Jackson advocate. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1939-current, 1956-03-10
Hammered Out By The South Itself
From: The Christian Science Monitor

The federal district court under whose ruling Miss
Autherne Lucy Negro had enrolled in the University
of Alabama has directed that the suspension imposed
the time of the campus riots be lifted The court did
this after dismisSng all proceedings filed by Miss Lucys
lawyers charging the university with conspiracy to
exclude her The university trustees protested that this
denied them the chance to refute these charges and at
expelled Miss Lucy for filing them.
1t seems grave mistake for her attorneys to have
let loose this voley of litigation Such tactics seemed
foolish turning blower fire that needs to be
quenched And the NAACP's chief counsel, Thurgood
Marshall now on the scene has shown wisdom IN agree
ing the charges could not be supported and should not
have been filed
The university trustees may establish they with
in their discretionary authority in expelng Miss Lucy
in the interests of good discipline But they will hardly
win stature for seeming to counter with charge of
less majesty.
The next steps in these legal moves and counter
only be guessed But they belong in the cate
CORY of the Souhs conscious attempts to resist absolute
ly or at least to insure gradulaism.
Other events have erupted simultaneously how
ever which belong in classification of considered
strategy prairie fire has broken out in Alabama The
houses of the state Legislature have severa passed
broadside of resolutions: to probe the NAACP for
Communist control; to publish the of all unver
sity students who signed petition in Miss Lucys be-
half to cut off state funds from famous Tuskegee In
sttute should Negro be admitted to white college in
the state and to demand the federal finance
deportation of all Negroes from the South to the North
and Midwest.
Most of this represents outbursts of sheer emotion
But it is not just surface emotion. 1t makes timely,
prophetic, letter appearing in this weeks Life
magazine from William Faulkner, Nobel Prize-winning
novelist Deep South by BIRTH upbrngng and ancestry
and opponent of segregation. 1t closes:
So would say to all the organizations and groups
which would force Indignation the South by legal
process: "Stop for moment. You have shown the
Southerner what you do and what you will do if
give him space in which to get his breath
and assmilae that knowledge; to look about and
that % nobody is going to force Indignation him
from the outsde (2 that he himself faces obsolence
in his own land which only he cure"
That in essence is what this newspaper has been
saying from the very occasion of the Supreme Courts
historic decision almost two years ago. Then urged
Let those to whom this decision means nothing less
than social revolution be forgiven their first angry out
bursts and be borne with in their first efforts to cushion
the impact and their continuing endeavors to adjust
their institutions to SO great change.
And few months later:
Out of all this will come pattern of solutions for
this delicate and difficult problem One thing is clear
right now: that pattern will be-must be-hammered out
by the South itself
With added force would say these things again
today