Advance and Retreat

Black Americans could take satisfaction in two recent moves by the Government against discrimination, and rightfully deplore two recent grand jury decisions in the South. The four events in capsule:

> In the last 14 months, the Justice Department has prosecuted almost as many suits alleging discrimination in employment under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as were brought in the first 4 1/2 years after that section took effect. Last week, the department zeroed in on the biggest corporate target of a Title VII suit so far, charging United States Steel, the United Steel Workers, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and twelve union locals with discrimination at the company's plant in Fairfield, Ala. The suit not only demands a change in U.S. Steel's hiring, transfer and promotion policies, but seeks compensation for workers held back by racist policies in the past.

The charge grows out of seniority rule, long common in large mass-production industries. Under the rule, workers accumulated long-service time in a particular department, rather than in a company as a whole. Thus if blacks, traditionally assigned to the lowest-paid and dirtiest jobs, obtained transfers, they had to give up their seniority. If U.S. Steel loses the case, it could face demands for as much as $40 million in compensation for black workers who have been discriminated against.

> Following reports of disruptive racial tensions in U.S. military installations throughout Europe, the Defense Department dispatched a 15-man team to investigate. As a result of its findings, the Pentagon last week issued a set of stiff directives aimed at improving the lot of the black soldier overseas. Among other things, they called for "numerical goals and timetables as a means to increase the utilization of minorities in occupations" where their representation is now out of balance, and the removal or reassignment of officers, noncommissioned officers and civilians who drag their feet on acting against discrimination. The new rules will also have an impact Stateside, since they empower base commanders here to declare housing off limits if landlords practice racial discrimination. They thus constitute an effective economic wedge for breaking up segregated housing near military bases.

> Despite the conclusion of the President's Commission on Campus Unrest that police response was "completely unwarranted and unjustified," a federal grand jury in Jackson, Miss., refused to indict any state or local law enforcement officers for the shooting that killed two blacks and wounded 12 more last May at Jackson State College. The 23-member jury, composed of 18 whites and five blacks, was discharged after failing to return any indictments or written findings.

> Similarly, a white Augusta, Ga., policeman was acquitted last week on charges of violating the civil rights of a black teen-ager killed in rioting last May. At the height of the riot, in which six blacks were killed, Private William S. Dennis fired a shotgun into a grocery store that was being looted. John W. Stokes, 19, was killed when nine pellets entered his back. The state refused to press charges, but a federal grand jury indicted Dennis, and the Justice Department attempted to prove that the force used in Stokes' death was excessive. The all-white jury saw it otherwise. Said Defense Attorney Roy V. Harris, a friend of George Wallace: Mr. Dennis was "confronted by savages" and should be accorded the community's praise.

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