"If Ever a Devil . . ."

As the owner-operator of Radio Station WBOX in Bogalusa, La., Ralph Blumberg felt it was his civic duty to help explain the meaning of the new civil rights law to his community. The local Ku Klux Klan disagreed. And to bolster its argument, its members threw bricks through Blumberg's car windows, spread tacks in his driveway, fired six shots into his transmitter, forced the station's transfer from rented quarters to a trailer. So convincingly did Klansmen threaten the lives of his wife and children that Blumberg moved them to St. Louis.

Blumberg stayed behind to fight, but local advertisers and employees faded away, until he was virtually alone on the job with only two national ad accounts to help pay costs. To honor his persistent fight, the Radio and Television News Directors last week named him recipient of their annual Paul White Award (named after CBS's first news chief). Aware that his Bogalusa experience has left Blumberg in need of far more than a silver cup, the TV men spontaneously passed the award around, filled it out of their pockets to the tune of $1,014.

For Blumberg, the honor was gratifying and the money more than welcome. But he announced sadly that while the cash helped, he could no longer afford to continue the fight and was currently negotiating to sell his radio station at a loss.

"When you become a target of the Ku Klux Klan," he told the broadcasters, "you soon learn that if there ever was a devil on the face of this earth, it lives, it breathes, it functions in the cloaked evil of the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan."

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