Problems of Integration

In Watertown, N.Y., students from nearby colleges carrying signs reading END LUNCH COUNTER DISCRIMINATION marched quietly one day last week outside the F. W. Woolworth store. Inside, Woolworth's top management and some 120 stockholders gathered tensely for the company's first annual meeting since Negro students in the South selected Woolworth lunch counters as a major testing ground in their fight for equal rights.

The protests came swiftly against Woolworth's policies. Among the first to speak was Florida A. & M. College Student Barbara Broxton, 20, released from jail a fortnight ago after serving 48 days on a trespassing conviction arising from a sit-in at a Woolworth lunch counter in Tallahassee. Brought to the meeting by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Barbara said: "I speak for the Southern students. We will fight because we are right. I've been in jail, and I'm willing to go back if necessary." The Rev. Thomas Carlisle, pastor of Watertown's Stone Street Presbyterian Church, read a petition, signed by 14 local ministers and a rabbi, urging Woolworth, which got its start in Watertown, to "pioneer" better racial relations in the South.

Community Responsibility. Woolworth President R. C. Kirkwood was ready with a written statement. "Dealing as we are," said he, "with deep-rooted convictions of people in the South, it is hardly realistic to suppose that any one company is influential enough to suddenly change their thinking on the subject." Heckled by the handful of anti-segregationist,. Kirkwood replied: "This is not an issue between Woolworth and the colored race; it is between the American people and the colored race.''

Anti-segregation demonstrators also turned up last week at the S. H. Kress annual meeting in New York City. Like Woolworth, Kress holds that the decision is up to the community. "We feel," said Kress Board Chairman Paul L. Troast, "that each of our stores should follow the custom of the community in which it operates. We should not use our position as a nationwide company to force a change on any individual city or town."

The man behind the demonstrations at both meetings is James Peck, 45, editor of CORE'S Corelator. Despite his two latest setbacks, Peck believes that attending company meetings produces results, says his pleas helped to cause W. T. Grant to open its lunch counters in Baltimore to Negroes and Greyhound to end segregated bus seating. "I attended Greyhound annual meetings for nine years straight," says Peck. "Finally, we won." Even before the demonstrations last week, both Kress and Woolworth had stopped excluding Negroes from lunch counters in San Antonio, Galveston and Nashville. Kress has desegregated in Austin. Negotiations to desegregate the counters are under way in many other Southern cities.

The Price of Segregation. How much have the sit-ins and picketing hurt business? Both Woolworth and Kress refuse to say. Woolworth has only 18% of its 2,250 stores in the South. On overall figures, Woolworth has not been affected. Last year sales rose to a record $916,836,907; earnings were $4.03 per share (v. $3.34 in 1958). So far this year, sales are up11.8%.

At Kress, which has 151 of its 266 stores in the South, the story is different. Kress's nationwide sales have declined steadily since 1952 except for a brief upsurge in 1958. Last year earnings dropped 63%, and sales so far this year are 4.6% below the 1959 level. Long before the picketing started, the chain was doing so poorly that there was a wholesale shakeup in top management.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.