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Racial War in the South
A Test of the American Charater
- Abstract
On the day the Supreme Court declared segregation unconstitutional the Savannah, Georgia, chapter of Rotary was holding a luncheon meeting. Someone brought in a news flash of the Court’s decision and read it to the group. There was a burst of applause.
Other newspaper clippings I collected at the time indicated at least a grudging acceptance by many Southerners of the Court’s decision when it first was announced. In Greensboro, North Carolina, the school board voted six to one to admit Negroes into white schools. Virginia’s state superintendent of public instruction, when asked for comment, replied, “There will be no defiance of the Supreme Court as far as I’m concerned.” The first public reaction of Price Daniel, then in the U.S. Senate and now governor of Texas, was: “Let us accept the law and try to live with the gradual changes it must surely bring.”
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