THE SOUTH: Creeping Realism (Contd.)

"I should've brought my camera," drawled a gangling Virginia youngster as he strolled into Theodore Ficklin Elementary School in Washington's bedroom suburb of Alexandria one morning last week. But the only crowd worth a snap was the throng of reporters and cameramen on hand for the third Virginia city's peaceful integration (the other two: Arlington and Norfolk) since Governor J. Lindsay Almond Jr. ordered orderly acceptance of the inevitable (TIME, Feb. 9). Result: in Alexandria 2,300 white pupils mixed easily with nine Negro newcomers, amiably greeted them aboard school buses.

Other events last week in the South's creeping realism about integration:

¶ In North Carolina, where token school integration (eleven pupils in three cities) began two years ago without even a court fight, N.A.A.C.P. groups sued for admission of 14 Negroes in token-integrated Greensboro and Charlotte.

¶Florida's Governor Leroy Collins admitted that his still segregated state must initiate "voluntary, token integration" in suitable schools, or leave the when, where and how to be "dictated by the N.A.A.C.P."

¶ Georgia's rural woolhats, led by U.S. Senator Richard Brevard Russell of Winder (pop. 4,604), marched on Atlanta (pop. 510,000) to try to scare city moderates out of complying with a certain-to-come federal integration order. "I want to invite the people of Atlanta back into Georgia!" cried pone-shaped Politician-Publisher Roy V. Harris. "Our greatest battle is against the quislings."

¶South Carolina, which last year refused to charter the Ku Klux Klan, reluctantly handed the N.A.A.C.P. a state charter of incorporation after failing to find legal grounds for continued denial.