National Reports
LERCHE, CHARLES O.
National Reports Passive Resistance and Atlanta Buses By Charles O. Lerche Atlanta The spreading Negro opposition to bus segregation that began in Montgomery, Alabama and then reached Mobile,...
...The best current guess about what may happen is based on what has been done where the schools are concerned...
...There has been no violence, no riots, and no heated talk by anyone except the state administration...
...The state administration reacted violently to the bus move...
...But the incident is more significant than the sequence of events indicates...
...Georgia has a law giving the Governor the power to abolish public schools the moment any are desegregated by court order...
...The bus driver is in charge of the bus...
...If struck, do not strike back, but show love and good will at all times...
...Only by provoking Negro spokesmen into hasty action or careless statements could the state machinery go into action...
...the cases will be tried on that charge...
...Ordinarily cool-headed people are quite disturbed by the possibility of large-scale race riots...
...Using the racial issue for all it is worth to deflect public attention from the admitted inefficiency and dictatorial tendencies in his administration, Governor Griffin has promised to fight bus integration with everything in his power...
...their story is one of the great comedy epics of literature) ; Clinton, Tennessee has become a fighting word...
...The next day, when the ministers got on another bus, they were arrested by city police for violation of the state's segregation law...
...Remember always to pray, especially for those who would persecute anyone.'' While the campaign has thus far remained entirely in the hands of the ministers who are leading it, these eight instructions have a relevance far greater than the bus controversy itself...
...This late in the game, it is clear that Negro strategy—at least here in Georgia, where racial tension is confidently exploited by the dominant political faction—was built on materials drawn from two storehouses of precedent: the record of the Montgomery bus agitation and the passive-resistance doctrines of Gandhi in India...
...If the situation is verging on violence, and if the violence cannot be avoided (as, apparently, some Negro spokesmen feel), it must be the white extremists who bear the blame...
...Attorney General Eugene Cook, one of Georgia's best-known public servants, also urged the Legislature to request U.S...
...Atlanta's municipal golf courses are integrated today largely because he insisted on obeying the Supreme Court's ruling and defying pressure from the Capitol...
...This is what makes the translation of Gandhi's doctrines to Atlanta so potentially important...
...Be sure you are neat and clean at all times...
...Pray for guidance and commit yourself to complete non-violence in word and action, observing the ordinary rules of courtesy and good behavior...
...So Governor Griffin, Attorney General Cook and other leaders have been free with their charges and their dark forecasts of racial violence...
...As the story is circulated, the state administration is pretty well convinced that Georgia's segregation laws are no better than Alabama's, and that they will share the same fate in court...
...As court decisions have accumulated, the resistance to integration has begun subtly to change character...
...If any person is being molested, do not arise to go to his defense but pray for the oppressor and use moral and spiritual force to carry on the struggle for justice...
...Eight ministers simply boarded a bus at Five Points (the heart of Atlanta) and calmly occupied seats normally reserved for whites...
...It is a simple open-and-shut case involving the validity of segregated seating...
...You will be notified when we wish you to begin helping to desegregate the buses and trolleys...
...On January 11, the "Southern Leaders Conference on Transportation and Non-Violent Integration" was formed in Atlanta with the Reverend Martin Luther King as chairman...
...Its strategy, therefore, has been to avoid any direct test of segregation statutes and count on beating back any Negro moves by use of the police power to preserve order...
...Its major work at its first session was a series of requests: to Attorney General Brownell for a conference with them...
...His police studiously refused to make an incident out of the bus situation, kept such difficulties as developed safely below the boiling point, and made certain that the "police power" dodge was not used...
...and while some politicians are repelled and frightened by what they have gotten into, others are glorying in it...
...Mayor Hartsfield refused to play into the Governor's hand...
...They bear directly on the whole Negro effort to undermine the tightly segregated Georgia social pattern...
...the ruling group has staked its political future on its ability to preserve "Georgia's way of life...
...This is where the Gandhi doctrines come into their own...
...The Ku Klux Klan is riding again, hoods and all (some Emory University students got mixed up with a KKK cross-burning on Stone Mountain last fall...
...Here there was no boycott, no violence, no extreme incidents...
...The Atlanta move was different from the tactics used in Alabama and Florida...
...Governor Marvin Griffin ordered Georgia's National Guard on standby alert to put down any racial outbreaks...
...It seems probable, considering the state government's feeling that no sacrifice is too great to preserve the purity of the races, that it will pull Atlanta's buses off the streets rather than permit integrated seating...
...ask his aid and report any serious incidents to him...
...To do this, however, there would first have to be some disorder to serve as a pretext for making arrests and lodging charges...
...proud, but not arrogant...
...happy, but not noisy...
...If, as is generally expected, the decision is against the law, integrated seating will be in effect throughout the state, for Georgia's rule applies to the entire state...
...Many observers have commented on the ugly trend of the South's racial pattern today...
...What began as a fairly respectable movement is now well on its way to being taken over by an extremist and violence-prone element...
...Some feel that this explains the ferocity with which the state leaders have belabored the race issue...
...What will the state administration do...
...This will create a storm in the city, but it will be very popular in the rural areas...
...Georgia's recent successful court assault on the NAACP is popularly interpreted as a step in this plan...
...Mass indignation is the Negro's secret weapon, as it was Gandhi's in India...
...It is the Indian technique that is worrying Senator Herman Talmadge's local political heirs today...
...There are rumors that the Negro move was either taken in close cooperation with the Atlanta city government, or that the city police played into the hands of the Negroes...
...They were charged, released on bail, and are now awaiting trial...
...in case of an accident, talk as little as possible, and always in a quiet tone...
...A Negro victory in court seems certain...
...If pushed, do not push back...
...If the Negro position is emphatically non-violent, if it incorporates the Gandhi doctrines, white extremism will draw the horrified attention of the entire country...
...to the President for a major civil rights speech in a Southern city...
...as long as peace was preserved, the state was helpless...
...Negroes generally trust him...
...Obviously, it cannot accept the end of segregation without a fight...
...That day (January 9) the driver merely announced that the bus had broken down, another bus pulled alongside and took off the white passengers, and the crisis was averted...
...The Atlanta Daily World, the local Negro newspaper, laid the plan out for all to see in a set of instructions to all Negroes on how to proceed in the bus integration fight...
...The rules, drafted by the Reverend W. H. Borders, are pure Gandhism: "1...
...Attorney General Brownell to declare the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People a subversive organization...
...Then report to one of our leaders immediately, giving date, time, place, and names of persons involved, if possible...
...Overt Negro defiance of segregated seating has resulted in the arrest of a group of Negro ministers and what Georgia politicians have feared for so long has finally come about: An open test case of the state's segregation law is in the courts...
...Do not be drawn into an argument about segregation, desegregation, or integration...
...National Reports Passive Resistance and Atlanta Buses By Charles O. Lerche Atlanta The spreading Negro opposition to bus segregation that began in Montgomery, Alabama and then reached Mobile, Birmingham and Tallahassee, Florida has at last reached this city...
...Negro leadership in the South seems to feel that its best hope lies in more forthright Federal intervention...
...If cursed, do not curse back...
...Thanks to Georgia's incredible system of apportionment, nobody in state politics has to care what Atlanta thinks as long as the wool-hat counties are happy...
...The Montgomery decision leaves no loopholes, and in Atlanta there have been no diversionary issues, either of conspiracy or of violence...
...What has obstructed the strategy, however, is that Atlanta's Mayor William Hartsfield is not only one of the Governor's political enemies but is also very popular with the Negroes...
...to Vice President Nixon for a tour through the South...
...The ministers taken into custody were arrested for violating the segregation statute...
...It may be that Atlanta will set the pattern for a region-wide test of its effectiveness...
...but until then be quiet, but friendly...
Vol. 40 • January 1957 • No. 4
