Negroes Laughing?

For more than 50 days the Negroes of Montgomery, Ala. have boycotted the city buses, protesting segregated transportation (TIME, Jan. 16). Last week Montgomery's Mayor W. A. Gayle reacted in a way that showed how much the boycott--95% effective--was hurting. He first announced that he and his fellow members of the City Commission had joined the extremist White Citizens' Council. Then he announced a policy of no surrender on the boycott: "We have pussyfooted around on this boycott long enough and it has come time to be frank and honest. There seems to be a belief on the part of the Negroes that they have the white people hemmed up in a corner and they are not going to give an inch until they can force the white people of the community to submit to their demands-in fact, swallow them all." (The Negroes demand seating in buses on a first come, first seated basis, with whites seating from the front backward, Negroes from the back forward.) Mayor Gayle was specially vexed about the white families who give car rides to their Negro help, or pay their taxi fare. He said that the cooks and maids who boycott the buses "are fighting to destroy our social fabric just as much as the Negro radicals who are leading them. The Negroes are laughing at white people behind their backs . . . They think it's very funny and amusing that whites who are opposed to the Negro boycott will act as chauffeur to Negroes who are boycotting the buses. When a white person gives a Negro a single penny for transportation or helps a Negro with his transportation, even if it's a block ride, he is helping the Negro radicals who lead the boycott. The Negroes have made their own bed, and the whites should let them sleep in it."

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