EXPEDITION TO ATLANTA
By Evelyn Sell -
Twelve members of the: United Nations Subcommission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities made an informal visit to Atlanta, Georgia, on January 26. They had been invited by the U.S, member of the subcommittee, Morris Abrams, who wanted them to see a Southern city which had worked successfully to solve interracial problems, The UN group saw a lot in Atlanta -= but not exactly what they were invited.to see.
Intensive. picketing of segregated businesses, clashes with the local Ku Klux Klan and mass arrests of Negro demonstrators had erupted during the days preceding the visit from the UN group. The demonstrations were led by the militant youth. organization SNCC [Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee]. .
Abrams had asked John Lewis, national chairman of .SNCC and one of the activists in Atlanta, to call off demonstrations while the UN visitors were in town. Lewis refused, telling Abrams that the civilrights fighters would show the visitors “what Atlanta is really like,"
Greeted at Airport
SNCC pickets greeted the UN group at the airport, The Negroes carried signs reading, “Welcome to a Segregated City" and "Atlanta's Image is a Fraud,'! oo
Later that day the visitors watched several hundred student demonstrators form. for a mareh on downtown Atlanta to protest segre~ gated restaurants, Some of the picket signs were designed especially for the UN observers, such as: "Atlanta Needs UN Help."
The UN group missed seeing the direct. confrontations between SNCC demonstrators and the hooded and robed Ku. Klux Klan members, The ~— Klansmen picketed establishments that had desegregated their facili-~ ties.
-While the UN visitors were being wined and dined. by city of fis cials, Klansmen and Negroes shouted taunts at each | other and scuffled briefly in the street. 2 ; ; Four SNCC members were beaten by six white persons when they’ sought service ina segregated restaurant; and 84 Negroes were arrested, a
What impression did all this make on the UN dignitaries? Most © of them were reluctant to talk about the racial situation in Atlanta. However, the delegate from India, Sira Arcot. Krishnaswami, said, What has heartened me is the progress in Atlanta's racial situation through faith in the democratic ideas,"
The UN group then flew back to New York and the Negroes of
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Atlanta continued to struggle for democracy.
No Moratorium on Segregation —
- On January 30, after five days of increasingly militant actions, the mayor of Atlanta called on civilerignts leaders to suspend demon~. strations for thirty days.
The older more conservative Negro leaders were willing to accept a moratorium, They have insisted right along that the way to win equality is through peaceful negotiations with "wellemeaning" white. leaders. These negotiations, however, have done little to break down long-established segregation patterns: in jobs, housing, schooling and public accommodations «
The younger more militant Negroes, led by SNCC, broke through ' the deadlocked negotiations between Negro leaders and white officials by staging demonstrations during the month of January. While the mayor was meeting with white and Negro leaders to discuss the mora-~ torium on demonstrations, the young Negroes resumed picketing outside a downtown segregated restaurant.
Such actions on the part of the younger militants have forced Atlantans to grant concessions in an effort to blunt SNCCts all-out . attack on discrimination and to give support to the conservative Negro. leaders who can thus claim small victories for the methods of compromise and negotiation, It is obvious, however, that without the spur provided by SNCC's militancy, the old ways of life; that 1a, Jim Crow life, would have gone on in Atlanta forever,
A good example of a gain clearly ascribable to pressure created by SNCC was the change in policy towards a federal public accommoda~ tions law announced by The Atlanta Constitution, one of the Southts leading newspapers, which had been dead set against civil-rights legislation to force businesses to desegregate, On January 21 the publishers: printed an editorial entitled, "For a Public Accommoda-= tions Law; Against SNCC-~Led Lawlessness,
The editors explained that they had believed that Atlanta businessmen could be persuaded to voluntarily end discrimination, Most good hotels and some restaurants had done so but most businesses had not, thereby "seriously jeopardizing the name and future of a city that others have labored, through many difficult adjustments to build, . . Faced with the alternatives either of passing a Federal law or of seeing Atlanta further degraded and stripped of its ideal of fair play, this newspaper now endorses the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Bill and urges its prompt passage, Atlanta urgently needs it,"
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