Morris Brown, Spelman College, the Blayton School of Accounting, Atlanta University, and the Interdenominational Theological Center have come together in a united effort to break the shackles of immorality, archaic traditions, and complacency in an energetic struggle for human rights.
On Wednesday, March 9th, students from six of the institutions published an “Appeal for Human Rights” in three of Atlanta’s leading newspapers. The “Appeal for Human Rights” is an expression of the students’ dissatisfaction with the treatment of Negroes in Atlanta and Georgia in particular, and discrimination and segregation wherever they may exist. The students of the Atlanta University Center hoped that an appeal of this nature would be successful in provoking the consciences of the people of Atlanta, Georgia, the nation, and the world to refrain from the immoral practices of refusing to grant to some those guaranteed rights which are due every member of the human race.
Tuesday, March 15th, prompted by the same spirit which produced the “Appeal for Human Rights,” while requesting service in nine different eating establishments housed in publicly supported buildings, seventy-seven students were arrested in seven of the restaurants. The two establishments where no arrests were made were located in federal buildings. One of the students, a minor, has been banned from Georgia.
On April 15th, five of the six signers of the “Appeal for Human Rights,” and two students who were not originally arrested for their request for service, were also indicted. The eighty-three students are now awaiting adjudication for violation of Georgia laws. They face possible maximum sentences and fines of forty years in jail and twenty-seven thousand dollars per person.
At this time, students have initiated a program of “selective buying” aimed at large food store chains in an effort to secure equal job opportunities.
On May 17th, in observance of the sixth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision regarding desegregation of public schools, three thousand students from the Atlanta University Center began a peaceful march to the Capitol of the State of Georgia. They were defiantly met by one hundred armed state troopers, sporting three-foot cudgels, tear gas bombs and fire hoses. Upon orders from the chief of the Atlanta Police Department, the students were rerouted.
The Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights is constantly seeking opportunities to negotiate with governmental and private business officials to help secure equal rights through understanding.
The struggle for human rights is a constant fight, and one which the students do not plan to relinquish until full equality is won for all men.
Let Freedom Ring
The Atlanta Daily World, a conservative African American newspaper, did not enthusiastically support COAHR and its desegregation campaigns. To counter the publication’s conservative voice, Bond and his friends joined with progressive black business leaders to found a new newspaper, the Atlanta Inquirer, in August 1960. Bond served as a reporter and then as an assistant and associate editor for the fledgling newspaper. He also ghost-wrote a column for Lonnie King. Three excerpts from the column, “Let Freedom Ring,” including a reflection on a SNCC conference held in Atlanta in October 1960, are below.
It is a special thrill these days to be a Negro and in the South. Perhaps more than any other Americans, we can fully understand the “Spirit of ’76” which began the greatest dream of freedom the world has ever known.
Our struggle today is to make this dream a reality for all Americans.
Negro students this year have written one of the most illustrious chapters of American history. By courageously and uncompromisingly embracing the cause of dignity and freedom, the students have made the American people aware of their un-American treatment of Negroes, and at the same time, have made Negro Americans realize that their just desires are within their grasp. The students’ protests have been the rallying point from which entire Negro communities have moved forward together to achieve their long-awaited and long-withheld rights.
The students’ struggle is, in effect, the struggle of all men who wish to be free. The students, through their parents, teachers, and ministers, have learned that America believes in the principle of equality. The students intend to make sure that this principle is not ignored anywhere in America.
In keeping with the struggle for human dignity, it would seem that it would be good sense for Negroes to spend their money in places where they know they will be treated in a dignified manner. If Negro Atlantans know of businesses downtown where they will be treated with the dignity and respect that is due paying customers and if they can be assured that their job applications will be received with the same willingness as their money presently is, then they should by all means patronize only these stores. If not, Negroes should give their money exclusively to establishments within the Negro community where they know from past experience that they will be accorded the fair treatment that all customers expect.
With the “kneel-ins” of Sunday, August 7, a new dimension was added to the student movement. Christian brotherhood is too often only an empty phrase. The fact that Negro students were graciously accepted in four white churches last Sunday shows that a few of Atlanta’s white citizens firmly believe in the equality of all men before God and that the church is the house of all people.
———
Atlantans can be justly proud of themselves. The unity exemplified by the Negro community is an unheralded event. By working together and sticking together, the community has shown its determination to end a particular phase of segregation. The era of under-the-counter dealers is over. The behind-the-scenes advocates of “go slow” and “not now” must finally realize that their day has ended. During the height of the demonstrations, we heard that this was not the way, that the courts should decide, that businessmen do not yield to pressure. When a store hired Negroes above counter boys and sweepers, these sages told us that the stores had made up their minds from the goodness of their hearts; a picket line which cost the store thousands of dollars a week was not mentioned. We hear that this is a town of “goodwill,” peopled with citizens of “good intentions.” Are we to imagine that this “goodwill” and the proverbial paving of the road to hell, “good intentions,” are the solution to our problems? If so, we wonder why the problem exists at all. We have left the Supreme Court decision to the courts, and in six years barely one percent of the school districts in the South have integrated. As attorney Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP said here last Sunday, what we need is more “do-it-yourself integration.”
Recent events have shown here that people are tired of having a few men, conservative and ever-protective of their vested interests, compromise the rights of people into nothingness. We are tired of seeing the tactics of the segregator, dividing and conquering, used upon us by our own. We are tired of seeing “leading Negroes” leading us into fathomless pits of hopelessness. Too long has the tide of integration been halted by one grain of sand, a grain so horrendous in its implications that it is able to halt the rightful progress of the onrushing waters of freedom. . . .
———
As the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Conference closed last Sunday night I thought of how wonderful the entire conference had been. Here we met and shared experiences and incidents of the summer, many rewarding, some disheartening, all adding to our determination to continue the struggle against discrimination until the battle is won. We have reaffirmed our faith in nonviolence not only as a technique usable in sit-ins and protest demonstrations, but as an actual way of life, as a real and vital part of everyday living. Through discussions and after-conference-hours sessions, we realize that the philosophy of nonviolence is the Christian philosophy that embraces and is embraced by the Golden
