Carl Rowan

"... In a speech before the American Foreign Service Association in Washington, Carl Rowan, Director of the United States Information Agency, characterized Malcolm X as only "an ex-convict," "ex-dope peddler," and a "racial fanatic." 

This Negro, Rowan, expressed his amazement that many Africans respected and admired Malcolm X. 

He stressed that his agency-the United States Information Agency in every country-must "correct" this lack of understanding by zealously disseminating the vilification and slanders of the U.S. press, designed to obliterate every memory of our slain brother. "

President Johnson: This is what I'm saying: --œDear Ed: --œIt is [with] the greatest reluctance that I yield to your insistence and accept your resignation as director of the Information Agency effective January the 20th.-- (Now, we may substitute that date.)

Edward R. Murrow: Of course.

President Johnson: --œI respect your feeling that a long convalescence from illness precludes your remaining on the job. The same high sense of duty which brought you to Washington now obliges you to depart. Nonetheless, I must admit that I've been hoping you'd find it possible to stay on. After your recovery, I'll be calling on you for advice and for help.

--œYou have done a magnificent job in this post.Your entire life, your eloquence, your idealism, your sound judgment, your determined drive, your sparkling personality all combine to make you superbly qualified for the task of conveying the true picture and purpose of this country to the world. You will be sorely missed. --œYou leave with the thanks of a grateful President and a grateful nation. I close, Ed, with a paraphrase of the words that you made forever famous on radio and television, in your own country and around the world: Good-bye and good luck.--

Edward R. Murrow: Well, sir, I don't deserve a word of it, but I'm grateful for it. [Laughs.]

President Johnson: Well, you deserve it all. Now, I have been seriously considering Carl Rowan.

Edward R. Murrow: Ah-ha.

President Johnson: I don't know.I haven't made that decision. I have talked to one or two folks on the Hill.I don't know what problems I would have.I have the feeling, though, that because he sits on the [National] Security Council that it might give me a chance to pick someone that had some State Department experience, some foreign experience, and also give some people a little hope--”

Edward R. Murrow: Yes, sir.

President Johnson: --”for the first [Black] man to ever occupy a place on the Security Council. That might keep a lot of people working to do better here at home.

Edward R. Murrow: There are obvious advantages and disadvantages . . .

President Johnson: Yes.

Edward R. Murrow: But your point, if I may say so, seems to me very well taken, sir.

President Johnson: Give me any reactions, and I'll treat them very confidential. What do you know about him?

Edward R. Murrow: I have watched him at the State Department since he first came there. I knew him when he was a journalist before. I hold him in very high regard as a professional in the news business. He was one of the more candid members at Rusk^∇'s staff meetings. He would have the obvious handicap, by which I mean that a fair amount of the agency's work abroad in the course of the next few years is obviously going to be in the field of civil rights.

President Johnson: Yeah.

Edward R. Murrow: Here, he would have both advantages and disadvantages--”

President Johnson: Yeah, yeah.

Edward R. Murrow: --”but he enjoyed the respect, so far as I know, of everyone who worked with him.

President Johnson: He'd have trouble with [John] McClellan and folks like that, I imagine.

Edward R. Murrow: That is true. I have not much doubt about that.Some of the people he would have to work with in Africa would regard this as a sort of Uncle Tom gesture--”not the more intelligent ones, but some of them would. He's a very able citizen, Mr. President.

President Johnson: He went around the world with me, and I was quite impressed with him. I've given some thought to [NBC President] Bob Kintner. What do you know about him? I'm talking to no one but you. It'll never go beyond this phone.

Edward R. Murrow: And I'm not talking to anyone.

President Johnson: That's right.

Edward R. Murrow: Kintner is [searching for word] able.Whether he would have the required flexibility to deal with the bureaucracy and to follow the guidance as laid down by the Department of State, I would not be quite sure, Mr. President.

President Johnson: Mm-hmm.

Edward R. Murrow:I would have a certain reservation there.

President Johnson: Mm-hmm.You think Rowan would do what the policy was?

Edward R. Murrow: Yes, sir, and this, as you know, is a very important aspect of the operation.

President Johnson: Yes, it is.

Edward R. Murrow: I may be doing Kintner an injustice, because--”

"(President Nixon,) in the face of a vote to impeach he might try, as "commander-in-chief", to use military forces to keep himself in power."

Carl Rowan

October 26, 1973 

Washington Star article entitled "Has President Nixon Gone Crazy?"

"Unless Gingrich and Dole and the Republicans say, ‘Am I inflaming a bunch of nuts?’, you know we're going to have some more events (like the Oklahoma City bombing). I am absolutely certain the harsher rhetoric of the Gingriches and the Doles … creates a climate of violence in America."

Carl Rowan

April 25, 1995 

Washington Post.

"I knew that the stories of the two murders would immediately grab the glands of millions of American white men, prejudicing them in ways they would never admit publicly. . . . (It) would enliven the insecurities of millions of white male psyches. The old college girl's chant, “Once you go black you never go back!” surely would take on feverish new meaning.

A black friend of morbid wit said to me, ‘Doesn't O.J. know that we can f*** 'em now but we still can't kill 'em?’ . . .

Black people would in private say that Nicole was ‘white trash,’ using her blond hair, her big breasts, her teenage pussy to woo a famous, rich, middle-aged black man away from the black woman who had sustained and nurtured him through the toughest years of his life. "

Carl Rowan

Columnist Rowan Shoots Young Intruder

By Carl M. Cannon, Inquirer Washington Bureau

POSTED: June 15, 1988

WASHINGTON — Syndicated columnist and television commentator Carl T. Rowan, who for years has called for handgun control, broke up an unauthorized 2 a.m. pool party in his back yard yesterday by calling the police and then winging one of the teenaged intruders with a single shot from his Smith & Wesson revolver.

"Somebody will see irony in this," said Rowan. "But I don't."

Rowan, 62, said he fired his .22-caliber pistol only after one of the trespassers ignored his warning and lunged at him as if he were heading into the house.

Although they did not publicly contest Rowan's account of the shooting, District of Columbia police said that Rowan's gun was not registered in accordance with Washington's handgun control law and that they had referred the matter to the U.S. attorney, who has jurisdiction in the District.

Possession of an unregistered handgun is punishable by up to a year in jail.

The U.S. attorney's office issued no public statement about the case, but it was learned that prosecutors were considering whether the shooting was justified - and whether to file gun charges against Rowan.

"We checked our forms and registration records and found that the firearm in Mr. Rowan's possession used in the shooting this morning was not, I repeat not, registered," said police Capt. William White.

In an interview, Rowan said his son gave him the gun several years ago - he didn't remember when - after he received threats. He initially said the gun was registered. When pressed on whether he was certain, Rowan answered that he believed his son, Carl T. Rowan Jr., had registered it.

The man Rowan shot, Ben Neil Smith, 18, of nearby Chevy Chase, Md., was treated at Georgetown Hospital for a gunshot wound to the wrist. Police had charged Smith and a friend, Laura A. Bachman, 19, of Bethesda, with misdemeanor trespassing, but those charges were dismissed by the U.S. attorney's office.

Parents of both young people refused comment yesterday. But before police and hospital officials cut off attempts to call Smith, he was reached by a local radio reporter.

"He had no right to shoot me," Smith was quoted as saying. "I mean I guess I was trespassing. That's no reason to shoot a person - for swimming in his pool. I was in my underwear soaking wet. I had just climbed out of the pool. I never spoke with him - he just shot me."

Rowan offered a different account. He said he was awakened at 2 a.m. by loud noises in his pool coming from four or more youths.

Rowan said he immediately called the police and then fetched his pistol, loaded it and waited for the officers to arrive. Only then, he said, did he leave the house and walk to a side gate to unlock it so the officers could get in the back yard. But the police went to another gate, Rowan said, and he found himself facing one of the fleeing swimmers.

"I said to him, 'Freeze, I have a gun,' Rowan said. "He said, 'Ah hell, man,' and lunged toward me as if to come into my house. I wasn't about to let that happen."

Rowan said he thought Smith was smoking marijuana. He also referred to the shot as "a warning shot," but skirted the question of whether he was aiming at the youth.

Rowan is a liberal who is most passionate when advocating civil rights for black Americans and programs designed to alleviate poverty. He has long decried police brutality and the proliferation of guns in urban America.

"I'm still in favor of gun control," he said yesterday. "But that doesn't mean you let people come in your home. And as for brutality, if there was any attempt to be brutal, the guy would be dead."