March on Gwynn Oak Park

Meeting in New York City last month, the general board of the National Council of Churches entered into soul-searching discussion of the role its members should play in the nation's civil rights struggle. Were pulpit pronouncements enough? Could the Christian conscience be satisfied by mere pious expressions of sympathy for the Negro? One who thought not was the Rev. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, executive head of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.'s general assembly, former president of the National Council and one of the U.S.'s most respected clergymen (TIME cover, May 26, 1961). Turning to a fellow board member, Blake said quietly: "Some time or other we are all going to have to stand and be on the receiving end of a fire hose."

Last week Blake, an old Princeton football guard and a man of enormous energy and determination, put his convictions to the test--and although it did not bring streams from a fire hose, it did lead to a Maryland police station.

The Choice. Blake was one of 283 whites and Negroes, including 26 Protestant, Catholic and Jewish clergymen, arrested in an integration march on the gaudy Gwynn Oak Amusement Park outside Baltimore, which has long barred Negroes from its 64 acres. Arrested with him were Bishop Daniel Corrigan, director of the home department of the national council of the Protestant Episcopal Church; the Rev. Dr.

William Sloane Coffin Jr., chaplain of Yale University; Rabbi Morris Lieberman of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation; and Msgr. Austin J. Healy, who marched as an official representative of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality, the march against Gwynn Oak was carefully planned. The demonstrators, most of them white, first gathered in Baltimore's Metropolitan Methodist Church, prayed and sang hymns until an appointed hour, then broke up into several groups and headed for the park.

The first group to arrive included Blake and nine other clergymen. Awaiting them at the park were Baltimore County Police Chief Robert J. Lally and a large contingent of cops. The demonstrators had previously warned the police of their intention to march on Gwynn Oak; the police, in turn, had warned the demonstrators that they would be arrested under Maryland's trespass law.

Ugly Shouts. Moments after Blake and his group entered the grounds, a park owner stopped them, read the trespass law aloud. The marchers remained silent--but they did not leave the premises. Said Chief Lally: "You can leave or you can be arrested." Still the group was silent. Police moved in, placed them under arrest, led them politely to a waiting patrol wagon.

So far the proceedings had been almost stately. But then the situation began to get ugly. Wave after wave of demonstrators moved toward the Gwynn Oak entrance. Police arrested most of them peaceably and drove them to district stations in waiting school buses. But some demonstrators sat down on the ground and refused to budge; they were hauled off bodily. The white crowd of some 1,000 inside the park turned mean, and there were shouts of "Dump 'em in the bay," "Black nigger, white nigger," "Castrate 'em" and "Send 'em to the zoo." But the police, in firm control, prevented actual violence.

"I Must Do Something." Several of the clergymen were immediately freed on $103 bond; seven chose to spend a night in jail, but at week's end all had been released. Along with the other demonstrators, the clergymen plan to fight the charges, demand jury trial. Explained Bishop Corrigan of the Negroes who demonstrated: "These are my fellow citizens. Being able to go into the park is important to them; therefore it's important to me. The time has come when it's not enough just to say this. I must also do something." In other cities across the country last week, the civil rights struggle spread on. Items: sb CHICAGO. Seven Roman Catholic nuns joined a chanting, hymn-singing group of Catholic students as they picketed the Illinois Club for Catholic Women in protest against alleged discrimination there. The nuns carried placards that read CATHOLICS DO NOT DISCRIMINATE and THE CHURCH IS FOR ALL MEN.

sb ENGLEWOOD, NJ. The state commissioner of education ordered Englewood's Lincoln School to adopt a plan for ending de facto segregation before September, thereby signaling an end to a nine-year-old dispute. In 1954 the city school board redrew school boundaries in a way that concentrated Negro students in the Lincoln district. Negroes have fought the move since.

sb NEW YORK. Demonstrators demanding that the Long Island state park commission hire more Negroes and Puerto Ricans squatted in a roadway leading to Jones Beach on Long Island. Two groups managed to halt traffic for a few minutes at three different times, but cops hauled them bodily off the roadway before they could create a real New York-sized traffic jam.

sb CHARLESTON, S.C. Police arrested 123 Negro demonstrators as they marched through downtown Charleston. The Negroes had paraded every day for a week without incident. But this time, police said, they had blocked traffic and refused to obey orders to move on. Later 17 sit-in demonstrators were arrested and charged with trespass.

sb NEWARK, NJ. Protesting discrimination against Negroes and Puerto Ricans on construction jobs, more than 50 pickets blocked the way of 35 construction men as they arrived for work at the site of a new high school. The construction workers charged. For ten minutes they battled the pickets, some of whom were white, before cops broke it up with billy clubs. No one was seriously injured. Two of the pickets were arrested.

sb GADSDEN, ALA. Negro leaders agreed to suspend the mass demonstrations that kept Gadsden on edge for more than three weeks after city buses were desegregated, and white civic leaders agreed to negotiate other integration demands.

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