The Talk Is Race

"What do they want?" demanded a perplexed Michigan housewife. "Why don't they stop?"

In the wake of last month's Harlem and Rochester violence, there was a wide new wave of concern across the country about race relations. National shock and disgust had erupted after Birmingham, but now a different and sometimes bewildered sense of trouble crept through the public consciousness. Perhaps because many minds had long equated the South with racial violence, there was something terrifying about the discovery that it could happen on a large scale in the North.

Beyond the Point. In San Francisco, the local CBS station was flooded with 7,000 more phone calls than it could handle. They came from listeners who wanted to join a discussion program on civil rights questions. In Columbus, sheriff's deputies practiced mob control by hurling featherweight plastic "bricks" at one another. In Chicago, housewives suddenly cut out their weekday visits to Lincoln Park Zoo and instead began going in groups to Lake Michigan's beaches because they feared attacks by marauding Negroes.

"You hear people talking about it all up and down the bar," said Minneapolis Restaurant Night Manager Paul Gian-cola. "Every time there is an uprising, they say, There are more votes for Goldwater.' " In Washington, IBM Salesman Jack Quinn explained: "The demonstrations started out to prove a point, and they've gone beyond that point. They've gone into areas they shouldn't be in." In St. Louis, Father James Marshall, a young white assistant pastor of St. Bridget's Catholic Church, wrote in a straightforward letter to the Globe-Democrat: "The hatred gushing forth on our city streets is not happening by mere chance. We are now paying the big price for years of planned segregation."

Predictably, Southerners were bitterly pleased that the North was at last getting a taste of racial woe. Addressing a political rally just before he walked off with the Democratic gubernatorial nomination for a sixth term. Arkansas' Governor Orval Faubus held up newspaper stories about the Harlem and Rochester riots and crowed: "This is New York City and New York State, and this is the state where people point their finger at Arkansas and Mississippi and send beatniks down here to try to tell us how to solve our problems!" And in the kind of paradox that has become commonplace in times of stress, a stunning Negro coed from Idaho, Dorothy Johnson, 19, became a finalist in Miami Beach's "Miss U.S.A." contest.

"An Eye for an Eye," Atlanta's Martin Luther King Jr. flew into New York to lend his counsel in easing the city's racial trouble. Before long, local Negro leaders were complaining publicly that King had ignored them and. anyway, that he was not speaking for them. Nonetheless, King and Mayor Robert Wagner met five times in four days. Not much of substance came out of the meetings. But King's trip was not entirely fruitless: while in town he joined other national civil rights generals in a summit conference. At the end, N.A.A.C.P. Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins released a statement calling on Negroes "voluntarily to observe a broad curtailment, if not total moratorium, of all mass marches, mass picketing and mass demonstrations until after Election Day, next Nov. 3." The reason was plain enough: the leaders figured that by calling a halt to Negro militancy, they might stop the growth of the white backlash vote for Barry Goldwater in November. The Negroes' energy, they said, should be aimed at getting voters to register. Lyndon Johnson lost no time joining their cause, backed a policy of "registration in lieu of demonstration."

But within hours, several of the more aggressive civil rights leaders--including James Farmer of CORE--declared their unwillingness to go along with any curtailment or moratorium on demonstrations. And, representing the worst kind of element, Black Nationalist Leader Malcolm X had his say all the way from Cairo, where he showed up as a self-appointed delegate to a Pan-African conference. Negroes, he counseled, should demand "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life." Dealing with the aggressiveness of some Negro youths and the ambitions of some Negro spokesmen, the responsible Negro leaders face serious problems in trying to maintain peace.

-From left: Washington March Leader Bayard Rustin, N.A.A.C.P. Attorney Jack Greenberg, National Urban League Executive Director Whitney M. Young Jr., CORE Director James Farmer, N.A.A.C.P. Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins, King, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Chairman John Lewis, Negro American Labor Council Chief A. Philip Randolph, Student Leader Courtney Cox.

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