Ticket Tempest

Louisiana newspapers all but ignored it.

A few even scoffed at it. But the headlines in the North made it seem like a big deal: the segregationist White Citizens Council of New Orleans was offering free one-way transportation to Southern Negroes who wanted to move North.

The idea was far from new, but much of the U.S. press recorded every bellowing boast from the council's man-in-charge-of-the-tickets, brash George L. Singelmann, 46. a personal aide to excommunicated Segregationist Leander Perez.

Singelmann would, he said, fill a train with 1,000 Negroes and send it North.

And even before that happened, he would load more than 100 Negroes on two buses in just one day. He would help dispatch unemployed Negroes from Little Rock to Boston and ask Senate Candidate Teddy Kennedy to care for them at Hyannisport. He would shuttle others off to Richard Nixon with demands to have the former Vice President establish them in his home town of Whittier, Calif.

After three weeks of reveling in the publicity (he brought his son John, 10, with him when newsmen gathered, explaining, "John wanted to get his picture on TV too"), Singelmann had been able to muster only 65 volunteers, including one family of twelve, another of ten, and at least one integrationist Freedom Rider, who gleefully accepted the racist money just for the ride. Most of the Negroes arrived in New York and Los Angeles, sheepish, shy and startled by flashbulbs and inquiring reporters.

Some of the reaction was as farcical as Singelmann's project. Author-Columnist Harry Golden urged Negroes to accept the free rides, enjoy a lark in the North, and he would provide funds to get them back home. Wealthy Chicago Art Dealer Richard L. Feigen, 31, said he had $10,000 he would use to buy white supremacists one-way tickets to South Africa. But one statistic seemed to show just how insignificant Singlemann's scheme really is: in the past ten years, more than 92,000 Negroes have left Louisiana at their own expense and with no encouragement--and no publicity--at all.

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