Showdown Near In Alabama Crisis

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30153, 10 June 1963, Page 11

Showdown Near In Alabama Crisis

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

TUSCALOOSA (Alabama), June 9.

The Alabama State Governor, Mr George Wallace, said in a telegram to President Kennedy last night that he would call up 500 National Guardsmen for stand-by duty in the university city of Tuscaloosa to keep law and order in this week’s integration showdown, the Associated Press reported.

Confirming reports from other sources, Mr Wallace said his summoning of troops was aimed at fulfilling a pledge to preserve the peace.

A tight security net was laid over the University of Alabama centre at Huntsville as the Governor disclosed his plans to move guardsmen into Tuscaloosa. State police arrested six white men last night and confiscated a cache of weapons that included clubs, bayonets and pistols. The State Public Safety Director, Colonel Albert Lingo, said the six were arrested near the university city. Colonel Lingo said the men had clubs, bayonets,

baling hooks and six pistols Mr Wallace said earlier he still planned to bar two negroes from entering the main campus at Tuscaloosa on Tuesday. A third negro will seek to enter Huntsville on Thursday. The Governor said steelhelmeted guardsmen will back up, if necessary, a force of 825 State, county, city and campus policemen in Tuscaloosa.

Mr Wallace told the President in his telegram: “Out of an abundance of caution, I will call approximately 500 Alabama National Guardsmen, effective Sunday. These guardsmen will be quartered on the premises of Fort Brandon National Guard armoury at Tuscaloosa to be used only in the event they are needed to maintain law and order, and preserve the peace at the University of Alabama and in the Tuscaloosa area.

“My sole purpose in this regard is to fulfil my pledge to preserve the peace. These guardsmen will be used for no other purpose.” In releasing the telegram to the press, Mr Wallace did not indicate whether he hoped to avoid “federalisation" of the guardsmen by the President. The President already has had an order drawn “federalising” the guard—as happened in the Arkansas and Mississippi integration crises. He has not signed it.

Mr Kennedy took the action after rioting broke out on May 13 in Birmingham. He sent Federal troops to two Alabama bases.

In other racial incidents, bullets were fired into the homes of two negro leaders in Clarksdale, Mississippi, last night In Jackson, Mississippi, the shop of a negro leader was damaged by a shotgun blast. There were no injuries. Three negroes and two white persons who sought service in a cafeteria in Atlanta, Georgia, today were beaten and pushed by two white men.

The demonstrators clasped their hands behind them, refusing a fight back while taking the punches. A crowd of about 100 persons gathered. The demonstrators left the scene after a tense situation lasted about 10 minutes.

Alabama sources, who earlier reported the call-up of Alabama guardsmen, made clear that Mr Wallace alone will attempt to keep the negroes from the university —and not the soldiers or the civilian police. Unlike the crises in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Oxford,

Mississippi, where guardsmen or State police barred negroes, troops and policemen in Tuscaloosa are under orders only to prevent violence and to keep mobs from forming.

In both Tuscaloosa and Huntsville, the university grounds were sealed off and only authorised persons could enter. An undisclosed number of troopers was on duty at Huntsville.

More than 1500 cheering segregationists gathered in a field near Tuscaloosa last night in the light of a full moon and a burning of a 50ft cross for a Ku Klux Klan rally. Klansmen, robed in white sheets, and many of them with hoods pulled over their faces, gathered in the field along with interested spectators as a public address system blared out “The Old Rugged Cross” and flames leaped from the cross, wrapped in burlap and soaked in kerosene.

“The niggers are creating a revolution in this country,” cried the Grand Dragon of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan. Calfin Craig. “It’s time we started to act like white men.”

The Grand Dragon of the Alabama klan, Robert Shelton, who said several weeks ago that he and his klansmen would play a role on the campus when the two negro students attempt to register on Tuesday, last night urged those attending the rally not to go to the university on Tuesday. “Let Governor Wallace stand up for you and handle this,” he said.