More Racial Riots In New Orleans

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29365, 18 November 1960, Page 17

More Racial Riots In New Orleans

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) NEW ORLEANS (Louisiana), November 17. Local and State police and school officials braced themselves today for further outbreaks of violence in fear-struck New Orleans. Racial incidents exploded all over the city yesterday and were continuing early today.

Racial hatred, heightened by the admission of four negro girls last Monday to two previously all-white elementary schools under a Federal Court order, broke out into fierce clashes between riotous white youths, police and negroes yesterday.

Police arrested about 100 persons, including a British woman correspondent of a London morning newspaper.

Police had to use fire hoses, motor-cycles and mounted patrolmen to clear streets of jeering demonstrators.

Among the worst incidents yesterday:—

A 19-year-old negro porter in a block of flats was stabbed and seriously wounded in the chest by a group of white teenagers. A 32-year-old white man, Leo Weilmeyer, was shot and

wounded in the 1 left hand by a negro youth. A group of white demonstrators stoned a negro lorry driver, who hurled bricks back at

them. Another white group trapped and savagely beat up four negroes, who were finally rescued by charging police. A negro delivery boy was thrown, beaten and kicked by white youths picketing the office of the local school board. A policeman who rescued the boy was struck on the nose A large cross burned at the edge of the city’s famed garden district.

Police early today reported several instances of negroes throwing rocks at buses and cars. In most cases, the crowds had dispersed by the time police reached the scene.

Late last night a police bomb squad rushed a live aircraft rocket away from the yard of a white family’s residence where it had been thrown from a passing car. An Army demolition expert said the rocket was “dangerous.”

According to police, six negroes in a moving car fired several shots at whites in a mixed residential district but no-one was hit.

In another Incident, several shots were fired from a car containing three negroes. The shots were apparently aimed at a group of whites. A block away, officers reported, the same car tried to run down another group of whites and overturned. One occupant of the car was captured immediately. The others escaped on foot.

The British newspaperwoman. 34-year-old Joyce Egginton of the London “Daily Herald,” was arrested in front of the city hall where hundreds of demonstrators were gathered.

Seh was due to appear in Court today to answer charges of assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest and refusing to move on. Miss Egginton. paroled in the custody of the city editor of the New Orleans ‘‘Times-Picayune.’’ declared that the “idea of someone my size assaulting two police officers is just too ridiculous.” She said she was with a group of reporters who asked police

officers whether they could mount the city hall steps, and received permission. When she moved to go up, she was grabbed by a policeman, hustled into a police waggon, taken to a police station and “booked.” she said. Police charged with clubs to break up the howling demonstrators. The majority of them were white youths who refused to enter the two elementary schools where the negro girls are enrolled. They attempted to storm the local school board’s offices and city hall. Mounted police charged the rioters repeatedlv but fire hoses had to be used to quell the youths who continued to chant: “Two, four. six. eight—we don’t want to integrate.” As water poured on the young demonstrators, a white mother grabbed the nolice suoerintendent. Josenh Giarrusso. bv the leg and nleaded: “Chief, help us. not the United States Government.”

Virtually forgotten in yesterday’s rioting were the four negro girls. They became the first of their race in nearly 100 years to attend classes with white children in the state when they were escorted to school bv United Stages marshals on Monday. One of the girls entered William Fran+z School auietly for the third day with a silent crowd of 100 whites watching At McDnnogh School, the other three children also marched into their classrooms with a small crowd of silent white persons watching. The girls sat in almost empty classrooms in almost empty schools. Angry oarents and white nupils have refused to mix with the negro children and have stayed a wav from classes in snite of threats bv the superintendent of the Incal school board that tbev would be prosecuted for truancy. But few parents and children were exnected to heed the warning in the face of the action of th? State Legislature in annulling Louisiana's compulsory attendance law and its cal] to to refuse to send their children to ? »itegrated schools. The State Legislature has raised a series of legal barriers to Drevent Federal officials from enforcing a Federal Court order that Louisiana schools should integrate.