New Beachhead

On July 3, 1950, Letter Carrier Robert M. Dawson Jr. and his four small children were ordered off the municipal beach at Baltimore's Fort Smallwood Park and sent home. Reason: they are Negroes. The Dawsons took the case to court, and last December Baltimore's Federal District Judge Roszel C. Thomsen ruled that the family had no right to be at the Fort Smallwood beach, because Baltimore maintains separate but equal swimming facilities for Negroes. Judge Thomsen held that the U.S. Supreme Court, in its historic decision banning segregation in public schools (TIME, May 24), specifically "refrained from deciding . . . in fields other than education."

Last week the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals at Richmond took an entirely different view of the Dawson case. Said the Appeals Court: the old "separate but equal" doctrine has been "swept away" by an impressive series of recent U.S. Supreme Court opinions, including the school decision.

"It is now obvious," said the Appeals Court, "that segregation cannot be justified as a means to preserve the public peace merely because the tangible facilities furnished to one race are equal to those furnished to the other . . . Racial segregation in recreational activities can no longer be sustained as a proper exercise of the police power of the State; for if that power cannot be invoked to sustain racial segregation in the schools, where attendance is compulsory and racial friction may be apprehended from the enforced commingling of the races, it cannot be sustained with respect to public beach and bathhouse facilities, the use of which is entirely optional."

If the Appeals Court decision stands, Negroes will be free to use public beaches, bathhouses and parks long closed to them in the South. Maryland officials quietly took the verdict "under study," but some Southern state leaders, who have threatened to close rather than desegregate their public schools, began to talk about closing their public parks, too.

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