TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=93HT0286> <link 93XP0452> <link 93XP0185> <link 93HT1309> <link 93HT0329> <link 89TT2051> <title> 1950s: Civil Rights </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1950s Highlights </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> Civil Rights: 1950s </hdr> <body> [At the start of the decade, racial segregation was a fact of life in most of the U.S.; even in the North, where blacks had swarmed in record numbers to escape the degradations of Southern rural life and seek greater opportunity, de facto segregation was the rule. In 1948, President Truman had ordered the armed forces integrated, and by 1950 nearly all units had done so without incident. Pressures for change on the home front began to build. The focal point for that change: the nation's public schools. The forum: the United States Supreme Court.] (December 22, 1952) For more than a year, the big & little guns of the South have been lobbing ominous shells in the direction of the U.S. Supreme Court. Said Georgia's Governor Herman Talmadge: "As long as I am governor, Negroes will not be admitted to white schools." Popped Grand Dragon Bill Hendrix of the Ku Klux Klan: if segregation is abolished, "the American Confederate Army" will march in armed rebellion. Cried South Carolina's Governor Jimmy Byrnes: "South Carolina will not, now nor for some years to come, mix white and colored children in our schools. If the court changes what is now the law of the land so that we cannot maintain segregation...we will abandon the public school system. To do that would be choosing the lesser of two great evils. Last week, far from shell-shocked, but obviously aware that it was dealing with high explosives, the Supreme Court settled back to listen to three days of argument on the U.S.'s sharpest social issue: segregation of Negroes and whites in public schools. Segregation is mandatory under the laws of 17 states, and is legal, if local districts want it, in four others. Before the court were cases from four states (South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and Kansas) and the District of Columbia. The cases varied in detail, but they added up to a carefully coordinated effort by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other Negro groups to force the court into a far-reaching decision. The court chamber was packed for the hearings, and the waiting line (unsegregated) stretched out the doors through the long marble corridor and down the front steps. The main objective of the N.A.A.C.P.'s lawyers was to carry the court beyond the "separate but equal" ruling laid down in the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896: i.e., segregated facilities are constitutional so long as Negro facilities are equal to those for whites. (May 24, 1954) It was 12:52 p.m., May 17, 1954. At the long mahogany bench sat the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme court. From the red velour hangings behind the bench to the great doors at the back of the room, every seat was filled. Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the U.S., picked up a printed document from his desk and began to read in a firm clear voice. When Warren finished reading at 1:20 the ruling was crystal clear; the U.S. Supreme court held that racial segregation in the public schools violates the Constitution. The decision was unanimous. In its 164 years the court had erected many a landmark of U.S. history. None of them, except the Dred Scott Case (reversed by the Civil War) was more important than the school segregation issue. None of them directly and intimately affected so many American families. The lives and values of some 12 million schoolchildren in 21 states will be altered, and with them eventually the whole social pattern of the South. The international effect may be scarcely less important. In many countries, where U.S. prestige and leadership have been damaged by the fact of U.S. segregation, it will come as a timely reassertion of the basic American principle that "all men are created equal." In his first important opinions since he became Chief Justice last October, Earl Warren was clear and concise. The court was not surprised that the history of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution "(Nor shall any state deny to any person the equal protection of the laws...") did not clearly show an intention to prohibit segregation in the schools. In 1868, there was little public education for white children, and less for Negroes. To decide the present case, the court had to consider "public education in the light of its full development." For many years the South, aware that it might be brought under Supreme Court scrutiny, has justified its segregation policy as giving "equal but separate" facilities to white and Negro children. This phrase was used by the court in an 1896 case involving Jim Crow transport. This week's opinion flatly rejected "equal but separate" as a guiding principle in education. Even if physical facilities are equal, said the court, there are intangible factors which prevent "separate" from being "equal." "To Separate [Negro children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone...We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of `separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Because of the complex problems involved, the Supreme Court deferred decision on the method of implementing the new policy. It asked all sides to present arguments next fall on 1) when schools should be ordered to abolish segregation and 2) who (a special master or the district courts) should set and enforce the terms under which it will be abolished. For a scholarly New York Negro lawyer named Thurgood Marshall, the court's decision was the victory of a lifetime. Marshall, a graduate of Jim Crow schools, handled the state cases for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Said he: "The most gratifying thing, in addition to the fact it was in favor of our side, is the unanimous decision and the language used. Once and for all, it's decided, completely decided." [Many states, especially in the South, elected to ignore, defy or circumvent the ruling. A year later, the court reinforced the decision, but acknowledged the difficulties of the transition by setting no timetable for desegregation, calling merely for "all deliberate speed." Blacks would have to work patiently through the courts to bring local and state laws into line with the Constitution. In many places, integration proceeded smoothly, if in a trickle. But there was backlash. One of the worst instances was at the University of Alabama.] (February 20, 1956) Of all the Southern universities that have been forced to open their doors to Negroes, none have reacted so violently--or surrendered so abjectly to mob pressure--as Alabama. All week a storm of hatred swirled around the lone figure of Autherine Juanita Lucy, 26, the first Negro ever admitted to a white public school or university in the state. This, says Autherine, "is a day I'll never want to live through again." She arrived at Smith Hall in a black Cadillac driven by Henry Nathaniel Guinn, Negro owner of a Birmingham finance company. A crowd of 300 had already gathered around the hall, suddenly began to chant "Hey, hey, ho, ho. Autherine must go." At the end of class Dean of Women Sarah L. Healy and Carmichael's assistant, Jefferson Bennett, led Autherine out a back door to a waiting car. The mob spotted them, began throwing eggs and stones as the car sped off to Bibb Graves Hall to Autherine's next class (children's literature). Autherine had to use a back door once again, but the crowd kept pelting the car with rocks, shouting at Bennett, "Kill him! Kill him!" Says Autherine: "After that class I was not permitted to leave the building, for my own safety. I could still hear the crowd outside...Sometime later I was escorted back to Birmingham by the state police." During these demonstrations the board of trustees met, later sent Autherine a telegram notifying her: FOR YOUR SAFETY AND THE SAFETY OF THE STUDENTS AND FACULTY MEMBERS OF THE UNIVERSITY, YOU ARE HEREBY SUSPENDED FROM CLASSES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. [The struggle for blacks' rights took place on many fronts. One fight, against segregated public transport, began in Alabama, and created a new national hero: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.] (January 16, 1956) On December 1, 1955, Mrs. Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old Negro seamstress, was ordered by a Montgomery City Lines bus driver to get up and make way for some white passengers. She refused, was arrested and fined $10 under an Alabama law making it a misdemeanor for any person to disobey a bus driver's seating instructions. But that was not the last of the Rosa Parks case; it has since been used to prove that economic reprisal, as advocated against Negroes by the white Citizens Councils of the South, is a double-edged blade. Within 48 hours after Rosa Parks had been arrested, mimeographed leaflets were being circulated in Montgomery's Negro sections, calling for a one-day boycott of the city buses. The strike was so successful that Negro leaders decided to continue it until their demands were met. The demands: that Negroes be seated on a first-come, first-served basis without having to vacate their places for white passengers; that white bus drivers show more courtesy toward Negro passengers; that Negro drivers be employed on buses traveling mostly through Negro districts. The bus company agreed only to instruct its drivers to treat Negroes more politely. The boycott continued, and last week, as it entered its second month, was still 95% effective. The boycott's economic punch has been staggering, because the 25,000 Negroes who ordinarily ride Montgomery's buses make up some 75% of the company's patronage. Company officials refuse to reveal the size of their losses, because "that's exactly what they want to know." Last week the city commission granted the desperate company's request for a fare increase; adult prices went up from 10 cents to 15 cents, school fares from 5 cents to 8 cents, and transfers, which had been free, were priced at 5 cents. The strike spirit showed no signs of flagging. A Negro minister, working for the car pool, stopped to pick up an old woman who had obviously walked a long way. "Sister," said he, "aren't you getting tired?" Her reply: "My soul has been tired for a long time. Now my feet are tired, and my soul is resting." (April 2, 1956) For 100 years Negroes walked soft and spoke low around Alabama's Montgomery County courthouse. Then, for four days last week, the tramp of Negro feet sounded heavy in the dingy downstairs corridors, on the creaking steps and in the second-floor hallway (with its sign reading, "Gentlemen will not and others must not spit on the floor"). In the drab courtroom, decorated by an American Flag and five advertising calendars, Negro voices were raised in pain and anger. And outside the old courthouse, shabby for all its pretensions of Greek revival elegance, a Negro crowd roared hope. On trial in Montgomery was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., 27, pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and leader of the Negro boycott against the Montgomery bus company. King was the first of 90 defendants (including 24 ministers) to be tried under the Alabama law (enacted in 1921 as an antilabor measure) making it a misdemeanor to conspire "without a just cause or legal excuse" to hinder any company in its conduct of business. The persecution concentrated on proving that the Montgomery Improvement Association, with Pastor King as president, was organized last Dec. 5, the day the bus boycott began, for the specific purpose of supporting the boycott and forcing Negro demands on the bus company. The defense aim was to prove, within the meaning of the stature, that the Negro protest against Jim Crow practices on the buses was just. As a witness, Defendant King argued that the boycott began spontaneously, that he had not instigated it but had become its spokesman after it had already developed. It did not take Judge Carter long to hand down his verdict (King had waived a jury trial: King was found guilty, fined $500, assessed $500 in court costs, and released on bond pending appeal. (November 26, 1956) To the 50,000 Negroes of Montgomery, Ala., the week dawned (as one of them put it) "darker than a thousand midnights." For more than eleven months, in a mass movement combining Christian fervor with Ghandi-like passive resistance, they had mounted and sustained in the "Cradle of the Confederacy" an almost total boycott of the city's segregated buses. Led by a handful of well-educated and young Negro leaders--notably by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 27, pastor of a local Baptist church--they had efficiently put together and operated a car pool of some 200 vehicles to ferry themselves to and from work. Now the leaders and lawyers sat glumly in the Montgomery County courthouse waiting for the state circuit court to outlaw the Negro car pool on the charge--made by the city commission--that it was actually a business enterprise operating without a franchise. In the middle of the proceedings they saw an A.P. reporter hand a piece of paper to their white opponents, who promptly hustled outside. Minutes later the news was out: the Supreme Court, ruling on the Montgomery case, had unanimously upheld a district court's ruling that the "separate but equal" doctrine was now as legally dead for segregated public transportation as it had already been declared dead of public schools and public recreational facilities. The effect of the decision: to invalidate Alabama's intrastate Jim Crow bus laws and to set the grounds for invalidating similar laws in eleven other Southern states. [By 1957, black and white children in many areas were being educated together. But in Arkansas, a publicity-hungry governor ordered the state's National Guard to disrupt a carefully planned schedule for the integration of schools in the state capital, Little Rock.] (September 16, 1957) Fewer than 100 people (not counting reporters, pupils and militiamen) were outside Central High when the test came. Most of the Negro children came in a group, accompanied by adults, and left quietly when told by a National Guardsman that "Governor Faubus has placed this school off limits to Negroes." But little Elizabeth Eckford, 15, stepped alone from a bus at the corner of 14th and Park Streets. In a neat cotton dress, bobbysox and ballet slippers, she walked straight to the National Guard line on the sidewalk. The Guardsmen raised their rifles, keeping her out. Elizabeth, clutching tight at her notebook, began a long, slow walk down the two blocks fronting the school. She turned once to try the line again--and again the rifles came up. A militia major shielded her from the crowds, escorted her to a bus-stop bench, left her. "Go home, you burr head," reaped an adult voice. Elizabeth sat dazed as the crowd moved in. Then Mrs. Grace Lorch, wife of Little Rock schoolteacher, sat down on the bench and slipped her arm around the child's shoulders. "This is just a little girl," she cried at the crowd. "Next week you'll all be ashamed of yourselves." After 35 minutes a bus finally pulled up. Mrs. Lorch took Elizabeth's arm and shoved through the crowd. "I'm just waiting for one of you to touch me," said she. "I'm just aching to punch somebody in the nose." The crowd gave way before the white- haired woman and the little girl--and that was about as close as Little Rock came all week to Orval Faubus' manufactured "violence." [After a national furor, and a meeting between Faubus and President Eisenhower, a federal judge ordered the governor to remove the troops from around the schools. When the violence Faubus had predicted, and incited, finally occurred, the President moved quickly to restore order and enforce federal law.] (October 7, 1957) Monday morning in Little Rock came bright and crisp. At 6 a.m., on the day that Judge Davies had ordered integration to begin at Central High School, about 70 cops stood about swinging billy clubs behind sawhorse barricades. Assistant Police Chief Eugene Smith, in charge of the high school, watched the crowd sharply, began to feel a sense of purpose and organization, noted that "half the trouble-makers were from out of town." The Central High School class bell rang at 8:45--and at almost that instant a shriek went up: "Here come the niggers!" Four Negro newsmen had foolishly approached the crowd from the rear. It was the tinder's spark. Some 20 rednecks turned on the Negroes, began chasing them back down the block. Other whites streamed behind. A one-armed man, his dimpled stump below his shirtsleeve, swung wildly at one Negro. Another Negro (a onetime U.S. marine) decided not to run, ambled with terrifying dignity through a gauntlet of blows, kicks and curses. A cop stood on a car bumper to get a better view. Other cops moved toward the fighting. The Negro children had already entered Central High School. While the mob's attention was distracted by the Negro newsmen, the nine students stepped from cars and walked slowly, calmly into the school. But the mob had nonetheless won the first day's battle of Central High School: it had discovered that it could act violently without suffering at the hands of the cops. From that moment on, the result was inevitable. The mob grew from 300 to 500 to 900; it had tasted blood and liked it. To Dwight Eisenhower, the issue was not integration v. segregation; it was the integrity of the U.S. Government and its judicial decision, Orval Faubus had left him no choice. President Eisenhower signed the proclamation commanding all persons obstructing justice in Little Rock "to cease and desist and to disperse forthwith." Only one hope remained for avoiding the use of U.S. troops in Little Rock: obedience next morning to the proclamation. The President, walking to his office just before 8 a.m., noticed that "there's a cold wind blowing up." There was indeed: the reports from Brownell began flooding in. The mob had not dispersed. Shoving and shouting outside Central High School, it refrained from violence only because the Negro children did not appear. A telegram came from Little Rock's Mayor Mann: the situation was beyond the control of local authorities. Then President Eisenhower signed the order that sent the Screaming Eagles to Little Rock. By 5 a.m. Wednesday, combat-ready paratroopers lined the two blocks of Park Avenue in front of the school, stood with fixed bayonets on corners a block away in each direction. A crowd began gathering a block east of the school, where "Roadblock Alpha" had been thrown up at an intersection. Major James Meyers, a thin, hard man with the glint of a hawk in his eyes, ordered up a sound truck. "Please return to your homes," said he, "or it will be necessary for us to disperse you." Nobody moved, "Nigger lover," shouted a man. A voice came from the shadows: "Russian!" A man in a brown suit was full of bravado: "They're just bluffing. If you don't want to move, you don't have to." Meyers snapped out an order: a dozen paratroopers moved into line, rifles at the on-guard position (butts on hip, bayonets forward). Brown Suit held his ground for a moment against the advancing soldiers, then scurried away with the rest of the crowd. A few minutes later a crisp, careful military movement put the nine Negro children safely into Central High School. A jeep rolled through the barricade at 16th Street and Park Avenue, followed by an Army station wagon and another jeep. The Negroes piled out of the station wagon. Three platoons came on the double across the school grounds, deployed in strategic positions. Another platoon lined up on either side of the Negroes, escorted them inside the building. There was dead silence around Central High School. The cold toughness of the Screaming Eagles abruptly put an end to violence at Roadblock Alpha--or anywhere else around Central High. The Negro children reported that they were well treated inside the school. (Arkansas N.A.A.C.P. Leader Daisy Bates had carefully coached her charges to be prepared for insults, to be dignified when vilified, and above all to reveal no bitterness when questioned by newsmen.) During the noon hour a white boy and girl, both school leaders, saw a Negro boy eating alone. They asked: "Would you like to come over to our table?" The boy smiled gratefully, "Gosh, I'd love to." And another Negro pupil called: "The white kids broke the ice. They talked to us." Clearly, many of the white children of Central High School were proving themselves better citizens than their elders. [Faubus had succeeded in delaying integration in Little Rock, and a year later, the Supreme Court addressed the Arkansas impasse.] (October 13, 1958) In the most closely reasoned, carefully pinpointed opinion of the whole desegregation struggle, the Supreme Court last week struck at the massive Southern attempts to avoid compliance with its 1954 integration order. Specifically, the court aimed its opinion at Arkansas' Governor Orval Faubus--but its effect would be felt in Virginia and in any other Southern state that had placed hopes for resistance in hedgerows of state laws. The opinion was an extension of the terse Supreme Court ruling of last month which turned down the plea of the Little Rock school board for a delay of 2 1/2 years in resuming its gradual integration program. Reviewing the Arkansas record, the court found that integration violence in Little Rock was "directly traceable to the actions of legislators and executive officials of the State of Arkansas...which reflect their own determination to resist this court's [desegregation] decision." [Virginia, traditional leader of the South, was among the states that took a different strategy for defying integration: massive resistance laws.] (September 29, 1958) Calmly and deliberately, Virginia's Governor J. Lindsay Almond Jr. issued orders to close two public schools in Charlottesville, thus bringing to three the total shut down to avoid compliance with the decision of the Supreme Court of the U.S. But gradually, in the areas where the schools were closed, and among the thoughtful people in the South generally, the full implications of the school closing began to soak in. Seen close up, the school closings turned out to be more than a defiance of integration, more than a legal stratagem. They turned out, in action, to be the Governor of a state seizing autocratic, political control of highly prized, independent local school systems. They turned out to be a real and forbidding threat in the competent education of youngsters in a sharply competitive national society. In short, they turned out to be the destruction of political and social monuments just as precious as the preservation of segregation. [This effort too was struck down by the courts, and Governor Almond bowed to the inevitable rather than futilely initiate new laws. At decade's end, the drive for civil rights, building on the Federal courts' decisions, was beginning to build momentum for the climactic efforts of the 1960s.] </body> </article> </text>