Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 10—OCTOBER, 1963—SOUTHERN SCHOOL NEWS
ALABAMA
Large Dynamite Cache Is Found;
State Police Arrest Three Men
(Continued from Page 1)
Lingo, who said the dynamite had
been hidden in some bushes, called the
discovery significant.
Lingo declared:
“We are stepping in the right direc
tion. We are making progress.”
Chambliss and Cagle previously have
been associated with Klan activities.
Chambliss was once arrested for
smashing a photographer’s camera at a
Klan rally in the Birmingham area and
was among signers of a charter to in
corporate a Klan group in the 1950s.
Cagle, who resides in a rural area
near Birmingham, was arrested with
five other men near Tuscaloosa June 8,
three days before the desegregation of
the University of Alabama. Police said
the men were enroute to a Klan rally
at the time. Cagle then was charged
with carrying a concealed weapon.
Negro Leaders Plead
Against Retaliation
Negroes at the scene of the church
bombing were weeping and bitter. Their
leaders pleaded that there be no retalia
tion.
The dynamite bomb of some 10 to 15
sticks was planted—not thrown, in
vestigators concluded—in a stairwell
four feet below ground level outside the
church.
Ambulances removed the dead and
wounded as Negroes wept and cursed.
There was no serious disorder outside
the church. Riot-trained police moved
into the area and a riot tank roamed
the vicinity.
Police fired shotguns and rifles into
the air and Negroes dispersed.
Debris from the blast was strewn
about the scene of destruction. Chunks
of masonry, hurled by the blast, dam
aged cars nearby. The inside of the
church was strewn with glass and
other debris; walls were crumbled and
boards snapped by the tremendous
force of the explosion.
First Fatal Blast
Although Birmingham has had more
than 40 unsolved bombings in recent
years, this was the first fatal dynamit
ing.
In answer to pleas by Negro leaders
for federal troops, the Federal Govern
ment announced that there already
were 300 federalized National Guards
men in Birmingham (See Legal Ac
tion) and that no legal basis existed for
sending regular Army troops.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was soon
on the scene. He and other Negro lead
ers demanded that state troopers be re
moved and replaced by federal forces.
President Kennedy, expressing “a
deep sense of outrage and grief” over
the bombings, called on all Americans
to put aside passions and prejudices
and work for domestic peace and
tranquility.
‘Would You Repeat That,
Sir? The Afternoon Bomb
Explosion Jarred The Micro
phone A Little’
Herblock, Washington Post
If the bombing could awaken Bir
mingham and the state to “the folly of
racial injustice and hatred and violence,
then it is not too late for all concerned
to unite in steps toward peaceful pro
gress before more lives are lost,” the
President said.
King Blames Wallace
Dr. King blamed Gov. Wallace for the
deaths. “It was segregation that killed
them,” he said, “Wallace created the
climate that made it possible for some
one to plant that bomb.”
King later proposed a resumption of
demonstrations in Birmingham, but was
sharply rebuked by two Birmingham
Negro leaders who said they did not
want any “additional outside help”
while two special presidential envoys,
former Army Secretary Kenneth C.
Royall and former Army football Coach
Earl H. Blaik, were on the scene con
ferring with white and Negro leaders.
(See What They Say.)
Congressional condemnation of the
Birmingham bombings was the most
severe yet directed at Alabama.
Hundreds of mourners attended fu
neral services for the dead girls. “They
did not die in vain,” Dr. King said at
services for three of the victims.” God
still has a way of bringing good out of
evil. . .
President Kennedy conferred with
separate delegations of white and Ne
gro leaders on the Birmingham situa
tion.
The President said a team of FBI
agents was making “massive efforts to
bring to justice the persons respon
sible.”
On Sunday, Sept. 22, thousands took
part in memorial services and marches
all over the country.
Alabama Highlights
Investigation into racial bombings
in Birmingham, including the Sept.
15 church explosion which brought
death to four young Negro girls and
injury to 23 other persons, led to the
arrest of three white men who were
charged with illegal possession of
dynamite.
The church bombing was pre
ceded by demonstrations and rioting
by white students which began on
Sept. 10, the day three Birmingham
schools were desegregated, and was
followed by Negro demonstrations
throughout the nation and expres
sions of grief and shock by state and
national officials.
In Birmingham, Mobile and Tuske-
gee, where school desegregation
orders had been blocked by Gov.
George C. Wallace through the use
of state troopers, 20 Negro students
beean attending previously all-white
classes on Sept. 10 after President
Kennedy federalized the Alabama
National Guard, which had been
called up by Wallace to enforce seg
regation.
Four students enrolled in four
previously all-white schools in Hunts
ville on Sept. 9.
In an outbreak of other violence
following the church bombing, two
Negroes were shot to death and sev
eral fires were set.
All five of Alabama’s U.S. federal
district judges issued a preliminary
injunction against Wallace, forbid
ding him to interfere with school
desegregation in Tuskegee, Mobile
and Birmingham. They had issued a
restraining order on Sept. 9, the eve
of the collapse of Wallace’s resist
ance.
Student boycotts subsided in Bir
mingham and Mobile, but all white
students withdrew from Tuskegee
High School, where 13 Negro stu
dents had been admitted and a
private school organization moved
toward completion of an all-white pri
vate school in Tuskegee.
Negro coed Vivian J. Malone
registered without incident for the
fall term at the University of Ala
bama. Another Negro student, James
Hood, facing charges of making ac
cusations against university officials,
withdrew in August and did not at
tempt to re-reeister.
Florence State College enrolled its
first Negro student on Sept. 11. He
is Wendell Willkie Gunn, who en
tered the college under a federal
court order.
& v
Jefferson County Sheriff Melvin Bai
ley said Sept. 20 that he was optimistic
that scores of FBI agents, state, city
and county officers would come up
with, a lead to solve the case.
Wallace, speaking on NBC’s “Today
Show” Sept. 27, blamed a “demented
fool” for the bombing, but he rejected
Dr. King’s contention that he had
“blood on his hands.”
Chiefly responsible, Wallace said,
were “the Supreme Court and the ad
ministration in Washington and the
agitators who come into this state . . .”
Even as presidential representatives
Royall and Blaik met with community
leaders, another bombing hit the south
ern part of the city—across town from
the church bombing—Sept. 25.
Two bombs were exploded. Officers
theorized that the first was intended to
lure Negroes onto the street, while the
second, a shrapnel bomb, was designed
to kill and injure. However, the second
bomb exploded prematurely, before
crowds could gather. Damage was con
fined to nearby homes and cars and a
utility pole. There was no disorder.
Schoolmen
Hundreds Boycott
Classes in Three
Alabama Cities
Students by the hundreds boycotted
classes in Birmingham, Tuskegee and
Mobile after the Sept. 10 collapse of
Gov. George C. Wallace’s resistance in
the face of a court order and federaliza
tion of the Alabama National Guard.
In all, 24 Negroes were admitted to
previously all-white schools, including
four in Huntsville Sept. 9; five at three
schools in Birmingham (two at West
End High School, two at Graymont
Elementary, one at Ramsay High); 13
to Tuskegee’s only white school; and
two at Murphy High in Mobile.
Students roamed the streets in Bir
mingham most of the week. Demon
strations approached violence at times.
Nine white adults were arrested.
Legal Action
English Class in Tuskegee High School
One Negro girl and a white teacher.
Eight were indicted by a special federal
grand jury Sept. 23. Among the eight
were Edward R. Fields, Birmingham,
information director of the National
States Rights Party; and Jesse B.
Stoner, Atlanta, attorney for the party.
U.S. District Judge Clarence W. All
good called the grand jury into session.
As the defendants were arrested, he
denounced “attempts to influence the
jurors and court.” All of the eight were
charged with attempting to obstruct the
court’s desegregation orders.
Six of the men, including Fields, also
were charged with assaulting and/or
reviling city police in their efforts to
prevent interference with the court
order.
Scuffling, hooting and jeering crowds
attempted to get white students out
of classes over the city. Most whites
did boycott the desegregated schools
for a few days but by Sept. 19 attend
ance in the three schools was near
normal.
After the Sept. 15 bombing, the dem
onstrations were called off.
Some 300 white students demonstrated
against desegregation of Murphy High
in Mobile, but after the arrest of 54
of them Sept. 12 the situation eased
and the boycott there began to diminish.
In late September, attendance in
Birmingham and Mobile schools was
near normal. But that was not the case
in Tuskegee, where some whites at first
attended classes with 13 Negroes ad
mitted to the city’s only white high
school.
All subsequently withdrew, some
transferring to other white schools in
(See PRIVATE, Page 11)
Five U. S. Judges Enjoin Wallace
All five of Alabama’s U.S. district
judges issued a preliminary injunction
Sept. 24 against Gov. George C. Wal
lace and other state officials to prohibit
them from interfering with school de
segregation in Tuskegee, Mobile and
Birmingham.
The same judges—Hobart Grooms,
Seybourn Lynn and Clarence Allgood,
all of Birmingham; Frank M. Johnson
Jr., Montgomery; and Daniel Thomas,
Mobile—had issued a temporary re
straining order against the governor’s
defiance Sept. 9.
Faced with the order and the Presi
dent’s federalization of the National
Guard, which Wallace had called out to
take over from state troopers the job
of enforcing segregation in white
schools ordered to admit Negroes, the
governor permitted Negroes to attend
classes in Birmingham, Tuskegee and
Birmingham Sept. 10.
Four Negroes already had become the
first of their race to attend desegre
gated classes Sept. 9, when they at
tended four previously all-white Hunts
ville schools (SSN, September).
In all, 24 Negroes began attending
desegregated classes in nine schools in
Huntsville, Birmingham, Tuskegee and
Mobile Sept. 9-10. However, one of the
13 admitted to Tuskegee High School
was suspended later and all white stu
dents walked out of that school, leav
ing the Negro students by themselves.
(See Schoolmen.)
A private school for whites was
readied for opening in Tuskegee Oct. 1.
The Sept. 24 injunction against Wal
lace, which also included Public Safety
Director A1 Lingo and others, pro
hibited:
• Physically preventing students or
teachers from entering desegregated
schools in Birmingham, Tuskegee and
Mobile. (SSN, September.)
• Harrassing or punishing students
or teachers who attend desegregated
schools.
• Interfering with the Macon School
Board (SSN, September).
® Preventing any persons from
carrying out the orders of the United
States courts.
Wallace and Lingo also were enjoined
from failing to maintain law and order
in such a manner that would not
interfere with schools remaining open.
The order signed by the five judges
said:
“Unless restrained by the order of
this court, the defendants will continue
to prevent the attendance of Negro
children in public schools in the cities
of Tuskegee, Mobile and Birmingham
. . . and will frustrate implementation
of the lawful orders of the courts. . . .”
The next step would be to make the
injunction permanent. However, the
temporary injunction, which can be
maintained indefinitely, was so worded
as to apply not only to Wallace and
other state officials, but to their suc
cessors as well.
Doar’s Contention
Justice Department attorney John
Doar argued before the five-judge court
that Wallace would not comply with
desegregation orders unless forced to.
Doar said that failure to issue the
injunction would mean that Wallace’s
executive orders (SSN, September)
closing the effective schools, and later
opening them only to white students,
would “become a higher law than the
Constitution.”
What Wallace was doing, Doar said,
“was using state power to paralyze the
supreme law of the land.”
Violation of the injunction could
mean a fine, imprisonment or both for
Wallace, who commented that the fed
eral government was preparing the way
to jail him without a jury trial.
In a Labor Day speech at Ensley,
Wallace called the federal judiciary
“. . . a bunch of atheistic pro-Com-
munist bums that run the country.”
Before federalizing the Alabama Na
tional Guard, which Wallace sought to
use to replace troopers to prevent court-
ordered desegregation in Birmingham.
Tuskegee and Mobile, President Ken
nedy said: ,
“This country will do whatever mus
be done to see that the orders of e
court are implemented—but I am h°P e _
ful that Gov. Wallace will enable local
officials and communities to meet m®
responsibility in this regard, as t e.
are willing to do.”
The President noted that in 144 schoo
districts in 11 southern states, desegr*^
gation was carried out for the fi rst 1 ,,
in September in a peaceful and ° r ,^ r '
manner. The districts had, the Presi e ^
said, “met their responsibilities m
dignified, law-abiding way.”
Wallace replied: “In every
where schools were integrated, _ ^
either did so through force
of **
federal government or threat of f° rC
Three Executive Orders
In turning away Negroes
mitting whites in Birmingham, „ efS
gee and Mobile Sept. 9, state 0 faee
said they were complying W1
executive orders applying to t e
cities.
a:ii im eX
Excluded, for reasons stm
plained, was Huntsville where fo ^
gro children attended four separa
schools that day: one each ®
Junior High, Terry Heights, Fi ta ry
nue and East Clinton e
schools. intend'
Dr. Raymond Christian, super sse d
ent of Huntsville Schools,
relief that the governor had wl _ _ un t}'
the state trooper block. City an
officials were jubilant.
Huntsville Mayor R. B. SearC or ked
‘I am delighted that things
out this way.” , gaid:
Police Chief Chris Spurl«*
“The citizens of Huntsville r ^ial
very mature in this change m w be
patterns. ... We are tr> sU ing
intelligent in this, rather a , a pt (0
a course which does no
inevitable change.”