It would be naïve in the extreme to dismiss General Francisco Franco as a villain or a butcher. He is a creature of his caste, a product of his moral… - John Gunther

The effect of World War II is one point worth noting. Almost every victim of lynching since the war has been a veteran. The Negro community is probably more unified today, more politically vehement, more aggressive in its demand for full citizenship- even in the South- than at any other time in history. Roughly one million Negroes entered the armed services. They moved around and saw things; they were exposed to danger and learned what their rights were; overseas, many were treated decently and democratically by whites for the first time in their lives; the consequent fermentations have been explosive. Also since Negroes were presumably fighting for democratic principles on the international plane, it was difficult to keep them from wondering why the same principles were not applied at home. It wasn't easy for an intelligent Negro to accept that he was fighting for democracy- in a largely Jim Crow army. The glaring crudity of this paradox became the more striking as the war went on. One famous remark is that of the Negro soldier returning across the Pacific from Okinawa. "Our fight for freedom," he said, "begins when we get to San Francisco."

Fiorello Henrico LaGuardia, the most spectacular mayor the greatest city in the world has ever had, has characteristics and qualities so obvious that they are known to everyone- the volatile realism, the rubble-supple grin, the flamboyant energy, the zest for honesty in public life, the occasional vulgarisms, the common sense. But the mayor I spent these uninterrupted hours with showed more conspicuously some qualities for which he is not so widely known. He picked what he called a "desk day" for me to sit in on. He did not inspect a single fish market or visit a single fire. What he did was work at his major job, administration of the city of New York. What he did was to govern, to put in a routine day as an executive.

In Athens, Alabama, in August, 1946, two white boys and a Negro had a scuffle. An honest white policeman refused to arrest the Negro, on the ground that he was not the aggressor; he did arrest the whites. A mob numbering between 1,800 and 2,000 thereupon stormed the city hall, forced the release of the white boys, and began to riot; Negroes were chased off the streets and between fifty and one hundred were injured. When order was restored nine whites were taken into custody on charges of "unlawful assembly." They were released later. Eight were teen-agers; the youngest, thirteen years old, "carried a club and knocked Negroes down."