SILENCE IN THE SOUTH

...The Mississippi legislature almost took care of all the Reverend Call-aways in one stroke...

...He was kicked out of the golf club...

...This means that Porgy and Bess can't play New Orleans because of the mixed cast, and it means that the million-dollar tourist attraction, the Sugar Bowl, can no longer invite mixed football or basketball teams...

...After all, the Monroe County, Miss., chapter demanded that the telephone company segregate party lines so whites wouldn't use the same wire as Negroes...

...But he knows what happens to lawyers who buck the Council patty line...

...But, in the very next breath, he harped to his cohorts upon the need to "educate" the people on the necessity of his bills...

...he soon found his business drained by boycott, and his social life ended...

...Proceedings were launched to disbar him...

...They didn't want simply to shush her...

...This is especially true of schoolteachers...

...The man was informed that a "town meeting" decided he "wouldn't be happy here...

...The White Citizens Council of Lexington heard of the prospective newcomer and sent a committee of three to Money to investigate him...

...On the other hand, the wife of an Alabama planter revealed she actually was asked to leave home because she voiced the opinion that her husband's Negro tenants were entitled to vote...

...He went to Lexington, Miss., rented a house, and put $500 down as an option on a building for a new grocery...

...When he drew up a series of extreme bills designed to extend segregation, he insisted he was answering the demands of the people...

...He decided to move away...

...While president emeritus he became executive director of the Georgia Committee on Interracial Cooperation—and proceeded to tumble from grace...

...It hadn't gotten around to worrying about general meetings and wouldn't until it could find an office...

...Look, I have a wife and three wonderful children," he said...

...The conference was never held...

...We risk all we have simply by not whooping it up for segregation every day of the week...

...The mayor knew where he must stand...

...Many teachers said they were interested but dared not attend because the law now permits immediate dismissal of any teacher dallying with integration...

...And part of the status quo involves keeping his mouth shut on the issue...

...Elected officials are the sitting ducks of the Councils, if they are indiscreet enough to murmur the wrong thoughts...

...You may consider him a coward...

...Their attitude was best expressed, perhaps, by a young South Carolina lawyer who' previously had been known as a liberal...

...The Louisiana Council on Human Relations saw some good in this delay...

...It announced a meeting of teachers to explore the practicalities of integration: the problems that might arise, and the possible solutions...

...he got a STAN OPOTOWSKY, who lived In the South for two decades, is on the staff of the New York Post, for which he recently wrote a series of articles on current developments south of the Ma-son-Dlxon line...

...But that's only part of the South's story...

...Gilliand stepped in...

...There's another, and perhaps a worse, side...

...Immediately, Juvenile Court Judge Leo Blessing sent in his resignation from the board...

...They were not fools to be so needlessly persistent...

...It is the suppression of thought which might indicate the thinker is out of step with racist extremism...

...That's what can happen to a white lawyer caught bucking the Citizens Council line of thought...

...Silence In The South by STAN OPOTOWSKY THE VIOLENCE and the economic strangulation generated against rebellious Negroes by the White Citizens Councils and the Ku Klux Klan are already a ghastly legend...

...Mc-Carthyism was now out of style...

...He knows, for example, about James D. Gilliand...

...He was asked to resign as solicitor of county recorder's court...

...But the Alabama Council of Human Relations had a bigger problem...

...It was evicted...

...So they began ferrying their maids to and from work in their own cars...

...When Mather Academy conducted an interstate interracial meeting, he bucked the Ku Klux Klan for a few hours with the suggestion that the obscure meeting wasn't bothering a soul...

...And the vote for segregation is the only vote...

...When the time comes when I can be for integration and not endanger them, I will be for it...

...The Georgia regents stripped him of his "president emeritus" title and even tried to cut off his pension although part of Dr...

...For instance: Dr...

...There has been a complete breakdown of civil liberties...

...It is the strangulation of thought of fellow whites in the South...

...The Councils couldn't intimidate the housewives of Montgomery...

...But not before...

...They knew that their actions, no matter how pointless, were featured in the newspapers and remained a pointed warning to any other teacher who might step out of line...

...It passed a bill which would have withdrawn tax exemption from any church that supported integration...

...But they were for scrubbing floors less...

...He asked Representative Francis Walter, Committee Chairman, why, if he were so interested in Un-American activities, he didn't stick around and look into these people preaching defiance of the U.S...

...He didn't dare go on with the grocery...

...Louisiana's State Senator William O. Rainach, a big man in the Citizens Council, displayed the rabid minority's fear of the docile majority...

...He went home to hell...

...The White Citizens Council of New Orleans, tiring, perhaps, of continuous attacks on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, switched to the Urban League...

...L. P. Davis, Jr., of the New Orleans White Citizens Council, said for publication: "We're organizing on a ward by ward, block by block basis...

...Church Elder C. H. Blanton agreed that the Rev...

...The Councils don't hide their intolerance of neutralists...

...In Shreveport, La., a juvenile probation officer was fired because he said the police jury (the county's legislative body) was "biased" against desegregation—an understatement, to say the least...

...The chap was in trouble...

...Faced with the Negro boycott of buses, Montgomery housewives were faced with dirty dishes...

...The Louisiana law bans everything interracial...

...The Council howled...

...Mostly the war against out-of-step Southern whites is aimed at businessmen (who can be boycotted) and government officials (who must face elections), They have been pounded into almost complete submission...

...When they returned home, they wrote the mayor protesting his violation of their right of assembly...

...When a Georgia school teacher named Coleen Marie Wiggins told her class she didn't particularly object to teaching Negroes, the Councils moved in...

...The Councils bray daily about "our Southern way of life...

...The racists don't stop with victory...

...The Reverend Marsh Callaway of Durant, Miss., was ousted from his Presbyterian Church for defending a doctor who talked of the inevitability of integration...

...Business men get it, too...

...They are on the decline because they are so futile and because the Council power to generate public opinion is so awesome...

...They bucked the Council to the end...

...And the law is effective...

...Some of the youths attending the meeting were from New York...

...The big hope is that eventually the moderates will become so aroused over the antics of the extremists that they will burst out of their own conspiracy of silence...

...The school board appealed, of course, and the city settled down for a year or two of litigation before actually coming face to face with the crisis...

...Well," cracked the Council president, Dr...

...But when its lease came up for renewal the landlord patiently explained that an adjoining office housed a White Citizens Council official who threatened to organize a boycott of the building if the integrated Human Relations group wasn't evicted...

...But the arm of 'the Citizens Councils likewise is strong, and it pounds down any white man who dares imply that there may be two sides to the integration question...

...They feel that outraged football fans and music-starved theater-goers might rise up where proponents of civil rights lie prostrate...

...It could aid the teachers in preparing for integration when the inevitable arrived...

...And I think that as we canvass the city house by house we ought to make it clear that joining our organization is like casting a vote for segregation...

...Moreover, no one would house the meeting—not even Negro organizations—for fear of prosecution...

...However, even Governor J. P. Coleman saw the dangers of that bill, and vetoed it...

...The attitude of fear is such that when a Southern newspaper editor, a known liberal, was chided for remaining silent amid the madness, he said quite seriously: "I think we're courageous not to take a stand now...

...He objects to the professional rabble rousers like John Kasper and Ace Carter, not so much on grounds of principle as on grounds of fear: they start trouble...

...Arthur Levin, the Anti-Defamation League representative in Atlanta, says: "It's getting so no one dare speak up now...

...That was all...

...Gilliand was expelled from the local Lions Club, and ejected by a policeman when he attended the meeting to find out why...

...That sweeping attack on churches may seem ridiculous, but nothing seems too ridiculous for the White Citizens Council...

...This was a bit unusual...

...The Red Cross meeting ultimately sneaked by, Negroes included, because a strong segregationist editor was chapter president...

...You will, no doubt, be amazed to learn that while your letter was being signed, a cross was burned in my front yard and anonymous threats were telephoned to me presumably by the KKK, because I had made preliminary arrangements with the governor's office to insure the safety of those people if they persisted in staying...

...But Mayor Henry Savage, Jr., was a responsible public official, or thought he was...

...He told one of the New Orleans Citizens Council canvassers he had better not join because it might endanger his federal civil service job...

...He wants die status quo...

...He replied: "Your letter illustrates what an enormous need we have for mutual understanding between the sections...

...He was condemned by the state American Legion, although he was the local post's commander...

...Callaway was a fine minister, but "he made the mistake of getting crossed up with the Citizens Council...

...The average Southerner, if there be such a person, is a vague moderate, He's for segregation, but against violence...

...A mail carrier learned that...

...However, some Southern liberals see their greatest hope in such restrictive laws...

...She fled...

...brick through his front window in reply, and finally was forced to chase off the canvassers with his shotgun...

...Its bludgeoning tactics explain, in part anyway, why countless Southern whites who want the law obeyed and the Supreme Court respected, find it prudent to keep their mouths shut...

...Six months ago a federal judge specifically ordered New Orleans public schools to integrate...

...Gilliand was an up-and-coming lawyer in North Carolina who got a telephone call one day from his old Wake Forest College roommate...

...There were three a.m...

...Until better understanding and far more magnanimity is displayed on every hand, every conscientious public official in South Carolina is very apt to find his position is not an easy one...

...This was not to be a pro-integration meeting or an anti-integration meeting, but simply a professional forum for the teachers who must actually integrate the classes when and if the time came...

...Wells' salary had gone into the pension fund during his working years...

...The Red Cross said it couldn't permit the loan of its meeting hall— it was even concerned about its own annual meeting, which likewise would be illegal because of the possible attendance of Negro members...

...At a mass meeting the Council president read off the names of the white men who dared serve on the League's board of directors...

...phone calls for many of these women, and threats for their husbands...

...To be sure...

...They wanted to crush her...

...A member of that same police jury was asked for his resignation When he refused to support an interposition resolution on the grounds that the Caddo Parish police jury simply wasn't big enough to nudge, much less budge, the U.S...

...Emmett Lee Irwin, "we got one of 'em...

...There is no walk of life not subject to such pressure—not even the clergy...

...The housewives were not for inte-gration...

...The remark slid off Walter's back, the hearings ended, and Gilliand went home...

...A white grocer in Money, Miss., spoke up against the Emmett Till murder...

...Supreme Court...

...He gave up...

...Strong words...

...He was hailed before a House Un-American Activities Committee roadshow, and he could find no attorney to represent him...

...Then the liberals and the moderates may well win the war...

...The mayor of Camden, South Carolina, is not exactly a liberal...

...No one cared that he had represented a maybe-Communist...

...Supreme Court...

...In a way you could say there is no more intimidation any more because there is no one left to intimidate...

...But everyone, it seemed, cared about that nasty remark about enforcement of the Supreme Court decision...

...At the next Council meeting the director's list was read again, with Blessing omitted...

...But, alas, the only time they meet opposition is when they buck someone's way of life...

...Some get it in the neck for less...

...But a year later, after she had quit teaching, become pregnant, and moved with her husband to another state, they were still howling and stripping her of an expired teacher's license...

...It had established itself in Montgomery...

...So do other elected officials in the South...

...In Louisiana the new law is sweeping: it even bans interracial meetings...

...And his only crime was speaking out against crime...

...Finally, however, he went to the school and asked that the meeting be disbanded lest violence erupt...

...In many cases, the Council gets its extreme views enacted into hard law by eagerly pliant legislators...

...The committee quickly returned with its report...

...Late during the afternoon of the hearing, knowing that the roadshow must quickly move on to its next commitment, Gilliand wandered off on a delaying diversion...

...Guy Wells had completed an honorable career as president of Georgia State College for Women...

...The Southerner doesn't want trouble...

...But as of now they can only say they lost the first battle...

...These incidents of protest are on the decline, but not because there is any trace of moderation, much less liberalism, creeping into control of the South...