Enthusiastic and determined cheers greeted this statement by Carol Coates, a leader of the Louisville National Organization for Women, at an indoor rally here January 9. Despite subzero temperatures and eight inches of snow, 600 Equal Rights Amendment supporters attended the rally sponsored by NOW. Two hundred people marched from the state capitol to the rally.

Buses and carloads of ERA advocates rolled in for the action to make Indiana the thirty-fifth state to ratify the ERA. They came from many cities in Indiana and surrounding states.

The week before the demonstration, 1,200 people packed subcommittee hearings at the state capitol. Two-thirds of the crowd were on the side of the United Auto Workers, NOW, and others testifying for ratification.

The anti-ERA speakers list read like a Who's Who of America's right wing: Stop ERA, Indiana Farm Bureau, American Legion, and a host of Bible thumpers.

All week Stop ERA head Phyllis Schlafly coordinated anti-ERA rallies, picket lines, and vigils. She denounced the January 9 NOW action as the work of "lesbians" and the "Socialist Workers Party."

Despite the right-wing's attempts to scare people away from the pro-ERA demonstration by such red-baiting and lesbian-baiting, the rally exemplified the broad unity behind women's rights.

January 21, 1952
Defense guards to protect lives and homes against bombings are being formed by both whites and Negroes as more cases of dynamiting and other violence spread throughout the South. As the Militant warned, the failure of federal and state authorities to punish lynch-violence and police murder of helpless Negroes has encouraged new outrages of a similar character. As the Socialist Workers Party urged, defense guards are being set up to safeguard the intended victims of the terrorists.

On January 10, two dynamite charges were exploded near Oxford, N.C. under a new house belonging to Sanford Holding, 65 year old Negro farmer, wrecking two rooms and cracking the foundation. The sheriff blamed it all on "novices" but neither he nor the State Bureau of Investigation has discovered the "novices" yet.

Meanwhile, Sanford Holding is taking no further chances. Determined to rebuild the home and move into it despite the terrorist attack, he has recruited an armed guard and posted it around his house. The sheriff said there was "no evidence of racial differences" but Holding knows better, and his defense guard is composed of Negroes. (The property had been bought from whites, and Holding could be sure that Negroes were not opposed to his occupying it.)

This and other incidents, as Negroes all over the South know, are part of a pattern of terror designed to intimidate the Negro people and prevent them from fighting for their rights.  
 
 
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