Integrating the News

Though Southern Negroes are moving to strike down racial barriers at schools, swimming pools, restaurants and hotels, there are some who would like to preserve "separate-but-equal" status in at least one area. For years many Dixie newspapers have printed separate Negro and white editions, splitting press runs to drop in pages of news for each community. "Negroes like it because they get more attention," claims Editor Joe Parham of the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph and News, where the practice is still in effect (as in Augusta). "We print their deaths and funeral notices, a hospital report, club meetings, birthdays, lodge notices, social and personal news."

Trouble is, the split run can be costly and timeconsuming, and it is slowly being abandoned--over the protests of Negroes and whites alike. The Atlanta Constitution tried to "integrate" white and Negro funeral notices 25 years ago, dropped the idea because of Negro complaints. Only recently the paper succeeded in combining the notices along with classified and theater ads in a single edition. There have been gripes about mixups caused by "Help Wanted" ads, but the paper intends to remain "colorless."

Latest to drop the newsprint barrier is the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser and Journal. For 30 years, the paper went through the costly routine of stopping its presses on each of seven daily runs, replating one or two pages with Negro news, then starting the presses again. Of 95,000 papers, 75,000 were white, while the rest dropped the financial pages for news of Negro events. When a white edition was inadvertently delivered to a Negro area, claims Publisher Carmage Walls, there were protests. But the split runs "slowed down the operation, and they had to go," said the cost-conscious Walls, who bought the Advertiser and Journal in March and has interests in a handful of Tennessee and Virginia papers. Since the changeover, Walls has had a few complaints from Negroes, and enough crank calls from white extremists to persuade him to have his phone conversations monitored.

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