Judith Sheppard: Be careful what you consider to be a 'mob'

I had to put down Saturday’s opinion page and walk away from it for a while before I could read Jennifer Foster’s column headlined, “Forgive the mobs; they’re just fed up.”

I thought perhaps an overworked headline writer had oversimplified her point about the current disruptions of town meetings across the country.

But the last two paragraphs were pretty clear:

“So forgive folks if they’re feeling a bit mob-ish. Their means, while regrettable, are accomplishing their long-pursued ends. They finally have their lawmakers’ attention.

“I love the First Amendment. Don’t you?”

I was concerned for two reasons. Yes, I love the First Amendment. It guarantees the freedom of expression, which is exactly what mobs do not want: they use their noise, numbers and intimidation to silence speech.

In fact, the Founding Fathers knew majorities can sometimes become bullies, so they wrote the Bill of Rights to restrict the many from taking away the rights of the few — like the right of one citizen, brave enough to stand up alone, to speak without being threatened.

The other reason is: I don’t feel so forgiving to mobs, not even those affectionately called “mob-ish.” I’ve researched the work of other journalists who saw a lot of angry crowds in their time; in Alabama, the most striking example is Buford Boone, who, on Feb. 6, 1956, saw a mob suddenly form and send Autherine Lucy, the University of Alabama’s first black student, fleeing for her life.

The next day Boone carved a spot on the front page of his Tuscaloosa News for an editorial headlined “What A Price for Peace.” It’s important to know that Boone wasn’t quarreling with segregationist views; he actually shared them. Except for Ira Harkey of Pascagoula, you can’t find a single Southern white newspaperman at that time who didn’t, whatever they came to believe (check the words of Harry Ashmore, Hodding Carter Jr., Ralph McGill, even Neil O. Davis).

On Feb. 3, Boone had editorialized that the NAACP should stop “pushing.”

He didn’t like what the federal government was doing. He was feeling frustrated.

He was fed up.

But join, or excuse, a mob? No. The day after Lucy escaped, he concluded his editorial with:

“What has happened here is far more important than whether a Negro girl is admitted to the University (using the terminology of the time). We have a breakdown of law and order, an abject surrender to what is expedient rather than a courageous stand for what is right. Yes, there’s peace on the University campus this morning. But what a price has been paid for it!”

He won a Pulitzer Prize, but he too paid a high price; he was considered a traitor to his region and his race for years. What amazed him, though, was why his fellow white Southerners were offended. “There was great, great resentment,” he told an interviewer 30 years later, “because we referred to the group there as a mob.”

They weren’t a mob: they were just right.

In this echo chamber the media have become, when the din of opinion is so loud few of us can understand what’s being said, it might be good to remember the power of words, and what they really mean, and why the quiet voice has always been the clearest.

Not that the First Amendment says you have to. You have to make up your own mind about that.

Judith Sheppard is associate professor of journalism at Auburn University.