Contributing to Delinquency

In many a U.S. community, stocky Curtis Bryant, 44, would be considered a model citizen. A crane operator for the Illinois Central Railroad, he is head of his union local, a Baptist Sunday school teacher and deacon, a Boy Scout committee chairman. But he is also president of his county's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People--and that, in McComb, Miss, (pop. 12,020), can apparently be enough to put a man behind bars.

By standards elsewhere, Bryant is far from a militant Negro leader. His 178 N.A.A.C.P. chapter members have dutifully passed the hat to help the national organization, protested unsuccessfully against a few race killings, held a quiet voting drive that only got 250 of Pike County's 15,400 Negroes to register. Says Bryant: "We haven't gone into any radical area."

Thus Bryant did not encourage five young Negroes when they decided to sit at McComb's Greyhound and Woolworth lunch counters in August. All were arrested, and one, Brenda Travis, 16, was treated as an adult and sentenced to eight months in jail, where she spent a month.

After her release, Brenda applied for readmission to her tenth-grade class at Burgland High School and was turned away by Principal Commodore Dewey Higgins. Angered, 120 of her schoolmates walked out, assembled at a Negro Masonic hall, and were advised by organizers of the Nashville-based Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (who had come to McComb to spur Negro voting) to march upon city hall. The students filed two abreast to the city hall steps, began to pray--and were all arrested. A white S.N.C.C. leader among them, Robert Zellner, 22, of Atlanta, was beaten and kicked in the face by white toughs, who were not arrested. Chief of Police George Guy explained: "I didn't see who they were."

To the railroad yards next morning came two McComb policemen to arrest Curtis Bryant. Although he had neither planned nor been present at the students' march, he was thrown into jail on a charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor--Brenda Travis, who was sent to reform school for an indefinite term by Judge Hansford Simmons.

Last week FBI agents were checking into Pike County's brand of justice, Brenda's classmates were required to sign no-demonstration pledges to get back in school, and two white out-of-state sympathizers were pulled from their car and beaten on McComb's Summit Street. With surprising candor, two of the county's top lawmen gave the real reason why N.A.A.C.P. Leader Bryant was jailed. "Bryant puts himself in the class of the white people," said Sheriff Clyde Simmons. Said Police Chief Guy: "We're trying to rook him in on the damn thing somewhere."

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