The Rome Incident

Twice in recent weeks ugly gossip ran up & down the wide and sunburned streets of Rome, Ga. (pop. 26,282): there had been what the white residents called "nigger trouble." A young Negro had sat in the white section on a bus, starting a row. Then word spread that a Negro preacher was saying that now, while white men and boys were away in the Army, was the time for Negroes to assert their rights.

Twenty miles northeast of Rome, on a 600-acre farm where his parents once worked as slaves, lives shy, greying Roland Hayes, 55, who earned as high as $100,000 a year when he was the world's greatest Negro tenor. The farm is wealthy Tenor Hayes's proudest possession. He calls it Angelmo (a word he coined from angel and mother), parcels it out among other Negro families to teach them the joys of independence. Among the neighborhood whites he is respected; he gives one charity concert a year in nearby Calhoun.

But in Rome, where he does his weekend shopping, quiet Roland Hayes is less well known. Fortnight ago, his wife and nine-year-old daughter Africa (pronounced Afree-ka) went into Higgins Shoe Store, where they had traded for three years. It was a hot day and they sat in the second of six rows of seats, underneath a fan. There was a new clerk: he asked her to take a seat at the rear reserved for Negroes. Mrs. Hayes said she preferred to stay under the fan. The day was hot, tempers short. An argument started. Said usually even-tempered Mrs. Hayes: "This is no time to talk about racial prejudice and segregation. Hitler ought to have you."

Someone called police and told them there was more "nigger trouble."

Embarrassing Prisoner. Roland Hayes, who weighs 120 lb., told what happened next: "I went to the store to rectify any trouble that might have been caused, and as I left a policeman caught me in the belt and dragged me back. I protested I had done nothing and I denied my wife had cursed [as the clerk contended]. I told them my wife didn't curse. When I said that, a man not in officers' garb gave me all he had on the jaw. Then I was dragged to the patrol car, handcuffed between two officers. I was struck again by this man not in uniform, who leaned through a window to hit me. My wife and I were put in a cell and our little girl left on the outside."

When Chief of Police Charles I. Harris learned his prisoner's name, he telephoned gallus-snapping Governor Gene Talmadge, who usually seizes any chance to sound off on an inflammatory issue. The Governor told Chief Harris to handle the case himself. Hayes and his wife were released on $50 bail. Next day the bail was sent back. When the case was called in court, no one appeared to prosecute. Rome tried to hush up the incident. Atlanta newspapers did not hear about it until four days later, when the Negro Atlanta Daily World broke the story.

Back at Angelmo, Roland Hayes, who has never been an agitator for Negro rights, reflected: "I am not bitter toward anyone and the humiliation is on the other side. I am only ashamed that this should happen in my native State. I love Georgia."

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