Hope in Kentucky

FULTON, KY. (pop. 4,800), tree-lined streets, courthouse in square, frequently called Kentucky's "southernmost city" because of location on Tennessee state line, plantation tradition, Deep South accents. Named for Steamboat Inventor Robert Fulton but grew up around important, longtime Illinois Central Railroad junction; lately pressing industrialization campaign--WE WANT INDUSTRY!

A year ago Fulton was ordered to integrate by a federal court order, got a year's delay because the term had already begun. The community used the year to good advantage. There were no formal meetings, sermons, speeches or editorials, but community leaders set up an informal living-room and street-corner campaign to tell the youngsters matter-of-factly that September would bring integration and they should make the best of it.

They did just that. Through opening week, as 20 Negroes joined 161 whites, classes proceeded without incident--and there were no adults hanging about on street corners outside. Boys choosing up sides for basketball chose Negro players. Negroes and whites ate together in the school cafeteria, though not at the same tables. At assembly, whites and Negroes, getting less tentative by the minute, stood up and sang the school song On, Fulton High to the tune of Working on the Railroad (which many of their fathers, whites and Negroes, did).

"Why," said one happy teacher at week's end, "they acted as if they'd been doing these things together forever." To date. Governor Albert B. ("Happy") Chandler's Kentucky has piled up a statewide total of more than 11,000 Negro children integrated with 134,000 whites.

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