Gene Dropped It

Governor Eugene Talmadge of Georgia, scourge of furriners,* picked up another poker and found it hot. Six men convicted of taking part in nocturnal Ku Klux Klan floggings, three of them now on the chain gang, appealed for clemency. Gene's tender heart was touched. He expressed sympathy for "misguided" floggers, admitted that he had once been one himself. Promising a public hearing on the appeal, he reportedly advised attorneys for the floggers to "have some preachers up here to speak for these men."

Preachers came, at least a score, but with few pleas for mercy. Instead, most denounced flogging, compared the Klan to "the despicable Gestapo." One stocky pastor described his own flogging to unconsciousness. Except for an orthodox Jew, who paid tribute to the Ku Klux Klan, the show took an altogether wrong turn.

When young Assistant Solicitor Daniel Duke brandished two heavy, cleated leather lashes, crying out: "A man could kill a bull elephant with one of these," the Governor interrupted and took over the defense himself. Of the floggers he said, "Some of them thought they were doing the right thing. I have seen some pretty good people get misguided and cut the fool." At the conclusion of the hearing he remarked, "These men have been away from their families long enough."

But over the weekend Gene's fingers began to burn. Monday morning he announced that he would leave the floggers in prison.

* Last summer he ousted the dean of the College of Education, University of Georgia, and the president of Georgia Teachers College, on the charge that they advocated mingling blacks and whites in undergraduate classrooms (not so). He Considers all extra-Georgians (and even Georgians who disagree with him) "furriners."

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