Atlanta Daily World

'Uneasy Peace' in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS (UPI)—An uneasy peace hung over New Orleans Thursday as the city waited for rumored Negro demonstrations over the furor created by the integration of two public schools.

State Rep. James Pfister of New Orleans, head of the House Un-American Activities Committee, had warned that a Negro organization was planning Thanksgiving holiday demonstrations that "could trigger a race riot."

Weary city police, who had to battle irate white mothers and teen-age rowdyism all last week while four 6-year-old Negro girls attended newly integrated William Frantz and McDonogh 19 schools, were put on the alert.

Pfister charged that the Congress of Racial Equality, CORE, was planning the demonstrations. But CORE spokesmen denied any such plans.

They countered that the "root catalyst, if interest and ill-will is not the work of integration leaders, but rather the Louisiana Legislature, citizens councils and other rabid segregationists..."

CORE is the group which sponsored several lunch counter sit-ins and church kneel-ins early in the fall.

The steamed-up state legislature, meanwhile, was recessed until Sunday for the Thanksgiving holiday after a heated session Wednesday during which a resolution was introduced condemning President Eisenhower and the federal courts for "making common cause with the Communist conspiracy."

Failure of the measure to pass marked the first time segregation moderates have been able to halt steamroller passage of pro-segregation bills by the more extreme lawmakers who preach closing the New Orleans public schools—hard to be thankful for—this Thanksgiving day.

The legislature voted Wednesday to appropriate more than $0 million to pay the 4,500 employees of the city's school district.