U.S. Negro Resistance Campaign Considered

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27988, 7 June 1956, Page 13

U.S. Negro Resistance Campaign Considered

(Rec. 11 p.m.) ATLANTA, June o.

A negro member of the House of Representatives, Mr Adam Clayton Powell (Democrat, New York) today announced plans for a meeting to discuss whether the “time is ripe” for a nation-wide programme of segregation resistance such as bus boycotts in Montgomery, Alabama, and Tallahassee. Florida. Mr Powell, making the commencement address at Morehouse College, said 12 persons, white and negro, from the North and South, would confer in New York on Saturday. ... He said he thought a national movement of a similar nature would help the Montgomery and Tallahassee bus boycott causes. u ..

He strongly criticised moderates of. both the Democrat and’ Republican Parties. “Moderation,” he said, “has come to mean: ‘Stand in the middle of the road and be trampled’,” In his speech, frequently interrupted by applause, Mr Powell urged his negro audience to "walk* together, work together, vote together, resist together (and) organise together.” He said American foreign policy was “no longer written on the banks of the Potomac but in Montgomery, Alabama. ; “We can’t stand in a little island of Anglo-Saxon superiority and defy a world that sweeps from Turkey to Japan, millions strong,” he said. America was losing out to communism in the rest of the world because of segregation. The United States would become a second-rate Power within the next five years unless changes were made, he said.

Bus Segregation Illegal In Montgomery, Alabama, today, three Federal Judges, sitting as a panel, ruled two to one that racial segregation on Montgomery City buses is a violation of. the Constitution. , , . Montgomery negroes have been boycotting the bus service since a negress was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman. The panel ruled that both city and State segregation laws requiring separate seating facilities for white and negro passengers violate the Federal Constitution. Judge Richard Rives and Judge Frank Johnson signed the majority opinion. ' Judge Seybourne Lynne, dissenting, said in his opinion separate but equal facilities were constitutional _ The ruling would not become effective until a formal judgment was entered, the Court said. The ruling can be appealed direct to the Federal Supreme Court. The panel allotted two weeks grace for the parties concerned to make suggestions for a formal ruling and give the State and city time to prepare to appeal.,... Negroes who have ridden m car

pbols or walked to work since they rebelled against their treatment on the buses last December, hailed the ruling as a signal victory. Also heartened were negroes in Tallahassee. Florida, now in the second week of a similar boycott that has resulted in the discontinuance of bus services to negro sections.

The panel had heard the case on May 12. It was brought by the negroes participating in the boycott, 90 of whose leaders were accused of violating an obscure State law against economic conspiracy to the detriment of a business, in this ca e the bus lipe. One negro, the Rev. M. L. Kin& was convicted and sentenced to a gaol term in lieu of a fine which he refused to pay. pending appeal. The other cases were held .in abeya e pending Mr King’s appeal.