DESPERATE AND TENSE, the Southern segregationist swings hard, not looking at his club. As he battles for a way of life, he grabs whatever he can, and too often at hand is a weapon tinged with anti-Semitism. The fervent battle against Negro rights in the South has brought with it a subtle but powerful spread of hatred for the Jew. Few segregation groups have policies that include anti-Semitism. Most openly avow the opposite. But their criterion for propaganda is only that it attack the Negro and help keep him separated. This has left the field open for the hate drummer. He has discovered that his literature and speeches, filled with anti-Jewish sentiments, will be used as long as anti-Negro remarks are included too. For example, Robert B. Patterson, executive secretary of the Mississippi Citizens Councils, once issued a list of organizations from which segregationists might obtain reading material. “Some of these groups are anti-Semitic,” wrote Patterson, adding: "However, all of the religious groups, including the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish - have been pushing the anti-segregation issue and it is time for all of us to speak out for separation of the black and white races, regardless of our race or creed." But Patterson’s comments were too blatantly unclever...

A potful of hot water gurgled down on us as we waited, caught in a giggling, shoving crowd, outside Washington’s Coffee ‘n Confusion Club, a beatnik haven marking its first Saturday night of business in the nation’s capital. An irate neighbor in an upstairs apartment had tossed out the hot but not boiling water. The sprinkles from above alighting on the sprinkle of beards in the crowd symbolized one of the oddest clashes in the history of this clash-ridden federal town. For several months now, the prudery of Washington has been at war with the rebellion of its youth. The war started when a 24-year-old self-styled poet, William A. Walker, decided to open his club. Following the style of shops in San Francisco’s North Beach, it would sell coffee, pastries, biscuits, cream cheese, bagels and poetry. But Walker and his wife, Ruth, a 22-year-old graduate of Vassar, erred strategically in their first attempt by failing to consult officialdom before opening. Zoning laws promptly descended upon them, and police shut down the shop. In their second attempt, the Walkers, moving gingerly, followed every step of the law. They found an abandoned cellar restaurant at 945 K Street, Northwest, rented it, decorated it, and applied for a license. And then the smug traditions of Washington, sensing that the venture might succeed, began to stir and swat at this pesky, tiny threat of non-conformity...

For most Americans, one dynamic young man, Tom Mboya of Kenya, symbolizes the onrush of African nationalism in the last few years. On his several trips to the United States, he has been publicized in rallies, television shows, and newspaper interviews. He is, for America, the magazine cover boy of Africa. But despite all the American cheers, Mboya is in deep political trouble at home, and some of the trouble stems from those very cheers. Mboya has qualities that appeal to western taste. He is vigorous. He is efficient. He is moderate, though always frank and direct, in his speech. He seems to combine the shrewdness of a politician with the honor of a statesman. Even the British settlers in Kenya, long displeased with the American encouragement of Mboya, have now come to regard him as a main hope for their survival when the colony becomes independent, perhaps some time this year or next. They trust him and would help him. The vision of an independent Kenya led by Mboya has replaced their shattered dream of a white man's Kenya. But Mboya, now thirty-two, will not be at the helm when Kenya becomes independent...

No Evidence of Any Effect on Congress - The historic civil rights march on Washington - massive and orderly and moving - has dramatized the wants of Negroes in America, but leaders still faced the task today of trying to turn drama into action. Speaker after speaker told the 200,000 Negro and white sympathizers massed in front of the Lincoln Memorial Wednesday that their demonstration was no more than a beginning. 'Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content,' said the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., 'will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.' Demonstrators and their leaders made it clear that one sign of progress, in their view, would be congressional approval of President Kennedy's civil rights bill...

Two simple posters explain the civil war in Nigeria. The first, a thin strip, was glued to the walls and windows of most public buildings in Enugu, the capital of Eastern Nigeria, a few weeks before the region seceded on May 30 to become the Republic of Biafra. The poster shows four men. Three look alike, obviously Ibos, the dominant tribe of the east. The fourth man is a Hausa from Northern Nigeria. “This Is Your Region,” the poster says, “Report Any Strange Face to the Police.” The second poster, a little larger and more colorful, was slapped all over Lagos, the federal capital of Nigeria, a few weeks before federal troops invaded Biafra on July 6, the beginning of the civil war. This poster shows a monstrous drawing of the severed head of Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, the ruler of Biafra, lying under the heavy combat boot of a Nigerian soldier. “Crush Rebellion,” the poster says. The first poster reflects the intense tribal feeling of the Ibos of Eastern Nigeria. They are enraged and bitter over the massacre of thousands of Ibos in Northern Nigeria last year. They believe the other tribes of Nigeria would wipe them out if they could. For this reason, the Ibos feel they are fighting for their survival. But in Lagos, just 270 miles from Iboland, the federal military rulers and their civil servants, now mostly from the north, refuse to acknowledge that this emotionalism exists. In their view, as the second poster shows, a gangster named Ojukwu is stirring up the Ibos. Crush them, and all the problems of Nigeria go away...

You can hear the moments of boredom tick away whenever you tell Americans that no other industrialized democracy has the same dispiriting problems as the United States--not the crime, not the guns, not the homeless, not the unschooled, not the poor, not the racism, not the ugliness. Listeners may mimic interest for a short while, then their glances roll up and away. They may not doubt me but, content in smugness, they do not care. After 21 years as a foreign correspondent, I returned home late last year to a country bristling with astonishing problems, most left untended. Yet many Americans persist in believing that their country has a divine mission on Earth, a model for all others. Ignorance about the rest of the world seems total. Our son set off for high school the other day in a T-shirt emblazoned with a bust of Lenin. I jokingly warned him to be careful. “Don’t worry,” he said, cynically not jovially, “no one at school knows who he is.” Few if any peoples can boast as much democracy and energy as Americans. These are wondrous gifts that foreigners can hardly fathom. Yet I often wonder now to what purposes they are put...

While reading The Passage of Power, the fourth volume of Robert A. Caro’s formidable biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson, I found myself recalling my role in the election of 1960 when Senator John F. Kennedy defeated Vice President Richard Nixon for president. I was a junior member of the Washington staff of the Associated Press then but nevertheless landed some juicy assignments. Since my role has been ignored by biographers and historians, from Theodore H. White to Caro, I thought it might be helpful to set down some of the details...