Pressure from Washington

If New Orleans had been left alone, token racial integration ordered for two of the city's elementary schools would have proceeded last year with a minimum of disorder. But in Baton Rouge, cowboy-songster Governor Jimmie H. Davis cranked the Louisiana legislature into paroxysms of racist sentiment, and it spewed out masses of bills aimed at grabbing control of the city's whole school system and cutting off pay to teachers at the integrated schools. The Federal District Court fought back with armloads of restraining orders, finally enjoined some 700 state officials, including the Governor and the entire legislature. But nothing really fazed the Davis crew until New Attorney General Robert Kennedy served notice that Washington was ready to trundle up all available weapons, political as well as legal, to see that the courts were obeyed.

On Bobby Kennedy's call, Louisiana Attorney General Jack P. F. Gremillion flew to Washington last week to talk things over face to face. Meantime. Bobby was on the phone to other state and legislative leaders in Louisiana. Working through Louisiana politicians he knows from the presidential campaign, he got an informal agreement that the Davis administration would back off its resistance, beginning with a bill to restore the New Orleans teachers' pay.

Davis had played with the racists too long to move suddenly without them, and the effort to get a bill foundered in the closing hours of the special session. Cried Extremist Wellborn Jack, of Shreveport: "They're not gonna put you in contempt. They're not gonna have the guts to do it." But Jimmie Davis knew something about Bobby Kennedy's guts. At week's end, with the legislature on its way home, he found some extra money in a special fund and earmarked it to pay the New Orleans teachers.

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