nostalgia nation

8/14/2019 Nostalgia Nation

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The Motorcycle GangsLosers and Outsiders . . . . . . Hunter s. Thompso

S u n Frnrlc,lrcoLastabor Dayweekend news-papers dl overahforniaavefront-pageeports of a heinousgangap enhe moonllt san ddunes near he own of Scaside onthe Monterey Penmsula. T w o girls,aged 13 and 15 . werellegedlytaken rom heirdates by a gangof filthy. frenzied. boozed-up motor-cycle hoodlums alled Hells An-gels. and dragged off to be re-peatedly assaulted A deputy heriff, ummoned byone of theerstwhllc dates, said hearrivfd 31 the ruch and saw ahue:c bo~lhrc urrounded b y cychstsof bothexes Thrn th e two sob-bing,near-hystericalgnls 51agger-ed out OF the darkness. begging fo rhelp. One was completely nude andthetheradn only a tornsweater.Some 300 Hells Angels weregathered in the Seaside-Montereyarea at the time, having convened,theysaid, or hepurpose of rais-in gundsmong themselves tosend he body of a ormermem-ber, kllled in anaccident, back tohl smother in NorthCarolinaOneof the Angels. 1 1 1 p enough to falselyidentify himself as Frenchy of Sa11Bernardmo, told a local reportcrwho came out to meet the cyclists.Wc choseMontereyecause w eget reated good here. mostotherplaces we get thrown out of town .But Frenchy spoke too soon Th eAngelswerent onhe enlnsulatwenty-four ours eforeour ofthem were in Jail for rape, and therest of the troop was being escortedto the county line by a large po l~cecontmgent.everalwereuoted,somewhaterisively, asaying :That rape charge against our guysis phony and i t wont stick.It turned out to be t rue, but thatwasnothertoryndertainlyno headliner.Thelfference be-tweenhe Hells Angels inhepapers an d he Hells Angels forreal is enough to make a manHunter S. Thompson is a fTee-lancewriter, now lzving in SanFranczscoand completing a novel, Rum Diary.Hzs most valuable source f o r this storywas a formermember of the HellsAngels,no w a p o l r e reporter o n on eof th e major S a l t F~anctsco allies.522

wonderwhatnewsprint j s for. ItSO uses a clues,tion as to w h oale the red hellsangcls.Ever inceWorldWar 11,Californiaaseentrangelyplagued by wild men on motor-cycles. Theysuallyravel ingroups of ten to thirty, oomingalonghe ighways an d stoppinghere nd here to getdrunk ndraise ell. In 1947, hundreds ofthemanmoknhe town ofHollister, an hours fast drive southof SanFrancisco,and got enoughpressnotices t.0 inspire a film call-ed The Wild One, starringMarlonBrando.The ilmhad a massive

elrect on thousands of youngCali-fornia motorcycle buff s; nmanyways, twas heirversion of TheS u n Also Rzses.

When you get in a n argu mrnt withyou can generallyount yochances of emerging unmalmcd bthenumber of heavy-handedallieyou can muster in the time i t taktomash a beerottle In thleague,portsmanshipsor oliberals and young fools. I smasedhis ace,one of themsaidme of a man hed never seen untithe swinging started. He got wiseHe called me a punk. He must habeen stupid .The most notorious of these oulaw groups ishe Hells Angesupposedlyeadquartered in SaBernardlna. Just east of Los Agelcls, 2nd with branches all ovthestate. As a result of the inlmousLabor Day gang rape, thAttorneyGeneral of California h

1 e;l.oup 01 OUL13W molorcyclls

The California climate s perfectformotorcycles, as well as surf-boards, wimming pools and on-vertlbles Most of theyclists are The Of theharmless weekend types, members termed colors, conszsts o f an emOf th e American wearzng amotorcyclehelmet Jubrozdered patch of a wtnged s k u lclation. an d no more dangerous belowhe w m g of themblemretha n skiers or kindivers.But a the l e t t ers M C 1 overhis 2s a bandfew belong to w hat he others call b e a ~ t n g he w o r d s HellsAngels,outlaw lubs, and heseare he B e l o w the emblem zs another patconeswho-especially on weekends bearlnghe local chapt erame,and holidays-are ikely to tu rn up zuhzch zs uszlally a n abbrevzatloalmost anywhere in the stat e, look- f o r the ctt.Y Or 1ocQlW These Patcheing oract ~on . Despite verything are O n th e Oar Of a usual l sleeuelessenimacket In addcasuists haveo ay bouthem, wearingmnotls t y p e s o fLu f t w a f fthey are tough, mean and poten- znszgnla andeproductzons o f Get l a l l ~ as dangerous as packs of man iron crosses * Manyffectwild boar.Whenpush omes to beards a n d their hazr is usually lonshove, nyeatheretishes or in- and unkempt. Some wear a stngladequacy feelings that m a y be in-volved arentirely heside theoint, for decorative an d shoeffect The Hel l sAnge l t s a re apolitiwith theseboyswill sadly testify. norant young thugs

recentlyssued an offlclaleporton he Hells Angels.Accordmg othe report, they are asily identified

the psychiatristsndreudian tlo?z, members haz,e been

as anyone wh o ha s ever and no more racist than otherThe NATI


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earring il l a p ie rced ar Zobe. F7-e-q u e n t l y t h e y h a v e b e e n o b s e r v e d t ow e a r m e t a lb e l t s m a d e of a l e x g t ho f p o l l s h e d motorcyc l edr i ve c h a mw l i i c h a nb eu n h o o k e d a nd u s e dns a f l e x i b l e b l u d g e o n : . . . Probablyt h e m o s t u n i v e r s a l e o ~ n n t o n e n o m -m a f o r LTZ i d e n t i f z c a t z o n of HellsA n g e l s LS t h e w g e n e r a l l y t l t l t y con-drtLon. I w u e s t i g a t m gf f i c e r s con-s i s t e n t l y e p o r th e s e e o p l e , o t hc l u bn t e n t b e m and t h e i r e n t a l e as -soc ia t e s , e em b a d l y i n 7teed o f aba th . F ingerpr iw t s , a re a ve ry ef fec -t z v e m e a n s of Ldentzfzcatzon b e c a u s ea h g h percen tage of Hel l s Ange l sh a v e crinzznal records.I n addztzon to t k e p a t c h e s o n t h e ,back Q f Hells A n g e l s a c k e t s , h e072e P ercente1.s wear a pa tch read-ing 1 %-er. Anotherb a d g e wo rmby so172e m e m b e r s b e a m tlre n u m b e r13 I t i s r e p o r t e d t o r e p r e s e n t t h e131h l e t t e r f the a l p h a b e t , M,wILicIa 117 t u m s t a n d s f o r m a r i j u a n aa n d i n d z c a t e s h e w e a r e r , h e r e o f isa u s e r o f t h e d r u g .

The Attorney Generals reportwas colorful, interesting,eavilybiased and- consistently alarming-just he sorft of thing, in fact, omake a, clanging good article ora nationalnewsmagazine.Whichit did;bothbarrels. Newsweek ledwitha eft hook titledThe Wild(Ones, Time crossed with a right,inevitably titled The Wilder Ones.The Hells Angels, cursing he im-plications of thisnew ttack, re-treatedohebar of the DePauHatel near the San Francisco water-,front and planneda weekend beachparty. I shmowed them he articles.Hells Angels do not normally readthenewsmagazines. Idgo nuts if I read hat stuffall the time,said one. Its all bullshit.Nezuszueek was relatively circum-spect. It offered ocal color, f1ash.yquotes and evidence carefullyat-tributed to the official eport butunaccountably aid he eport ac-cused the Hells Angels of . homo-sexuality,whereas the eport aidjust the opposite. Time leaped into(the fray with a flurry of blood,booze and semen-flecked wordagethat mounted, in the end, o aclassic of supercharged okum :Drug-induced stupors , , , noac tis $00 degrading . . . swap girls,drugs,and motorcycles withequalabandon . . . stealing forays . . . henride off again to seek some newnadir in sordid behavior. . . .

Where does allhiseavethe Hells AngFls an d the thousandsof shuddering Californians (accoxd-M a y 17, 1965

ing to T i m e ) who are worried sickabout them? Are these outlaws real-l y going to be busted, outedalidcooled, as the news magazines im-plied? Are California highways anysaferas a result of this publisheduproar? Can hlonest merchants onceagain walk the treets in , peace?The nswer is that othing aschanged except that a few peoplecalling themselves Hells Angelshave a newsense of identityandimportance.After two weeks of intensivedealing with the Hells Angels phe-nomenon, both in print and in per-son, Im convinced (the net resul tof the generalhowl and publicityhas been to obscure and avoid, thereal ssues by invoking a savageconspiracy of bogymen and conningthe public intothinking all will bebusiness as usual once this fear-some snake is scotched, as i t surelywill be by hard and ready minionsof thestablishment. ,

Meanwhile, according to AttpmeyGeneral Tkiomas Cj Lynchs own fig-ures, Californias true crime picturemakes he Hells Angels Jook likea gang of petty ack rollers. Thepohce count 463 ,Hells Angels:205 around Los Angeles and 233 intheSan Francisco-Oakland area. 1dont know about L.A. but the realfigures or the Bay Area are thirtyor so in Oaldand and exactly eleven-with one facing expulsion-inSan Francisco. This disparity makesit hard to accept othe? police statis-tics. The dubiousackage alsoshows convictions on 1,023 mis-demeanorcounts and 151 feloniesprimarily vehicle theft,, burglaryandassault.This s or all yearsand all alleged members.

Californias overall figuresor1963 list 1,116 hbmicides, ,12,448aggcavated assaults, 6,257 sex of-Penses, and24,532 burglaries. In1962, thestate isted4,121 rafficdeaths, prom 3,839 in 1961.Drug arrest figures for 1964 show-ed a 101 per cent increase in juve-nile maijuana arrests over 1963,land a recent back-page story in theSal2 Frnnctsco Examiner said, Thevenereal isease rate mong thecitys] teen-agersrom 15-19 hasmore than doubled in the past fouryears. Even allowing for hean-nual population /jump, juvenile ar-rests in all categories are risingby10 per cent or more each year:

Against this background, wouldit make axiy difference to the safety

and peace of mind of the averageCalifornian if every motorcycle out-law in hestate all 901, accord-ing to the ohce)were garrotedwithin wenty-fourhours? This isnot to say that a group ike theHells Angels has no meaning. Thegenerally bizarre flavor of their of-fenses and their insistence on iden-,tifying themselves make good copy,but usually oveswhelm- n print,,at least-the unnerving ruth hatthey epresent, in colorful micro-cosm, what s quietly and anony-mously growing all around us everyday of the week.

Were Wastards to the world andtheyre bastards o us, one of theOaltland Angels told a N e w s w e e kxporter:When you walk into aplace where people can see you, youwant to look as repulsive and repug-nant as -possible. W,e are completesocial outcasts- utsidersagainstsociety.A lo t of this is a pose, but any-one who believes thats all it is hasbeen on thin ice since the death o f ,Jay Gatsby. Thevastmajority ofmotorcycle outlaws axe uneducated,unskilled m e n between 20 and 30,and mosthave ,n o credentials ex-cept a police record. So at the rootof theirsadstdnce s a lot morethan a wistful yearning for accept-ance n a world , they never made;their real motivation is an instinc-tive certainty as to what the scorereally s. TQey areout of theballgame and they know it-and thatis theirmeaning; orunlikemostlosers in todays society, the HellsAngels liot ohly know but spite-fully, proclaimexactlywhere heystand.

I went to ,one o their meet-ings recently, and half-way throughthe night I thought of Joe Hill onhis way to face a Utah firing squadan d saying his final words: Dontmourn, organize.It is safe to saythat 110 Hells Angel has ever heardof Joe Hill or would know a Wob-bly from a Bushmaster, bu t never-theless heyare somehow related.Th e I.W.W. had sericous plans orrunning the world, while the HelIsAngels mean only to defy theworlds machinery.But instead oflosing quietly, one by one,heyhave banded together with a mind-less kind of loyalty and moved out.side the framework, for good or ill.There is nothingparticularly ro-mantic or admirable about it; thats

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just the way it is, strength in unity.They ont mind elhng you thatrunnin g fast and loud on their cus-tomizedHarley 74s gives them apower and a purpose thatnothingelse seems to offer.Beyond that,heirosition asself-proclaimedutlawsliclts acertainopularppeal,oweverreluctant.Thats especially truein the West and even in Californiawhere heoutlaw radltlon 1s st111honored The unartlculated link be-tween t h e Hells Angcls and the mil-hons of loscrs and outsiderswhodont wear any colors IS the key totheirnotolletyand heambivalentreactions they inspi re herereseveral ther keys. having to dowitholltlclans,ollcemen andJournalists,but orhis we haveto go back to Monterey andheLabor Day gang rape.

Politicians, ikeeditors andcops, are veryeen on outragestories, nd tateSenatorFred SFarr of MontereyCounty is no ex-ception He is a leadlng light of theCarmel-PebbleBeachetnd nofriend of hoodlums anywhere, espe-cially gang aplstswho nvadehisconstituency. Senator Farr demand-ed nmmediatenvestigation ofthe Hells Angels andthers oftheir i lk - ommancheros.StraySatans, IronHorsemen,Rattlers ( aNegro cl ub ), an d Booze Fighters-whose ack of statuscauscd hemall to be lumped oqether as otherdlsreputables. In the cuL-ofi xvorldof big bikes, ong runsand classy534

rumbles, hisnew,state-sanctioneds8tratiflcationmadehe Hells An-gelsvery blg. They were, after all,NumberOne. Like John Dillinger.Attorneyeneralynch, thennew in his job, moved quickly tomount an investigation of sorts. Hesent uestionnairesomorehan100 sheriffs,districtattorneysandpolice chiefs, sking ormforma-tlon on the Hells Angels and thoseother dlsreputables He also askedforsuggestions as to how he awmlghtdealwlth hemSix months went by before all thereplles were condensed into the f l f -teen-pageeporthat madeewoutrageheadlineswhen twas e-leased to the press. (T he Hells A n-gels alsso got a copy,one of themstole mine ) As a historicaldocu-ment, t ead like a plot ynopsisof Mickey Spillanesworst dreams.B u t in thematter of solu~tlons twasague,eminiscentnomeways of MadameNhusproposalsfordealingwith he Vietcong Thestatewas goingo entralize m-formation on thesehugs,rgemoreigorous prosecut~on,utthemall undersurvedlancewben-everpossible, etc.A careful reader got the mpres-sion that even if the Hells Angelshad acted out this script-elghteencrimeswere specified and dozensof others ~mphed-verv little wouldor could be doneboutt, andthatndeed Mr. Lynchwaswellaware hed been put,or pohti-cal reasons, on a pretty weak scent.Therewasplenty of mad action,

scnseless destruction , orgies, brawlpelversions nd a stlangeparadeof innocent victims that, even opaper and in careful police laguage, was enough to tax hecre-dulity of the dullest police reporteAny bundle of mformatlon off plice blotters 1s bound o eflectspeclal vlewpolnt. a n d parts of thAttorneyGenerals eport areactually humorous, if only or the lnguage.Here 1s an excerpt.

Ox N o u e n l b e r 4 , 1962. a SunFranczsco e szden t d r C T J L ~ h r o u gR o d eo , p o s s l b l y urxler then f l u -e w e of a lcoho l ,t ruck a motorc y c l ee l o n g m go a Hells Ang e l parkedou t szde a bar. A grouof A n g e l s p u r s u e d t h e vehiclep u l l e d t h e d r l u e l f r o m t h e caa n d a t t e m p t e d io d e m o l t s h t h7 a t l w r eapenstue z ~ t ~ l r ~ c l ehe burt e n d e r clalrned he h a d seer2 n o t l r r nbut a c o ck t a l l walt,rs.s I t ) t h e b af u ~ r ~ t s h e c ld e n t r f ~ a t r o no th e offLc e r s o n c e r n m g some o f h o s e responszb l e for t h ea s s a u l tT h en e x td a y z t was r e p o r t e d o o f f z c e r s h a ta m e m b e r of t h e He ll s Ang e l s gangh a d t h r e a t e n e d t h e h f e o f t h z s w a z t -Tess as well a sn o t h e ro m a nwaz t re ss A m a l ew a t n e s s who de fn l t e l y zden t z f zed zve par t zc zpan t s zt h ea s s a u l t n c l u d t n g h ep r e s a d e n tof t he Va l l e lo Hel l s Ang e l s and thV a l l e l o Road R a t s a d v z s e d o f f t c er sthat b e c a u s e of hzs fear o f re ta l zatton b y c l u bm e m b e r sh e -roould ref u s e to t e s t z f y to t h e a c t s Ize h ap r e u z o u s l y f u t n l s h e d

That s a representative temin the ection of the eport itledHoodlumActivities. Flrst, i t ocurred n a small town-RodeoonSanPablo Bay Just orthOakland - here he Angels hstopped at a ba r without ausingany trouble until some offense wcomm~ttedgainsthem. In thcase, a driverwhomeven he pl ice adm~t was possibly druhit ne of their motorcycles Tsame kind of accldent happeevery dayall over he nation ,buwhen i t involvesutlawmotor-cyclists i t 1s something else agaInstead of settling he hingwithan exchange of insurance informtion or, at the very worst, an argmentwith a few blows, he IIeAngels beathe driver andat-tempted to emolish the vehiclI askedone of them if the polexaggeratedhisspect,nd said no, hey had done the naturthingmashe d eadl~ghts, kickin doors.brokenwindows and orvarious components off the engin

Of all theirhabltsand predlleT h e NAT


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tionshat society finds larming,this departure from the time-honor-edconcept of an eye for an eyeis the one that most frightens peo-ple. The HellsAngels trynot todo anythmghalfway, and anyonewho deals in extremes 1s bound tocauserouble,whether hemeansto or not. This, along with a bellein total retaliation for any offenseor insult, is what makes the HellsAngels unmanageable for the pollceand morbidly fascinating to thegeneral ublic;,Their laimhatthey dont start trouble is proba-,bly rue more often than not,, buttheir , idea of provocation is dan-gerously broad, and heir biggestproblem is hat nobody else seemsto understandt. Evenealingwith ,them personally, on the friend-liest terms, you can sense the nhair-trigger readiness to retaliate.This s a ,public hing,andnot at all true among themselves Ina meeting,heironversation istotally frank and open. They speakto and aboutoneanotherwith anhonesty thatmore civilized peoplecouldnt bear. At the meeting1 at-tended (and before they realizedI was,a ,journalist) one Angel was, being publicly evaluated, somememberswanted himout of theclub and therswanted to keephim n. I t sounded ikea group-therapy * clinic in progress - otexactlywhat I expected to find

when just before midnight I walkedinto the bar of the D e Pau in oneof the bleakest neighborhoods, inSa11 Francisco, near Hunters P&t.By the time I parted company withthem-at 6.30 thenextmorningafter an all-night drinking .bout mmy apartment - had been im-pressed by a ot of things, but noone thmg about them was as con-

sistently obvious as their group loy-alty. This is an admirablequahty,but it is also one of the things tha tgets them in trouble. a fellow An-gel I is a lways s i g h t when dealingwith outsiders. And thls sort of rea-soningmakes a group of offead-ed HellsAngels nearly impossibleto deal with.Here is another incident from theAttorney Gellerals report:O n S e p t e m b e r 19, 1964, a largeglozLp of H e l l s A n g e l s a n d S a t a n sSlaves c o n v e r g e d O I L a b a r in S o u t hG a t e ( L os A n g e l e s C o u n t y ) , p a r k z n gt l z ez rmotorcyc les nd cars, z n th es t r ee t 21 2 suclz a fns lzzox a s t o blocko n e - h a l f of t h e o a d w a yT h e y o l doffzcers t h a t t h e e m e m b e r s of t h e Iclub had-recent l y bee i z asked to s tayout of t h e ba T a n d h a t h e y h a dc o m eo e a r a t d o w n U r o n t h e wa p p r o a c h h e bar o w n e r o c k e d h ed o o l s a n d tul -ned off t h e l z gh t s a n dn on t r a n c e was m a d e , u th eg r o u p clzd d e m o l z s h a c e m e n t block

f e n c e 071, rrzval of t h eol i ce ,, nzenzbers of t h e G1ub.zuere l y a n g o nt h e s d e w a l l z a n d L?Z t h e s t r e e t . T h e yw e r ea s k e d o e a v e t h e city, wizzcJat h e y dzd reluctanfly. As ;hey l e f t ,seve la l were heard t o s a y t h a t t h e ywould b e b a c k a n d e a r down t h ebar.Hereagain s heethic of total,retaliation. If youre asked to stayout of a bar, you dont just punchthe owner-you come backwithyour army and destroy thewholeedifice. Similar ncldents - longwlth a number of vague rape com-plaints-make up thebulk of thereport.Eighteen ncldents m fouryears, andnoneexcepthe apecharges are more serious than casesof assault on dtizens who, for theirown reasons, hadbecome involvedwlth the Hells Angels prior to theviolence. I could find nocases ofunwarrantedattacks on wholly in-nocent victlms.8 There re a few

M a y 17, 1965 c

borderlineases,wherein victimsof physical attacks seemed innocent,according to police andpress e-ports, but ater efused to testifyfor fear of i.etaliation. The reportasserts very strongly that HellsAngels aredifficult . o prosecuteand convict because hey make ahabit of threatening and intimidat-mg witnesses. That is probably trueto a certainextent,but in manycases,vlctims have refused to testifybecause they were engaged in somelegally dubious activity a t the timeof theattack.In tw o of themost widely pub-licized incidentshe prosecutionwould haveared etter if theirwitnesses and vlchms Itad been in-timidated Into silence. One of thesewas the Monterey gang rape, andthe other a rape in Clovis, nearFresno in theCentral Valley. Inthe latter, a 36-year-old widow andmother of five childrenlaimedshed been anked ut of a bmwhere she was having a quiet beerwith anotherwoman, hencarriedto an abandoned shack behind ~ebarand raped epeatedly for twoand a half hours by fifteen or twen-ty Hells Angels and finally robbedof $150. ,Thats how thestory ap-peared in the San Francisco news-papers henext, day, and t waskept allve for a few more days .b ythe womans claims hat he wasgetting phone calls threatening herlife if she estifiedagainst her as-sailants.Then, four days after he crime,the victim was arrested on chargesof sexual perversion. Theruestory emerged, said the Clovis chiefof police, whenhewomanwasconfronted by witnesses. Our in-vestigation shows she wasotraped.said thechief. She 1 par-tlapated in lewd acts in h e avernwith ateas t three Hells Angelsbefore the owners ordered themout She encouraged heiradvancesin the tavern, then led them to anabandonedhouse in the ear. . . .She was not robbed but, accordingto a woman who accompanied her,had left herhouse early i n the even-ing with $5 to go bar-hopplng..Thatincldent did notappear in he At-torney, Generals report.But i t was impossible n o t to mea-tion he Monterey gang rape, be-cause it was theeason for thewhole subject to beoome official.Page one of the eport - hichTimes editors apparently skipped-says that he Monterey case was

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dropped bccnusc , . further m-vestlgalionaised uestions as towhether forcible rapead beencommlttcdor 1f the dentlflcatlonsmade by vlctimserealid Chargeswereismissed on Sep-tember 25. wlth the concurrence ofa grand p r y . The deputyDistrictAttorney said a doctor examinedthegirls and ound no evidenceto supportheharges. Besidestha t, one irlefused toestify,he xplained, and heotherwasgiven a lie-detector est and foundto be wholly unreliable.This, in effect,waswhatheHells Angels had been aying allalong. Here 1s their version of whathappened,as told by severalwhowere there :One g l r l 7uas zuhzte a n d pregnant,thether P L U S colored, a n d the11were w t 1 L f lue colored s tuds Theyhung around our bar -Nxlz s Place

on Del Mo~tteAvenue-for aboutthree h o u r s Saturday nzght, drznk-i n g an dalkzng wzth ou r rzders ,then. t h e y came out to thebeachwlth us-them nd hew zveboyfriendsverybodyastandzngaround t h e fire, drinkzng wme, an dsome of the guys werealkznq tothem-hustltng em , naturally-andsoon somebody asked the two chzcksi f theywanted fo be urnedon -you know, did heywant osmokesome pot? They s a d yeah, ant1 t h e n

thc7l w n l k e d o f f 7uith some o f th eguys t o the dunes Th e spade wentzllrth n f ewuys and thenhew a n t e d to y u ~ 1 ,but the p r e y w n ton e ZLUS reallyhot t o trot, he f z r s tfour or f l ue g u g s she wa s reallydraggzngnto h e r a r m s , bu t af terthat sh e cooled of f , too. BY th i st z m e , though,ne of thew bollf t l e n d y had got scared and gone forthe cops-and hatsall rt was

But not quite all. After that therewere Senator Farr and Tom Lynchand a hundred cops and dozens ofnewspaper tories nd rticles 111the national news magazmes-andeven hisarticle,which is a directresult of the Monterey gang rape Whenhemuch-quotedeportwaseleased,heocalress -prlmanly the San Francisco Chron-d e , which had earlier done a longand alrly objective eries on heIlells Angels-made a point of say-

ing the Monterey charges gainstthe Hells Angels ha d been droppedforack of evidence. Newsweekwascareful not to mention Mon-terey at all, ut The New YorkTzmes referred to it as the allegedgang rape which, however, left nodoubt in a readers mind that some-thing avagehadoccurred.It remained for Time, though, toflatly ignore the fact that the Mon-terey rape hargeshadbeendis-

Five Seats in CongressThe Mississippi Challenge . . .The voting-rightsbillwhichPresi-dent ohnson ent to Congress asa result of the nations anger, andhisown, over thecallous vlolenceof Alabama state troopers at Selmaand hemurder of the Rev. JamesReeb IS a historic tep orward-bu tongverduendar fromenough.(SeeThe Right To Vote:Small Fruit of a Bold Promise byWilliam W. VanAlstyne, The N a -tion, April 19.)That t is longoverdue is cer-tainly no reason not to welcome it.That i t is fa rfromenough s cer-talnly reason t.0 point out hat heAdministration has at hand , if onlyGeorgeSluff zs a lazvyer practzczng znLos Angeles nd ne of tho se w h ovolunteered f o r the M ~ s s z s s z p p tChal-lenge.526

it will use t, a muchmoreeffec-tive way oguaran tee he vote toNegroes in heSouth han his oranyother piece of legislation thatCongress ould ass. That is theMississippiChallenge. If it suc-ceeds-and whatPresident ohn-sonndisdministratipn doabout it may well determine wheth-er ornot t wlll succeed-it wlllstand as a leswn forevero theSouthern states that as l w g as theypreventNegroes fromvoting heyare ndanger of losing their rep-resentation in Congress.

The Mississippihallenge isthecontest-filed on thefirstdayof Congress his year on behalf oftheississippireedom Demo-cratic Party-to the ight of thefive Mississippi Congressmen to sit*

missed. Its article lcnncd heavilyonhe airiest ndeastactualsections of thereport.and gnoredthe est tsaid, for Instance, hatthe Hells Angels initiationitedemandsthat ny ewmemberbring a woman or girl [called asheepl who 1s wllllngo submitto sexualntercourseithachmember of theclub.That sun-true, lthough, s one Angel ex-planed, Now and hen you get awomanwho likes to cover thecrowd, and hell, Im no prude. Peo-pledont llke to thinkwomen gofor hat tuff,but a lot of themdo Wewerealking cross pootable boutheash of publlcltyand how i t ha d affected the Angelactivities I wasryingo xplainto him hat thebulk of thepressin th ~s countryhas such a vestedinterest n he status quo that icantfford too muchonestprobing at theoots, fo r fear owhat they might findOh, I dontknow,he said Ocourse I dont lke to readall hisbullshltbecause it brings he headown on us, butsince we got famous weve had more nch fagandsex-hungrywomencome looking for us than we ever had beforeHell, hese days we havemoreac-tion tha n we can handle

. George Slaffin theHouse of Representatives. Iis based on he allegation that heCongressmenwerenominated anelected in a primary ndgeneralelection from which Negroes werregularly and systematically excluded by Intimidation, harassmeneconomic repmal, property damageterrorization,iolence and illegaandnconstitutionalegistratlonprocedures.

Whatarechances of theChal-lenges success? Good, if thena-tional indlgnation aroused by Selmand its afte rmath does not cool oforecomepatheticallyatisfiedwith a nominal voting-rights ill.Good, if the Challenge is detemmed on thebasis of conditionas they exis t in Mississippi, as documented by some 15,000 pages oThe NATIO


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