The Southern Front

Not since the Korean war had U.S. newsmen faced such risks in the line of duty as they did last week in covering the Southern riots over school integration (see NEWS IN PICTURES). The rioters not only feared that pictures could be used as evidence against them in court; they also sensed that the press would arouse public opinion--and action--against them.

Near Clinton, Tenn., where more than 100 newsmen converged, segregationists charged at reporters, flinging stones and brandishing clubs to block coverage of their rallies. When the Knoxville Journal's Bill Anderson tried to get into a mass meeting unobtrusively, six men beat him up; he had been given away by the prefix number on his automobile license plate, marking him as an '"outsider" from adjoining Knox County.

A Shotgun in the Stomach. During a tense encounter between the Tennessee National Guard and an armed mob in Oliver Springs. 15 miles west of Clinton, members of the mob elbowed their way through shoulder-to-shoulder guardsmen and leaped at newsmen. The chief danger was to photographers and newsreel men, whose equipment made them conspicuous and vulnerable. While LIFE Photographer Robert W. Kelley was atop a jeep photographing the clash at Oliver Springs, five men, three of them carrying shotguns, advanced on him. Leaping to the ground to escape them, he broke his left leg. In the same melee, Nashville Tennessean Photographer Jack Corn had a shotgun shoved into his stomach and barely managed to hang onto his camera until guardsmen took him into protective custody. Two days later a 19-year-old prisoner--one of 15 mobsters arrested at Oliver Springs--sprang suddenly between two carbine-carrying guardsmen, knocked Corn down and slugged and kicked him. Two stitches were taken to close a gash in Corn's face.

The National Guard, under the command of its adjutant general, a World War II captain named Joe W. Henry Jr., who now wears two stars, gave the newsmen little protection. At the Oliver Springs encounter, Henry denounced the photographers to curry favor with the mob. Guardsmen stood by while rioters roughed up newsmen and stole cameras.

Taking the Hint. Later in the week, when the 15 prisoners were released on a $1,000 bond each, Henry told them that the guard would not interfere in anything that happened between them and photographers waiting outside the town jail. The released prisoners took the hint. While guardsmen watched, the photographers were left to defend themselves in a free-swinging sidewalk brawl. When the newsmen angrily protested being denied protection on a public street, Henry barked: "I don't have to defend myself to you people."

The Kentucky National Guard gave the press better protection in the rioting at Clay and Sturgis. But, reported Mrs. Francele H. Armstrong, editor of Kentucky's Henderson Gleaner and Journal. who was herself bullied by the mob at Clay, "the climate was unhealthy for two classes of citizens--newspaper people and Negroes." Before the guard arrived, newsmen trying to approach the Clay school were run out of town, and one managed to escape while a crowd tried to overturn his car.

Despite the rough treatment, the reporters and photographers managed not only to get the news out but to keep a grim sense of humor. In Clinton they formed the Southern War Correspondents Association, planned to give each member a card reading "Integrated"' on one side and "Segregated" on the other, thereby suitable for use on both sides of the firing line. The card will also bear the motto: "Discretion is the better part of valor."

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