Boycott in Tuskegee

For years the white-supremacist fathers of Tuskegee, county seat of Macon County, Ala., have contemplated two obtrusive facts about their small (pop. 6,700), highly segregated community. Fact No. 1: about 70% (4,800) of Tuskegee's residents are Negro. Fact No. 2: the town is the site of Tuskegee Institute, one of the South's influential Negro campuses and a powerhouse in the struggle for civil rights. The fear that some of the institute's teachings, e.g., on the Negro's right to the ballot, would seep into the town of Tuskegee has been heightened by a steady increase in Negro registration—despite the fact that meetings of the all-white board of registrars have been few and far between. White voters still outnumber registered Negro voters, but the margin is growing slim—about 600-400.

Drastic Remedy. To Macon County's State Senator Sam Engelhardt Jr., executive secretary of the Alabama Association of Citizens' Councils, the remedy was obvious. Sam Engelhardt, taking a look at Tuskegee's square-mile area, noted that most of the city's Negroes live in the northwest quadrant near the institute or to the south of it. The remedy, which he proposed to the state legislature this spring: shrink the city limits by some 50%—and in such a way as to reduce Tuskegee's Negro population to about 400, its registered Negro voters to nine. Both houses unanimously passed Engelhardt's gerrymander bill, sent it on to Governor James E. ("Kissin' Jim") Folsom.

But Sam Engelhardt and his fellow legislators had overlooked an important point: if the heavy Negro population of Tuskegee and surrounding Macon County provides a political hazard, it also provides the principal economic income of Tuskegee's merchants. In the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church last week, a stomping, whistling crowd of 2,900 Negroes heard Professor Charles G. Gomillion, 57, dean of students at the institute and president of the Tuskegee Civic Association, lay out a strategy for fighting back without violence. "We will buy goods and services only from those who will recognize us as first-class citizens." Then, sounding a note reminiscent of Montgomery's Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Gomillion cautioned: "Please refrain from boasting, betting or accepting bribes. Soon the time will come when they [the whites] will have to respect us. They may hate our guts, but they will respect us. We can hold out longer than they. We can form our own businesses if necessary. We will continue as long as we have to."

Potent Response. Next day the boycott was on. At Tuskegee's big Veterans Administration Hospital, which, together with the institute, pumps an, estimated $9,000,000 a year into Tuskegee's economy, some 2,000 employees—mostly Negroes—got their bimonthly paychecks. Few cash registers jingled in town: for Tuskegee's white merchants it was the worst "payroll Wednesday" in years. At week's end tight-lipped shopkeepers admitted that the boycott was about 90% effective among the Negroes, and many merchants were grimly beginning to wonder how long they could hold out.