An Issue of 1956: Civil Rights

From 35 states of the Union, more than 2,000 delegates crowded into Washington last week for an Assembly on Civil Rights. Dominated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the assembly sought enactment of civil rights legislation such as withholding of federal funds from segregated institutions, federal protection of the right to vote. Among those present were famous faces of the recent weeks of tension: Gus Courts of Belzoni, Miss., boycotted and shot after he refused to take his name off the voting registration lists; Autherine Lucy, late of the University of Alabama; the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, one of a score of Negro ministers indicted in connection with the Negro bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala.

"The Time Is Now." Quickly, it became evident that most of the delegates were in a mood for vehement talk. "We seek action now," cried N.A.A.C.P.'s Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins. "We are here to condemn murderers. We are here to demand redress for victims of cruel dictatorship." N.A.A.C.P.'s Washington director, Clarence Mitchell, added: "Tell those Democrats that if they keep a stinking albatross like Senator Eastland around their necks they can kiss our votes goodbye." Some N.A.A.C.P. delegates felt, however, that such talk did the organization more harm than good in the high-tension atmosphere of today.

The delegates heard Democratic National Chairman Paul Butler and Pennsylvania's Republican Representative Hugh Scott. Scott outlined the progress of the U.S. Negro under the Eisenhower Administration, e.g., completion of desegregation in the armed forces, desegregated dinners at the White House. Answering Adlai Stevenson's call for desegregation by 1963, Scott concluded: "The time to meet injustice is not [in] 1963, because it happens to be the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. The time to meet injustice . . . is now . . ."

Butler charged that President Eisenhower, as General Eisenhower, had condoned segregated forces "without lifting a finger or raising his voice to protest this inequality." Scott had a last word for the delegates: "Could you have eaten in Washington restaurants under a Democratic Administration? Could you have even gathered in this fine hotel?" Scott asked sardonically: "When is Mr. Butler's appointment with Senator Eastland?" When Butler got up to reply, the delegates took up a mocking chant: "Eastland, Eastland, Eastland."

"Very Sorry." Next day the delegates fanned out across Capitol Hill to pin down their Congressmen on civil rights. Ohio's Republican Senator George Bender was ready to agree to everything, even the dispatch of U.S. troops to keep order in Mississippi. Virginia's segregationist Democratic Representative Howard W. Smith declined to see the delegates: "A waste of your time and mine." Most dramatic confrontation came when Mississippi's Gus Courts walked into the office of Missis sippi's James O. Eastland. Courts told the Senator how he had been shot, whereupon Eastland shook his head and said: "We don't condone that." Eastland remarked afterwards: "Negroes come up to see me all the time."

Winding up the Civil Rights Assembly, N.A.A.C.P.'s Roy Wilkins expressed the hope that the gathering in the nation's capital had impressed legislators with the need for reform. "Your presence and your calling of attention to issues," he said, "have served a purpose . . . Shake well and repeat dosage at frequent intervals until it works--or until the polls close on Nov. 6, 1956 . . ."

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