Turmoil

Trouble, bad trouble seemed brewing in the South as whites and Negroes made all kinds of forced adjustments to the changes in ways of living brought on by the war--and the Four Freedoms:

> The Southern Conference for Human Welfare, composed mostly of liberal whites, took a full-page advertisement in the Birmingham News-Age-Herald for an open letter to the President: ". . . There has been artificially created in the South grave racial tension. . . . Violent speeches filled with Nazi ideas and phrases are inciting race hatred and conflict. ... A widely advertised campaign to revive the K.K.K. is preparing the South for organized racial violence. With grave concern responsible Southerners are watching the subversive efforts of irresponsible politicians who for selfish purposes are endangering the nation's war effort. . . ."

> In Mobile, Ala., Negro Private Henry Williams had words with white Bus Driver Grover Chandler. Police said the soldier was shot and killed after he had asked the driver to lift his suitcase off the bus. Driver Chandler, 29, was charged with murder.

> In Macon, Ga., during a quarrel between soldiers and Negro civilians, a Negro soldier grabbed a sergeant's pistol, killed a Macon policeman and wounded the sergeant.

> Federal officials started prosecution of two Beaumont, Tex. policemen accused of beating and shooting Negro Private Charles Reco after a fight that started when Reco took a bus seat reserved for whites. The charge: violating the soldier's civil rights.

> Colonel Lindley W. Camp, head of the Georgia State Guard, ordered the Guard to be on the alert for trouble: "There have been reported efforts on the part of Negro men and women to demand certain privileges which are not granted in Georgia and which never will be."

> But from the South Seas came a different note: For "heroic action at the risk of their own safety," General Douglas MacArthur awarded the Soldier's Medal to Negro Privates Julius Franklin of Charleston, S.C., Harvey Crandle of Greenville, N.C., and James Scott of Montgomery, Ala. Their deed: plunging through deadly gasoline flames to save a pilot from a burning plane.

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