Caws in the Wind

In both the North and the South last week, the harsh caw of Jim Crow was raised in triumph in two cases of racial discrimination having to do with public parks. The two:

P: In Deerfield, Ill., a velvet-lapel commuter suburb of Chicago, the citizenry took extraordinary measures to keep twelve Negro families out of town. Ostensibly, the voters endorsed a $550,000 bond issue which would buy a 22-acre home-development site in Deerfield and convert it into a public park. Actually, there was no need for such a park, or any desire for one--until Deerfield learned that Developer Morris Milgram planned to sell twelve of the 51 houses (at prices of $30,000 and up) to Negro families (TIME, Dec. 7). Panicking in their fear of declining land values, the Deerfielders backed the bond issue 2,635-1,208.* The Chicago law firm of Stevenson, Rifkind & Wirtz (senior partner: Adlai Stevenson) filed a $750,000 damage suit against Deerfield on behalf of Builder Milgram, and Federal Judge Joseph Sam Perry issued a temporary order restraining Deerfield officials from blocking the development. "I urge you to try to get along peaceably," he said. "Forget the emotionalism and try to work this out like cultured, refined, civilized people."

P: In Montgomery, Ala., where the Negroes' peaceful resistance to segregation sparked the bitterly successful 1956 bus boycott (TIME, Dec. 31, 1956), city fathers sold off the last animals in the Oak Park Zoo four months after a U.S. district court ruled that segregation in the park was unconstitutional. The animal sale marked the end of Montgomery's park system, left the city's 45,000 Negro and white children without a public swimming pool, tennis court or woodland glade.

* The South was watching closely. Said Virginia's segregationist Richmond News Leader: "The residents of Deerfield gained a little understanding of themselves as they are. They may have acted deviously in authorizing this park, but the paradoxical thing is this: they acted honestly, too."

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