The Klan Wins

Three Georgia newsmen, framed by the Ku Klux Klan last month, were let down cold by their newspaper last week.

Photographer Joe Talbot and Reporters James Bellows and Carlton Johnson charged that they had been seized while covering a Klan meeting and forced to drink a pint of liquor apiece (TIME, March 22). Arrested for drunkenness, they had posted bonds, vowed to fight the case to the bitter end.

Last week, without consulting the newsmen, attorneys for the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer gave up the fight; they forfeited the bonds in court. The Ledger-Enquirer management piously promised "not [to] abate its pursuit of full justice. . . ." But it apparently took the word of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that it would be "impossible" to win the case "since [the Klan] would be able to furnish approximately 175 witnesses against the newspaper reporters." At week's end, City Editor Joe Hall quit in disgust.

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