The Law: End of an Ordeal

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Civil rights have come so far in Atlanta that no one bats an eye any more when Negroes are served side by side with whites at Krystal restaurants, a chain that sells 100 hamburgers all over town. Yet only 17 months ago, Connecticut College Coed Mardon Walker, 18, was considered such a menace when she joined a sit-in at a Krystal counter that she was arrested for trespass and hauled before Fulton County's terrible-tempered Judge Durward T. Pye.

For Mardon, the white daughter of a U.S. Navy captain, Pye meted out the absolute maximum sentence—a $1,000 fine, six months in jail and twelve months' hard labor in a county work camp. Pye set Mardon's appeal bond at a whopping $15,000, to be secured by unencumbered property only. She appealed to Georgia's highest court—and lost.

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Mardon's conviction with a brief order explaining that all such sit-in cases have been rendered moot by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. "We are glad Miss Walker's long ordeal is over," rejoiced the Atlanta Constitution in an editorial slap at Segregationist Judge Pye. "We only wish she had not had to go to Washington to get justice."