Crisis in Civil Rights

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It was just that sort of talk that had helped land John Patterson in his present mess and had brought federal forces into his state. If he had kept his mouth shut and accepted his responsibility to maintain law and order, the Freedom Riders would probably have passed through Alabama with little incident—just as they had passed through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. As the Freedom Riders themselves admit, segregation would have returned to Alabama before their bus was out of sight. Says a CORE lawyer: "A trip like this is like hacking your way through the jungle with a machete. After you've gone, the jungle grows right back."

Instead, Patterson helped set off integrationist movements that last week were spreading throughout the South. In Florida, the N.A.A.C.P. ordered a segregation test of all rail and bus facilities. In New York, CORE headquarters announced that it was sending field secretaries to New Orleans, Jackson and Montgomery. In Nashville, more students were ready to go to Jackson, where the 27 arrested Freedom Riders were fined $200 each and given suspended sentences of 60 days. At week's end, 22 of the 27 were still in jail because they refused to ante up any money.

The boldness and bravery of the Freedom Riders won over most of the old-line, conservative Negro leaders, leaving only a few doubters, who were shrugged off by the students as "Uncle Toms." "These kids are serving notice on us that we're moving too slow," said Thurgood Marshall, the N.A.A.C.P. lawyer who won the school segregation case. "They're not content with all this talking." Said Martin Luther King: "I think all of this is unfortunate, but I think it is a psychological turning point in our whole struggle, just as Little Rock was a turning point in our legal struggle.* The people themselves have said we can take it no longer. If we can get through this, I think it will mean breaking the backbone of massive resistance and discrimination."

None Too Soon. Over the Voice of America, Bobby Kennedy last week reminded the world that the U.S. has an Irish Catholic for President, and added: "There is no question about it. In the next 40 years a Negro can achieve the same position that my brother has." And at Columbia, S.C., Howard University President James Madison Nabrit Jr. told the graduating class of Negro Benedict College: "Swifter than you can imagine, you will have all the rights and privileges of every other citizen in the U.S." That time cannot come too swiftly for young Negroes of 1961—and the John Pattersons of the South can do little to stop them.