Arriving to work, Panos found Frings sitting in one of the leather chairs in his office with his feet up on the desk and the newspaper in his hands. The place smelled of stale coffee. Panos hung his jacket on a hook on the back of the door and lowered himself slowly into his chair. He stared at where Frings’s coffee cup sat on his desk. Frings set the cup on the floor under his chair.
“Don’t keep me in suspense, Frank. Tell me your troubles.”
Frings read from the paper. “This is, what? … One, two, three, fourth paragraph: ‘Councilor Truffant alleged that the police and the mayor conspired to cover up the murders of three young Caucasian women whose bodies were found in the vicinity of a Negro shantytown known as the Uhuru Community.’ Caucasian, Panos?”
Panos nodded. “It’s accurate, Frank.”
Back to the paper. “ ‘Truffant alleged that the Uhuru Community is a communist enterprise, pointing to self-proclaimed communists Melvin Washington and Warren Eddings as leaders in the Uhuru Community.’ ” Frings skipped ahead. “Truffant, quote, ‘Based on the cover-up of the three murdered girls and the savage beating of an off-duty police officer, one has to wonder where the mayor’s sympathies lie, with the people of the City or these violent Negro communists.’ ”
Panos gave a pained smile.
“ ‘Truffant asserted that his first action as mayor would be to bulldoze the shanties.’ Quote, ‘This would be the top priority for me. But I understand that, if I win the election, I will not take office until three months from now. I would not blame any citizen for thinking that this was too long of a wait to address this problem.’ End quote.
“Panos, this is an incitement to riot and we ran it in the paper. That’s reckless. We’ll have a lot to answer for if something happens in the shanties.”
“Frank, it’s news. The Sun has this. The Post has this.”
Panos banged his fist on his desk. “Enough. Enough, Frank. I understand you don’t like it, okay? But, Frank, why does your pal Westermann bring Prosper Maddox into police headquarters to talk, but he meets with Mel Washington on the outside, when he thinks no one is looking? Ah? What does it mean? Maybe nothing. But, Frank, you can’t pretend that it doesn’t happen.
“Listen, Truffant is an asshole. You see this; I see this. We print this story, the people who know better, they, too, will see this. People who don’t … There are problems in this City, Frank. I don’t know if most people think like you and I.
“We ran your column, Frank. I think that makes our standpoint clear.” Frings shook his head. “We didn’t run it on the front page, Panos. Not on the front page.”
THE GAZETTE
Editorial, August 12, 1950
FLIMFLAMMERY
History is written by the victors and news is written by the powerful. Only a naïf can read the newspaper with the expectation that he is receiving “The Truth,” a concept that in and of itself seems to be negotiable in these unsteady times. Would that this paper were immune to this practice, but the briefest perusal of today’s front page shows its—our—complicity.
I refer specifically to allegations aired by Councilor Vic Truffant regarding the tragic murders of three young women and the somewhat less troubling beatings of four men, all in the general vicinity of the Uhuru Community, of which we have previously written. It is a testament to Vic Truffant’s strategic acumen, if not to his honesty, that he was able to preempt any journalistic investigation of the story by holding a press conference where he presented his conspiratorial version of these events; this version—a fetid brew of half-truths and innuendo—because of a combination of apathy and laziness, graced the front pages of all the major papers, this one not excepted.
But while Vic Truffant correctly anticipated the retarded work ethic of most City reporters, his version does not deserve to go unchallenged, as it is as lacking in actual evidence as it is awash in bad faith. To be brief, Councilor Truffant claims that the perpetrators of these felonious actions were one or more Negro men from the Uhuru Community. The evidence: the proximity of the victims to the Uhuru Community and the alleged communist ties of certain Community residents. Yet questions exist that stymie the logic of this conclusion. I will focus the rest of this column on the assault on the four Caucasian men and make explicit the flaws in Truffant’s specious claims.
Why, one asks, would these Caucasian men be in those environs in the dead of night? The reason for this may be illuminated by a different series of assaults, events deemed not sufficiently important to merit a mention in any of the City’s major papers—again, this paper included. Over three nights, three separate assaults were carried out against Uhuru Community residents—unprovoked attacks against unarmed citizens. It will be no surprise to frequent readers of this column that the police were decidedly indifferent in their response.
So let me posit another scenario, one that I believe is more consistent with the facts and with the context of the events of the past week. Four Caucasian men return to the scene of their previous attacks, anticipating another night of preying upon unsuspecting and defenseless Negroes. They have not foreseen that the Uhuru Community will resist this attempt at intimidation and are therefore caught unawares when members of the Uhuru Community take steps to preempt the next violent incident.
In the absence of any witnesses beyond the participants in this incident, the reader must discern which scenario most likely played out. If you accept the scenario that Vic Truffant has described, you are placing your faith in the author of the story rather than in a plausible reading of the facts.
There is a larger motive here, I believe, to Vic Truffant’s advocacy of these four men’s soft martyrdom. That motive is Councilor Truffant’s oftstated and well-known wish for the destruction of the Uhuru Community shanties. Perversely, he seeks to use the very people who terrorized Community residents as the victims who will garner public support for this aim. Do not fall victim to this flimflammery.
F. Frings