The Press: Indignation in the North

Seldom do U.S.-datelined news stories provoke such irate cartooning as the reports from Selma inspired last week. In Northern newspapers Alabama's Governor George Wallace and his cops were pilloried with the ferocity that cartoonists in the past have usually concentrated on Communist leaders or Hitler and his storm troopers.

Wallace, Alabama law-enforcement officers and Selma's red-neck hoodlums were caricatured as fascist bullyboys, Neanderthal dimwits or lumbering ogres from a horror movie. Expectably, the angriest cartoon of all was drawn by Herblock of the Washington Post, who depicted a moronic "Special Storm Trooper" chuckling with satisfaction as he washed a Negro woman's blood from his club.

Heavy-handed as many Northern cartoonists were, their indignant caricatures were more effective than their attempts to convey pity or shame. Though not so mawkish as some of his colleagues, Herblock at week's end sketched the murdered minister's grave. Propped against the headstone was a crown of thorns.