The Ignorance Epidemic
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| A flyer from the "Alert Americans Association" featured in the tabloid The Augusta Courier, July 8, 1963 (click to enlarge) |
Perhaps the most revealing single fact in the report is the almost total ignorance of the white majority of Americans concerning the colored minority. As the Commission put it: "Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans. What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it...white society condones it."In response to his broadcasts some listeners sent in angry letters, two of which are featured here. They wrote in to express their fears of a communist conspiracy. They also made clear their hostility toward the Civil Rights Movement.
To those well-meaning whites who protest that "I didn't have anything to do with the slums. I pay my taxes and obey the laws." Well, such protests have no meaning. Because the stinking, rat-ridden ghettos are there. And there are the angry and hopeless people forced to live in them because they have no other place to go.
The last portion is a newsletter written by anticommunist activist and conspiracy theorist Kenneth Goff. It solicits donations by capitalizing on the ignorance of many white Americans amid the riots and unrest across the country.
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| Written on the back: "telephone wire tapping." The blacked out portion is Skinner's address |
July 20, 1967
To Bill Downs
ABC Broadcasting Co.
Washington, D.C.
I was listening to your broadcast this evening concerning National Rifle Assc. and its members and I was quite concerned or rather upset in your reasoning (logic). In other words one bad apple ruins the whole sack full. If this is the correct way to evaluate all organizations I'm afraid we have real problems.
I have been a member of the N.R.A. for many years and proud to be a part of the overall program it stands for. I am also a free and accepted Mason and realize that of all the good this organization stands for there is still a few bad apples in the bunch. I would give my life for my country and firmly believe in the Almighty God. We need these organizations so we may group our efforts for the betterment of all. The common mistake we make (in haste) these days is to eliminate every thing but the source of our problems, which we ignore.
Sincerely,
Newell Skinner
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An anonymous listener sent in their reaction to Downs' broadcast:
July 25, 1967
To Bill Downs
Dear Bill -
Heard your commentary the other day on the National Rifleman's Assn. I wouldn't worry about them but about the international communist conspiracy, which is what is behind the trouble in Detroit, N.Y., Calif. etc.
Consider the enclosed by a former member of the Communist Party.
So strange we blame all on the right wing, rats, heat etc. Let's identify it by what it is. King said a couple of years ago that "the Am. people have too long suppressed my people, we will see to her destruction!" Why aren't these people stopped???
Sincerely,
A Concerned Matthew
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Dear Christian Friend,
The "Long, Hot Summer" is upon us. From coast to coast, civil disturbances, riots, and blackouts have become the order of the day. With blood flowing in the streets of Omaha, West Palm Beach, New York, South Bend, Denver, Chicago, Jacksonville, Cleveland, and several dozen other major cities across the nation, a new phase in the Civil Rights Movement has begun.
The young Turks among the negroes, being spurred on by the Communist Party and its new chairman, the negro, Henry Winston, along with the Illuminati, are out for power and blood. The old adage of "give an inch, and they'll take a mile" is coming true. For years, we have told you that the Civil Rights drive is Communist inspired; for over twenty years, they have been training leaders for this hour. We have stated that Red propaganda has flooded the negro race, instilling bitter hatred in their minds. They have been repeatedly brainwashed with phrases like "there goes Whitey, kill, kill, kill," until it has turned sane people into madmen.
One can see this in Lee Oswald, who killed the President while acting under the orders of the Communists. One can see this in the madman sailor, Richard Benjamin Speck, who killed eight nurses in one of the bloodiest massacres in the 20th century. Speck had the sickle tattooed on his body! These mad robots are inspired and trained to kill; the lust for blood has been planted in their minds. To believe otherwise is a folly. This, the nurses found out to their sorrow.
Dr. Generoso Provido, Philippine Consul General in Chicago, said that Nurse Amurao told him that she, and the other eight student nurses, discussed their plight while being held captive, and the strategy that won out was "maybe if we are quiet and calm, he will remain quiet and calm," but they were wrong. "They were too trusting," Dr. Provido said. He said Miss Amurao was on the side of those who urged the group to fight the man in order to defend their honor.
One hundred and eighty million Americans are acting like these eight nurses—they say, don't take action, this will soon end when the negroes get their civil rights; they believe one is stretching his imagination when one tells them that to join an ofay club, a negro must rape a white lady; they will not read the FBI reports on the increasing number of rapes in our nation. They refuse to admit that our major cities have become jungles at night, filled with beasts of prey; that no one is safe any longer either at home or on the street; and that many churches have been forced to cancel night services. We fail to understand that these madmen do not seek civil rights, but use it as an instrument through which they seek black power. They seek to subject our nation to tyranny, and to submerge our culture and religious heritage under a flood of cannibalism, voodooism, and beastly jungle sex orgies.
The drums that beat out rock-and-roll can be heard in the darkest parts of Africa sending forth the rhythm that prepares native tribes for the kill, and conditions their minds to participate in heathen sex orgies. Yet, today, in many so-called churches in our nation, these drums and heathen dances of black magic are taking the place of singing "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" and "The Old Rugged Cross." The pulpits, the press, our schools, and government, have branded those who will not submit to these practices of the Devil, and integration, as bigots and racists. Yet, Elijah Muhammad makes no bones about telling us that he will kill every white man, woman, and child by 1970; but, this is not supposed to be racism.
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(ATTN: Those who have not sent in their "Zip", we must have it to send the Pilgrim Torch and any third class mail.)
The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Revolutionary Action Movement, The Deacons for Defense—all call for seizing of black power by revolutionary means; but, this is not bigotry.
William Booth, a negro Civil Rights leader, says "if people aren't getting what they need, they should take it." M.L. King, who claims he is non-violent, creates violence everywhere he goes. He supports Red China and North Viet Nam, and has openly seized property in Chicago; but, this is in not bigotry.
Gun stores are being openly raided in every riot, and negroes are being armed and trained for guerrilla warfare and the revolution. But, if a white man is trained for survival, or for the protection of his home and family—in the eyes of the government, this is bigotry and open treason.
In many cities, hundreds of black men are meeting in secret cells planning an Armageddon in which Whitey is either to be exterminated or brought to his knees. Said one negro leader, "Let's get Whitey, let's put his head in the bowl and pull the chain." Said LeRoi Jones, the playwright who is getting tens of thousands of dollars of the taxpayer's money from the government to put on his anti-white plays, "I don't think it is necessary to make anything clear to the white man except perhaps that most of the people in the world would be better off if the white man didn't exist."
"What Whitey doesn't know," says another extremist leader, "is that the man he's overtipped not only doesn't love him for it—he may very well hate him. He may be wishing he could cut out his fine Christian heart."
The extremist leadership, a secret revolutionary elite scattered in clusters across the country, numbers in the hundreds. Each cluster has its own dedicated followers, numbering into the scores of hundreds. There are groups with weapons caches—sniper rifles, sidearms, shotguns, automatics, even bazookas—disappeared in tenement coalbins, in vacant attics, in the basements of funky bars where three double shots of scalding bourbon cost a man a dollar. There is, too, by common knowledge, a plentiful stockpile of empty soda bottles, rag wicks, funnels and cans of gasoline that convert into instant incendiaries of the type which, at Watts in south Los Angeles last August, leveled more than 200 business buildings and extensively damaged some 400 more.
A white storekeeper in Harlem, working on his week's bookkeeping on a Sunday morning, looked out the the rear window of his shop and was dumbfounded to see eighty to one hundred men in the courtyard resolutely going through combat drill with rifles, automatics and dummy demolition charges. When he reported his discovery to precinct detectives, the storekeeper was told that in recent months similar drills had been spotted and reported in northern Manhattan, the southern Bronx and the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The police could only keep the would-be guerrillas under surveillance in an attempt to discover the location of their ordinance depot. The merchant, shaken by the backlot maneuvers, took off for his home in Queens and now does Sunday work in his living room.
A distraught mother on Chicago's South Side recently told detectives she had discovered that her 15-year-old son was stealing towels and stripping them for Molotov cocktail wicks. What should she do? The police advised her to keep them informed if possible—but under no circumstances to let her son know she knew, for fear that she would place herself in mortal danger from his associates.
"You can just about bet," said a special investigator from a large metropolitan police department, "that these people have the circuit diagrams of the underground power-cable systems in many of the major cities." Said a revolutionary, who has a degree in engineering, "These things are quite simple, you know—an idiot could almost do it. You only have to know what cable to cut, or what manhole cover to life—and where to place the explosives."
With growing unrest, with National Guard troops patrolling many streets, with military police forces on round-the-clock duty, this all totals up to only one thing. We are in a civil war. A revolution to subject the white race to black power.
The guilty ones are not the negroes—the guilty ones are the cheap politicians and our White House who sell their souls, and all that their fathers have bled and died for, in return for a few measly votes. Marxist doctrine in place of the doctrine of Christ. These are the ones who preach integration as if it is the law of God, even though they know the Bible condemns it.
The guilty ones are the press, radio, and T.V., who hawk their race-mixing wares, and who implant the hatred of whites in the south to gain a few extra shekels.
Truly, this summer, America stands at the cross-roads of destiny—one road leads to the precipice of destruction. Will we awake before it is eternally too late, and act in such a way that our Republic can be redeemed? This summer could yet be an hour of decision for our nation and Christian civilization.
Soldiers of the Cross is on the battle line as ever, yet it is with loneliness and deep sorrow that I write this summer. In the past few months, we have had to say farewell to our friends and compatriots who have gone on to be with the Lord: Elizabeth Dilling, Dr. Harvey Springer, J.B. Matthews, Major Jordan, Sarah Deason, Chief of Police of Los Angeles, George Riegler, and Ruth Record Ewing. No more will their voices be heard amid the battle until Christ returns. The world becomes a sadder place, but heaven shines more brightly because they are there. To those of us who remain, the burden becomes more heavy. Our duty to fulfill our calling becomes greater.
We need your prayers. May God help us to raise and train more young people to fill the gap. At the Soldiers of the Cross Training Institute, we rejoice that our enrollment exceeds anything we have had in the past. At our conference, every building was filled, and many had to be placed at the motels and hotels in Evergreen. This summer there has been perfect unity and cooperation on the part of the students and teaching staff. Minds have been awakened; souls have been saved; leaders have been trained for the battled; and Christ has been exalted! In all of this we rejoice that the victory is Christ's.
Naturally, the increase in activities has depleted our treasury; because of this, we have been delayed in publishing the Torch, and in doing many other things that should be carried on. We pray that you have not forgotten us, nor the crusade to which we are dedicated. Our summer schools have over a month to go, and I have hoped it would be necessary for me to go into the field before the closing of these sessions. You can help through your prayers and contributions, and I trust that we shall hear from you shortly as this will determine how much, and what, action we can take.
For everyone who gives a gift this month, we have prepared a packet with material, that in our opinion, should be in every file. We have marked it Packet X and this shall be sent to everyone responding to this letter. Trusting to hear from you soon, I remain Sincerely yours for Christ and America.
Signed,
Kenneth Goff
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Soldiers of the CrossKenneth Goff - Box 116Englewood, Colorado - 80110Enclosed my contribution this month $_____________ for Christ and my Country. Send Packet X.
