THE SOUTH: FURY & PROGRESS

THE SOUTH: FURY & PROGRESS

A LONG the fringes of the Deep South last week, the integration of white and Negro schools was going surprisingly well. The eight states of the Solid South were still solidly segregated, and for the most part sullenly determined to remain so. But Delaware, West Virginia and Missouri were on their way to complete integration. In Maryland, Kentucky and Oklahoma, many counties were quietly but firmly enforcing the desegregation law.

The achievement was overshadowed by noise and fury from a few trouble spots and troublemakers, who shamed and embarrassed their fellow Americans. In Texas 25,000 Negro schoolchildren were integrated without incident. But in the farm town of Mansfield, Negro students slated to enroll in the high school were scared off when whites hung a Negro dummy over the entrance. Governor Allan Shivers piously announced he would not use state police power "to shoot down or intimidate Texas citizens who are making orderly protest against [school desegregation.]" But in Clinton, Tenn., where Governor Frank Clement dispatched National Guardsmen to quell shouting, stone-throwing rioters, Negroes by week's end were still in mixed classrooms, and the guardsmen were beginning to leave. In western Kentucky armed mobs roamed through the mining towns of Sturgis and Clay, yelling for "nigger blood." But the mob quickly subsided in the face of tank-borne National Guardsmen sent by Governor A. B. ("Happy") Chandler, who declared they would stay there "as long as necessary."

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