THE SUPREME COURT: Help for N.A.A.C.P.

. . . nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . .

—Fourteenth Amendment

In the South's fight to knock the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People out of business in Dixie, one of the hardest punches was a $100,000 contempt-of-court fine levied in 1956 against the Alabama N.A.A.C.P. Offense: refusing to obey a court order to hand over membership lists as evidence in the state government's still pending suit to bar the N.A.A.C.P. from operating in Alabama. Turning over the lists, protested the N.A.A.C.P., would expose members to harassment.

Last week the Supreme Court unanimously struck down the Alabama contempt conviction as a violation of the constitutional rights of N.A.A.C.P. members. Said the opinion, written by Justice John Marshall Harlan: "Freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the 'liberty' assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. . . . Inviolability of privacy in group association may in many circumstances be indispensable to preservation of freedom of association."

More important to the N.A.A.C.P. than the $100,000 was the decision's firmness in blocking, not just in Alabama but in all Southern states, all attempts to enfeeble the N.A.A.C.P. by forcing it to hand over its membership rolls.

The Supreme Court also refused to review U.S. District Judge Harry J. Lemley's order granting the Little Rock school board permission to suspend racial integration at beleaguered Central High School until 1961 (TIME, June 30). In its haste to get a final ruling before Central High reopens in September, the N.A.A.C.P. had carried its case straight to Washington without waiting for a Court of Appeals decision. Supreme Court policy, seldom breached, is to refrain from reviewing lower-court decisions until the Court of Appeals has its say. But recognizing the "vital importance of the time element," the Supreme Court urged the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (St. Louis) to "act upon the applications for a stay or the appeal in ample time to permit arrangements to be made for the next school year."