On the Beach

With the coming of the South's sultry summer. Negroes intend to turn the heat on a new front in their campaign against segregation. Sit-ins at segregated lunch counters will give way to "wade-ins" at segregated public beaches. "Negroes get hot just like white people do," said the N.A.A.C.P.'s Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins in announcing the new tactic last week. "They like to swim to cool off, and intend to do it this summer."

Mississippi Negroes stuck a tentative toe into white waters fortnight ago on Biloxi's sun-drenched beach along the Gulf of Mexico. Led by Dr. Gilbert Mason, 31, Biloxi's only practicing Negro physician, 80 Negro men, women and children waded into the gulf, were driven off by a gang of club-wielding, chain-swinging whites. The Negroes have not been back. The new wade-in assault, said Wilkins, will aim at segregated, tax-supported beaches and parks in eleven states along a 2,000-mile coastline curving from Cape May, N.J. to Brownsville, Texas.

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