Schools Integrated When Kennedy Acts

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30234, 12 September 1963, Page 16

Schools Integrated When Kennedy Acts

(N.Z.P.A .-Reuter—Copyright) BIRMINGHAM (Alabama), September 10. President Kennedy today stepped in and took control of the Alabama National Guard out of the hands of the diehard .segregationist State Governor, Mr George Wallace. He ordered the withdrawal of troops which the Governor had sent to prevent integration at schools in Birmingham, Tuskegee and Mobile.

As a result, 20 Negro children were able to enter classrooms with white children for the first time.

Trouble broke out when several hundred white pupils stayed outside Murphy High School, Birmingham, arid jeered as two negro girls went in.

Soon, several hundred white people had joined the jeering children. Police, prodding the crowd with their truncheons, drove the demonstrators back until noone was closer to the school than two blocks. The crowd chanting “Nigger, go home,” and “Two,

tour, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate,” tried to move in .again, but the police repulsed them. Soaittered fighting broke out, and two men who resisted police were arrested. Only about 100 of the 1500 students enrolled attended classes art Birmingham’s West End School, where one negro was admitted. Two other newly integrated schools —Ramsay High School and Graymont Elementary School— {Were better attended and quieter. Police reported three arrests at Mobile, but said the situation was relatively quiet. The British United Press said several white parents removed their children from

tihe Tuskegee schools which admitted Negroes. There were no incidents at Huntsville, where four Negroes began their second day of integrated schooling, Reuter said. Kennedy’s Order

President Kennedy’s directive went further than federalism® the Alabama National Guardsmen. It also authorised the Defence Secretary (Mr McNamara) to use "such of the armed forces of the United States as he mav deem necessary.” The President called on Governor Wallace to stop “wilfully opposing and obstructing the execution of the laws of the United States.” Mr Wallace said' he would obey Federal Court orders restraining him from interfering with racial integration in Alabama schools. He said there was little he could do before the “whole armed might” of the United States.

“The Court orders breaches of the peace. My duty is to preserve the peace. The Governor is caught in the middle. I cannot fight bayonets with my bare hands,” he said.