BLACK MUSLIMS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Re Frederic Ballard's article in the CRIMSON of October 30 describing the "bomb scare" at Jordan Hall during a speech by Dr. C. Eric Lincoln concerning the Black Muslims, a militant Afro-American protest movement. By describing Lincoln's speech as a "bitter attack" and by mentioning that part of his speech which dealt with "the membership of the Black Muslims, and in particular, their 'secret military office,'" the article implies that the Muslims might have been behind the bomb threat. The article emphasizes the importance of the Muslims in this affair by excluding the John Birch Society in the headline to the article.

The article further implies the Muslims' role in the scare in the paragraph concerning the CRIMSON's query to Lincoln as to whether he had received any "direct threats" from the Muslims, the word "direct" being the CRIMSON's. Lincoln's negative answer is followed by the assertion that "the Muslims did, however, have a 'steadily growing temple'" in Boston. The word "however" is again the CRIMSON's, leading us to assume that Lincoln's statement was taken out of context to give the impression that the growing temple was responsible for the bomb threat.

We feel that this implication may not be so much a malicious attempt to malign an Afro-American protest movement as a poorly conceived article stemming from gross ignorance about the movement. Since Malcolm X, a militant Muslim leader, has openly declared that Lincoln's book is a fair representation of his movement and since Lincoln has almost singlehandedly tried to bring the truth about the Muslims to the American public in the face of bitter attacks against the Muslims in white newspapers, Negro newspapers, Time, and now the CRIMSON, there would be no reason for the movement to prevent Lincoln from speaking. As James Laue observed in his article on the Muslims and the press in the last issue of Comment:

"If the Muslims' goals were better understood and more clearly presented to the public, the defensiveness which often turns reform movements bitter would have no raison d'etre. There are already signs that the Muslims are anxious to be understood by a larger segment of society...."

We feel that through the lack of understanding the CRIMSON has put an Afro-American protest movement in a grossly unfair light and has thereby contributed to the possible sad effects of which James Laue spoke in his article. Jack Butler '63,   John Hartman '64.