Once I became convinced that race was important and that people of European descent needed to protect their heritage and culture, I became a young member of the Citizens Council. Often, after class and on rainy summer days, I would go down to the office on Carondolet Street in New Orleans to do volunteer work.

Many fascinating publications streamed into the office from hundreds of right-wing groups all over America. One day, when I finished helping with a Council mailing, I came across some tabloid newspapers called Common Sense. It was a conservative, right-wing paper modeled after Thomas Paine's classic broadside; only the message was sharply different from Paine's. "JEWISH-LED NAACP PART OF COMMUNIST PLAN FOR AMERICA!" read one issue's headline. "COMMUNISM IS JEWISH!" trumpeted another. I also found some old issues. The huge headline in one of them predicted, "RED DICTATORSHIP BY 1954!" However, such a warning did not lend much credibility to the paper when looked at in 1965! I found the National Enquirer-type headlines ludicrous, but it was hard to resist reading something that scandalous, even if just to laugh at it.

The Sharp Words of Mattie Smith

One of the regular volunteers, Mattie Smith, an elderly lady in a flower-print dress and outlandish hat, saw me snickering at the lurid headlines and simply said, "You know, it's true."

"Red Dictatorship by 1954?" I replied with a smile.

"No," she said, "Communism is Jewish. They are the ones behind it."

I thought I would humor the little old lady by politely arguing a bit with her. "Ma'am. How could that be?" I asked. "Communists are atheists; they don't believe in God. Jews believe in God, so how could they be Communists?"

"Do you know who Herbert Aptheker is?" she said, answering my question with one of her own.

"No," I replied, affecting nonchalance.

She was like a tightly coiled spring waiting for release. "He has the official role of chief theoretician of the Communist Party, USA, and he's listed in the Who's Who in World Jewry.¹ Leon Trotsky, the Communist who took over Russia with Lenin, was in Who's Who in American Jewry.² His real name is Lev Bronstein. Both are atheist Communists, and both are proudly listed as great Jews in these books published by the largest Jewish organizations in the world."

Meekly, I offered, "Maybe they were listed because they were once Jews."