Battle of the Buses

The six-month-old Negro boycott of Jim Crow buses in Montgomery, Ala., has taught the South a fact of economic life: in regions where most bus passengers are Negroes, the boycott is a powerful economic weapon. Last week in Montgomery a three-judge panel in Federal Court--all judges born and raised in Alabama--gave the boycott a sharp legal edge: the court ruled 2-1 that the city's Jim Crow bus seating violates the 14th Amendment and is unconstitutional.

Said the majority decision: "There is now no rational basis upon which the separate but equal doctrine can be validly applied to public carrier transportation." But the court, taking its pace from the Supreme Court's doctrine of "deliberate speed," postponed any order to stop bus-line segregation, and explained that when one came it would apply only to Montgomery.

Meanwhile, in Tallahassee. Fla., the Negro leaders of a two-week-old bus boycott rejected some surprisingly moderate bus-company concessions, e.g., first come, first-served seating (but no side-by-side mixing of Negroes and whites), hiring of Negro drivers on predominantly Negro runs. Instead, they demanded complete abolition of Jim Crow seating.

In Memphis, the president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People filed suit in Federal Court to challenge state laws requiring Jim Crow public transportation; he said enigmatically that there would be no bus boycott unless one started up "spontaneously."

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