St. Paul recorder., 1962-06-22
Six Freedom Riders
Freed BY High
CourF RuIino


Washington, DC: The Supreme
Court recently set aside the con-
victions of six CORE Freedom
Riders who had tried to desegre-
gate a bus terminal in Shreveport,
Louisiana.
The court acted summarily
granting a petition for review and
going ahead to decide the case
without hearing argument. It said
that there was no evidence to sup
port the charge - breach of the
peace - on which the riders had
been convicted.
The arrests and convictions in
this case followed a pattern that
had occurred elsewhere in the
South, notably in Jackson, Miss
issippi and Baton Rouge, Louis
lana. Negroes went into a white"
terminal waiting room and were
charged with breach of peace when
they refused to obey a police order
to leave.
In Jackson 270 persons - white
and Negro - have been convicted
of disturbing the peace on freedom
rides.
The decision makes it all but GER
tain that all of these convictions
will eventually be reversed. But
there still may be long legal pro-
cess to go through before the
charges are dismissed.
The Mississippi convictions, for
example, are now on appeal to
state Circuit Court. From there
they must go to the state Supreme
Court before they can be brought
to the Supreme Court of the United
States.
The state courts could, of course,
recognize the import of today's de-
cision. But if they do not, the de-
PENDANTS must go through the
lengthy appeal process. Each is
free on $1,5OO bond, which had to
be posted in cash because Miss
issippi bondsmen will not provide
bail bonds in such racial cases.
National Director James Farmer
of CORE said he hoped other
Southern courts seeking to pre-
serve segregation" would recog-
nize that their tactics had reach
ed the point of no return"
In reversing the convictions the
Supreme Court cited its Louisiana
sit-in decision of last December.
1t reversed a group of breach-of-
the-peace convictions then because
there was no evidence to support
them.
Today, as in those sit-in cases,
the court said, 1.-THE, only evidence
to support the charge was that
petitioners were violating a GUS
tom that segregated people in
waiting rooms according to their
race, a practice not allowed in in
terstate transportation facilities by
reason of Federal law"
At this point in the opinion
there was a significant footnote.
1t cited a decision of 1917 in
which the Supreme Court struck
down a Louisville, Kentucky ordi-
nance providing for racial zoning in
the city. The ordinance had been
defended as necessary to main
tanning the peace, but the court
in the passage quoted
below:
That there exists a serious and
difficult problem arising from a
feeling of race hostility which the
law is powerless to control, and to
which it must give a measure of
consideration, may be freely admit
ted. But it's solution cannot be
promoted by depriving citizens Of
their constitutional rights"
BY printing that passage, the
court seemed to be warning the
South that if Negroes exercise of
their constitutional rights led to
tension, the police would have to
prevent violence by some method
other than that of denying the Ne
groes their rights.
The petition for review Of the
Louisiana conviction was filed by
Carl Rachlin, CORE general coun-
sci of New York, An opposing
brief came from Louisiana's At
torney General, Jack P. F. Gremil-
lion.