"A Shameful Thing"

In 17 Southern and border states, 147 school districts were ready to integrate their facilities for the first time. At most places, everything went well. In Charleston, S.C., Millicent Brown, 15, one of two Negro children admitted to Rivers High School, described her first day's experience: "It was a fine day. I met several nice girls. I think I'm really going to enjoy Rivers." In Baton Rouge, La., 28 Negro kids broke the color barrier, and Mayor John Chris tian said he was "very well satisfied with the way things turned out." In Tallahassee, Fla., 16-year-old Harold Knowles, one of three Negroes to start classes at Leon High School, said: "I expected some friction, but nothing hap pened." In Savannah, Ga., 25 Negroes entered previously all-white public and parochial high schools, and a white pu pil said later: "We'll be all right if everybody will just leave us alone." In Cambridge, Md., summer-long scene of civil rights strife, 20 Negroes were peaceably admitted to white schools.

But then there was Alabama--and the trouble that flared there last week diverted much of the nation's attention from the civil rights progress achieved elsewhere.

"Speaking the Truth." Four Alabama cities--Tuskegee, Mobile, Birmingham and Huntsville--were scheduled to start token public school integration. Even Birmingham, long a national symbol of diehard segregationist sentiment, now seemed resigned. "Few of us are happy," wrote the Birmingham Post-Herald, "but we trust that the people of Alabama will face up to their court-ordered responsibilities with a good grace and without violence." Said the Birmingham News: "Our school officials have looked at the problem from every angle. They are speaking the truth: there's nothing to do but keep schools open and do what the courts say has to be done."

But Alabama's Democratic Governor George Wallace was having none of such relatively temperate talk. On Monday, when 13 Negro children were supposed to show up for enrollment in a Tuskegee high school, Wallace sent more than 100 state troopers into the town. From Mayor Howard Rutherford on down, Tuskegee officials were enraged. But the troopers surrounded the school, turned away all pupils and teachers trying to enter, and passed around copies of Wallace's "Executive Order No.9" --which declared that the school was being shut down in order to "preserve the peace and maintain domestic tranquillity."

Bitter Retort. Tuskegee city officials, backed by most of the community's citizens, protested Wallace's action as an "invasion." But the high school stayed shut--and Wallace ordered most of his troopers to move on to Birmingham, where integration was supposed to start on Wednesday. As the state cops were leaving Tuskegee, Wallace's on-the-scene straw boss, State Finance Director Seymore Trammell, walked up to

Mayor Rutherford. Said he: "You ain't going to have any trouble here, Mayor, and if you do, George will send the troopers right back." Retorted Rutherford bitterly: "Well, I have 8,000 angry citizens on my hands."

Into Birmingham streamed 200 state lawmen. Everyone assumed that they would close down the schools that Birmingham proposed to integrate, just as they had done in Tuskegee. Speculation ran strong that Wallace, seeking the political advantage that defiance of the Federal Government on civil rights issues can bring in Alabama, was deliberately trying to goad the Kennedy Administration into sending U.S. troops into the state for a second time.

But no. When the morning for integration came, Wallace's troopers stayed in their hotel rooms--while two Negro boys enrolled in Graymont Elementary School. Protecting them were Birmingham's city policemen. A group of about 100 whites stood outside the school, jeered at the Negro boys, even tried to rush the police lines. The cops knocked a few on the head with their billy clubs, and the demonstrators dispersed.

Bombs & Bricks. That night, Negro Attorney Arthur Shores, a civil rights leader, was reading the Wall Street Journal in his home on "Dynamite Hill" (the scene of many bombings, including one that damaged Shores's home only last month), when the explosion of a dynamite bomb ripped the house, tumbled his ill wife out of her bed. Within minutes, hundreds of vengeance-bound Negroes swarmed onto the scene. They were met by Birmingham city policemen. Some Negro leaders pleaded with their people to go home. But emotions were running too high for the crowd to listen to such advice.

Bricks, bottles and rocks began flying. Then, from both sides, came the ugly sound of gunfire. The police shot out the street lamps to avoid being silhouetted against the darkness, and for 40 minutes the battle raged. Up roared the police department's six-wheeled armored tank. Ambulances screamed in the darkness, and cries of pain mingled with curses and the zing of bullets. When it was all over, one Negro had been shot to death, and more than 20 Negroes and whites had been injured.

The riot gave Governor Wallace the excuse he needed to postpone integration not only in Tuskegee and Birmingham but in Mobile and Huntsville as well. Said Wallace's press secretary: "The Governor is concerned over the situation in these two cities, as he is concerned about the situation in Birmingham and Tuskegee."

Again mayors, citizens and newspapers castigated the Governor. Complained Huntsville's Mayor R. B. Searcy: "I cannot understand the Governor's action. He sits down and out of one side of his mouth he criticizes the President of the U.S. for interfering with states' rights, and at the same time he's doing the same thing himself with cities' rights. They just took our authority away from us." The Huntsville Times accused Wallace of placing "his own political ambitions above the welfare of the schoolchildren he had pledged to aid ... This disgraceful spectacle is not of Huntsville's making, but Huntsville and all Alabama will suffer from it." Said Huntsville's Police Chief Chris Spurlock: "This is a shameful thing."

A federal judge in Alabama ordered Wallace to show cause why he should not be enjoined from interfering further with the desegregation of Birmingham schools. Similar action was almost certain to follow in Huntsville, Tuskegee and Mobile. But at week's end Governor Wallace could still boast to the press: "I want you to realize that there is not a single integrated school in the state of Alabama yet."

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