Media/Headlines
Segregation Resistance To Continue
Students Attend Durham Session
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Tuesday, February 23, 1960.
[Statement On Protests Given By McNeill Smith, B1]
DURHAM, Feb. 22 (AP) — Negro leaders of a statewide revolt against lunch counter segregation pledged themselves today to continue their protests through "non-violent resistance."
In a resolution released by the Rev. Douglas Moore, a Durham Negro leader, they said:
"We shall actively explore, study and use whatever and whenever practicable the methods of protest associated with picketing, boycotting and other lawful and peaceful means of protest notwithstanding the threats of arrest, imprisonment or other harassment and punishment."
30 At Meeting
About 30 students from Negro colleges at Fayetteville, Raleigh, Durham and Greensboro met Sunday night at Moore's home.
He called the group an agency to coordinate and provide liaison among the various Negro colleges involved in the demonstrations against racially segregated lunch counters at Tar Heel drug and variety stores.
While the sentiment at the meeting was to continue the protests until success is achieved, Moore said local strategy would be left up to leaders in each city.
The meeting agreed especially to "adopt the technique of non-violent resistance as our primary method of protest and persuasion to win converts to the causes of equality of opportunity, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech on a nondiscriminatory basis in every avenue of life in our native land."
They called racial and religious discrimination "unpatriotic, unchristian and uneconomical."
Students Only
Moore said the meeting was attended only by students and did not include members of national groups.
Meanwhile, in Raleigh where 43 Negro students are to be tried Thursday on charges of trespassing, picketing continued in front of the downtown variety and drug stores which have closed their lunch counters in the face of the demonstrations.
The pickets, however, were not present in front of the S.H. Kress store which opened its upstairs lunch counter Saturday serving both races standing up. Another lunchroom downstairs remained closed.
The 43 students were arrested as they stood on a privately owned sidewalk two weeks ago in a Raleigh shopping center.
At Winston-Salem, the F.W. Woolworth store's lunch counter was reopened, but was re-arranged so as to make it easier to serve whites only.
NEGROS ARE ARRESTED IN RICHMOND SITDOWN
RICHMOND,Va., Feb.22 (AP) — Thirty-four Negro students were arrested on trespassing charges here today when they refused instructions to leave the food-service areas of a big downtown department store.
Meantime, at Hampton, Negroes staging a downtown demonstration in protest of segregated eating facilities were served for the first time at a white lunch counter — but at exorbitant prices.
They bought coffee at $1 a cup, hot dogs at $1.45, barbecue buns at $1.50.
The Negroes arrested in the Richmond incident were students at Virginia Union University. Another 100 students perhaps were save from arrest when university faculty members showed up and asked them to go home.
The students had crowded into Thalhimers Department Store earlier to resume their sitdown protest of downtown Richmond eating establishments which began last Saturday.
When they were refused admittance to a fourth-floor tea room, some minor pushing and shoving occurred. Store officials asked them to leave.
They refused, and when another group stood fast at a first floor lunch counter, two magistrates were summoned. Thalhimers officials swore out warrants after asking each individual:
"Will you please leave the store?" and "Do you realize we are charging you with trespassing if you stay?"
The Negroes were led away one by one and taken to jail, where they were released on $50 bond as fast as they were brought in. Their trial was set for March 4 in Police Court.
Police said the trespassing charge, a misdemeanor, carried a maximum $100 fine.
In Florida, the state branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People called today for more public protests against segregated eating facilities in business licensed to serve the public. The Rev. A. Leon Lowery, head of the Florida NAACP, said the NAACP would fully support such protests conducted in a peaceful way.
The Hampton lunch counter where Negroes were given high-priced service was at the Langley Sweet Shop. A waitress said she had been instructed to serve from the special list if any Negroes demanded service.
Race Issue Is Viewed Hopefully
Bruton Foresees Little Difficulty
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RALEIGH, Feb. 22 (AP) — North Carolina's newly appointed attorney general said today this state has shown that the school segregation problem "can be met head-on with a minimum of difficulty."
T. Wade Bruton, 57, declared "North Carolina has taken the lead in meeting this problem. Our laws dealing with the segregation issue have been demonstrated in test cases as being sound and logical."
Bruton, who was appointed Saturday by Governor Hodges to succeed Malcolm Seawell, was busy today answering congratulatory telephone calls and greeting well-wishers. He will assume his new duties late this month. Seawell stepped down to seek the Democratic nomination for governor.
Bruton said his moderate views on segregation are essentially the same as those of Seawell. He added, "We have to abide by the U.S. Supreme Court decision." The state's course of action in dealing with the school segregation problem has been limited, token integration put into effect in several cities.
A native of Montgomery County, Bruton will take with him to his new post 26 years of experience as an assistant attorney general. He has served under six attorneys general.
"I've got a lot to live up to," said Bruton. "Everyone of my predecessors did an outstanding job."
He paid tribute to Asst. Atty. Gen. Ralph Moody "for the very fine work he has done in handling the state's briefs and arguments in a school segregation cases."
Bruton said he hasn't studied the problem of court reforms "too seriously," but feels that modernization and improvements in the North Carolina court system are definitely needed.
A graduate of Duke University Law School, Bruton began the practice of law in 1927. He entered politics in 1928 and ran for the House of Representatives in Montgomery County. He was runner-up in the first primary by 10 votes an won in the runoff race by five votes. In the general election that fall he won by 23 votes. Bruton served two terms in the House, 1929 and 1931.
Bruton, whose wife died early this month, served three months in 1933 as clerk of court in Montgomery prior to joining the state attorney general's office as an assistant. When he came here July 1, 1933, the late Dennis G. Brummitt was attorney general. Brummitt's only other assistant at that time was A. A. F. Seawell, who later became attorney general and a member of the State Supreme Court. He was the father of Malcolm Seawell.
Bruton, who has been active in National Guard work, holds the rank of colonel and heads the state headquarters and headquarters detachment of the guard.
He was called into Army service in 1942 with the rank of captain. EArly in 1945, he went to Germany with the War Crimes branch of the Army, serving as chief of the prosecution section in Wisenbaden. In this capacity, he helped prepare cases for trial against Nazis accused of mass murders in concentration camps. Bruton returned to the United States in 1946 and resumed his job as assistant attorney general.
In addition to Attorneys General Brummit, A. A. F. Seawell and Malcolm Seawell, Bruton has served under the late Harry McMullan, William B. Rodman and George Patton.