Frank Hague's Pawns

From New Jersey's industrial Hudson County, where disdainful Frank Hague rules like a dictator, came a shocking story of personal oppression. Eleven Negroes, ten women and a man, have languished for five months in the county jail without any charge against them, unable to see a lawyer, unable to see their families or friends--all because Frank Hague is out to get a political opponent.

Ever since stocky James J. Donovan was elected mayor of the oil-refinery town of Bayonne on a "Home Rule--Not Hague Rule" platform, he has had trouble with Hague's stooges in the county. Soon after Donovan lined up with forthright Governor Charles Edison in the fight against Hague over railroad-tax laws, the county prosecutor began making vice raids in Bayonne. Then Donovan was indicted by a grand jury for misconduct in office.

In one of the raids last June the eleven Negroes were picked up as "material witnesses," intimidated into signing prepared statements. Their bail was set at $5,000, which none, of course, could meet. That was the last anyone except the jail guards saw of them until last week when they appeared briefly at a hearing at which Donovan sought to have his indictment quashed. Some testified they were just standing around and watching the raid when they were arrested. After the hearing, the bewildered Negroes were sent back to jail. There they remained, still incommunicado; finally a Federal judge stepped in this week to give them a hearing. But to all others in the county the warning was clear: don't be even an innocent bystander when Frank Hague is out for vengeance.

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