Segregated Anniversary

Hospitality was the word for Old Virginia, and in honor of this year's celebration of the 350th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown, the Old Dominion decided to put out the welcome mat for Old Virginians living outside the state. Down the lists of distinguished ex-Virginians went the official hosts; out to some 600 notables went engraved invitations to a reception May 17, arranged by the State Chamber of Commerce.

Then the hospitality suddenly turned cold. Among the first to accept the invitation was Dr. Clilan B. Powell, a New York physician and publisher (Amsterdam News), born and raised in Newport News and only recently returned from the independence ceremonies in Ghana (TIME, March 18), where he was entertained by, among others, the Duchess of Kent. In rechecking the list a chamber official discovered that Dr. Powell is a Negro.

The Chamber of Commerce wired a withdrawal of the invitation, and Dr. Powell, who at first insisted that he would attend, finally bowed out. In Toledo, Negro Civic Leader Ella Phillips Stewart heard about the ruckus and decided that she would not accept her invitation. In Chicago, Roosevelt University Sociology Professor St. Clair Drake also received an invitation, but the word from Richmond was that his invitation—as well as any others that had slipped through the racial screen—would be withdrawn.

Also withdrawn—in the sense that he privately approved of these actions and passed the buck to the Chamber of Commerce—was Virginia's weak-kneed Governor Thomas B. Stanley, who had co-signed the engraved invitations with a flourish. But many another white Southerner was highly offended at the breach of good manners. In an open letter to Governor Stanley, Virginia-born Lambert Davis, director of the University of North Carolina Press, wrote: "[You] have taken the ridiculous position of asserting, in effect, that being distinguished is an accomplishment possible only for people of Caucasian ancestry. You have succeeded in making the leadership of the Commonwealth both a stench and a laughingstock in the nation. I believe that I can best show my loyalty to the great traditions of Virginia by declining your invitation."

Wrote Editor Virginius Dabney of the segregationist Richmond Times-Dispatch: "If any of these invited colored citizens come to the dinner . . . and admission is refused, Virginia and Virginia hospitality will get a black eye from which they may never recover." With all this said and done, the Chamber of Commerce mended its anniversary manners, announced that any invited Negro who showed up at the reception would be "courteously seated."