Kickbacks

Kickacks

Although Supreme Court rulings, i.e., the ban on bus segregation in Montgomery, Ala., have made "every segregation act or law of any state as dead as a doornail," declared U.S. District Judge Dozier DeVane in Tallahassee, Fla. last week, "every state has a right to litigate these matters."

Judge DeVane, at that moment, was about as deep in litigation as he could get. Three days before, Tallahassee Negroes broke their own seven-month bus boycott and began a concerted ride-the-bus on a first-come, first-served-basis campaign. Cities Transit Inc. did not object (Negroes made up 60% of its passengers before the boycott). Tallahassee's city commission objected furiously, suspended the company's franchise for not enforcing segregation. The company responded with a plea for an injunction preventing interference with its operations until the court decided whether Florida's bus-segregation law is still valid. Judge DeVane granted the injunction, but it was, as his ruling implied, just the beginning of prolonged litigation in the state courts.

In other places in the South last week, the anti-bus-segregation drive--and reaction to it by white extremists--went far beyond litigation. In Birmingham, Ala. the Rev. Mr. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, 34, antisegregation leader and pastor of a local Negro Baptist church, told the city commission to end bus segregation by the day after Christmas, or "we will take whatever action is necessary." Late Christmas night six or more dynamite sticks blasted the Shuttlesworth house. Miraculously, Shuttlesworth and his family escaped serious hurt. Shuttlesworth next day led some 150 of his followers in broad-scale, nonsegregated bus riding, later was persuaded to call off the drive after 22 Negroes were arrested for Jim Crow violations.

In Montgomery, where Negroes and whites rode together peacefully in the first days after integration, Christmas week brought the first big kickbacks from lunatic-fringe groups. In three nights snipers fired on and struck four buses, wounding a 22-year-old Negro laundry worker in both legs. The city commission, declaring that "an emergency exists," ordered all nighttime bus operations suspended through New Year's Day. None of the snipers was arrested. Said a city detective: "We have no leads--nothing to work on."

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