Atlanta Daily World

ATTORNEY SEES FALL OF CITIZENS COUNCIL

WASHINGTON - (ANP) - The power of the White Citizens' Councils and the Ku Klux Klan has about reached its peak and is now waning, thinks John B. Culbertson, a white South Carolina attorney.

Addressing a congregation at Plymouth Congregational church here recently the southern liberal said the two pro-segregation groups have begun to realize that "in spite of everything they do, the South is a part of the United States and Federal laws will prevail."

Speaking with a rich southern accent, the 48 year old segregation fighter told how he is now ignored by people of his own group around Greenville, S. C., who used to constantly demand his service as a commencement speaker at high schools.

Since he began his one-man battle against racial segregation he doesn't get invited to address white schools any more. He said he guessed they're afraid I'll undermine Southern traditions." But he continues speaking, he said, now chiefly to Negro groups since he began his anti-segregation battle six years ago.

With friendly, good manners so typical of Southerners, Culbertson said he had been interested in liberal causes and the labor movement since his days at the University of South Carolina.

He became an attorney and served for awhile as a FBI agent before returning to private practice in Greenville. He became interested in the labor movement when he began defending labor cases.

He soon realized that someone in the South would have to face the problem of segregation and solve it, or the labor movement wouldn't succeed, neither would

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democracy itself.

As a native southerner. Culbertson felt that he was fitted to lead the fight against segregation for the sake of democracy and of Christianity.

"I've always been a firm believer in democracy, too, and thought it was a mockery to talk about it when I looked around and saw that 50 percent of the people in South Carolina were denied the fundamentals of democratic government."

When he undertook to do something about this situation, his practice suffered some and he was "kicked and cuffed around a bit" but he plans to continue this fight by molding public opinion through his speaking efforts. And he is optimistic about the future.