Widespread Civil Rights Protests By Negroes

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30201, 5 August 1963, Page 11

Widespread Civil Rights Protests By Negroes

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) GADSDEN (Alabama), Aug. 3.

About 1000 singing and praying negroes, including children and women with babies in their arms, today staged the largest antisegregation demonstration in the history of Gadsden, a manufacturing tow'n with a population of about 60,000. Police arrested about 685 of them.

A sheriff's deputy said about 200 of those arrested were juveniles and were later released.

The marching demonstrators were halted by reinforced police squads who were sent to the north-east Alabama city urgently. “I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble today.” said the sheriff. Mr D. Colvard “We've got nearly all of them in gaol." Negroes alleged police used electric cattle prod poles and levelled shotguns at them, but a sheriff’s deputy, Mr A. E. Lockridge, said he had “not

seen any electric prodders or shotguns used.” Mr Colvard said demonstrators would be charged with violating an injunction prohibiting demonstrations which block the normal flow of traffic. “They’re going to be charged with violating that injunction, every one of them,” he said More Proteste Possible A negro spokesman for the demonstrators, Mrs Mary Hamilton, said more protests might be staged tomorrow. The marchers, spread over about a half mile, stepped off from a meeting hall in the negro section of the city late this morning. Parading in twos and threes. the demonstrators were permitted to continue for about a mile until they reached the business district where police stood waiting. They were told they would be arrested if they did not disperse, but the negroes held their ground and subsequently were herded, about five at a time, into about 15 patrol cars. From there they were shuttled to gaol. No violence was reported and officers turned away youngsters, including about 20 pre-school children.

“I want to go to gaol.” one negro child told an officer. The child was sent home.

The protest came a day after a Federal Judge in Birmingham. Alabama, refused to assume jurisdiction in the cases of about 3<X) negroes arrested for violating an injunction prohibiting mass racial demonstrations in the city. The negroes claimed they could not get a fair trial in Circuit Court in Gadsden. The injunction, issued about two months ago by Judge A. B. Cunningham, allowed demonstrators to march in twos and thrss, but added that they could not block footpaths or store entrances. Today’s marchers sang spirituals and ’The Star Spangled Banner” in addition to kneeling on the footpaths and praying. They contended they observed traffic lights and were careful to observe the injunction. Nearly 700 Arrests Massive civil rights demonstrations continued at New York’s medical centre construction site in Brooklyn where police arrested at least 33 persons on charges of disorderly conduct or resisting arrest.

Nearly 700 persona have now been arrested at the site. Violence, flared briefly when several pickets attempted a sit-down and other demonstrators tried to prevent police from carrying off a mother and her four-year-old son. The chairman of the Bos-

ton School Committee capitulated to negro demands and agreed to ask other committee members to meet with negro leaders to discuss what the negroes say is "de facto segregation” in the city’s schools.

The Rev. Martin Luther King, jun„ said in Atlanta, Georgia, he had “authentic information” that a negotiated settlement was imminent in Savannah’s racial strife. School Demonstration

In Chicago, mud and driving rain failed today to deter integrationists who lay down at a school site and let police haul them off to gaol At the same time, police mobilised for a feared renewal of the racial outbreaks which have swept another Chicago neighboutbood for four successive nights. Police picked up the “lay down" demonstrators and carted them off to Englewood police station, already crowded with negroes and whites arrested last night and early today in a tense white neighbourhood torn by the tnove-in ot three negro families.

The protesters were trying to prevent trucks from moving into a school site where 18 mobile classrooms—similar to house trailers—were being placed and prepared for September classes

The Congress of Racial Equality, which has led a series of sit-in demonstrations against alleged “de facto segregation,” has pro-

tested that mobile classrooms are being used to further segregation ot negro pupils under Chicago’s traditional district school system.

The “lay down” occurred about three miles from the West Englewood area, where crowds shouted curses and threw stones and bottles for hours last night and early today. Hurt With Glass At least 24 persons were injured—most of them by flying glass—and 41 were arrested in the area where negro families moved into an old Irish neighbourhood.

An estimated 1000 persons roamed the streets for four blocks in every direction of the 30-year-old red brick building where the negroes moved in this week. Teen-age girls and boys sat in the street and shouted. “Two, four, six, eight—we don’t want to integrate " Others shouted: “If you’re white, you’re all right. If you're black, stay back.”

Several youths were arrested when they kicked and pounded a police car. Several white persons were injured when their windshields were smashed with rocks as they drove through the nearby negro section. A number of priests circulated through the knots of protesters in an effort to calm down agitators. Police kept a round of meetings going with white and negro community leaders to win their help in ending the disorders.