The Augusta Courier

STRICTLY PERSONAL
By ROY V. HARRIS

A wild stampede is on in Atlanta.

The people there remind me of a bunch of cattle when a wild coyote gets in their midst on a moonlight night.

They are running hither and yon without any sense of direction whatsoever.

Some are even wild enough to advocate selling the schoolhouses.

Ralph McGill, Mayor Hartsfield and "Mugsy Dumbsy" Smith are predicting that the schoolhouses will be closed.

Nowhere else in Georgia have the people stampeded.

Nowhere else in Georgia are the people advocating selling their schoolhouses or predicting that they will be closed.

Everywhere else in Georgia the people are calm and determined.

They are determined to keep their schoolhouses open and they are determined to keep them segregated.

Now, why all this difference in Atlanta?

It is due to the fact that Ralph McGill, Bill Hartsfield and the other race mixers in Atlanta have deliberately set out on a campaign to force race mixing in the public schools of this state.

For the present, they are waging a campaign to force the governor and the legislature to exempt the City of Atlanta from the general law of this state and allow it to put into effect what they call "token" integration in Atlanta.

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A Merry Christmas To Everybody

All of us at The Augusta Courier wish for you and yours a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Let us hope that 1959 will see sanity restored in our government in Washington and the members of the Supreme Court of the United States equipped with a curbed bit and a blind bridle by the Congress.

The Supreme Court reflects the insanity pervading government circles in Washington and the organized minorities in control of the government of the United States. It is time that people will let those in authority know that it is demanded that something be done and something can be done if the people will let those in authority know that it is demanded.

Let us all hope that the people of Georgia will have the courage not to surrender or bow the knee to the insanity which emanates from Washington and the Supreme Court during the good year 1959.

Roy V. Harris, Editor
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They ask that a special case be made of Atlanta and that Atlanta be permitted to start a gradual process of integration as advocated by the so-called moderates.

They know that the Atlanta newspapers, Bill Hartsfield, the radical labor leaders, the race mixers and the Negroes can vote race mixing in the public schools in the City of Atlanta.

Then, if they can achieve race mixing in the City of Atlanta they will then start a campaign to force race mixing on the rest of the people of the state.

In this campaign they have overlooked a few salient facts.

They have overlooked the fact that the Constitution of Georgia does not authorize the levying of taxes to support any kind of school except a segregated one. Even if the legislature could be stampeded into making an exception of the City of Atlanta, they still would not be able to levy and collect taxes for the support of race mixed public schools. This the Constitution of Georgia forbids.

Now, the general law of the State provides that in the event of race mixing in any city or county system that the governor shall close the schools in the system affected. It means all the schools, not just one or two. It means both the white and Negro schools.

Atlanta wants to be exempted from this general provision of law.

They overlook the fact that neither the governor nor the legislature can exempt them from the operation of the Constitution of the State of Georgia.

The most surprising thing about the whole situation, however, is that these race mixing leaders are dumb enough to think that the governor and the legislature will do what they want done.

They have just about as much chance of selling this idea to the legislature as the proverbial snowball has of existing in Hades.

The legislature will ignore their request. The legislature will not be stampeded. The governor will not be stampeded.

The governor has already said so in no uncertain terms.

The members of the legislature, with whom I have talked, are just as adamant. I know the members of the legislature and they will get nowhere in the legislature.

Now, they may bring all these race mixers, the members of the PTA's and the school teachers and stage a march on the state capitol when the legislature meets in January.

If they do, they will be met by a counter-march. We will meet them there. We will meet them there with representatives from the rest of the state and they will find out how the rest of the state feels about this little tempest in a teapot in Atlanta.

Now, "Mugsy Dumbsy" Smith may introduce a bill in the legislature to exempt the City of Atlanta from the operation of the general state law.

If he does, it may get to a committee. If it does, it may go to a hearing.

If it does go to a hearing, I will be there and I will ask to appear. I will not appear alone. We will have representatives from all over Georgia there. These representatives will speak for their communities.

As a matter of fact, I would like to see a march of Atlanta people on the capitol. I would like to see them assemble somewhere in a great hall and I would like the opportunity of telling these people the truth.

Most of them have not had the opportunity of reading the truth or hearing the truth. They are fed their information by the Atlanta newspapers and as you and I both know, this is a monopoly.

The Cox organization has a monopoly on the newspapers in Atlanta.

They have the biggest television station, the biggest radio station and they are now actively at work in an attempt to brainwash the people of Atlanta.

I would like the opportunity of telling these people that Ralph McGill, Bill Hartsfield and the other race mixers are leading them down the road to destruction.

The course they are now following leads inevitably to the destruction of their public school system. There can be no other answer.

I would like the opportunity to tell these people that in no place in the South today has there been race mixing in the public schools except where the white people of the community have invited it.

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If these race mixers in Atlanta had exerted the same amount of pressure and waged the same campaign appealing to the NAACP and the Negro people of Atlanta to get rid of these lawsuits and to keep our segregated way of life, they would have made e more progress than they have made in their campaign to stampede the people of Georgia into accepting race mixing.

Not a word has any of these race mixers ever uttered, and not a line have they ever written, urging the Negro people to maintain the pattern of life under which we have lived for all these years and under which we have made such progress.

Instead, they have tried to ram race mixing down our throats.

Now, these good people haven't had an opportunity to visit Brooklyn or Chicago or Washington, D. C., or any other place where race mixing has been tried.

Wherever race mixing has been forced on the people, the schools have exploded with a greater violence than they would have had a time-bomb or a ton of dynamite been planted under the schoolhouses.

Race mixing inevitably destroys the schools and race mixing will always destroy the public school systems.

Last week, we carried an article in this column written by James H. Gray, editor of the Albany Herald, at Albany, Georgia.

Now, Jimmy Gray isn't any hot-headed Southern radical. Jimmy Gray was born, reared and educated in Ohio.

But, Jimmy Gray has lived in Georgia long enough to know conditions here and to study conditions elsewhere.

He knows what will happen in Georgia if the schools are race mixed.

Here's what he said:

"If the schools of Georgia are integrated, those who can afford the cost will surely send their children to private schools. This will come about chiefly because the education thus dispensed in Georgia, as a result of racial conditions peculiar to our region, simply will not be worth the paper on which the diploma is written. Certainly, enforced integration is very much the burden of the family who can afford nothing else."

We haven't had any trouble in Georgia, yet.

We haven't had any trouble because the people of the state have been following our segregation leaders.

We haven't had any trouble because the people of the state have been following Herman Talmadge, Dick Russell, Marvin Griffin and Ernest Vandiver, and others like them, who have been in the forefront of the fight to preserve segregation in Georgia.

This is the first attempt that has ever been made to destroy the public school system in Georgia.

It is strange that it was tried in Atlanta and Atlanta alone.

If is being tried in Atlanta for the sole reason that Atlanta is the only place in Georgia where a substantial number of white people have invited it.

Following these race mixers, like Ralph McGill, Bill Hartsfield and the NAACP, is heading towards race mixing.

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Following this leadership means trouble. Following this leadership means the destruction of the public schools.

In every state where the schools have been integrated and trouble has arisen, it has been due to the people's following such leadership as Ralph McGill, Bill Hartsfield, "Mugsy Dumbsy" Smith and the other race mixers.

Now, I would like to invite the people of Atlanta to restore their equilibrium. Let's stop the stampede. Let's reason calmly.

We have gotten by for the last four years following the segregation leadership. Let's try it from now on.

As a matter of fact, I would like to invite the people of Atlanta to become a part of the State of Georgia.

Does Atlanta wish to separate itself from the rest of the state? Does Atlanta wish to be set apart? Does Atlanta want a wall built around it?

If a wall were built around Atlanta, it wouldn't last for a week. The people would be leaving Atlanta faster than they did when old Sherman and his Army stuck the torch to the City!

Now, an artificial wall can be built around Atlanta by the people of Georgia. It can be done by a boycott.

If the people of the rest of the state would just stay out of Atlanta for a week, Atlanta would then know what it means to be a part of Georgia.

Now, if Atlanta continues this policy it may be necessary for the people of Georgia to stay out of Atlanta for a few weeks.

If the people of Georgia would just stay out of the Atlanta stores, hotels, motor courts, etc., for one week, you would hear the biggest howl you have ever heard.

If the people of Georgia would quit buying and ordering merchandise from Atlanta firms and concerns, Atlanta would no longer want to be separated from the rest of the state.

But these are drastic measures and it is hoped that the people of the state will never be forced to take such drastic steps to protect their way of life.

On the other hand, I would like to invite the people of Atlanta to join us in a fight to keep our schools. If they will help us we can:

1. Keep public schools.
2. Keep them open.
3. Keep them segregated.

Now, in the last few days we have had one voice of reason out of Atlanta.

Roger Derthick, principal of Grady High School, one of the largest high schools in the city, told his P-TA meeting on the night of December 9, 1958 that Atlanta schools will not be closed next year.

He denounced the effort to try the suit now pending in federal court in Atlanta ahead of time "in the newspapers and on the radio".

He told them there might be a time when they would need them and if so they would send for them.

Somebody introduced a resolution expressing confidence in the Atlanta school board to handle the situation. Somebody else amended it to express confidence so long as they maintained segregated schools.

This large P-TA meeting then tabled the whole thing and refused to express confidence of any kind in the Atlanta school board.

We can win this fight in Georgia and we expect to win it. But it makes it more difficult to win when the people of Atlanta are stabbing us in the back.

In conclusion, let me say there is no reason for the schools in Atlanta to close next year. There is no reason why they shouldn't continue their public school system and keep the schoolhouse doors open.

If the schoolhouses in Atlanta are closed in the year 1959 it will be because the white people of Atlanta invite it.

If they are so dumb as to invite the closing, then the responsibility is theirs.