"Nothing Can Save Us"

Segregationist by creed but able lawyer by profession, Mississippi's Governor James Plemon Coleman is no man to fool around with racist lawlessness. Last month, when a bunch of masked toughs broke into a jail at Poplarville (pop. 2,500) to abduct and kill an accused Negro rapist named Mack Charles Parker, Governor Coleman acted swiftly and sensibly: he asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to enter the case. From that point on, event followed event with the predictability of a Pearl White flicker.

Reel One: No sooner had FBI agents arrived on the scene than wild cries of "brutality" began to rise. After a visit by FBImen, a woman witness cut her wrists in a dramatic--but curiously unconvincing--gesture toward suicide. The janitor at the jail in Poplarville, questioned by agents, swallowed a nauseating dose of toilet-bowl cleaner. Farmer C.C. ("Crip") Reyer, 42, whose car looked like one seen at the jail, entered a hospital with a "nervous breakdown." Farmer Arthur Smith Jr., 32, went to a hospital with a "cerebral hemorrhage," which his doctor said was brought on by the strain of FBI questions. Smith later turned out to have suffered no hemorrhage at all.

Reel Two: Onto the scene came the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in the person of Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins. Wilkins talked when silence made better sense. Said he at an N.A.A.C.P. rally in Jackson: "It should be said that Governor

Coleman has a record of support for law and order."

Reel Three: Coleman's political opponents were already making hay out of his FBI call, and the Wilkins statement was material for their hayrakes. "Wilkins gave Coleman a nice bouquet of roses wrapped in gold foil," cried State Democratic Chairman Bidwell Adam, charging that Coleman wanted "to sew up the 25,000 Negro votes." Barred by law from another term, Coleman is backing Lieutenant Governor Carroll Gartin. But in the aftermath of the Parker case, amid strong rumors that the FBI would have the killers this week, Coleman's support of Gartin was less than an asset. Said J. P. Coleman: "Nothing but the good sense of the Mississippi people can save us now."

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