This Lovable Land

From MURRAY KEMPTON

NEW YORK

A MERICA 1965? How odd Mr. Dickens would A. find it that most of the contributors to the Spectator's American issue are brothers from his own island and how surprising that in general they seem to join President Johnson in his assess- ment of ours as 'this lovable land.'

Still, reconciled though we are, Mr. Dickens, here as everywhere, enforces his claim as model.

There is very little in the American Notes which

has much use to us now. But that little still has overwhelming force; it is in those pages when Mr.

Dickens ceased his own complaint and simply printed all the advertisements for fugitive slaves that he found in the New York press during his visit. The great model, even at his worst, can still instruct us that no estimate of America, whether in praise or blame, can ever be sent forth unaccompanied by a document which describes us with what we take for granted.

The document for America, 1965, would be the December 10, 1964, edition of the Roanoke News of Weldon, North Carolina, which is all the record history is likely to have of events in its state's upper north-eastern counties of Halifax and Northampton.

Those two counties voted three-to-one against Barry Goldwater last November. The more solid, of their citizens, white and negro, are tobacco farmers and contented wards of an agricultural programme expensively mercantilist. Weldon then is a bastion of Southern moderation. This is how things were there at the end of Year One of the Great Society Era. The governing board of Halifax County had lately received reports that its Ku-Klux-Klan was growing and aggressive.

Sheriff Harry A. House had been ordered to in- vestigate and he reported his findings to a meet- ing of the county commissioners.

There are a number of Klan members scat- tered through the county [Sheriff House said]. But from all the information I can gather, they belong to groups based in other counties.

I attended the Klan rally in Enfield and there were several thousand members present. It was one of the most orderly meetings I have ever attended considering the size of the crowd.

A 'Mr. Jones,' of Greensboro and Char- lotte, introduced himself to me as the Grand

Dragon. He told me none of the Klan members were allowed to carry weapons and had been instructed not to violate any laws. If they did, he would like to know of it.

There had been three crosses burned in the

county in recent weeks, not counting 'the large one which was burned at the public rally in En- field.' One of them was small and crude and 'must have been the work of pranksters or kids and not the Klan,' whose high standards in crosses are known and universally respected. As for the other two crosses; 'I have been unable to find anyone who saw them put there. Thus I am unable to say who was responsible.' He went on:

It has also been charged that members of the Klan have ridden into the negro section of Enfield on several occasions. I have been unable to find anything to substantiate that charge.

The Klan was also accused of attempting to burn a house or store in the negro section of Enfield. I talked to firemen called to the scene and it was their opinion that there was no real attempt to burn the building.

The sheriff had one final summary of, his remorseless efforts: We have been unable to find anyone who has seen a Klansman in the county who was robed except at the Enfield rally and none of them wore hoods.

After the comfort of their sheriff's dedication to peace and order, the Halifax County com- missioners next took up the public disturbance of a delegation of local negroes who have the temerity to call themselves the Halifax County Voters Movement.

The Reverend A. I. Dunlap, as their spokes- man, laid before the county fathers a number of requests, which the Roanoke News lists without comment. Among these revolutionary demands were that jails and rest houses be integrated; that the present system of jury selection be altered so that negroes are not systematically excluded from jury duty; that all racial labels be removed from public buildings.

The Reverend Mr. Dunlap had opened by say- ing that Halifax's negro citizens 'constitute a majority of the people of the county.' When he had finished, the chairman of the county board asked if any other member of the negro dele- gation would care to make some further remark.

Then, the Roanoke News tells us:

One suggested that perhaps there could be some discussion by board members in order to determine their feelings on the matter. None of the commissioners had any comment.

When asked if the Halifax County Voters Association would be notified by the Board of

any action it might take (the county) Chairmat assured the delegation that such notification wil be given.

In other societies there might be the suspiciot that the Roanoke News is a fake, invented bl some enemy of the moderate South, But they Americans, like Ghanaians, have never had muck chance to refine the art of parody, since in neithe culture can parody hope to compete with the rea 1 thing. Of course there is a Roanoke News, and al excellent paper it is, the first job of a newspape being to tell strangers how things really are in it territory.