Memorandum from Chester Kerr to Wilson Wyatt and Leon Henderson

CONF IDENTIAL MEMORANDUM TO: Wilson Wyatt and Leon Henderson FROM: Chester Kerr SUBJECT: PCA Greek Crisis Rally in Madison Square Garden, March 31. During the recent ADA Conference in Washington, Charlie Bolte and I decided it would be "interesting" to attend the March 31 PCA Madison Square Garden rally on Greece - to hear Wallace in person and to observe how the PCA conducted the occasion. It was more than "interesting" as perhaps the following report will show. The Kerrs and the Boltes arrived forty minutes late, at 8:10; we found some- what to our surprise, we had missed Jo Davidson, who led the hit parade, and also the first half of the remarks by Harlow Shapley. The Garden was packed. Eighteen thousand of the faithful had been turned out. Another thousand were milling a- round the street and the entrance, a number of whom importuned us for extra tickets. Inside, where the circus programs are usually sold, vendors were wistfully offering copies of The Nation. PCA literature was available at tables; I attach a couple of samples. The Garden was in semi-darkness when we entered but we could distinguish American flags hanging in profusion from the ceiling, way up. The four corners of the first balcony were each drapes with slogan banners: DON'T ARM TYRANNY; U.S., THE HOPE OF WORLD PEACE; FEED PEOPLE, DON'T FIGHT THEM; WE DONfT WANT A CENTURY OF FEAR. In stead of a speakers' dais, with the orators on exhibition and a chairman residing, we found ourselves witnessing a spectacle staged with considerable theatrical skill and efficient management. Jerome Chodorov, the plyywright, was later given a credit line; he deserved it, for a slick, and to us, terrifyingly smooth job. Dead center, where the boxing ring usually stands, was a large raised platform, with about twenty feet of clear floor space around it in front of the first rows of audience on three sides and speakers and stage managers on the fourth. Centered on this platform was another smaller raised platform about the size of a boxing ring. Centered on that was a bunting-draped podium topped with mikes to the loud- speaker system and to the ABC network audience which later heard most of Wallace's speech. From the top of the Garden, four spotlights focused on the speaker, their white shafts plucking him out boldly from the semi-darkness. Shapley was, we judged, about half-way through his speech. He did not mention, after we arrived, Greece. He was devoting himself to what turned out to be Topic #2 of the evening: a defense of American Communism in the form of attacks on the President's executive order on the loyalty of the government employees and the proposed ban on the Party. (Each subsequent speaker devoted approximately half his words and energies to this runner-up Topic.) With heavy-handed, rapie irony Shapley was being "funny" at the expense of the nation's red-baiters. The audience thought he was a wow.