The South: Intruders in the Dust

Seldom, if ever, in the dozen years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s school-desegregation decree have white Southern racists resorted to such brutish mob violence as the terrorism that greeted school opening in Grenada, Miss., last week. A neat, small (pop. 12,000), outwardly placid county seat deep in Faulkner country, Grenada (pronounced Gren-ay-da) had been simmering with racial tension ever since the James Mer edith protest march trooped through town last June.

“Don’t Come Back.” The peaceful passage of the march kindled the hopes of Grenada’s 5,800 Negroes and prompted Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference to set up shop there. Despite promised concessions by town officials, the summer months witnessed a succession of ugly incidents. Local police wantonly assaulted a peaceable platoon of Negro pickets; sheriff’s deputies broke up a civil rights fund-raising dance with tear gas. Though more than 250 of their number were arrested on various charges, the Negroes persisted in their S.C.L.C.-backed boycott of local white merchants. And when a federal court, acting last month on a Justice Department suit, ordered Grenada’s Lizzie Horn Elementary School and John Rundle High School to grant admission to any Negroes requesting it, 300 of 1.378 eligible Negro children registered.

On the first morning of the fall term, a cluster of whites armed with ax handles, lead pipes and chains pounced on the 150 Negro youngsters who showed up, lashing out at boys and girls alike. By noon, the rabble outside had grown to 400. Cheered on by their womenfolk, Grenada’s vigilantes savagely attacked terrified Negro children as they emerged from school. They trampled Richard Sigh, 12, in the dust, breaking a leg. Another twelve-year-old ran a block-long gauntlet of flailing whites, emerged with bleeding face and torn clothes. Still other Negro youngsters were thrown to the ground and kicked. “That’ll teach you, nigger!” grunted one assailant. “Don’t come back tomorrow.” For good measure, the rowdies pummeled and kicked four white out-of-town newsmen. A pickup truck equipped with a two-way radio helped the mob head off fleeing children. Grenada policemen stood by and grinned. “These niggers,” explained Constable Grady Carroll, “is keeping the law-enforcement officers from doing their duty.”

Belated Arrests. Nor did the mayhem end when Mississippi Governor Paul Johnson, ignoring protests of several local officials, sent in 150 state troopers. Next day, a number of troopers studiously read newspapers a block away while white rowdies broke windows of four cars carrying Negro youngsters to school, chased and beat the occupants. As tension mounted, the Federal Government mercifully stepped in. At Oxford, Miss., U.S. District Judge Claude Clayton issued a restraining order warning Grenada officials to protect the Negro children or face federal contempt charges. With that, the state troopers surrounded the schools to protect Negro students, thereby persuading Negro demonstrators to turn back. Police eventually arrested eight Grenada whites for attacking Negroes, and FBI men followed with a dozen arrests on federal conspiracy charges.

More than 40 schoolchildren were treated for injuries. The violence also took its toll on the remaining vestiges of responsible white leadership. At the height of the fury, the mob demanded —and got—the resignation of City Manager John McEachiri, who, though an avowed segregationist, had discouraged racial violence so as not to impede the town’s influx of light industry.

Even though the city council finally called for “peace and tranquillity,” any realistic hopes for continued order plainly rested with state and federal officials. Judge Clayton, suspending school for a day while Grenada officials attended a hearing in his courtroom, at week’s end replaced the restraining order against Grenada officials with a permanent injunction; he also sentenced Constable Carroll to four months in prison for resisting the service of a federal subpoena last July. Governor Johnson, a moderate by Mississippi standards, charged that Grenada’s latest violence was an effort to embarrass him politically, and promised that state troopers would remain there as long as necessary. That may be quite a while.