The Augusta Courier

CLINTON'S PROBLEM IS OUR PROBLEM

(From the Chattanooga (Tenn.) News-Free Press)

In America, there is no justification for violence and good citizens should condemn it whatever the cause in which it is mistakenly and wrongly resorted to. Those responsible for violence in the Clinton, Tenn., disturbances should be prosecuted, and it is proper that steps already are under way to bring to justice those who yesterday were guilty of an attack on a Baptist minister.

But prosecution of the guilty will not solve the knotty problems forced upon Clinton by the court-ordered integration of that community's high school. The Anderson County School Board has recognized that fact and has wisely closed the integrated institution.

When the high school was integrated, it lost public support. No public school can operate satisfactorily without the support of the public. The result was the decision yesterday closing the school.

That, of course, does not provide an easy solution, for there is none. Anderson County simply has been driven to an extremity that other counties and cities may well be driven to in the face of court-ordered integration which interferes with social customs, generates ill will and destroys racial peace and harmony.

Whether Clinton High School can be reopened in an atmosphere that will permit it to function as it should, whether all Anderson County High School students--white and Negro--will have to go to schools elsewhere, whether some sort of private school arrangement can be made, or whether there is some other alternative remains to be seen. But integration in Clinton is unacceptable and will not work.

We cannot take a detached view of Clinton's problems, for what Clinton is suffering today Chattanooga may be suffering in a very near tomorrow. We should recognize that integration came so immediately to Clinton by court order because Clinton had no legal alternatives ready. And Clinton High School has been forced to close because no alternatives to forced integration have since been devised.

Segregated schools still are maintained in communities which were direct defendants in the original suits that brought the unconstitutional Supreme Court decision on integration in 1954—because those communities did not sit idly by in surrender. Neither have those communities resorted to violence and disorder.

Instead, they have constructed legal alternatives and delaying actions. And of ultimate importance, many of our neighboring states have made preparation so that they may —if pushed to it—abolish the present public school system and resort to private schools which would be out of reach of the integrationists.

Clinton's problem is our problem. It is a problem of maintaining order and of maintaining segregation in our schools. Clinton today is reaping the harvest of failing to seek alternatives in time, a mistake we should be eager to avoid.