And the Walls Down Came Tumbling

Throughout the South, from Charleston to Dallas, from Memphis to Tallahassee, segregation walls that had stood for several generations began to tumble in the first full week under the new civil rights law.

In Birmingham, Negro Chauffeur J. L. Meadows, 70, strolled into the Dinkler-Tutwiler Hotel's Town and Country Restaurant, sat down amid a roomful of staring white diners, ordered, and was served without incident. Said he later: "I've been driving white folks down here for 21 years, and now I'm going to eat where I've been taking these white folks." At least nine other Birmingham restaurants and four movie houses also accepted Negroes for the first time. In Montgomery, Ala., the state capital, most restaurants and lunch counters, along with two theaters, were peacefully desegregated.

Even in Mississippi. Similarly, Negroes were admitted to previously all-white hotels and eating places in Savannah, Thomasville and Warner Robins, Ga. In Texas, Dallas' Piccadilly Cafeteria, a motel and lunch counter in Longview, restaurants in Palestine, and Austin, and a Beaumont drive-in were integrated. Thirty-three Memphis restaurants, including one of the city's largest downtown cafeterias, opened their doors to Negroes. Kemmons Wilson, chairman of the Memphis-based Holiday Inns motel chain, noting that he had instructed his motels to obey the new law, said: "The alternative is eventually anarchy, chaos and destruction." And in Charleston, Columbia, Florence and Greenville, S.C., integration proceeded without major trouble. In Greenville, a young Negro was sipping tea in the Jack Tar Poinsett Hotel dining room when South Carolina's Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond, one of the rights bill's bitterest foes, walked in. Apparently unaware of the Negro's presence, Thurmond sat down in another part of the room and quietly ate breakfast.

Even in Mississippi, land of violence, there was quiet compliance. Negroes played golf on Jackson's municipal course, ate at a Vicksburg whites-only lunch counter, and, drawing scarcely a disapproving glance, checked into and ate at Jackson's two leading hotels and a motel. In Jackson, the way had been paved by a Chamber of Commerce policy statement urging local businessmen to "comply with the law, pending tests of its constitutionality in court."

The Holdouts. Choosing not to comply was Stewart Gammill Jr., proprietor of the city's third largest hotel, the Robert E. Lee, who ordered the hotel's Confederate flag struck and put up a sign: CLOSED IN DESPAIR. CIVIL RIGHTS BILL UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Two days later, Gammill announced that henceforth the Robert E. Lee was a private club open to members only. A Richmond, Va., steakhouse also turned private, and restaurants in Charlottesville, Va., and Durham, N.C., and a Williamston, N.C., theater closed their doors for good rather than comply.

Inevitably, there were some trouble spots, such as Laurel, Miss., and Americus and Albany, Ga. In Baton Rouge, La., a white state employee punched a Negro minister in the jaw as he and two Negro women left the state capitol cafeteria after eating. Fifteen Negroes were arrested in Slidell, La., when they sought service at a restaurant. At a variety-store lunch counter in Bessemer, Ala., a steel town near Birmingham, six Negro youths were beaten by whites wielding 24-in. baseball bats. Near Texarkana, Texas, a white man and three Negroes were wounded when another white man opened fire with a shotgun during a Negro wade-in at Lake Texarkana.

In Atlanta, perhaps the most moderate of the South's big cities, some of the worst flare-ups took place. One occurred when three Negro ministerial students sought to test a fried-chicken joint owned by Lester Maddox, an unsuccessful Georgia office seeker and a loud racist. Maddox was waiting for them in the parking lot of his place, waving a snub-nosed pistol. "You ain't never gonna eat here!" he shouted, shoving against the car door as the Negroes started to get out. When the students persisted, Maddox and another white man grabbed ax handles from a stockpile Maddox had laid in for just such an occasion. "Git, git," Maddox ordered. The Negroes did, with a crowd of angry Maddox patrons at their heels. Among them was a small boy dragging a 3-ft. ax handle and squealing: "I'm gonna kill me a nigger!"

Next day, at a Fourth of July segregationist rally at Atlanta's fairgrounds, three Negro youths were beaten with metal chairs in a melee that began when the Negroes and a white girl civil rights worker entered the grandstand. Forty whites chased the Negroes into a fenced corner, pommeled them until cops broke it up.

The Ugliness. In Tuscaloosa, Ala., one of the most bizarre incidents took place--indicating, if nothing else, how civil rights tensions may lead to ugly misunderstandings. Actor Jack Palance, his wife Virginia, and their three children, in Tuscaloosa to visit relatives, had a narrow escape from a mob when they went to a movie. Earlier in the day, Palance had signed autographs for both whites and blacks. When he and his family entered the newly desegregated Druid Theater, a rumor spread that a Negro woman had accompanied them. As it turned out, there were no Negroes in the theater at the time, but a crowd of nearly 1,000 whites gathered, pelted the cashier's cage and the marquee with rocks and bottles, shattered the windows and slashed the tires on Palance's rented car. Local cops took the Palances to the police station for protection.

Finally, in a mysterious incident on a north Georgia highway, Lemuel A.

Penn. 49. director of vocational high schools in Washington, D.C., was killed when two shotgun blasts, fired from a passing car, ripped into the car he was driving while returning to Washington from Army Reserve duty at Fort Benning, Ga.

Despite such incidents, the South's initial compliance with the new civil rights law was by any standard encouraging. Perhaps Mrs. Constance Baker Motley, a Negro lawyer for the N.A.A.C.P. who has spent 18 years fighting for Negro rights, summed it up best. Said she: "Voluntary compliance has been unexpectedly good. I would have lost every penny I've got if I had made a bet."

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