Creeping Realism (Contd.)

"I should've brought my camera," drawled a gangling Virginia youngster as he strolled into Theodore Ficklin Elementary School in Washington's bedroom suburb of Alexandria one morning last week. But the only crowd worth a snap was the throng of reporters and cameramen on hand for the third Virginia city's peaceful integration (the other two: Arlington and Norfolk) since Governor J. Lindsay Almond Jr. ordered orderly acceptance of the inevitable (TIME, Feb. 9). Result: in Alexandria 2,300 white pupils mixed easily with nine Negro newcomers, amiably greeted them aboard school buses.

Other events last week in the South's creeping realism about integration:

P: In North Carolina, where token school integration (eleven pupils in three cities) began two years ago without even a court fight, N.A.A.C.P. groups sued for admission of 14 Negroes in token-integrated Greensboro and Charlotte.

P:Florida's Governor Leroy Collins admitted that his still segregated state must initiate "voluntary, token integration" in suitable schools, or leave the when, where and how to be "dictated by the N.A.A.C.P."

P: Georgia's rural woolhats, led by U.S. Senator Richard Brevard Russell of Winder (pop. 4,604), marched on Atlanta (pop. 510,000) to try to scare city moderates out of complying with a certain-to-come federal integration order. "I want to invite the people of Atlanta back into Georgia!" cried pone-shaped Politician-Publisher Roy V. Harris. "Our greatest battle is against the quislings."

P:South Carolina, which last year refused to charter the Ku Klux Klan, reluctantly handed the N.A.A.C.P. a state charter of incorporation after failing to find legal grounds for continued denial.

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