Races: The Inexorable Process

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For six months-ever since a feeble little bus boycott-Negroes in the furniture and textile town of Lexington, N.C., had returned silently to their Jim Crow world. Then last week, caught up in the fever of the Negroes' national revolution, 14 Negroes decided to try for service in a few of Lexington's segregated stores.

It went pretty well. They were taunted by some whites. A few rocks were thrown. But, surprisingly, a segregated drugstore counter sold them food. The next night things were different. Scores of whites began gathering at Lexington's Red Pig, a rigidly segregated beer-and-barbecue spot in the center of town. The talk was of the Negroes' gains the night before. The crowd grew larger and suddenly someone yelled: "Let's hang the first nigger we find!" The mob began to move menacingly through town. It found no victims, and it surged on until 800 angry whites were standing in a roaring wall along the street that separates white and Negro homes in Lexington.

"We'll Start Shooting." A warning cry sounded through the Negro district. Some 400 people charged out of their homes to face the whites, and a deafening roar of insults, obscenities, threats rose from the white men's mob. The Negroes answered in kind.

Police nervously patrolled the center of the street, hoping to keep the races apart. But rocks, sticks, bottles-some filled with gasoline-flew back and forth across the police line. A Negro girl dropped to the sidewalk when a rock struck her on the head. A photographer for the High Point (N.C.) Enterprise, Art Richardson, 24, set himself to snap a picture, collapsed in the glare of his own flashbulb. He had been shot in the back. From a Negro apartment building came furious shouts: "Tell the white people to get back or we'll start shooting!" The white men stayed. Bullets began to ricochet off the pavement, spurting sparks as they hit. The thunder of the mob rose-louder and louder-until even the sound of gunfire was drowned out.

One of those shots struck Fred Link, 25, an auto mechanic who had left his rural home that night, telling his family he was going to town because he was curious to see what would happen after the Negro sit-in attempts. The bullet hit Link in the head. He died on the way to a hospital in Winston-Salem, 20 miles away. State troopers had joined Lexington police and firemen by then. Using fire hoses, they drove away the crowd. Next day seven young Lexington Negroes and twelve whites were arrested. Police said the Negroes were armed with a zip gun, a shotgun and a sawed-off .22 caliber rifle.

An Appeal to Reason. Even before last week's killing, an anxious Justice Department official had said, "I'm afraid we'll get down to a different kind of Negro-the knife and club type." He explained that the various Negro groups were competing with each other in militancy and fervor, and that there was a danger that the leaders would become followers. "There's competition among the N.A.A.C.P., CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), 'Snick' (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and Martin Luther King Jr.'s group. They think the group that's most militant will wind up on top."