1964

Articles from 1964

Banned Book$
(Coronet Magazine, 1964)

This is an article about the unintended consequences that ensue when the morality police ban books that, in their eye, will corrupt our youth and degrade society’s splendid ethical code. Time and again these books become bestsellers:


“In our own day, standards have changed so rapidly that books banned and burned only decades ago are now acceptable reading matter in our schools…[banned authors] are so respected that most college students are puzzled to learn of the trouble that greeted these books when originally published.”

Russia’s Fifth Column in America
(American Opinion, 1964)

Over the last thirty years the United States, as well as Central and South America, has been invaded repeatedly by ununiformed soldiers of the Soviet Government – agents of the International Communist Conspiracy. Our government has been furnished repeatedly with conclusive evidence of this invasion and yet has done nothing to exclude and deport the invaders… To make matters worse, ‘Liberal’ administrations since the time of Franklin Roosevelt have urged that what few immigration restrictions we have to prevent their entrance be removed… Roosevelt was not interested in the fact that many of those entering were Communists; after all, he told me that some of his best friends were Communists.

‘Fear of the Police”
(Pageant Magazine, 1964)

As 1964 came to a close this venom-packed column was read by many in the white American middle-class and it must have seemed very clear to many among them that matters between the races would not be righted for decades to come. Written by the Harlem-born writer James Baldwin (1924 – 1987) on the occasion of the 1964 Harlem Race Riot, Baldwin did not simply denigrate the NYC Police Department but the culture, government and sacred documents of the entire nation.

The Dying Underclass…
(Pageant Magazine, 1964)

This article chronicles the poor health that had been a constant companion within the African-American communities and how it differed from their white counterparts.

To the men who count the living and the dead – the statisticians, discrimination against the Negroes carves a picture in their death charts as clear as an inscription on a new tombstone, as pathetic as a dead child’s forgotten doll… There is no question in any public health expert’s mind that to get a real improvement in the death rate picture among Negroes, they must be able to improve their diet, housing, education, and living standards, including medical care. And that can only come about, it seems, by removal of all the discriminatory barriers on the economic and social level.

The Faith of Mahalia Jackson
(Pageant Magazine, 1964)

In this 1964 article, the cherished Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson (1911 – 1972) explained for the reader the relationship she had with the Almighty and further remarked that this relationship was the exact one God required from Christians:

– you have to have a made-up mind. You don’t straddle the fence serving God; we must put our all on the alter and let God abide.

Tony Randall: Movie Star
(Pageant Magazine,1964)

In this early Sixties article, celebrity epistolarianne Cyndi Adams recalled her first two encounters with the man who would be Felix Unger:


‘I am definitely neurotic and psychotic,’ cheerily announced Tony Randall (1920 – 2004) the first time we met – ‘he’s an actor-comedian of remarkable skills…he unconsciously reflects, in the way he plays his rolls, so much of the neurotic age we live in…’.


The New York Times would pursue this point to a further degree in their 2004 obituary of the actor:

That’s the force Tony Randall embodied: he represented, in his neurotic grandeur, our national will to unhappiness. Or if not our will, at least our right, which in the 50’s we were only beginning to realize we could exercise.

‘Why I Compare LBJ with my Father, FDR”
(Coronet Magazine, 1964)

Doesn’t LBJ remind you of FDR?‘

That’s the question I hear most of these days. He does, and touring through the poverty-stricken states of Appalachia with President Johnson, I saw why.
– so wrote Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. (1914 – 1988) in the attached article that was penned some 23 years after his father’s death.

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