| |
|
|
|
|
|
|||
Volume IV: Symbol of the Movement,
|
Foreword, A First Step Toward School IntegrationMay 1958 Montgomery, Ala. In a 12 March letter Rustin asked King to sign the foreword of a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) pamphlet on school integration: "Your signature . . . will help to give this work an even wider circulation." He enclosed a draft of the pamphlet and invited King to suggest changes for the introduction. In a 19 March reply to Rustin, King agreed to lend his signature to the foreword as it was drafted: "I have read the whole document and find some invaluable suggestions there. It certainly is a good job and I am sure that it will be quite helpful in the present crisis." Can the method of non-violence that erased the color line in Montgomery=s buses be applied effectively to schools? This pamphlet seeks an answer to that question, so urgent in southern communities where the Supreme Court decision of 1954 is not yet accepted. CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality) told the Montgomery story in Our Struggle, a pamphlet in which I described the year-long boycott of segregated buses. In this pamphlet Anna Holden tells how a CORE group helped parents and children when--despite the violence of segregationist mobs--desegregation was begun in the Nashville schools in the fall of 1957. Alex Wilson, the newspaperman who was beaten by a Little Rock mob, wrote in the Tri-State Defender that the two groups which made integration possible in Nashville were CORE and the Negro PTA. Since CORE was organized in 1943, its affiliated groups have worked steadily by peaceful means to end discrimination in restaurants, hotels, theaters, transportation and employment. Nashville was an important test of non-violent techniques in the schools. The outcome suggests that the same methods can be used in other southern communities where court-ordered integration is being thwarted by terrorism. The key to success in Nashville was CORE=s policy of backing up the parents--by visiting them and by escorting their children to integrated schools. If Little Rock had had a strong interracial group, Governor Faubus might have been checked without the use of federal troops. MARTIN LUTHER KING PDS. MLKP-MBU: Box 76. |
