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-,, w:isffriig'·f o"ir'"'TiaTry'"'News '"'~"972'07 6'6'""' "---~,_,_,_,_____"'"'-""""----------- Mcfyo r Lookea Good in Atlanta Racial CriSis By BRUCE BIOSSAT ATLANTA, Sept. 20-Despioo sudden abback upon him by some white liberals, M.ayor Ivan Allen of Atlanba seems sure to emerge from his city's postLabor Day racial disturbances a nger figure than ever. ttesponsible Negro leaders and s y m p at h e t i c white spokesmen he1·e simply do not buy any argument that the incidents demonstrate that the Mayor's intern at i o n a 11 y celebrated assault upon Negro !OndJ.1ions is fundamentally insincere. Influentti.al Negroes and whites criticize Mr. Allen on porbant specifics of his performance, but they do not seriously question his motives, his attitudes or his courage. Most impre6Sive to these people was liis risky mingling with young hotheads stirred up in the Sept. 6 outbreak in summerhiil . For an hour and a half, Mr. Allen plunged from one angry knot of rock-'throwing Negroos lio another, trying oo calm them down and a vert s tern police action. He told this report.er in an interview: " Sometimes when I'd be talking to one group, another would be jumping a policeman just behind my back. Most of the aroused Negroes did not know who he was. Some, he found, did not know WHAT a mayor was. While he milled around, some p o l i c e m e n helplessly muttered fears for his safety. An experienced Negro civil rights leader in Atlanta says privately: "It was very significant that Mayor Allen saw the trouble first-hand, that he experienced the anger and didn't just read about it in police reports". He w~t out there when his very p1·esence could provocative. have been laid at his door. Negro leaders "It is good to know we have a man who cares enough to go in and see." A white liberal, looking at the mayor from a longer view, says his determination to rid Atlanlla of slums is "almost an obsession" with h,lm. This source thinks, in fact, that others in the city's white power structure are s o m e t i m e s annoyed at the mayor's preoccupation wibh tihis and other Negro problems. ·Some of the very same Negro and white spokesmen who speak feelingly of Mayor Allen's dedication and courage believe he has not really grasped the depths of slum despair and frustration, that he mov(!B too slowly and too narrowly to eradicate festering conditions which could be growing worse. Not all the blame for this is often criticize themselves and their middle class colleagues for not showing more forceful and imaginative leadership. There was cr iticism of the mayor, however, for arresting SNCC leade1· Stokely Carmichael and other " SNICK" workers on charges of " inciting a riot." Id; was argued that responsible Negroes in the distw·bance areas were effectively casting out Carmichael and his limited followers on their own. Tho ex p e r i e n c e d Negro leaders vehemently disapproved of Oarmichael's tactics, a prominent lawyer among them said privately that one group he sat in with suggested quietly llhat the stir "might do us a whole lot of good." The argument Is the obvious one: there has been too much attention oo Atlanta's shining surface, too little to its seamy underside. �