Note (Back) — CHAPTER 21

"It is hard to realize that your office would become so rotten and degraded," one critic wrote McNamara. "In my opinion you are using the tactics of a dictator.... It is a tragic event when the Federal Government is again trying to bring Reconstruction Days into the South. Again the military is being used to bring this about." Did businesses not have the right to choose their customers? Did local authorities not have the right to enforce the law in their communities? And surely the white soldier deserved the freedom to choose his associates.[21-68] Another correspondent reproached McNamara: "you have, without conscience and with total disregard for the honorable history of the Military of our Great Nation, signed our freedom away." And still another saw her white supremacy menaced: "We have a bunch of mad dogs in Washington and if you and others like you are not stopped, our children will curse us. We don't want black grandchildren and we won't have them. If you want to dance with them—you have two legs, start dancing."