"In Changing Times"

President Kennedy last week addressed himself to civil strife in Albany, Ga. "I find it wholly inexplicable," said he at his press conference, "why the city council of Albany will not sit down with the citizens of Albany, who may be Negroes, and attempt to secure them, in a peaceful way, their rights. The U.S. Government is involved in sitting down at Geneva with the Soviet Union. I can't understand why the government of Albany . . . cannot do the same for American citizens."

As he spoke, whites and Negroes were at least sitting down in the same room in Albany, Ga., but it was in a federal courtroom, not at a bargaining table. The city fathers, having lost one order restraining mass Negro protests over segregation (TIME, Aug. 3), were trying to revive it. But as Mayor Asa Kelley Jr. said, "At the rate this hearing is going, we'll be here until the next generation."

The key witness was Police Chief Laurie Pritchett, 36, who testified for twelve hours. More than anyone else, Pritchett is responsible for keeping Albany (where about 1,000 demonstrators, Negroes and whites, have been arrested since December) from turning into a bloody battleground. A tough (220 Ibs.) but affable professional, Pritchett has won the respect of both sides in the Albany dispute; the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. thinks that Pritchett is the best Southern police chief he has ever met. Says Pritchett: "I'm Southern through and through. I'm conscious of my roots here, and they go deep. But I know we're living in changing times. I know we've got to adapt ourselves to these things . . . Besides -it's my job to see the law's enforced."

Even when pop bottles and rocks were being thrown at his men, Pritchett and his forces were able to keep matters in hand without the use of clubs or guns. One night last week, when 16 Negroes gathered before the city hall to pray and sing hymns, Pritchett angrily rushed to the scene. He was irritated, he explained, because he had been told that the Negroes would forgo a demonstration that evening so that he could observe his twelfth wedding anniversary at home in peace. The Negroes obligingly dispersed, and Pritchett went home to continue his family celebration.

The combination of Pritchett's talent and the generally nonviolent character of the Negro protests notwithstanding, Albany's problems are still far from solved. Answering President Kennedy, Mayor Kelley insisted that "we will never negotiate with any person whose announced purpose in being in our city is to turn the city upside down." By "any person" Kelley specifically meant Martin Luther King, who had been jugged only a week earlier for the third time in eight months.

As the injunction hearings continued this week, both whites and Negroes doggedly refused to budge from their positions -leaving nothing for the foreseeable future but a stalemate.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.