“Our Southland,” said John Howard O’Dowd to his fellow South Carolinians, “is becoming a place where nonconcurrence with the established orthodoxy is cause for rejection and social ostracism.” As editor of the Florence, S.C. Morning News (circ. 14,219), young (29) O’Dowd knew whereof he spoke. Because he had broken “the established orthodoxy” by calling for moderation on the desegregation issue, O’Dowd was pressured into dropping the whole subject of racial integration from the News’s editorial page (TIME, April 2).
Nevertheless, threats against O’Dowd and his family and pressure on the newspaper, which his father, 68, had published since 1912, only increased. Last week Jack O’Dowd resigned “for my own good and the good of the paper.” Next month he will join the staff of the Chicago Sun-Times as a reporter. Said O’Dowd regretfully: “I’m certain that the News no longer will buck racial feeling.”