Dublin Core
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
OCS awd
ae
MOLLY CLOWES, Edi
She ‘Conrier-Zonrnal ee
JOHN ED PEARCE WILLIAM PEEPLES
BARRY BINGHAM BARRY BINGHAM JR. LISLE BAKER — ADELE BRANDEIS CHARLES WALDEN
Editor and Publisher Assistant to the Publisher Executive Vice-President HUGH HAYNIE. Cartoonist ~
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1966. FOUNDED 1826.
The Quality
Of Leadership
In Atlanta
REJECTING the easy and superficial course
of outraged denunciation, Mayor Ivan Allen,
Jr., of Atlanta is reacting sensibly and con-
structively to the recent racial disorders in
his city.
While condemning Stokely Carmichael and
his cohorts for their role in the rioting, the
Mayor conceded that the substandard living
conditions in the Negro area where the out-
break occurred would be a fertile field for
agitation by anyone.
The city, he said, “must assume the respon-
sibility of housing, education, and employ-
ment opportunities for many of these dis-
advantaged people, and in Atlanta we have
accepted this as our responsibility.” The
Mayor also made it clear that he favors
passage of the civil-rights bill- now before
Congress with an even stronger open-housing
provision than it contains in its present form.
With this kind of leadership, Atlanta should
continue to show the way to racial accommo-
dation in the Deep South.
The rioting in Atlanta came after a police-
man shot a Negro sought in a car-theft case.
The policeman’s judgment, in this instance,
is open to question, but the use that Car-
michael and his lieutenants made of the inci-
dent brings Carmichael’s judgment into even
more serious question, The evidence is strong
that he provoked the violence, and to what
purpose?
Mr. Carmichael, it is becoming increasing-
ly clear, is a liability to the civil-rights move-
ment. His purposes are undefined and his
aggressions unfocused. His tiresome chant
of “black power” is dangerously provocative
and he has yet to define what it means in the
context of his operations.
Dr. Martin Luther King, on the other hand,
continues to speak in accents of reason. Com-
menting on the Atlanta outbreak, Dr. King
said: “It is still my firm Cees that a
re ee esti eo “3 a
‘ sy fame es a oe ean 2
eakars conditions v]
f — y