Back on the Home Front

Although the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has been protesting unfair treatment of Negroes all across the U.S., it has been a long while since he last spoke out in his own city of Atlanta. Last week, however, King's patience with the slow pace of negotiations between Atlanta's white and Negro leaders came to an end. Addressing some 2,500 Negroes, shivering on a cold, windy afternoon in a downtown park, he debunked Atlanta's reputation for racial enlightenment.

"While boasting of its progress and virtue," said King, "Atlanta has allowed itself to fall behind almost every other Southern city in progress toward desegregation." His intent, he said, was not "to embarrass our city, but to call Atlanta back to something noble and plead with her to rise from dark yesterdays of racial injustice to bright tomorrows of justice for all. We must honestly say to Atlanta that time is running out. If some concrete changes for good are not made soon, Negro leaders of Atlanta will find it impossible to convince the masses of Negroes of the good faith of the negotiations presently taking place. We must revolt peacefully, openly and cheerfully, because our aim is to persuade. We will try to persuade with our words, but if our words fail, we must persuade with our acts."

Next day the Atlanta City Council, apparently moved less by King's oratory than by the fact that local segregation ordinances are one after another being declared illegal by the courts, adopted a sweeping law that abolishes "all ordinances which require the separation of persons because of race, color or creed." Among those repealed were measures that had made it illegal for bars to serve beer or wine to whites and Negroes in the same room, Negro barbers to cut the hair of white women, amateur baseball teams of different races to play within two blocks of one another, and Negroes to visit any "whites only" park except the local zoo.

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