taking Arab land and homes in Palestine, expelled over one million Palestinian Arab refugees, and thereafter segregated the Arabs who remained, discriminated against dark skinned Jews, and served as a United States toe-hold for controlling Arab oil, while the Rothschilds are presented as long controlling European wealth, conspiring with Britain to create Israel, and controlling much of Africa’s mineral wealth (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.4-5). The issue closes on PDF p.8 with its newly elected officers — H. Rap Brown as chairman, Stanley Wise as executive secretary and Ralph Featherstone as program director — and their press-conference programme of support for liberation struggles worldwide, a Black Anti-Draft Program and National Freedom Organizations, the report of the raid on its San Francisco Bay Area office, and the conclusion of Lawson’s TSU account, which calls the attack on the dormitories a panic action forced by clumsy leadership (PDF p.8).

What the file is

  • The file is SNCC Newsletter, Vol. I, No. 4, June-July 1967, Atlanta, Georgia, 8 PDF pages, each PDF page one printed page (PDF p.1 is the cover; printed page numbers 2-8 appear in the running heads). PDF metadata gives the title SNCC Newsletter, July 1967 and the author as Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), with a Duke University / John Hope Franklin Research Center courtesy note.
  • Access basis given with delivery: NGO, downloaded from https://www.crmvet.org/docs/sv/6707_sncc_news-r.pdf (Civil Rights Movement Veterans archive).
  • Text copy: the supplied text copy (raw/1967-sncc-third-world-round-up-palestine-problem.txt) has a page marker for every page, 1-8, and about 21,393 words in total. It is a heavily garbled OCR of a scanned multi-column newspaper: column order is scrambled on most pages, headlines and photographs are duplicated in places, and many words are split or misread. Every page was therefore also read in the original, and the reading notes reassemble passages in the order of the printed pages and say so. Nothing was left unreadable after that check; slips that appear in the original itself are held under Open questions, not corrected.
  • Staff, as printed on PDF p.6: Editor Ethel Minor; Writers Carolyn Baker and Ethel Minor; Printing Wilson Brown; Layout Design Ethel Minor, Bob Fletcher, Dena Maloney and Bill Mahoney; Art Illustrations Kofi and Herman Bailey; SNCC Photographers Bob Fletcher and Rufus Hinton. The Palestine feature’s introductory box is signed The Editor.
  • Structure: cover (p.1); the TSU Five case, Rev. William Lawson’s eyewitness account and a Carolyn Baker editorial (p.2, Lawson continued p.7-8); police riot in Atlanta, the Willie Boyd arrest and a RAM Sixteen frame-up statement (p.3); Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem (p.4-5); white cops, Klan and Guard in Prattville, Alabama, Howard University, staff box and urgent appeal (p.6); Lawson continued and the Boston Mothers for Adequate Welfare / Roxbury rebellion (p.7); SNCC’s new officers and their policies, the San Francisco office raid, Lawson’s conclusion, a correction box for a book review and a contributions appeal (p.8).

Section by section

Cover — PDF p.1

The cover leads on a funeral photograph from Atlanta, Ga.: Mr. Willie Ross, 48, shot and killed by a white cop as he stood in the doorway of his home in Dixie Hills, with Willie Ricks, SNCC field secretary, comforting a relative (SNCC Photo, Bob Fletcher). Its contents list points to cops rioting in Atlanta, cops attacking TSU students, cops and Klan attacking Blacks in Alabama, Boston cops beating Black mothers, a Black man arrested after calling cops for help, and an SNCC office raided. A lower panel asks where cops, running wild, will strike next, naming Kalamazoo, Cairo, Prattville, Dayton, Minneapolis, New Jersey, Atlanta, Newark, Nashville, Birmingham, Harlem, Houston, Cincinnati, Detroit, Jackson and Tampa, and Boston (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.1).

Will They Die? Five Texas Students Face Death; Eyewitness Account; Editorial — PDF p.2

The facts box charges that five young Black Texas Southern University students and SNCC members — John Parker, 20, Trazawell Franklin Jr., 20, Charles Freeman, 18, Floyd Nichols, 25 and Douglas Wayne Waller, 21, together the TSU Five — were charged with murdering a white cop, and gives a nine-point account of May 16, 1967: Waller’s arrest on campus, 500 cops with rifles, machine guns, shot guns and dogs surrounding two dormitories, students firing firecrackers and pellets, police emptying some 5,000 rounds into the buildings, Chief Short’s order to clean out the mess, Patrolman Louis Kuba killed by a 32 bullet, dormitories wrecked and a house mother, Mrs. Mattye Harbert, kicked and trampled, residents trampled outside in shorts, and 487 students arrested and herded into vans. A June 3 grand jury indicted the five for Kuba’s murder; the newsletter says Kuba was probably killed by his fellow officers’ wild fire, reports Houston’s D.A. will ask for the death penalty, and sets trial for July 25. A What You Can Do box asks readers to pass the paper on, discuss it, write President Lyndon Johnson and Attorney General Ramsay Clark, demonstrate, encourage Black men not to fight in Vietnam, and send money to the Houston Defense in Action Fund, Box 14004, Houston 77021 (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.2).

Rev. William Lawson’s eyewitness report, published in Forward Times May 27 and reprinted here, says the incident lacked a riot’s usual marks — no looting, no repetition, no widespread resistance to arrest — that one man died, at least three were wounded by gunfire, one dormitory was plundered unfit for residence, and 489 college students were arrested, the largest mass arrest in the city; local media, he says, misrepresented the facts to present police acts as prudent and commendable, and the university and its students are being made the scapegoat for Kuba’s blood. Its background, in the part of the account on this page, is two May 15-16 protests: expelled Northwood Junior High students not readmitted when white students were, and a protested garbage dump near Sunnyside that had claimed an 11 year old boy’s life; 28 were arrested in Northeast Houston and 32 in Sunnyside. The account continues on PDF p.7. Carolyn Baker’s editorial says the five and all TSU students have been prejudged by the white powers of Houston, including its White Peoples Press and especially KHOU TV, quotes Governor John Connally that he cannot find what caused the riot, and answers that 500 policemen fired 5,000 rounds into dormitories and stormed the buildings — cop violence caused it (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.2).

Police Riot in Atlanta; Black Man Calls Police, He Gets Arrested; Another Frame Up — PDF p.3

The Atlanta report presents the June 17-22 Dixie Hills rebellion as a police frame-up prepared by predictions of summer riots and by gestapo-like riot tactics: June 17 arrests, the June 18 arrest of SNCC field secretaries Stokely Carmichael, Donald Stone and Ernest Stephens after Carmichael stopped to offer legal help, Monday community meetings demanding Black control of the community and an end to white economic exploitation in the Dixie Hills Shopping Center, and police firing shots that night. On Tuesday June 20, after a molotov cocktail exploded on the shopping centre roof, white cops shooting blindly up a darkened side street killed one Black man and seriously wounded three other Black people, including nine year old Reginald Rivers, shot in the stomach, all standing in doorways to their homes; the report says even white officials and press admitted the bullets came from police weapons, and calls the crimes murder and assault with intent to kill. On Thursday June 22 Judge T.C. Little sentenced Carmichael, Stone, Stephens and one other local resident to 50 days in jail or a 1,000 each; Willie Ricks was arrested outside the courtroom greeting people with Black Power. The sentence is placed in line with Muhammad Ali’s sentence in Houston (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.3).

The Willie Boyd item reports that on Monday July 3, disabled World War 2 veteran Willie Boyd, 43, was cursed and insulted by the white woman operator of the Adams Menswear Store, 101 Broad St., after she refused him the washroom, called police, and was himself arrested for failure to move on and resisting arrest, refused medical attention, thrown head-first into a paddy wagon by four cops, released on 5,000 bond, four of those arrested were convicted and serving Prison Farm sentences, and a July 8 community meeting planned an extensive Black boycott of Broad St. stores. Another Frame Up reprints a June 27, 1967 joint statement issued at a press conference called by CORE and SNCC on the June 21 arrest of sixteen Black people alleged to be part of R.A.M. (Revolutionary Action Movement), charged with plotting to kill NAACP executive director Roy Wilkins; the statement protests trial by press headlines, bond that cannot be lowered, and points to the Statue of Liberty Case and the Philadelphia dynamite case, in which, it says, police framed SNCC members (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.3).

Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — PDF p.4-5

A boxed introduction, signed The Editor, launches the feature: starting with this issue the newsletter will contain news and analysis of what is happening around the world and how it relates to the struggle at home, because Afro-Americans are an integral part of the Third World (Africa, Asia, Latin America, American Indians and all persons of African descent). It asks why the Arab-Israeli conflict, which exploded again into all-out war as in 1956 and 1948, has produced a prolonged conflict and permanent state of war, why the United Nations, which helped create the problem, has been unable to solve it, and what the root of the problem is; because the white American press seldom gives the true story of world events in which America is involved, it presents the following documented facts, which affect brothers in the Middle-East, Africa and Asia and pertain to the struggle at home, and promises future issues more background information and articles on the Arab-Israeli conflict (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.4-5).

The thirty-two facts, each posed as a question, argue in order: (1-2) Zionism is a worldwide nationalistic Jewish movement that organised, planned and created the State of Israel by sending Jewish immigrants from Europe into Palestine, the heart of the Arab world, to take over land and homes belonging to the Arabs, with maximum help from Great Britain, the United States and other white western colonial governments. (3) Organised Jewish Zionism dates to 1897, when the first Zionist Congress at Basle adopted the programme of a home in Palestine secured by public law. (4-6) Britain took control of Palestine at the end of World War 1, working hand-in-hand with European Zionist Jews such as Lord Rothschild, and set forth the Balfour Declaration in 1917, favouring a National Home for the Jewish People while saying nothing should damage the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish inhabitants, the Arabs; the Mandate government and the Zionists at once encouraged European Jewish immigration, although in 1917 over 90 per-cent of Palestine’s population were Arabs and there were no more than 56,000 Jews in Palestine. (7-10) More than half those 56,000 were recent immigrants welcomed by the native Palestinian Arab people, native Palestine Jews were under 5 per-cent of the population, Arabs owned 97½ per-cent of the land against 2½ per-cent for Jews together, the Zionists purchased only 3½ per-cent in thirty years of British rule, much of it transferred to Zionist bodies by the British government directly, and not sold by Arab owners, so that when Britain passed the problem to the United Nations in 1947 Zionists owned no more than 6 per-cent of the total land area, with 1.3 million Arabs and 650,000 recent Jewish immigrants living in Palestine (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.4).

Facts 11-16: (11) In 1947 the U.N. General Assembly recommended a Jewish State and granted the proposed state about 54 per-cent of Palestine, including the coastal fertile and irrigable lands, leaving the Arabs dry mountainous areas. (12) Zionist (Israeli) armies immediately occupied, and still occupy, more than 80 per-cent of the total land area. (13) Most of that conquest took place before May 15, 1948, before the formal end of British rule, before the Arab armies entered and before the Arab Israeli War. (14) The Arab States sent poorly trained and ill equipped armies against superior western trained and supported Israeli forces in a vain effort to protect Arab lives, property and rights, the formal beginning of the Arab-Israeli War. (15-16) The Zionists conquered Arab homes and land through terror, force and massacres, wiping out over 30 Arab villages, and the Zionist terror gangs, Haganah, Irgun and Stern gangs, deliberately slaughtered and mutilated women, children and men, causing unarmed Arabs to panic, flee and leave their homes. A photograph captioned as the Gaza Massacres, 1956 states: “Zionists lined up Arab victims and shot them in the back in cold blood.” (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.4)

Facts 17-24: (17) Over one million Palestinian Arab refugees still live in the Arab countries surrounding Israel, homeless, penniless and living off United Nations charity. (18-20) The General Assembly had no legal right under the U.N. Charter to recommend the 1947 Partition Plan, Arab and Asian attempts to test its legality before the International Court of Justice were rejected or ignored, and the plan was approved at the first vote only by white European, American and Australasian states, every African and Asian state voting against; in the second vote United States pressures, which a Truman cabinet member called bordering onto scandal, forced only the Philippines and Liberia, both controlled by Uncle Sam, to abandon opposition — “IN OTHER WORDS, ISRAEL WAS PLANTED AT THE CROSSROADS OF ASIA AND AFRICA WITHOUT THE FREE APPROVAL OF ANY MIDDLE-EASTERN, ASIAN OR AFRICAN COUNTRY!” (21) Israel has remained a total stranger in the Afro-Asian world and has never been allowed to attend any African, Asian or Afro-Asian conference. (22-23) Since the 1949 Armistice Agreements Israel has continued to cross the Demarcation Lines, invade neighbouring Arab states and make commando raids against the Arab People, condemned by the U.N. on at least eleven occasions; no Arab State has ever been condemned by the U.N. for military attacks against Israel. (24) Israel was granted admission to the U.N. under the December 11, 1948 resolution only if she agreed to repatriate the Arab refugees and compensate property losses, and has refused, although the U.N. calls every year on Israel to honour the original resolution (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.5).

Facts 25-32: (25) Israel segregates the few Arabs who remained — more than 90 per-cent of these Arabs live in Security Zones under Martial Law, are not allowed to travel freely within Israel, and are victims of discrimination in education, jobs etc. (26) Dark skinned Jews from the Middle-East and North Africa are also second-class citizens in Israel, the color line putting them in inferior position to the white, European Jews. (27-28) The United States has constantly supported Israel and Zionism with military and financial aid to this illegal state ever since it was forced upon the Arabs in 1948, and has worked with Zionist groups to support Israel so America may have a toe-hold in that strategic Middle-East location, helping white America control and exploit the rich oil deposits of the Arab nations. (29) American Zionists and their cousins in Europe have poured billions of dollars into Israel since its founding and promoted a propaganda campaign covering their aims and preventing the world knowing the truth of the Palestine Arab refugees. (30) Several American and European Jews who are not Zionists have spoken out against the horrors committed by Zionists in the name of Judaism and condemned Zionist distortions of the Jewish religion, but their opinions are never printed in the Zionist controlled press or other communications media. (31) The famous European Jews, the Rothschilds, who have long controlled the wealth of many European nations, were involved in the original conspiracy with the British to create the State of Israel, are still among Israel’s chief supporters, and also control much of Africa’s mineral wealth. (32) Under the disguise of foreign aid, the Israeli Histadrut (Labor Organization) has gone into African countries, tried to exploit and control their economies, and sabotaged African liberation movements and any other African movements or projects opposed by the United States and other white western powers. The page’s photograph caption presents the Haganah as a Zionist terrorist group, the Irgun as a more brutal dissident gang formed from it, and the Stern gang as the most brutal, formed from Irgun dissidents. Its central illustration, signed Kofi, shows a hand marked with a Star of David holding chains over two Black men, one raising a fist, under a Liberation Movement banner and the words Third World (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.5).

White Cops, Klan, Guard Attack Blacks in Alabama; Howard Officials Do It Again — PDF p.6

The Prattville report gives Sunday June 11, 1967: former SNCC Chairman Stokely Carmichael arrested by white patrolman Kenny Hill on a disorderly conduct charge after calling out a slogan printed as Black Lower, police attacking Southern Courier reporter Jim Peppler and damaging Radio Station WRMS reporter Norman Lumpkin’s equipment, white klansmen shooting from cars on the main street until Black men returned fire, that evening klansmen with police entering Black homes, interrogating and beating occupants, and a mob surrounding NAACP leader Dan Hauser’s home with some 25 Black people, mostly women and children, trapped inside, shooting into the house and shooting out street lights. Men in the Hauser home returned fire, believed to have wounded five policemen; National Guard units from Montgomery entered the house and held occupants with arms raised for almost an hour; nine men are named as arrested — Stanley Wise, Ulysses Nunley, Theophilus Smith, Julius Roberts, Rev. James Harris, Haber Willis, Charlie Devine, Nathaniel Rudolph and Horace Morris — while the text later says the ten persons arrested are now free on bond awaiting an August trial. Charles Rasberry, a Black man, had been murdered in the same Prattville jail in February 1967 by the same policeman, Kenny Hill; Dan Hauser was severely beaten, chased out of town and hospitalised in St. Jude Hospital with serious eye injuries, and John Hulett of the Lowndes County Freedom Party was beaten and chased out of town; the prisoners were held incomunicado [as printed] (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.6).

Howard Officials Do It Again reports Howard University, Washington, D.C., dismissing fourteen students, suspending three others, and firing five faculty members including Prof. Nathan Hare for disruptive campus activities and support of student protest, under pressure, it says, from South Carolina Representative Mendel Rivers; it calls Howard a concentration camp of the mind, and adds that on May 22, 1967 Howard announced plans to honour Crossroads Africa founder Rev. James H. Robinson at its Centennial Commencement, although the February 19 New York Times had reported Crossroads Africa as one of 25 youth groups supported by the CIA through the Foundation for Youth and Students’ Affairs. The staff box and an Urgent Appeal, saying this issue is almost one month late because the newsletter could not pay its expenses and asking for the $2.00 annual subscription, are also on this page (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.6).

TSU Eyewitness Account continued; Boston Cop Attack On Black Mothers Sparks Roxbury Rebellion — PDF p.7

Lawson’s account, continued from p.2, gives his own first-person narrative of the night of May 16-17: the Sunnyside protests, his release about 12:30 A.M. Wednesday May 17 at the mayor’s request, the police show of force blocking Wheeler Street, Douglas Wayne Waller seized after claiming city police had no right to intimidate him on state property, failed negotiation with Rev. F.D. Kirkpatrick and Rev. Earl Allen and Police Chief Herman Short, students blocking the street with corrugated metal and two kerosene-soaked tar barrels set alight, and Chief Short’s order to charge the dormitories and shoot as they charged — over six hundred policemen, over 5,000 rounds, policemen shooting each other, one taken away in shock, students forbidden to bring out wounded Morris English, shot through a wall while lying on his belly. Young Louis Kuba, sheltered in a concrete forum pit in front of the unoccupied Student Union Building, fell back fatally wounded into a newsman’s arms; Lawson says the FBI know the bullet did not come from a dormitory, because there are no rooms or windows on the dormitory’s east end. After the volleys stopped shortly after 2:00 A.M., police dashed into Lanier Hall for Men with fire-axes and drawn guns, trampled housemother Mrs. Mattye Harbert — still in hospital at this writing — broke doors, ceiling tiles and mirrors, destroyed clothing, books, radios, lamps and television sets, beat students with clubs and dogs, and took many to jail half-naked; Lawson, taken at gun-point to a squad car and then questioned with Rev. Kirkpatrick and a Rev. Moody in Chief Short’s office at 4:00 A.M., told the Chief his own command had endangered his men. The account is marked continued on pg. 8, where its conclusion appears (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.7).

The Boston report gives June 2, 1967: Mothers for Adequate Welfare (MAW) demonstrated for a second day at the Grove Hall Welfare Office on Blue Hill Ave. near Franklin Park, protesting Boston Welfare Department Director Daniel I. Cronin’s refusal to meet them; after sitting in for hours the mothers locked the office’s three doors with chain locks, a staff member complained of illness, and cops crashed through the front door although a basement door had been opened for the ill worker, roughing up and dragging out the mothers. Fathers and sons moved to stop the brutalization, 2,000 cops were rushed to the scene and forced the Black people further down Blue Hill Ave., white stores were bombarded, and Roxbury burned for the following two nights, many standing stores having SOUL printed on their windows. As an aftermath, former SNCC chairman Stokely Carmichael was invited by the Roxbury Peoples Movement to speak at a June 25 rally; the page reprints Acting Mayor Barry Hynes’s telegram warning the sponsors that Carmichael is a known agitator whose past experiences have often been followed by bloodshed and property damage, and the reply from United Militant Headquarters (Boston SNCC, Afro-Americans Against the War, Rebellion News), taking the telegram as an insult and telling the mayor to keep his police force home (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.7).

SNCC New Officers; SNCC Office Raided; TSU Eyewitness Account concluded; correction and appeal boxes — PDF p.8

At its annual staff meeting held in early May, SNCC elected the new officers pictured on the page to head the organization for the coming year: H. Rap Brown, chairman — “Rap”, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who dropped out of Southern University in 1964 to work with SNCC, spent the past few years organizing the rural counties of Alabama, was SNCC Project Director for the State of Alabama last year, and is 25; Stanley Wise, executive secretary, 24, an old-timer from his Howard University days, where he served as President of the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG), born in Charlotte, North Carolina, with action in Cambridge, Maryland, and Virginia, and service as SNCC Campus Traveler and Organizational Secretary; and Ralph Featherstone, program director, who gave up his Washington, D.C. teaching job in 1964 to become one of SNCC’s most daring and courageous organizers in Mississippi, was Project Director of Neshoba County, feared by the white sheriffs and cops responsible for the murder of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman in 64, later served in West Point, McComb and Holly Spring [as printed], Miss., and is 27 (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.8).

At a press conference held right after the staff meeting, the new officers outlined their policies and programs: SNCC is a Human Rights Organization interested not only in human rights in the United States but throughout the world, encouraging and supporting the liberation struggles of all people against racism, exploitation and oppression, seeing its struggle in America as an integral part of the world-wide movement of all oppressed people, such as in Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Latin America, and supporting its brothers in Puerto Rico in their fight for independence and liberation; it will build a strong nation-wide Black Anti-Draft Program including high school and college students and other Black men of draft age, since there is no reason for Black men daily murdered physically and mentally in this country to go and kill yellow people abroad, who are victims of the same oppression as its brothers in Vietnam; and its major thrust will be building National Freedom Organizations, whose political objective is a viable, independent political force, whose economic objectives are to expel the exploiters who control the community, gain economic control of the communities, and create an economic system responsible to and benefiting the Black community rather than a few individuals, and whose cultural objectives are to destroy the myths and lies propagated by white America concerning Black history in Africa and in this country, and to develop awareness and appreciation of the beauty of thick lips, broad noses, kinky hair and soul, working with all other Black groups fighting for the same goals (PDF p.8).

The SNCC Office Raided report, from San Francisco, says the Bay Area Regional Office of SNCC was raided in the early hours of Monday morning, May 22, by unknown parties; located at 449 14th St., it also houses the national office of The Movement, the west coast monthly newspaper affiliated with SNCC. The raiders entered by an outside window, broke a door lock, stole the newspaper’s subscription list, and escaped with confidential files containing SNCC reports and correspondence; address stencils of The Movement were scattered over the floor, and a list of international contacts and the names and addresses of persons working for SNCC and with The Movement in the Bay area were also taken. On the previous Friday two volunteers for a church group in the same building had driven off a middle-aged man who tried to enter through a window, and The Movement editor Terence Cannon is quoted as sure the same person waited until Sunday evening to raid the offices. The item presents the raid as showing that the U.S. government realizes the threat a strong Black political movement poses, with SNCC the scapegoat and target of the government’s campaign to crush the movement; Cannon says SNCC has come under extreme attack from the FBI and the House Armed Services Committee for its opposition to the Vietnam War, that Rep. Mendel Rivers wants to do away with the First Amendment in order to put Stokely Carmichael in jail, and that J. Edgar Hoover is trying to link SNCC with so-called insurrectionary groups. It then rebuts reports in the New York Times and the Atlanta Constitution that The Movement had severed connections with SNCC: a May 7 Times front page story claimed The Movement had “disassociated” itself from SNCC over a disagreement over Black Power, and Ralph McGill’s column in the Constitution made a similar charge, but Cannon calls the claims false, and a May 22 letter to the Times signed by Stokely Carmichael and Terence Cannon reaffirmed that The Movement supports fully the Black Power philosophy of SNCC (PDF p.8). A cartoon signed Kofi shows the Statue of Liberty leaning over a door marked SNCC, beside a window sign reading “BLACK POWER!” (PDF p.8).

Lawson’s eyewitness account concludes: the strategy was stupid and made the wild shooting a last resort; Lawson says neither of us could possibly have approved the events of that night — the account does not name the second of the two, and on PDF p.7 the mayor and the police chief are the ones who wanted to question him, while a photographer, a minister and Lawson sat in the outer office of Chief Short awaiting questioning — but the Mayor recognized the political consequences of the attack against an entire university, and the Chief realized he had ordered his own officers to risk death, and, when no serious opposition developed, had to confess there never were the hordes of snipers they had pretended filled the dormitories. It became vital for the Chief, who had to face his city and the widow of his young officer, to prove the decision wise and approved even by Negroes, and the Mayor has had to use the mass media to deny what many statements and photographs and the reports of the FBI will show: that the massive attack on TSU dormitories was a panic action forced by clumsy leadership, and that the build-up of force was originally designed to teach a lesson to Negroes in Houston, that the city is strong enough and determined enough to crush any uprising they may plan. Its final paragraph says Chief Herman Short will hear for the rest of his life his own words — the orders he did not give, to call them out and search them or to throw a few tear-gas bombs and force them out — and closes on the bungling troops in the empty streets and the line that nobody laughs at all (PDF p.8).

Two boxes complete the page: Sorry, We Goofed corrects the previous newsletter’s book review, naming the book as Cheddi Jagan’s The West on Trial: My Fight for Guyana’s Freedom (International Publishers, 381 Park Avenue South, New York City 16, New York, $10.00), his story of how the C.I.A. destroyed the first independent government of Guyana, and quoting the review on Jagan’s documentation of the colonial powers’ measures to insure his government’s defeat; and a Help appeal, headed “WE’RE SINKING FAST!!!!!!!!!!”, asks readers to send contributions to SNCC, 360 Nelson St. S.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30313 (PDF p.8).

Key passages

Evidence the work relies on

  • For the Palestine feature: the feature itself presents its thirty-two items as documented facts and gives no citations, bibliography or named sources for them in the pages read; the documents and events it invokes, as it presents them, are the 1897 Basle Zionist Congress programme, the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the British Mandate, the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan and its two votes, the December 11, 1948 U.N. resolution, and the 1949 Armistice Agreements (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.4-5).
  • For Houston: Rev. William Lawson’s eyewitness report, as published in Forward Times May 27, reprinted on PDF p.2 and continued on PDF p.7-8, and the newsletter’s own nine-point facts box (Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge — SNCC Newsletter Vol. I, No. 4 (June-July 1967), PDF p.2).
  • For New York: a joint statement issued at a press conference called by CORE and SNCC on June 27, 1967, reprinted on PDF p.3.
  • For Boston: Acting Mayor Barry Hynes’s telegram to the June 25 rally sponsors and United Militant Headquarters’ reply telegram, both reprinted on PDF p.7.
  • For Howard: a statement by Representative Mendel Rivers before the House, quoted on PDF p.6, and the February 19 New York Times report on CIA support for Crossroads Africa, as the newsletter presents it (PDF p.6).
  • For the officers and programme: the officers’ own press conference held right after the early May annual staff meeting, reported on PDF p.8, and the officers’ biographies as printed there.
  • For the San Francisco raid: Terence Cannon, editor of The Movement, quoted on PDF p.8; the May 22, 1967 letter to the New York Times signed by Stokely Carmichael and Terence Cannon, quoted there; the May 7, 1967 New York Times front page story and Ralph McGill’s Atlanta Constitution column, as the newsletter presents them (PDF p.8).
  • For the correction box: the book as named there — Cheddi Jagan, The West on Trial: My Fight for Guyana’s Freedom, International Publishers — and the passage quoted from the previous newsletter’s review (PDF p.8).
  • Photographs credited in the pages read: SNCC Photo, Bob Fletcher (cover; PDF p.3); National Guardian Photo and Militant Photo (PDF p.2); Jim Peppler, Southern Courier (PDF p.6). The officers on PDF p.8 are pictured but no photographer is credited there.

Analysis

The issue’s method is juxtaposition: domestic reports of police, Klan and Guard violence against Black communities, each built from the newsletter’s own reporting, named eyewitnesses and reprinted statements, are placed around an international feature that expressly says the world material is included because it relates to the struggle at home. The Palestine feature’s form is catechetical — thirty-two numbered facts each posed as a question under the head Test Your Knowledge — and it gives no citations for its figures in the pages read, so its land, population and refugee figures stand as the feature’s assertions, credited to it as such. Its perspective is that of the feature: Zionism as a worldwide nationalistic Jewish movement backed by white western colonial governments, Israel as a state planted at the crossroads of Asia and Africa, and the United States as Israel’s constant supporter for a strategic toe-hold and Arab oil. Its treatment of the Rothschilds — long controlling the wealth of many European nations, in the original conspiracy with the British, and controlling much of Africa’s mineral wealth — and of a Zionist controlled press are the feature’s own claims, recorded here as printed, with no supporting evidence given in the pages read. The closing page makes the same framing organisational: the new officers elected in May 1967 define SNCC as a human rights organization supporting liberation struggles worldwide and its American struggle as an integral part of that movement, the same programme A Shadow over Palestine describes, in the terms recorded on the SNCC page, as the May 1967 refashioning of the organisation; and the office-raid item reads a break-in by unknown parties as part of a government campaign against SNCC, on the strength of the attacks and press reports it lists, without naming evidence tying the raiders to the government.

People, organizations, places and events

Concepts

Zionism, Third World, Black Power’s Palestine, Nakba

How it relates to other sources

  • A Shadow over Palestine treats this article at length as the first iteration of Black Power’s Palestine: Feldman identifies it as an August 1967 newsletter article of thirty-two documented facts reproducing verbatim much of the Palestine Research Center’s Do You Know? Twenty Basic Facts about the Palestine Problem, with fully fifteen of the pamphlet’s twenty facts appearing verbatim or nearly so, while its tropes on Jewish financial dominance do not appear in the PRC pamphlet and its Rothschilds claim is, in Feldman’s word, specious. The newsletter as read here is dated June-July 1967, Vol. I, No. 4, not August 1967; both datings are held, not reconciled (see Open questions).
  • Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, Chapter 9 as recorded on the SNCC page, treats an August 1967 SNCC paper, The Middle East Crisis, presenting a history of British and Israeli colonization, the dispossession and siege of Palestinians, racist discrimination against Arab Jews by Israel, and the silencing of Jewish critics of Israel. Whether that paper is this newsletter feature under another title is not established by the pages read here; the feature as printed is titled The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge under the Third World Round Up banner.
  • On Zionism, Balfour Declaration and the 1948 dispossession, the feature’s land and population figures (97½ per-cent Arab land ownership, 56,000 Jews in 1917, 6 per-cent Zionist ownership in 1947, over 30 villages wiped out, over one million refugees) are its own, presented without citation, and sit alongside the differently sourced figures given by Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and others, credited to each source separately.

Open questions

  • Dating: the issue is dated June-July 1967 on its cover and running heads, while A Shadow over Palestine calls the Palestine article an August 1967 newsletter article and Palestine: A Socialist Introduction an August 1967 paper. Held as printed in each source, not reconciled.
  • TSU arrest total: the facts box on PDF p.2 says 487 students were arrested; Lawson’s eyewitness account on the same page says four hundred eighty nine college students were arrested. Both figures are held as printed.
  • TSU police strength: the facts box on PDF p.2 gives 500 cops surrounding the two dormitories, and Carolyn Baker’s editorial on the same page gives five hundred policemen firing 5,000 rounds and storming the buildings; Lawson’s account on PDF p.7 gives over six hundred policemen running down the empty street in the charge. Both figures are held as printed, not reconciled.
  • Prattville arrest total: the Men Return Fire section on PDF p.6 names nine persons arrested at the Hauser home, while the continuation says the ten persons arrested are now free on bond. Both are held as printed.
  • Slips as printed in the original, held not corrected: Stokely Cramichael for Carmichael (PDF p.3, twice, in the Police Riot report); the slogan Black Lower for Black Power (PDF p.6, Carmichael Arrested); PRISONERS HELD INCOMUNICADO (PDF p.6); Phillipines for Philippines (PDF p.5, fact 20); villanous in Lawson’s account as printed on PDF p.2; Radio Station WRMS in the Carmichael Arrested text against WRMA in its photograph caption (PDF p.6); a 32 bullet for Patrolman Kuba’s death (PDF p.2, fact 6, wording as printed).
  • Fact 24 (PDF p.5) as printed ties Israel’s admission to the U.N. to the U.N. Resolution, December 11, 1948 and to repatriation and compensation conditions; the resolution and the admission are presented in one sentence in the feature, and are recorded as the feature presents them, not separated.
  • The Palestine feature gives no citation for any of its thirty-two facts in the pages read, although its introductory box calls them documented facts. What documents it relied on is not stated in the pages read.
  • Slips as printed on PDF p.8, held not corrected: kilt for kill, willh for will and tne for the in the officers’ policy statement; Ammendment for Amendment, fromt for front and columh for column in the Office Raided item; Holly Spring for the Mississippi town in Featherstone’s biography.
  • Stanley Wise: the executive secretary biography on PDF p.8 and the Stanley Wise named among the nine persons arrested at the Hauser home on PDF p.6 carry the same name; the issue does not say in either place whether they are the same person, and they are recorded as the two mentions stand.

Coverage

PDF p.1-8 of 8, read in full in parts 1-2 of 2.

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