Good Neighbors

The little (pop. 1,849) town of Fruita, in a valley of Colorado's Rocky Mountains, had always been an all-white town. Because no Negro had ever lived there, few townspeople even knew of their Jim Crow ordinance forbidding Negroes to remain in town after sundown. Then the Minters came to Fruita.

The Minters were Melvin Minter, a Negro lumber worker from Ansley, La., his wife and ten children (aged 2 to 17), heading for Yakima, Wash., where Minter had a new job waiting. One morning last month, as they approached Fruita in their pickup truck on Highway 6, a car nosed out of a side road. Braking to avoid a collision, the Minter truck skidded and overturned. Margaret, 14, was killed. Mrs. Minter was seriously injured. The other children were cut and bruised.

Fruita responded to the emergency. Townspeople sped to the scene in private cars to carry the Minters to a hospital. Mrs. Wilda Lahue offered them an unoccupied house she owned. "Here's the key," she said. "Use it as long as you wish." Other womenfolk brought furnishings and food to stock the house. Cecil Schafer gave Minter a job as a laborer with his Schafer Construction Co. While Mrs. Minter was recovering, women took turns caring for the family. Fruita's citizens paid for repairing the Minters' truck, for their hospital bills, and for Margaret's funeral. City Judge I. L. Harris and Police Chief Herb Johnston were pallbearers.

Then someone remembered the town's Jim Crow ordinance. No one seemed to know who had passed it, or when or why. Snorted Judge Harris: "We just won't enforce the bill. It's unconstitutional." But there it was on the law books. Finally, Mayor Lewis Moore called an emergency meeting of the city council, which voted unanimously to abolish the law.

Last week, with Mrs. Minter home from the hospital but still under the care of Dr. Robert Orr, Judge Harris ripped the old law from the ordinance book. The Minters thought they would stay in Fruita. "I never had such treatment in my life before," said Minter. "Why would a man leave a place like this?"

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