A Senseless Killing

School integration had gone remarkably smoothly in the steamy cotton town of Drew in the Mississippi Delta. A majority of white parents, to be sure, had taken their children out of Drew High School. But those who remained got along well with their black classmates; there was not a single racial incident during the entire school year. Last week, graduation exercises brought a year of tranquillity to a fitting close. Garbed in caps and gowns, white and blacks mingled freely under the gaze of proud parents.

That night, as if in bitter mockery of the day's festivities, racial peace was shattered in Drew. One of the graduating seniors, a comely 18-year-old black girl named Jo-Etha Collier, was walking down a street crowded with other youngsters celebrating the end of the school year. A green Ford passed by, then people on the street heard the report of a gun, and Jo-Etha slumped to the ground. She had been shot below the ear and was bleeding heavily; she died before reaching the hospital.

Jo-Etha was a most unlikely target for a killer's bullet. Popular with her classmates, she had starred on the girls' basketball and track teams and had received a specially created award for her school spirit. She had been planning to attend nearby Mississippi Valley State College in the fall. "It was a senseless act of violence," said Drew Mayor W.O. Williford. "It's just unexplainable."

It seemed all the more puzzling because the killers' car was easily recognized by witnesses. One of the three white men in it was a local farm hand. When the police picked them up four hours later in a town only 18 miles away, they still had loaded weapons with them, including a .22-cal. pistol with one round expended.

Mississippi blacks, on the other hand, had no trouble finding an explanation for the murder. A voter-registration drive aided by young whites from the North had recently started, and local resentments were aroused. Said state N.A.A.C.P. President Aaron Henry: "Apparently they were out to kill a black, any black." In the wake of the killing, angry crowds of Negroes roamed the town, occasionally hurling stones at windows and passing cars. Heavily armed, nervous police patrolled the streets and imposed a one-night curfew.

Calling the shooting a "deplorable and appalling act," President Nixon ordered the FBI to investigate and determine whether a federal offense had been committed. "It's a moral outrage," said Hodding Carter III, editor of the Delta Democrat-Times, "but also a chance to prove it is an aberration and not part of an unending string of events." Amid the bright promise of the new South, the murder was a tragic reminder of the old.

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