The Augusta Courier

WILL IKE INVADE CHICAGO?

(Shreveport (La.) Journal)

Since he has persisted in using armed troops to force racial integration in Little Rock's Central High School, we hope President Eisenhower, in his "State of the Union" message today, will reveal the kind of military action he is planning against white citizens of Chicago who refuse to mix with Negroes.

After four years and five months, according to the Augusta, (Ga.) Courier, white citizens of the South Deering section of Chicago are continuing to hold the line against their city government's efforts to break down the pattern of segregation which exists in the area.

In August of 1953, according to the Courier, the city of Chicago undertook to move 36 Negro families into Trumbull Housing Project adjacent to Trumbull Park in the South Deering section. For several years, the Courier reports, it took 2,100 policemen to keep the Negroes in the apartments.

Latest information on the situation, the Courier continues, is that there are only nine Negro families left in the project and that it takes 75 policemen to protect them.

"To this day," the Courier reports, "a Negro is not permitted to set foot on the streets in South Deering. They are escorted in and out by policemen."

An editorial in the South Deering Bulletin, entitled "Integration Creating Ominous Unrest," is quoted in the Courier as follows, in part:

"The invasion by undesirables had begun in August (1953) and the usual pattern in Chicago, when such an invasion occurred in other communities, was to run.

"The newspapers, politicians and the police department made it quite evident by using their tremendous power and force, that full integration was inevitable and any opposition was stupid and bold defiance of law.

"Was South Deering's opposition stupid? We are still the most decent and law-abiding community in Chicago, according to police records.

"Was it a defiance of law? We would like to know what law we are defying. It is no violation of law to keep an undesirable element out of your community.

"Are they undesirable? Every area where they have taken a foothold in Chicago has become crime ridden and eventually decent people have to leave for their very safety.

"The NAACP and white bleeding hearts organizations cry these people must have a place to live and this no one can deny. Forcing them into a white neighborhood is not the answer. Experience in Chicago has shown the white people will not accept their way of life and so one white neighborhood after another is becoming all colored . . !

"South Deering realizes the city is faced with a difficult problem. We, however, do not believe it will be solved by vacating our homes and running to the suburbs. We have been abused for taking this position but it has been well worth it. We still have our community, stronger and more united than ever."

And so, in the face of this determined stand by a group of Chicago citizens, we think it is entirely in order to ask the President of the United States if he intends to repeat his performance in Little Rock and send armed troops against the Chicagoans.

In all sincerity, we ask President Eisenhower to include in his "State of the Union" message his estimate of how many millions of dollars have been ear-marked in his record peace-time budget to pay the cost of military action against white citizens resisting racial integration in Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi-and Chicago. He has already spent untold thousands in Little Rock.

Without meaning to be facetious at all, we ask the President if any of the rockets and missiles for which he is seeking funds might be used against white citizens to force them to accept racial integration. After all, a man killed by a bayonet would be just as dead as one killed by a missile and bayonets have been used in Little Rock.

No presidential report on the "State of the Union" will be complete without the answers to these questions.