Box 18, Folder 29, Document 76

Box 18, Folder 29, Document 76

EDITORIALS



A New Star In King’s Crown

Atlanta’s Negro riot — and no
unruly gathering with overtones of
violence should slide by under the
euphemism of “demonstration” —
shows that in the field of racial
progress as in so many others, you
just can’t satisfy some people.

Atlanta has long been regarded
as a municipal beacon of Negro
progress and interracial goodwill
shining in a darkened wilderness.
It has been held up to other areas
of the South as proof that Negroes
and whites can jointly build a great
city with opportunities and benefits
for all, that progress can substitute
for “never” and prosperity for
“freedom now.”

BUT SUDDENLY there is a smirch
upon the image of Atlanta which
had been as golden as the dome of
the state capitol, sitting there on its
own little Acropolis. Atlanta has had
a race riot, its Negroes have poured

into the streets shouting “black

power,” its mayor, second in succes-
sion with proved records of friend-
ship to the Negroes of that city, has
been attacked while he talked with
the mob seeking an end to the
trouble.

It is no more logical to expect all
Negroes in a city to be. wise and
logical and understanding than it is
to expect all white citizens of a city
so to be. But it is tragic that a rela-
tive handful of nincompoops can
destroy for the reasonable, hard-
working and understanding majority
of Negroes in a city such as Atlanta
most of the goodwill they have
enjoyed, and put sand in the gears
of continued progress.

ATLANTA’S RIOT, and the per-
sonal, physical attack upon its pro-
Negro mayor, give obvious excuse
to other cities and other leaders to
reject efforts for cooperation with
Negroes for improved racial rela-
tions and opportunities. “If they
can’t even be satisfied in Atlanta,
there’s no point in frying,” is going
to be a general reaction.

Thus once more the excesses of
the “black power’ movement will
react against the best interests of
the vast majority of Negroes. And
everyone should remember that the
rioters in every city, north or south,
represent but a minute portion of
the Negro population of each city
involved. ware

But this excess was itself inevit-
able. No matter the need, as Martin
Luther King interpreted it, for focus-
ing public attention upon the needs
and wishes of the Negroes, when
the civil rights effort took to the
streets it laid the groundwork for
rioting. And the successes which
met Dr. King’s tactic of provocation
inevitably planted in other minds
the idea that it pays to riot.

THE PARTICULAR riot in At-
lanta was triggered by the shooting
of a Negro suspect in a car theft
investigation. Circumstances sur-
rounding the shooting weren’t clear
in press reports of the riot. But it
was white police against a Negro
suspect, and to the militant “black
power” groups anything a white
policeman does that a Negro doesn’t
like is “police brutality.”

This, too, is an outgrowth of the
King doctrine that there is a moral
obligation to disobey some laws.
From this sprang the idea that you
obey only the laws you want to obey,
which is the same as saying you don’t
have to obey laws at all and those
who try to make you do so are op-
pressive brutes.

Martin. Luther.._King and _ his
tactics of violent non-violence came
from Atlanta, and now they have
returned. In addition to all the
progress with which he is credited,
he must be credited too with
Atlanta’s riot.

And with the fact that the same
day the wires carried the story of
Atlanta’s night of violence, they
carried the word that Senate leaders
concede passage of the newest civil
rights bill is virtually impossible.