The Company He Kept

Robert Newman and Joe Cunningham, roustabouts with a traveling carnival, went drinking together in Greenville, S.C. They got into a drunken quarrel, and Newman stabbed Cunningham to death. Last week Circuit Judge J. B. Pruitt sentenced Newman, 23, to two years in jail for manslaughter. In imposing the minimum sentence (maximum under South Carolina law: 30 years), Pruitt told the defendant, a white man, that he deserved to do time for drinking with Cunningham, a Negro. "God made us different," said the judge. "You could have found some white people to associate with."

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