Box 19, Folder 17, Document 7

Box 19, Folder 17, Document 7

£6 Le “Daas SOL 6: THE NEW YORK

«Che New York Times.

AvoLrr S. Ocns, Publisher 1826-1935
‘OrvIL HE. Darroos, Publisher 1961-1963

PUBLISHED EVERY DAT IN THE TRAR BY THe NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY

ARTHUR Hars SuLZuercen, Chairman of the Board
PTHUR OcHSs SuLzbercen, President and Publisher








Vice President and Secretary Francis A. Cox, Treasurer



Meigs 1 verse vee

On rare occasions the oratorical fog on
Capitol Hill is pierced by a voice resonant ©
with courage and dignity. Such a voice
was heard when Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. of |
Atlanta testified before the Senate Com-
merce Committee in support of President
Kennedy’ s bill to prohibit racial discrimin-
ation in stores, restaurants and other pub-
lic accommodations.

On the basis of the very substantial ac-

‘ complishments that his city of a half-
million, the largest in the Southeast,
has made in desegregating publicly owned
and privately owned facilities, he might
have come as a champion of “states’
rights” and of the ability of localities
to banish discrimination without Federal
law. Certainly, he would have had much
more warrant to espouse that view than
the Barretts, the Wallaces and the other
arch-segregationists who raise the specter
of Federal “usurpation” as a device for
keeping Southern Negroes in subjection.

But Mr. Allen was not in Washington to
boast. He was there to warn that even in
cities like Atlanta the progress that had
been made might be wiped out if Congress
turned its back on the Kennedy proposal ,
and thus gave implied endorsement to the
concept that private businesses were free
to finish the job started with the Bmanci-
eee Proclamation a centry ago: “Now:

elimination of segregation, which is
slavery’s stepchild, is a challengé to all
of us to make every American free in
faet as well as in theory—and again to
establish our nation as the true champion
of the free world.” |