How Not to Have Anything

Most of the South's big cities--influenced by local businessmen, pressured by well-organized Negro communities, shaken by federal court orders, and sobered by the violent racial outbreaks that keep erupting from time to time--have gradually developed a new attitude toward segregation. To them, segregation is still preferable to integration, but not at the cost of self-destruction. A major exception to this trend is Birmingham, Ala. (pop. 340,887).

A grim, grimy, post-bellum steel town, Birmingham remains a backwoods with industrial chimneys. Its best-known citizen is Public Safety Commissioner Eugene ("Bull") Connor, a rambunctious segregationist. Rather than allow integration, Birmingham has shut down the entire city park system, sacrificed the city's baseball team, the annual Metropolitan Opera visit and Broadway shows--leaving Birmingham citizens with much time on their hands to ponder the price of intransigence.

New Impetus. Birmingham's Negroes for years were unable to get together. Until recently, their only voice seemed to be that of Fred Shuttlesworth, now 40, a Baptist minister whose stubborn courage was sometimes mitigated by his fondness for melodrama. Shuttlesworth threw himself against Birmingham's segregation barriers with predictable results: he has been arrested 20 times since 1958, suffered four bad beatings, and his home has been bombed. Now the pastor of a Cincinnati church, Shuttlesworth still spends much of his time in Birmingham, where he is currently involved in 27 court cases.

For all Shuttlesworth's efforts, Birmingham remains almost totally segregated. Yet now, at least, the cause has become common. The impetus came from the Negro students of tiny, unaccredited Miles College on the outskirts of town. Protesting the segregation and lack of Negro employment opportunities in Birmingham department stores, the students last month began to avoid Birmingham stores and go to nearby Tuscaloosa instead. They urged other Birmingham Negroes to forget new duds, to "wear old clothes for freedom," and to shop from mailorder catalogues. Anywhere else, the movement would be known as a boycott. But Alabama law specifically outlaws boycotts; so the Miles students call it a "selective buying campaign." By last week they could claim that it was 80% effective among Birmingham Negroes. As for Birmingham white merchants, said one: "Don't ask us how effective it is. Just tell us how the hell to get out of it."

Time to Talk. Many merchants favored negotiations and a possible loosening of the city's strict segregation ordinances. Said the segregationist Birmingham News: "It is time for Birmingham citizens to sit down and talk together." But Connor, running for Governor against popular "Kissin' Jim" Folsom and five other Democrats, is not about to sit down and talk. In retaliation for the boycott, the City Commission cut off city relief payments, most of which go to Negroes; Connor denied a routine permit for a long-planned, house-to-house collection for Miles's rundown library.

Connor's stand has only added steam to the students' drive. Promised one Negro leader last week: "We can keep it up as long as the white people." Under the students' energetic leadership, Birmingham's Negroes were, for the first time, becoming a community. And some white citizens were recalling the words of Salesman Carl Miller, one of the few Birmingham whites who spoke out last December against the park closings: "We're going to find ourselves with a big empty Birmingham. We won't have a damned thing, but we sure won't be integrated . . . Glory, glory."

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