Godfathers to Dynamiters

In Atlanta, six days after dynamiters did $200,000 worth of damage to the interior of the Reform Jewish congregation's Temple, a massive effort by city police and far-ranging squads of FBI brought indictments against five local residents who, if not the actual bombers, were deemed to be in on the deed. The indictments, brought under a state statute that carries a maximum penalty of death, marked the first successful police effort against the bands of stealthy racists who have rocked the South with 83 bombs, seven of them against Jewish institutions, since the Supreme Court's school decision four years ago. Ex-Convict Richard Bowling, 26, tagged by police as the ringleader of the indicted men, blamed his arrest on "Jewish-Communist pressure groups."

Georgia's Racist Senator Herman Talmadge theorized that the bombing might be a plot of Communists, but Atlanta's 68-year-old Mayor William B. Hartsfield did not need to wait for his police to act before he knew the real criminals: "Every political rabble-rouser is the godfather of these cross burners and dynamiters who sneak about in the dark." Wrote the Atlanta Constitution's Editor Ralph McGill: "Let it be understood that when leadership in high places in any degree fails to support constituted authority, it opens the gates to all those who wish to take the law into their own hands."

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