Having Wonderful Time

On a sort of reconnaissance raid into the North, a passel of Georgians gleefully stopped off in Seattle and Kansas City, Mo. last week, publicized a weird scheme for counterattacking the damyankees. As the schemers explained it, a Georgia nonprofit corporation, American Resettlement Foundation, Inc., is going to buy houses in upper-income Northern suburbs and rent the places cheap to Negro families hauled up from Georgia.

According to its charter, the A.R.F.'s purpose is to provide "adequate housing facilities" for "underprivileged persons." But in their hilarity, the Georgians could not help blurting out the real purpose. Drawled mustachioed Alpha A. ("Alfalfa") Fowler Jr., 37, Georgia state legislator and A.R.F. president: "What we're lookin' for is the bluegum, stinkin' scum of the earth, the niggers with common-law wives and passels of little black bastards." Back home in Georgia, an A.R.F. cofounder, pudgy, rednecked Politico Roy Harris, was equally frank. Vowed Harris, often called the "kingmaker" of Georgia politics: "We're goin' to buy the houses next door to Hubert Humphrey and Dick Nixon and get us the biggest nigger families we can find to send up and move in. We're goin' to see just how these civil righters perform when the problem is across the street or next door."

The first victims, it seemed, were Georgia's taxpayers, who have to pick up part of the tab for the A.R.F.'s scouting expedition. Technically it goes on the books as an official trip to look into state archives, but the loudest talkers in the party (five men, four wives) seemed more interested in real estate than records, and -if the truth were known -more interested in propaganda than real estate. Whether or not Fowler, Harris & Co. really expect to stir up the North, one thing is clear from their grins and chuckles as they talk about their scheme: they find the mere thought of it more delicious than red gravy or pecan pie.

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