NORTH CAROLINA: Too Deep Too Fast?

NORTH CAROLINA Too Deep Too Fast? The church-studded textile city of Greensboro, N.C. (pop. 119,000) has taken its responsibilities toward Negroes seriously. It has quietly integrated buses and public libraries, has an outstanding Negro member of the school board and this fall became the first city in North Carolina to begin limited school integration. But Greensboro balked when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People opened a campaign to get integrated swimming pools.

For 20 years the city ran an outsize (150 ft. by 75 ft.) swimming pool, bathhouse and recreation center for Negroes, only two years ago got around to building a pool and bathhouse for whites, in the Lindley Park area. Last June after a Negro woman was turned away from the white pool, the N.A.A.C.P. petitioned the city council to open the Lindley Park pool to Negroes. Councilmen, recalling trouble in St. Louis and other cities over the mixed-swimming issue, called for a public hearing. Just before the hearing in October, the N.A.A.C.P. sensed it was over its head and withdrew its request. ” But the issue was joined. At the hearing, Negroes were split; several testified that there was no sense going all the way across town just to make an issue of Lindley Park. Some white spokesmen argued that the city should get rid of the headache by closing both pools. Last week the city council did even more; it voted (7 to 1) to sell both pools at public auction.

“The forthcoming sale of Greensboro’s public swimming pools,” editorialized the Greensboro Daily News sadly, “symbolizes the plight of a tormented region. The torment stems from hates and fears tragically stirred by unfortunate but inevitable high court decisions. It becomes inflammatory when forces which would push too fast clash with forces unwilling to move at all.”