"A Chance to Play"

Without comment or formal opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court last week tersely ordered public parks, playgrounds and golf courses desegregated. It required fewer than 70 words for the Supreme Court to make two separate rulings, one affirming an appeals court decision against segregation in Maryland parks and playgrounds (including swimming pools), the other reversing lower-court decisions that had upheld segregation on Atlanta golf courses.

In the South, politicians fulminated against the Supreme Court and made plans to circumvent its rulings. Among the first and loudest in the field of protest were Georgia's Governor Marvin Griffin and ex-Governor Herman Talmadge. Cried Griffin: "Comingling of the races in Georgia state parks and recreation areas will not be permitted or tolerated ... I can make the clear declaration that the state will get out of the park business before allowing a breakdown in segregation in the intimacy of the playground." Said Talmadge: "I think the court of last resort is the people, and if the people don't comply, there's little they can do about it. It will probably mean the end of most public golf courses, playgrounds and things of that type." South Carolina's Governor George Bell Timmerman Jr. said flatly: "There will be no mixing of the races in our state parks."

Being eyed favorably as a means of avoiding compliance with the Supreme Court rulings was the action that Leland, Miss. (pop. 4,736) had already taken, in anticipation of the desegregation order, by selling its city park to the local Lions Club for one dollar, thereby technically placing it under private ownership.

One leader who was having no part of such ruses was Maryland's Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin, governor of the state that had been directly ordered to end park and playground segregation. Said McKeldin: "Officials of the State of Maryland have never to my knowledge questioned the supremacy in the law of the U.S. Constitution or the interpretations of that document by the Supreme Court of the U.S. I see no reason to do so now." Atlanta's Mayor William Hartsfield was less positive about obeying the court's golf-course order. "Out of it all, I have no doubt that Atlanta, as usual, will do the right thing," said he. Hartsfield's words gave little assurance to Dr. Hamilton M. Holmes, 71-year-old Negro physician, who, with his two sons, had gone to court to win the right to play on Atlanta's Bobby Jones Municipal Golf Course. "All we want is a chance to play golf," said Dr. Holmes. "We understand how to play the game of golf and understand the courtesies of the game. You can be sure we will do what is right."

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