Black List

As President Truman had directed, Attorney General Tom Clark last week issued his list of "totalitarian, fascist, Communist or subversive" organizations. It is to be used as a guide for the President's Loyalty Review Board in judging the loyalty of federal employees.

Clark's black list of 90 organizations, compiled from the files of the FBI and other Government bureaus, contained no surprises to newsmen and others who cover the Communist front. Under the Communist Party, it listed seven "affiliate" committees, among them the Labor Research Association Inc. and the Committee to Aid the Fighting South. It listed several disbanded outfits, but it did not include several large organizations whose leaders' pursuit of the Communist line has made them suspect in Congress and elsewhere.* Now labeled by the Government as "Communist or subversive" were these busy and noisy organizations:

P: The National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, chairmaned by the Rev. William Howard Melish of Brooklyn's Holy Trinity Protestant Episcopal Church.

P: The Civil Rights Congress, headed by rich, earnest George Marshall (no kin to the Secretary of State). It has been the courtroom defender of avowed Communists.

P: The Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, chairmaned by Dr. Edward K. Barsky, now out on bail pending appeal of his conviction for contempt of Congress.

P: The Council on African Affairs.

P: The Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

"Up-to-Date as a Model T." Also listed were the American Youth for Democracy (once the Young Communist League) and eleven schools which Tom Clark's sleuths decided were Communist Party incubators. From William Z. Foster, boss Communist in the U.S., came the expected cry: "A purge list . . . takes the United States a long way toward fascism and police-state totalitarianism."

The list found few friends anywhere. Its incompleteness was "utterly farcical" to New Jersey's Congressman J. Parnell Thomas and to most of the members of his Un-American Activities Committee. Said Thomas: "There are hundreds of Communist and Communist-front organizations alone." Said a committee member: "As up-to-date as a Model T Ford."

"Guilt by Association." Tom Clark prefaced his cautious listing with a warning: "It is entirely possible that many persons belonging to such organizations may be loyal to the United States. Guilt by association has never been one of the principles of American jurisprudence." Editorialized the New York Times: "Guilt by association is certainly implied. . . . The Government will be on safer ground, well within the principles of the Bill of Rights, if it gives every organization . . . a public day in court."

* Not black-listed was one organization which has hundreds of federal employees among its members: the C.I.O.'s United Public Workers Union. Last week, three C.I.O. vice presidents and Lithuanian-born Abram Flaxer, the union's president, called on the Attorney General, pleaded with him not to include it. Asked Tom Clark: "Mr. Flaxer, are you a Communist?" The reply: "If you mean to ask do I carry a card, the answer is no; if you mean do I believe in some of the philosophical ideas of Communism, that is another question."

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