The Bite

At a mass meeting of white adults in Linden, Ala. last week, State Senator Walter C. Givhan spoke on one of his favorite topics: the campaign of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to end segregation in the schools. What, he cried, is the real purpose of the campaign? "To open the bedroom doors of our white women to Negro men." And what will happen if the campaign succeeds? The Negroes will see to it that the nation gets a Negro vice president, "and after that happens, what would prevent them from assassinating the President and making the Negro President?" Roared the senator: "You say it can't happen here, but I say it can and will unless we stand up and fight." The crowd, obviously in agreement, promptly voted to set up a white Citizens Council to stop desegregation before it even begins.

By last week the white Citizens Councils that began last summer in Mississippi had spread to at least four Alabama counties. Their purpose, said Lawyer Alston Keith, chairman of the council in Alabama's Dallas County, is "to make it difficult, if not impossible, for any Negro who advocates desegregation to find and hold a job, get credit or renew a mortgage." So far, the council's bark has been worse than its bite, but the bite is taking effect. Examples :

P: In Indianola, Miss., members of the Citizens Council have been buttonholing patients of Negro Physician Clinton Battle, have warned them that they will lose their jobs if they continue to consult him. Reason: Battle, the first Negro in Sunflower County to register and vote, had been urging other Negroes to follow suit. The council's campaign has been so successful that at the last election not a single Negro--including Dr. Battle--appeared at the polls.

P:In Belzoni, Miss., the Citizens Council learned that Negro Undertaker T. B. Johnson is a member of the pro-integration Regional Council of Negro Leadership, warned him that he had better not take the job of being chairman of the local Negro Boy Scouts. If he did, said his white townsmen, he would never get a penny of credit in Belzoni again. Told that he might also be run out of town, Johnson gave in.

P:In Columbus, Miss., the Bank of Commerce told Negro Dentist Emmett Stringer, ex-president of the state N.A.A.C.P., that though it had lent him money in the past, it would not do so in the future. Other citizens have taken up the practice of calling Stringer's mother up in the middle of the night to report: "Dr. Stringer has been killed." Added one imaginative caller: "Do you have his body yet?"

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