Rich's is Georgia's largest department store chain. It is also one of its biggest employers, with more than 10,000 workers in the Southeast, and with at least eight stores in Atlanta alone. Its sales last year totaled more than $250 million.

Strikers are calling for a boycott of all Rich's department stores until the workers are able to win their demand for an end to racist hiring, promotional and firing practices, and low wages. The boycott has already cut into normally lucrative Easter sales.

Most of the strikers are from the downtown store and have been picketing it daily. Picket lines have been as large as 300. Spirited mass meetings have been held nightly, with 300 to 400 workers present.

Delegations of strikers from most of the stores have come to the meetings to explain the effect of the boycott and to participate in the chanting and singing that mark these meetings.

April 19, 1948
The House Un-American Committee has unanimously agreed on an omnibus witch-hunting bill to be introduced shortly to Congress.

The aim of this vicious legislation, as announced in the press, is "to jail Communists." To accomplish this end - expressly prohibited by the Constitution - the bill will have a lengthy preamble defining the Communist (Stalinist) Party, as an illegal conspiracy.

The present Smith "Gag" Act which makes it a crime to seek the "overthrow of the government by means of force and violence" will be amended to make it criminal to seek the "overthrow of the government by any means."

In its definition of "illegal conspiracy" the committee includes disruption of "trade, commerce or government in the United States with intent to further the objectives of the world Communist movement." When asked by reporters if this "disrupting trade" clause included strikes, Congressman Nixon of the Un-American Committee replied that it could in strikes that were "primarily" political.  
 
 
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