Deliberate Speed

New pieces stitched into the broadening patchwork of Southern integration last week:

¶ In Atlanta, U.S. Judge Boyd Sloan ruled on the petition of three Negroes to enter Georgia State College of Business Administration, found that a state law requiring alumni sponsorship of applicants violates the 14th Amendment because there are no Negro alumni to sponsor Negro applicants. The ruling opened the way for Negroes to apply to all 19 schools in the state's 35,000-student white college system, left it up to Georgia to decide whether to close them all by invoking a state law banning integrated colleges.

¶ In Atlanta, U.S. Judge Frank A. Hooper heard the complaint of two Negro ministers, decided that segregated seating on city buses was unconstitutional in light of the Supreme Court's Montgomery bus decision. Atlanta becomes the third Southern city (with Montgomery and New Orleans) ordered to integrate buses; 26 other cities have desegregated voluntarily.

¶ In Little Rock, where high schools have been closed since last September, U.S. Judge John E. Miller forbade the newly elected school board to transfer school property to private-school groups or impede the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals integration mandate. The court did not order schools reopened, but told board members "to take affirmative steps on their own initiative" to integrate once schools are open, and to report such steps to him within 30 days.

¶ In Montgomery, where famed Negro Minister Martin Luther King Jr. (TIME, Feb. 18, 1957) had announced that Negroes would soon present the board of education with a school integration plan, the city commission 1) accused "certain Negroes" of "attempting to disturb the operation of the public schools," 2) pledged "full assistance" to the board of education in resisting school integration, and 3) called for a grand jury investigation of King's integration movement.