American Notes Michigan

Fed up with interlopers crowding their swimming pools and picnic tables, residents of the Detroit suburb of Dearborn voted last November to close the city's parks to outsiders. "Racism!" cried the local office of the A.C.L.U. and the Detroit chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., which promptly filed a suit against the town and kept the ordinance from being enforced. Dearborn (pop. 86,960) has fewer than 100 black residents, the N.A.A.C.P. argued, so only blacks would routinely be asked to show their city identification cards. "When they said 'residents only,' they were really talking whites only," said the Rev. Charles Adams of the Detroit N.A.A.C.P.

Last week the ban on nonresidents was struck down altogether when Wayne County Judge Marvin Stempien ruled that a random check of park users' identification violated constitutional guarantees against illegal search and seizure. Pending a possible appeal, Dearborn's parks will remain open to outsiders, and the N.A.A.C.P. has called off its ten-month-old boycott of local stores.