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ATTACKS ii REPORT ON
Eastern Shoremen Resent Federal Council's Blaming Entire Shore
The following appeared in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin of Monday.
Indignant protest against the "Federal Council of Churches of Christ acting without full facts and outside its proper realm" in the Council's criticism of the residents of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, was made today by prominent citizens of that section.
A survey report just made by the Council censures the Sheriff and his deputies, the police, "the intelligent citizens" and the churches for their failure to stop the recent lynching in Salisbury.
The Rev. George W. Dawson, pastor of the Centreville M. E. Church, in commenting on the report, said:
"Such statements are ridiculous and absurd. Such remarks as the report makes must ultimately bring the Council into disrepute. The long association of myself and thousands of others with the people of the Eastern Shore enables us to state with definite certainty and truthfulness that there is as much intellectual capacity and moral responsibility here as you will find among any other people in America. Unfavorable and untrue statements concerning the Eastern Shore should come to an end."
Dr. William J. Holloway, principal of the State Normal School, Salisbury, said: "Many of us who know the university professor whose views are quoted understand how to take his slanderous utterances concerning this Peninsula. He doesn't understand us and his intellectual slant is that he cannot understand the charm inherent in the Eastern Shore.
"It is quite typical of what some of the teacher friends of mine, who have sat in his classes, both winter and summer, have reported concerning some of his scholarly lectures and his manner of conducting classroom discussions. From the academic halls, where he thought he was scattering pearls of wisdom, they have come away laughing at his extravagant, sensation-seeking, often vapid statements."
The Salisbury Evening Times today commented editorially: "So much of unfairness and untruth is recognized in the report of the Federal Council of Churches that the best reply is to completely ignore it.
"If the Federal Council of Churches would devote the same energies to the suppression of communism in Baltimore and other metropolitan centers, and to elimination of loopholes in the American legal system, the organization would go far toward abolishing the cause of lynching throughout the country.
"Dr. Mitchell, like many others, has missed the major point at issue, for he
fails to differentiate between justice and law and order."
Sheriff Luther Daugherty says that law enforcement in Somerset County would be easier if Baltimore city Communist organizations and church leagues would attend to their own affairs.
[Dr. Mitchell is a graduate of the University of Delaware. He is noted for being egotistical and inclined to spread Russian propaganda in this country, since he visited Russia last summer. In his report he took the assertions of Mencken for facts, and as Mencken and Mitchell have both outgrown America, they no doubt have a feeling that their superior intelligence is not properly appreciated on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The unfortunate part is that strangers to the Eastern Shore may not understand that reports of Mencken and Mitchell are both inspired by pique; Dr. Mitchell because Salisbury people paid so little attention to him while he was there. Dr. Mencken, because the Eastern Shore criticised him so unmercifully for being pro-German during the World War.—Eds. Messenger.]
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