Nation: More Strife & More Strides

U.S. Negroes last week could count some substantial forward steps in their civil rights struggle. In an executive order, Kentucky Governor Bert T. Combs forbade race discrimination in all business establishments licensed by the state, such as taverns, restaurants, nursing homes and real estate offices. Then the Governor directed state licensing agencies to report within 60 days how they intend to enforce the order, suggested that the licenses of violators be suspended or revoked. Combs also warned that school districts that operate under state accreditation stand to lose both federal and state aid funds if they refuse to integrate.

In Washington, the Pentagon announced that after 15 years of efforts, discrimination finally has been eliminated from the Armed Forces reserves. A drive to eliminatediscrimination from National Guard outfits by “persuasion” has led to integration of nearly all such state units as well—except in ten Southern states where Guard units are still exclusively white. And in New York, Governor Nelson Rockefeller said he would speed up work on $4 billion worth of state construction projects to create more jobs, especially for Negroes. The state Building and Construction Trades Council promised it would eliminate “any existing discrimination” in New York building-trades unions.

A city-by-city rundown of other events in the Negro revolution:

BOSTON. More than 3,000 chanting Negroes and whites gathered on Boston Common to hear Negro speakers eulogize murdered Integration Leader Medgar Evers. Democratic Governor Endicott Peabody, who decreed “Medgar Evers Memorial Day,” gave state employees two hours off to attend the rally.

CANTON, MISS. A shotgun blast struck five Negroes as they left a voter-registration meeting. None were seriously hurt. A white service station attendant was charged with the shooting.

MINNEAPOLIS. Homemade bombs shattered windows at the homes of two white cops. One was a patrolman suspended for 30 days for slugging a Negro with a blackjack. The other was his precinct captain, suspended later for allowing fellow cops to take up a collection to help the patrolman. Negro ministers responded with their own special church collections—to help repair the damage to the two houses.

RALEIGH, N. C. Negro leaders turned down Governor Terry Sanford’s plea that they halt demonstrations to prevent violence, retorted in a statement that “we seek nothing less than complete acceptance of Negroes, as full, first-class citizens of North Carolina.”

DETROIT. Waving flags and singing hymns, more than 125,000 Negroes and whites paraded through downtown streets in an orderly “Walk to Freedom” protest against discrimination.

PHILADELPHIA. About 1,000 Negroes and whites paraded around city hall for four hours to protest discrimination by unions and contractors on public projects. Then 19 demonstrators began a sit-in hunger strike in city offices.

DENVER. Nearly 3,000 Negroes paraded 35 blocks to a city council meeting, where they protested against discrimination in public and private employment and in housing.

SAVANNAH, GA. After massive demonstrations, hundreds of arrests and pitched battles between Negroes and cops, whites and Negroes began negotiating quietly over demands for desegregation of restaurants, hotels and motels. State troopers, brought in to help curb protests, were shipped out. Bishop Thomas J. McDonough of Savannah announced that all Roman Catholic schools in the diocese will be inte grated next fall.

ATLANTA. Some 50 more Atlanta restaurants agreed to desegregate for a trial period of one week to 30 days.

HOLLYWOOD. Negro leaders threatened demonstrations at movie studios and theaters to protest the film treatment of Negroes as “caricatures” or “invisible men.” Among the complaints: that not one Negro was seen in the movie The Longest Day, a cast-of-thousands recounting of the World War II Normandy invasion. Later, the Department of the Army reported that some 500 Negroes were at Omaha Beach on D-day and another 1,200 were at Utah Beach, but that none fought with the invasion’s infantry combat outfits. Normandy’s Negroes, serving in mostly segregated units, worked under fire instead as stevedores and as antiaircraft men who ran up barrage balloons to frustrate enemy air strikes at the beaches. They, like their white comrades in arms, shed blood.