New Pittsburgh Courier from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 38

ft i 7 1 1 I 4k i i i 7 of Series of Articles) By BIO BOBEBTS MONTGOMERY, Ala. Thii bald headed reporter fail pd to gain newsman courtesies pere in Cramton Bowl, if you Will pardon a personal refer nce, because two young polic fflcers, strangely keeping rival football factions apart, narrow Id their flint hard tyes and 6nr commanded, firmly, "Get. back in them stands, Boy, and Quick." Peering into the eyes of racially envenomed young Anglo Saxons, now become post war fixtures in the Montgomery po lice arm, one detects a vivid homlcidaljieurosls; an aggravated disquiet of mood and manner which, the very next day, iled one of those touchy Whites to shoot a Negro taxicab driver to death. Yet, peering at any one of them, intuitively, you feel the world in which they live is not and will not again be the fixed, December 29, 1956 Negro baiting world they knew before the boycott took wings and, somehow, you know they know it, too. OLD FEARS and hates, exemplifying the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Councils, have failed to meet changing challenges arid the new conscience of our time.

They have been "terribly ineffective in Montgomery, matched against a stick of moral dynamite. Old, wlVV brute traditions "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman, "Cot ton" Ed Smith, Tom Vardaman, ire unavailing. The old solidity is there, to be sure, but the ground Is uncertain. These white Montgomery policemen, Its officials, these heirs of an outlived age, are upside down. They are afraid of Negroes in a strange, sudden manner and, as usual, without analysis.

They are desperately afraid but determined to hold on to the old certainties. r' fc I I I f.i 0 KLANSMEN PARADE, UNMASKED, IN BROAD DAYLIGHT, ON DOWNTOWN MONTGOMERY (ALA.f STREET A Actually, they have nothing In reserve. Non violence has deprived them of their favorite answer for ambitious Negroes: ready, red eyed hate. ONE OF ALABAMA'S very best legal firms has advised Montgomery officialdom it has no case against the boycotters. For no kind of financial consideration is this firm interested 4n defending lthe city's official stand.

The latest refinements, denying Negro motorists the right to extend "lifts" to most, of their ellowmen, is illegal and beyond police power. Official Montgomery is painfully, "secretly aware of the fact Montgomery Negroes suffered long before they reacted. Througn many years, peering through a mist of tears, they boarded buses at the front door along with the white fares, and Surchased tickets. Then, while ley. had to return outside and re enter; by way of the back door, the whites had taken seats 1 I i and oftrn, on a gloomy day! the white motorman gave his motor the gun, leaving the Negro passenger reaching vainly for the back door.

Protest meant arrest and arrest meant, in all probability, a beating. The incident involving Mrs. Rosa Parks merely fused a long dormant detonation, Oppression kindled in the souls of Montgomery Negroes a flame; an outbi st of creation more than the North can ever know, has wrought a change In Dixie i LIFE CAN never, be the same for any Negro, anywhere in America, after the Montgomery episode. This staid old city is the new moraj Mecca; it is the first rift of dawn of a day thought unattainable by three, post Appomattox generations. Having discovered that they own a collective soul, Montgom ery Negroes have willed to save their soul alive.

Whites, a year ago, dismissed the boycott, saying: those lazy ain't gonna keep walkin' like that. They'll be back on thpse buses, glad even to sit on the floor." Today those whites are gazing on the walking boycotters in total disbelief. Here, under the guidance of trusted, intelligent leadership, Negroes have overcome the human tendency to fierce outburst when pressed too hard. "I'm walking for my grand cniioren," smnea one grim "charwoman. said another, "my feet are heavy but my heart, is so light." This is the new day and a new way; a mode and a manner which leaves official Montgomery without means for any re mrmco Kacori nn nrlmiHvIsm This is the day that hope had promised.

Thisis Montgomery's moment; mis is secession from repressiflm, and an escape from the prison house erected by the children of the Confed eracy! Courier Mbfloifle Secfen 7.