Civil Rights: And the Walls Down Came Tumbling

Throughout the South, from Charleston to Dallas, from Memphis to Tallahassee, segregation walls that had stood for several generations began to tumble in the first full week under the new civil rights law.

In Birmingham, Negro Chauffeur J. L. Meadows, 70, strolled into the Dinkler-Tutwiler Hotel's Town and Country Restaurant, sat down amid a roomful of staring white diners, ordered, and was served without incident. Said he later: "I've been driving white folks down here for 21 years, and now I'm going to eat where I've been taking these white folks." At least nine other Birmingham restaurants and four movie houses also accepted Negroes for the first time. In Montgomery, Ala., the state capital, most restaurants and lunch counters, along with two theaters, were peacefully desegregated.

Even in Mississippi. Similarly, Negroes were admitted to previously all-white hotels and eating places in Savannah, Thomasville and Warner Robins, Ga. In Texas, Dallas' Piccadilly Cafeteria, a motel and lunch counter in Longview, restaurants in Palestine, and Austin, and a Beaumont drive-in were integrated. Thirty-three Memphis restaurants, including one of the city's largest downtown cafeterias, opened their doors to Negroes. Kemmons Wilson, chairman of the Memphis-based Holiday Inns motel chain, noting that he had instructed his motels to obey the new law, said: "The alternative is eventually anarchy, chaos and destruction." And in Charleston, Columbia, Florence and Greenville, S.C., integration proceeded without major trouble. In Greenville, a young Negro was sipping tea in the Jack Tar Poinsett Hotel dining room when South Carolina's Democratic Senator Strom Thurmond, one of the rights bill's bitterest foes, walked in. Apparently unaware of the Negro's presence, Thurmond sat down in another part of the room and quietly ate breakfast.

Even in Mississippi, land of violence, there was quiet compliance. Negroes played golf on Jackson's municipal course, ate at a Vicksburg whites-only lunch counter, and, drawing scarcely a disapproving glance, checked into and ate at Jackson's two leading hotels and a motel. In Jackson, the way had been paved by a Chamber of Commerce policy statement urging local businessmen to "comply with the law, pending tests of its constitutionality in court."

The Holdouts. Choosing not to comply was Stewart Gammill Jr., proprietor of the city's third largest hotel, the Robert E. Lee, who ordered the hotel's Confederate flag struck and put up a sign: CLOSED IN DESPAIR. CIVIL RIGHTS BILL UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Two days later, Gammill announced that henceforth the Robert E. Lee was a private club open to members only. A Richmond, Va., steakhouse also turned private, and restaurants in Charlottesville, Va., and Durham, N.C., and a Williamston, N.C., theater closed their doors for good rather than comply.