Quote: Mencken

The last thing H.L. Mencken wrote before the stroke that ended his career was an article in the Baltimore Sun about the segregated public tennis courts in Baltimore. Some liberal troublemakers, black and white, had gone to the courts to try to play and had been arrested. Mencken's article was about how stupid that rule was in public accommodations. His last paragraph was:

In answer to all the foregoing I expect confidently to hear the argument that the late tennis matches were not on the level, but were arranged by Communists to make trouble. So far as I am aware this may be true but it seems to me to be irrelevant. What gave the Communists their chance was the existence of the Druid Hill Park Board's rule. If it had carried on its business with more sense they would have been baffled. The way to dispose of their chicaneries is not to fight them when they are right.