At Tuskegee

Three weeks ago white inhabitants of Tuskegee, Ala., protested (to the Veterans' Bureau) the installation of an all-Negro staff at the Government's hospital for Negro veterans at Tuskegee. Sheeted Ku Kluxers paraded in the streets; General Frank T. Hines, Director of the Veterans' Bureau, suspended the installation of Negroes.

Last week General Hines announced that if the whites of Tuskegee did not wish an entire Negro staff installed, they must propose a suitable alternative. Immediately a committee of three, appointed by the white people, sent a proposal to Washington. They asked that the entire administration be given to whites. Their proposal was rejected.

Unless the whites can propose something acceptable, General Hines indicated that he would shortly follow his original plan of installing an entire Negro staff. There are now about 85 Negro patients at the hospital. The nurses, attendants and laborers, constituting 60 per cent of the staff, are colored. The Veterans' Bureau has secured an adequate number of Negro doctors to displace the white physicians now in charge of wards. A white commandant will be left at the hospital until a competent Negro can be found.

The Bureau evidently intends to go on with its plans. Meanwhile, in parts of the South the attitude of the Alabama whites is found incomprehensible. In Louisiana, for example, the attitude is: "For goodness' sake, let the Negroes take care of themselves! We don't want whites to have to do it."