Dining in Dallas

Like many another Southern city, Dallas accepted schoolrooms as the place for its first test of integration; as a result, about six first grades will desegregate under court order when classes start in September. But unlike other cities where Jim Crow is dying, Dallas has had second thoughts about turning the thorny race problem over entirely to its children. Last week the Citizens' Council, a businessmen's group originally organized to promote Dallas, took a bold step. Said the council: "This should be an adult experience before it is a child experience. If adults couldn't handle it well, we couldn't expect the children to." So saying, it sponsored an unannounced Negro sit-in at 41 white restaurants.

Joining with the Citizens' Council (no kin to the South's demagogic White Citizens' Councils), but picking up their own tabs, 146 Negro clergymen, business leaders and their wives spread through the city. Their destinations ranged from Woolworth's lunch counters to the swank Zodiac Room at Neiman-Marcus' specialty store. Nowhere were they refused service.

The council happily revised its plans. Negro diners had been scheduled to return to the restaurants two days this week, three days next, eventually every day for a full week. But with future service and courtesy apparently assured, no more demonstrations were needed. So well had Dallas adults handled their "experience" that the chances of uneventful school integration brightened perceptibly.

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