Getting Together in Yazoo

SQUATTING tiredly on the banks of the river from which it takes its name, Yazoo City is an arche typical Mississippi community. Dependent on the cotton crop, it is, like the rest of the state, a land of hill and Delta where traditions are respected and segregation is not just an institution but a way of life. In one important way, however, Yazoo City differs greatly from other communities in this bastion of the Old Confederacy: it has not only accept ed the inevitable and desegregated its schools, but has actually gone out of its way to make integration work. "If it will work anywhere, it will work here," says Norman A. Mott Jr., the third in his family line to edit the weekly Yazoo City Her ald. "Lord knows we've tried hard."

Convinced that a strong public school system is just as important to their children as it is to blacks, local white leaders began more than a month ago to prepare their city for the shock of final desegregation. A loosely knit committee of prominent whites met with the city's whites, urging them to support the public schools rather than abandon them. School administrators worked through the Christmas holiday to shift classrooms and equipment, and persuaded all of the system's 186 teachers to stay on the job. Even stu dents joined in the effort to pre serve their schools. The Yazoo City high school newspaper, the Yazooan, called upon students to remain in school. sb Yazoo City's efforts have so far proved successful. As teach ers stood guard inside the doors and police cars passed by reg ularly to guard against violence, the city's six schools reopened last week without incident.

While a few adult whites gath ered to watch in tight-lipped silence, black children marched into once nearly all-white schools. Within an hour, Yazoo City's schools, though not their classrooms, were integrated. However, school officials, who had reas signed entire classes rather than in dividual students, promised to rectify this situation promptly. Total registration came to 3,150, only 650 less than the 3,800 students who were attending school when classes recessed for the Christmas holidays.

No less than three-quarters of the sys tem's 1,900 white students showed up for classes.

Most white students were cautious but resigned. "We have to put up with it," said Tommy Miller, a white ninth-grader at the formerly all-black N. D. Taylor High School. Nor were all the blacks enthusiastic about the change. "I would still rather be at Taylor," said Wallace Kohn, a black senior at the city high school. "I had my privileges there." But both blacks and whites seemed determined to make the best of the situation. "There were too many colored kids," said Ninth-Grader Denise Richards after her first day at Taylor. "I'm going to try it, though." So were most of her fellow students. "I'm not going to school for race," said Mary Rucker, a black junior. "I'm going to get an education."

For Yazoo City youngsters, that education will inevitably be social as well as academic. Black and white youngsters at the Bettie E. Wool folk Elementary School were seen sliding together on a patch of playground ice. Black high school students casually joined their new classmates to integrate the Town and Country Kitchen, a previously all-white teenage hangout a block from the school. sb

Even more encouraging is the attitude of the community's white parents. While many simply cannot afford to send their children to the area's three all-white segregation academies, an equally large number are convinced that, given time, white and blacks can coexist. "Those of us who are here have got to learn to live together in this situation," explains Don McGraw, personnel director of the Mississippi Chemical Corp. "It is upon us." Like McGraw, a majority of Yazoo City whites are willing to keep their children in the public schools unless the ratio of blacks to whites gets too high, something that is not likely to happen if the parents themselves refuse, as they have commendably done so far, to panic.

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