THE SOUTH: A Word for Principle

While the South still rumbled volcanically at points where desegregation stresses ran deepest (see EDUCATION), the federal courts were moving toward the goal of integration with judicial impersonality, just as the Supreme Court knew they would. In ruling on a test suit filed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, three judges (all Louisianians) in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans last week held that Louisiana’s segregation laws are unconstitutional; they further held that the schools of the city of New Orleans must be desegregated “with all deliberate speed.”

In rendering the decisions, Judge J. Skelly Wright added a profound contribution to the great debate. Said he: “The problem of changing a people’s mores, particularly those with an emotional overlay, is not to be taken lightly. It is a problem which will require the utmost patience, understanding, generosity and forbearance, and from all of us, of whatever race. But the magnitude of the problem may not nullify the principle. And that principle is that we are, all of us, freeborn Americans, with a right to make our way unfettered by sanctions imposed by man because of the work of God.”