ustxtxb_obs_1960_04_08_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

Burns, News-Messenger Demonstrators Pray in Marshall Square They Came Downtown from Two Negro Colleges Press Incidents Now I’m a Jailbird,’ A Girl Student Laughs orange drink. A mustard cellar was overturned on the counter by the opening to the back of the counter. The square was full of policemen, reporters, photographers, and townsfolk. Three large German dogs had caused the main stir in the morning, but by noon they had been closed into cars parked in the square. Sharply at 12:30, William Wilburn, a sophomore music major at Tyler, and Patricia Anderson, a first-year student from Marshall at Wiley, walked down the long block ending at Rexall’s drug. A few reporters followed them; they cut into the drug store, sat down, and were taken by the arm at once and arrested. Two newsmen were shoved out of the drug store ahead of them. The earlier sit-ins had involved larger groups, and it did not dawn on police at once that by coming in twos Friday, the Negroes rendered the state unlawful assembly statute, which requires that three or more be involved, inapplicable. The two students, therefore, were marched around the square and two blocks to the county jail, cameramen and reporters following, and townsfolk gawking but not heckling. Highway patrolman Tom Linthicum attended them. Some of the press followed into the jail while they were being booked, but before long an officer came barging in and said, “Get those cameras outa there or we’re gonna book you!” and reporters did not again get inside the county jail. About 1:10 the police dogs were loaded onto an open truck and driven out of town. As the afternoon proceeded, more Negroes arrived in pairs at the drug store, were arrested, and were taken to the city jail and booked. The excitement on the square during the arrests took many forms. Reporters trying to keep MARSHALL Three sharp toothed, attack trained German shepherd dogs all of them weighing more than 100 poundswere brought to the Marshall courthouse square during the height of the tension here. They were removed to private cars parked on the square only after Gov. Price Daniel had told Ranger Captain Bob Crowder by phone to get them out of there. D. A. Charles Allen backed up the Governor’s position. State highway patrolmen openly carried tear gas grenades around the courthouse while awaiting the arrival of Negro students for their sit-ins last Friday. The students came, but neither the dogs, by then out of sight, nor the tear gas were used. Russell Milroy, Nacogdoches dog trainer who had two of the dogs, and Don Cooper, Longview trainer who had the third one, explained they brought them to town in hopes of selling them, and for advertising. Ranger Capt. Crowder, asked if the Rangers had asked that the dogs be brought, said no. “Pretty, aren’t they?” he mused. When asked if he planned on using them, he said, “You can’t ever tell. . . . I’m just glad to see ’em.” Milroy said all dogs are “color blind” and could not tell Negroes from whites, but Cooper said they could distinguish Negroes by “scent discrimination.” Cooper said his dog, Big Boy, weighing 120 pounds, would attack when told, biting and clawing. Cooper said he never had any better protection. “You can be right or wrong and you’re still right to him,” he said. up with the arrests checked with each other. “They got two more?” one would ask another. Three white boys at one point blocked the sidewalk in front of two Negro boys and a Negro girl, who turned around and walked the other way; whereupon the three whites faded back against the side of a building. When a car of Negroes, including Rucker, turned onto the square, a cameraman began taking pictures, and an officer shouted, “All right get out of the street if you’re gonna take pictures.” “Was that one of them?” a white bystander asked. Told yes, he said to a friend, “I told you it was them bastards.” By mid-afternoon, 16 Negroes, nine men and seven women, had been taken to the city jail in the basement of the city hall. .At 3:54 p.m., five well-dressed young Negro menRucker, Holmes, Peabody, Willie Sapp, and S. J. Briscoestrode onto the courthouse square. All wore coats and ties except Peabody who had on a tie and short-sleeved white shirt. They walked to the courthouse without looking to either side and climbed the inside stairs to the district attorney’s office. A reporter told them the students who had been arrested were at the city jail. “The city jail,” Rucker said, and they started for there. A policeman met them at the door to the jail. He asked for their attorney in charge; Rucker said he was not in town. “We have orders to allow no admittance,” the officer said. “Are they charged?” Rucker asked. “I don’t know. See your attorney,” the officer said. He nodded politely and they walked back across the square to their parked pink-andblack Buick and, drove back to the college to await their -own arrest. White citizens of Marshall formed a striking arcalmost a Cooper said he had just come over “to see what’s going on” and had not been asked to come over by authorities. He added, “It’s been talked about. I wouldn’t say I was asked to come.” Officers had not asked him and Milroy to leave, he said. Asked by cameramen for a “demonstration,” Cooper said, “I have to have a villian.” A 17-yearold white boy volunteered, though he kept a respectful distance. Cooper said “Watch ‘im,” and the dog charged \(but was held back back legs, barked, and snarled, baring his teeth. This caused a sensation all over the square. Several local merchants and a local Baptist minister entered the courthouse to tell D. A. Allen that the dogs were making a bad impression and were not necessary. On the other hand, one white man on the square was laughing and saying, “Get them niggers runnin’ with them dogs.” Word of the dogs reached Austin and Gov. Daniel. As reported on the square and confirmed later, Daniel telephoned Marshall and said to get them off the square. Allen confirmed that he asked the trainers to remove the dogs, too, and another report said he threatened them with prosecution if they did not do so. The dogs were taken into Allen’s office first; then they were taken off the square and placed into private cars parked around the square; in the afternoon, after the sit-ins had resumed, they were driven out of the downtown area in a pick-up truck. protective formationtwo or three deep around the sunny side of the courthouse, Though the five Negroes had driven off, the whites stood looking after the direction in which they had departed. “I don’t know what that was supposed to be. I guess,” said a white boy, “that was the N Double A C P or something. They gotta be smart to be the N Double A C P.” “You know,” said another, “it’s funny, all these people in town. Everybody standing around. All the stores about to go broke.” “Boy, if everybody would stick together,” a white man was saying. A local newsman speculated that the students’ visit had been “a probing action”‘ and they might come back in force and “storm the jail.” The square calmed then. A Ranger paced up and down. An old Negro man, his head sunk into his shoulders, his eyes starting from his dark, fleshy face, worked his way around the courthouse. The flag over the courthouse billowed out in the late afternoon breeze. A cameraman sat down on a bench, put downhis load, and said, “Ah, well.” ‘Now I’m a Jailbird’ The $100 bonds for the girls in the city jail were made about 9:30 that night by Negro attorney Romeo Williams of Marshall; the men spent the night and most of the next day in custody. At the Wiley campus, Rucker said, “We aren’t worried about the bonds. We didn’t have anybody behind us when we started. We’re in it for good.” C. B. Bunkley, Dallas attorney who has handled cases for the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, had entered the case, but he said he did so on the request of the students and had not heard from the N.A.A.C.P. in the matter. N.A.A.C.P. spokesmen have pledged full support to the sit-ins. Emerging from a student lounge where about 50 Negroes were watching television, Holmes -said, “We been coolin’ all afternoon, waitin’ on ’em to come.” About 6:15 that evening, Sheriff Earl Franklin, Ranger Ernest Daniel of Dallas, and another sheriff’s deputy arrived in two cars and parked near the student cafeteria. They went inside and waited. Peabody, saying “I’m going to look for them,” led a group of students over to them. Franklin emerged from the cafeteria. There then ensued a strange and affecting scene. About 100 of the Negro students drifted over and formed a silent semicircle opposite the officers. In the twilight Franklin squinted at a sheaf of warrants in his hand and began calling out names, as a teacher might call the roll. Some answered. “Nathaniel Smith.” He came forward. “Come right over here, Nathaniel.” He was a California student who, when he had been told by his folks he had gone to Marshall at the wrong time, had replied to them, “I think I came at the right “Hey, Peabody, where’s all the rest of ’em,” Franklin asked. “I don’t know exactly where they are,” he replied. Six were assembled and loaded into a car and driven off. Matthew Miller was called. “He’s practicing tennis,” someone said. Girls began arriving from the girls’ dorm, but none of them were called then. Another five answered to their names, and were driven off by the officers. Dispersing, the students spoke to each other in low tones. By nightfall 51 had been arrested and taken to the district court THE TEXAS OBSERVER Page 3 April 8, 1960 room, where Justice of the Peace J. G. Stauts told them one by one that they were charged with “unlawful assembly to prevent any person from pursuing his labor, a misdemeanor,” told them they could plead guilty or wait two days to decide whether they wanted a trial, heard each of them say they would wait, and set $500 bond on each of them. Then, in groups, they were led off and driven to the county jail. Some of the students said thank you to the judge, while others did not conceal their bitterness or disinterest. They were dressed as college students might ordinarily be. Over at the square brick jail, three girls, waiting in the back of a sheriff’s car to be booked and assigned to cells, called out to the Observer reporter through the fence. “The last time I talked to you,” one of them said, “I was a college studentnow I’m a jailbird.” She laughed. “We don’t mind being in jail for the cause,” said Hattie Jean Whittenburg. “I think this is going to be an enjoyable stay, because as long as I have the cause in mind, it’s all right,” said Ernestine Stubblefield. MARSHALL The out-of-town press were resented by many of the local officers and the white townsfolk during the demonstrations here. A woman told an AP photographer God should strike him dead for photographing the Negro demonstrators. A Shreveport radio newscaster blamed prolongation of the disturbances on the out-of-town reporters. On the other hand, one local White citizen told a reporter the people of Marshall might as well get used to all this, because “it’s coming,” and another one said with a trace of admiration that the Negroes “aren’t going to quit now.” Friction between reporters and lawmen led to several incidents. An assistant district attorney, R. P. Watson, Jr., challenged the Observer’s reporter to a fist fight and they started outside, but the district attorney called Watson back to his office and told him not to go. When a UPI reporter and photographer went to the home of ex-communist Wilkerson late one night to interview him, police stoppedthem as they left, they .were asked what they were doing in “a nigger house,” the reporter’s wallet was snatched from his hand, he said, and the photographer believed he had been threatened with bodily harm. What did they have to read? One had the Bible and a book on biology; another, the Bible and Literary Masters of England; and the third, the Bible and a book on the U.S. Constitution. An officer came up and said they were ready for them, so they said “bye bye” gaily and walked into the j ail. There was a bonfire on the Bishop campus about 1 o’clock that night. Although the windows and doors of the jail had been closed, reporters could hear the students inside singing some jazzy songs together. By 3:30 a.m. all was quiet. In the morning, six more students tried to picket Woolworth’s and the drug store and were promptly arrested and charged with unlawful picketing, in that they did not keep 50 feet apart nor did they stay 50 feet from the doors of the businesses they were picketing. Their signs said “Why Pay More for Segregation?” and “Our Money Will Not Buy Segregation.” All of the arrested students were released by Sunday. Half a dozen who had gone home for the week’. end were charged and released Monday. R.D. When several press men followed two Negroes into Fry-Hodge drug store to see if they were going to sit down, two of the newsmen, including the Observer reporter, were shoved out of the drug store by police. For several hours reporters were barred from city police headquarters while demonstrators were being booked and jailed pending bond. Police Sgt. J. 0. Burts at one point rushed a TV cameraman, clapped his hand , over the camera lens, said he w o u l d not be photographed, ducked behind a nearby car while the cameraman ground away, and ran across the street, threatening to “break the ‘b’s camera.” However, the intercession of calmer officials prevented any serious conflicts. Gaines Baldwin, the city attorney, had the police station thrown open to the press. Sheriff Earl Franklin, after a nudge from Marshall News-Messenger publisher Millard Cope, told his men to respect the rights of reporters. When newsmen protested D. A. Charles Allen’s plan of arraigning the .57 Negroes arrested Friday night in the county jailthus behind a nine-foot barb wire fence reporters could not passAllen had second thoughts, moved the proceedings to the district courtroom at the courthouse. After about a day and a half of intensive coverage, the press and the law developed fair working relationships. Dogs, Tear Gas