Segregation in the U.S.

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27914, 10 March 1956, Page 8

Segregation in the U.S.

The case of Miss Lucy of Tuscaloosa illustrates the determination of some southern States to resist the historic 1954 ruling of the United States Supreme Court by which segregation of races in tax-supported schools was declared unconstitutional. Twice orders of Federal Courts on the trustees of the University of Alabama have been invoked on Miss Lucy’s behalf. The first order required the trustees to accept Miss Lucy as a student; but her attendance at the university led to mob violence. The trustees thereupon sought to evade the Court ruling by telling her to keep away from classes—without, however, questioning her standing as a student. The Court again ordered the trustees to readmit Miss Lucy to classes; and the trustees have now expelled Miss Lucy “ because of the conspiracy “ charges she made against university officials in connexion with her “Federal Court action”. The spirited Miss Lucy and her supporters are unlikely to let the matter rest; more litigation seems certain. As Mr Adlai Stevenson has said, a single ugly incident should not obscure the great and significant fact that Negroes have entered southern universities without trouble. On the other hand, observers of the southern scene say that the incidents at Tuscaloosa dramatise but do not exaggerate a deteriorating situation in the southern States. When passing its anti-segregation judgment, the Supreme Court thought that some time would pass before the new principle would sink in. Only tolerance and consideration would erode the harsh edges of a difficult, deeplyfelt social issue. But in some States reaction to the Supreme Court’s judgment has been not tolerance,

but sharpened prejudice. Prosegregation organisations have been formed among white people; and the coloured people have responded with their own organisations, notably the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. There is now plenty of evidence ‘that both sides are using the weapon of economic boycott. In most areas the weapon is stronger and more effective in the hands of the white people; but one instance of its use by coloured people has attracted wide attention—the boycott of city buses by Negroes in Montgomery, Alabama. The desperate evil of the boycott, of course, is that it both increases tension between the races and decreases the area of inter-racial communication.

There are reasons to fear that the issue may become national, and, in this election year, important politically. Walter Lippmann goes so far as to say that the question poses “ as “fateful a dilemma as any internal “ American question that has arisen “ for several generations It arouses great human passions, and the temptation to play politics with these passions will be too strong for many politicians to resist. The Democratic Party is in a particularly awkward position because, generally speaking, it supports the civil rights of Negroes in the north and opposes them in the south. There is little likelihood, therefore, that the Republicans will attempt to take this issue, so damaging to its opponents, out of politics. It is expected that before the election the Administration will submit civil rights legislation which will embarrass the Democratic-controlled Congress. Walter Lippmann pleads for “ some sort of council of eminent “ citizens ” through which “ guiding “ principles might be agreed upon “which would * give to American “ opinion a standard around which “it could rally But this is an impossibly idealistic proposal in the grimly realistic atmosphere of American politics. Politics, indeed, are likely to make the segregation issue worse before it can become better.