Helmsley Lecture Series; William Hartsfield, Jr.

I have had the privilege of living through a lot of change in the south. The uhh old south, After the Civil War, and you [stammers] to understand the race problem, to understand some of the southern people, you have got to sort of set a stage and scenery, a background if you please. I'm a great believer. in un knowing not simply the history of a country, or of a man but also what was going on around him, at that time, that you had to contend with or that influenced him. This prostrate south was left penniless.[pause] devastated [pause] And that has had its effect on the people, to this good day. What was happening in this country about that time after the American Civil

War? The West opened up. That was great excitement in this country about the possibility of the West and the attention of the country was directed on it. Texas was going to be opened up a great deal- Texas descendants came from Georgia, Tennessee, not the guy that has been in the print here for the last few days, but a lot of fine people out there came originally from Georgia, Tennessee. Gold was discovered in the West. And the attention of the nation was focused on the West and the South was largely a neglected section. Fresh blood, entrepreneurs, peoplw who build and engage in trade and commerce. found it wise d to stay out of the south. It was considered as a place of no particular opportunity, as early as

1933 and that is just yesterday. In the course of history, Franklin D Roosevelt proclaimed the south is a nation's economic problem number one. There are men in this room can remember that. You remember Frances Perkins I hope the- Roosevelt's secretary of labor, who said that the south was a section with no shoes, and some of us got a little offended. But it showed up thinking that was prevalent, And here is a section that we're talking about, tonight. I come from a section with all its progress Marvelous progress, the last few years it is still the low income section of the nation. My section southeast, the lowest general income of the nation is in the south. [pause]

The lack of education, coming out of that poverty there was a time when the southern white man couldn't educate himself much less the negro. There was a different philosophy in this country. Lincoln had been assassinated. There was a great deal of bitterness toward the south. Those were the days of reconstruction. This section that I come from had no Marshall plan, had come back the hard way. They wasn't any government help, Franklin D Roosevelt was the first man who started the grant system as you know, and I'm happy to be around. I was an applicant to Harry Hopkins along with a lot of other mayors in those days for CWA and PWA and the south medical agencies when the system started. [pause]

But up to that time we lived mostly in a- the south, what you Very little of might call a colonial, economy, poor, very little of anything when we borrowed our money we came to Boston and uhh New York. and Providence, Rhode Island for our money, for our insurance, we were not producing any capital down there. We didn't have money to lend ourselves, [pause] when we bought our manufactured goods, most of them came out of New England. For years, the southern cotton farmer sold his product on a world market and he bought the wherewithal to make it on a protected market. Actually New England. That cotton was a devastating thing to the south, it produced the slave system, it produced

on eroded land, and there are sections of Georgia now where the soil is poor due to the constant planting of cotton a hundred years ago.So that is part of the background. The stage upon which we set the modern problems of the segregation in the south. Education is a chief need of our people. I said to an audience,a largely negro audience, at one of our universities several years ago, I would years ago I said to my audience here, and there were largely negro educators, ought to be the most enthusiastic advocates of education for these white people in the south because it is from those uneducated people that you're having the most

trouble they are your Klu Kluxers,they are your dynamiters. They are largely your hate group, they are your advocates of violence, and there is no hope, except to educate at least their children. Well that is, uhh as I said the, my explanation for the, some of the basic problems of the south. But those things began to change ,it began to change with first World War, with the first World War people began to move around and cycle like more soldiers saw more, provincialism began to disappear in the south. One of the besetting sins of the south, provincialism. A people in many areas, never been anywhere, that began to change

with the First World War and in that First World War you your great manufacturing sections of New England, and the Middle West, and the rise of Detroit, and similar areas with the automobile and incidentally for years those automobiles were manufactured up there and we bought 'em and paid Ne- uhh Michigan's taxes, and Detroit taxes and everything else lowered it on that automobile, wasn't one of them manufactured in the south for many years. but you got your extra labor supply, in the storage of those great vessels that were coming in and out of New York Harbor. People were coming. and manning work plants And that's another thing about the south, largely anglo saxon actually its white population and why? Immediately after the Civil War, when iron was discovered in

Minnesota, the west opened up, and the country was experiencing a great expansion and thousands and hundreds of thousands of German people came to how Wisconsin. The Swedes came to Minnesota, man the iron mines, but none of them came south, there was no opportunity there, the south was sort of bypassed as a sort of a stagnant bane in the national life. But after the First World War people were brought to man the plants that started a little industrialization in the south, as you know that gentleman that I spoke of is marching from Atlanta to the sea, did a 3rd job on Atlanta. We have uh

I have often referred to him as Atlanta's first slum clearance and.urban renewal group [laughter] He left us in ashes. And that was November the 14th, 1864, next year next year, November the 14th 1964 will be exactly 100 years from the date upon which my town was left in ashes. Not only in ashes but its money destroyed, the social economic governmental system destroyed, its people ordered out while the town was being burned .And I like to think of

that great city today. What a difference. Now I'm going to tell you one reason why Atlanta has grown so, those people came back and started rebuilding that town and the never wasted any time cussing General Sherman, or getting mad at anybody waving the bloody shirt we had a man down there named Henry Grady, a great journalist He was the editor of the paper, in the position that Raft McGill holds today. civic leader Raft McGill is a holder of Henry Grady's position and that great orator and civic leader preached the industrialization of the south, to get off of that awful cotton economy that was destroying us. And he cameto the New England Society meeting. So history says and you all once

invited him and all of the abolitionists of New England, Boston were there, and history records the fact that General Sherman who had burned his town was there, seated about four seats away from him at the banquet table, and Henry Grady made an eloquent speech that moved the whole north. He told the story of a south that was trying to come back, and of Atlanta was trying to come back and of how we were building, he hoped, a new south, without any hatred of bitterness, of our great need for industry [clears throat] and he turned to General Sherman and said something, that has been the theme, the motto of Atlanta ever since. Turn Termin said General I want to say to you that out of the ashes in which you left us. We have builded

a brave new city. Somehow or another we have caught sunshine in the brick and mortar and have builded therein not one ignoble thought nor trace of bitterness, that was the highlight of his talk, It became the theme of Atlanta, and I have often given voice to it as its mayor. A city too busy building to hate anybody. And our people have accepted that challenge and that's one of the reasons why Atlanta is a little apart from the balance of the South. Well comes next World War and this time immigration is shut off, and what happens them- the southern negro moves into the north. Southern negro came into Detroit to man your automobile plants, he went west to man your shipbuilding plants

and at the same time thousands of your boys, came south for the training camps. The greatest infantry schoo on Earth, you know, was Fort Benning, Hundreds of thousands of them passed through Benning, In fact we used to tell a story about an old southern farmer who uh just before the end of the Second World War was uh plowing the field near Fort Benning and a young northern soldier off was strolling around walked upt to him and said uh, When do you think the war is going to end? And this old southern uhh farmer with his plow spat a load of tobacco juice out of his mouth turn around and says Well, says, I think its gonna take about a year to, Go asked him first he said how

long you think it'll take? I said I think its gonna take about 3 years And this young soldier says Why do you say it won't take three years? Well it says its gonna take about a year to get to beat those Germans and it's going to take another year to beat those Japs. And then it's going to take another year to run you darn Yankees back home.[laughter] So that was his conception. But that Second World War did something this nation. It moved us around. It took the negro out of the south it brought many of your boys south. We saw each other. We lost some provincialism there,and then industry began to look at the south, same time I can tell you a little something about that, because not many people know that before I was mayor

I was uh engaged in the practice of law and in the mining business. I've mined manganese I mined iron ore, mined manganese in Alabama, iron ore, I've mined Bauxite and I used to mine and powder grind talc, thats an industrial uh pigment, that goes into rubber and uh uh is a pigment for various uh manufactured articles and I used to try to sell it, up in Dayton which was a tire manufacturing point and I used to get run out, with discriminatory freight rates For years the south was prevented from industrializing by those freight rates which were formulated largely out of New England by what was known as the official classification representatives of all the major railroads

and the rates were such that we couldn't manufacture in the south and get out competitively. It took years of legal fighting In the courts and before the ICC, before we got that southland where we could manufacture on equal times with the balance of the country. And when we got to changed industry began to come in. One of the first industries to come south uhh in anything but cotton millsm and the cotton mills did come south came out of the New England and they were not entirely a blessing. because the cotton industry at least in that day and time was an industry interested in cheap cotton and cheap wages and they did this out but little good. It was not until other forms of manufacturing came south, that we began to prosper. and that movement has accelerated

where now we are dotted with plants and factories all over the southland. And I'm proud to say being in around Atlanta , I do not know of a single large manufacturer producer of anything that hasn't got either a an office plant or warehouse somewhere around Atlanta. The automobile industry has decentralized. Instead of all being con- up in Detroit, Georgia is now the 5th automobile producing agent uhh, state in the union General Motors with its great plants down there, Ford with its great plants Lockheed with this its great airplane plant employing 18,000 people all in the Atlanta area that is having its effect on the south, raising wages, providing money for education

and that is the plus side of our race relations. We are an improving, coming up section. And that is bound to have its effect on good race relations. Now I know that you want to know some of the details of how we handle these problems. You must know that up to a few months ago I lived in a state where my vote was worth one hundredth, one 100th of a rural man's vote, the famous Georgia cow unit system, I took one case to the supreme court under my own name and financed the one that we want, under another man's name and the Supreme Court decided in our favor, and I think you know that that had the effect of revolutionizing Georgia politics. And it may revolutionize some more states before we get through with it.

The reapportionment under the mandate of the Supreme Court but for the last 15 years that uh Atlanta confronted the balance of the south, we did so with a legislature rule that dominated in hostile governments I've known what it is to be cursed regularly by the governor of Georgia over the radio on the television or whatever medium you had, called a Communistm, communist inspired, crazy. If there's any name that human mind can conceive of, bad that I haven;t been called I'd like to know what it is. [laughter] I wish I could plaster on the wall about one tenth of one percent of my anonymous mail, some of it I couldn't afford to put up there. We people who have espoused racial justice will for years subjected to anonymous phone calls,

to threats I've had my telephone at home, I had to hide it. I've had to had to live in the world of false calls all kinds of goods sent to me that I didn't [chuckling] order, funeral cars sent to my home, fire trucks. It got to where the police and fire would check any call to my house, they had so many of them, before they sent ' em I used to worry about having a real fire. [laughter] I finally took my phone out and I made the mistake when I assumed friend of mine was elected and I'm glad to say that the same policies that I espoused carried on into that new administration and are still the policies of Atlanta

But I made the mistake of putting my name in the phone book thinking that let me alone now, oh no, they worked on me when they found that name in the book. And only a few months ago uhh after a siege of telephone calls that I had to deal with I got up and went out to my car. I'm not bragging but it's gun metal [laughter]And found it scraped with a tire tool from one end to the other, and all the beautiful upholstery inside. slashed into ribbon. [crowd noise] [laughter] The bill was $657 dollars to put it back in shape, and I would not touch it. I had a garage come to touch it

bring it out because I didn't know what the gentleman might have finished the job by putting something in the electrical system that would blow me up. I didn't wanna take that chance but that's the price that those who have advocated racial justice have had to pay Its getting less, but that is the sort of thing that we've had to go through uh, Years ago we had the white primary. When I was first elected mayor, it was a white primary as a public official, we have to take things that we find them If you want to be mayor the white primaries a route, and I took that route. But in 1946, after Supreme Court decisions the Negro people began to vote and we encouraged it. And they

registered in large numbers They have now about 30 or 40 thousand registered negro voters. They act as members of the executive committee that conducts the election. They act as election managers in many of the polls and clerks, and we have a very fine relationship which has had its influence on Atlanta, admittedly we're not perfect but we've made great progress in creating the image of good race relations and that is very important. We have seen to it as far as we could that no incidents happen in Atlanta that would bring shame to our city, and I'm going to tell you that some of it was very practical. that means something to keep a good image of a town,.Here's a great city, that is a headquarter city

of the south. Let me say something to you now, what is Atlanta? by the way I've had many people to say it, why are you different from the balances, why why aren't you cutting up like Benninhgam or Montgomery, and here's the answer. Atlanta has jumped ahead of other parts of the Deep South because it is a transportation center, to begin with. You may be interested I'm going to do a chamber of commerce job on you while I'm here. [laughter] Our town has an elevation of 1,100 feet. It sits on a plateau pretty good clmate to live in, it is a railroad center, the Chicago of the south it is a retailing distribution center the New York of the South, it is a governmental center the Washington of the south, there are 3 or 4 office buildings in Atlanta

housing, nothing but government employees, The U.S. Public Health Service works 6,000 people alone in its communicable disease laboratories there, which are world wide in their scope.I mentioned to you the great Lockheed plant, the motor plant Bringing a better class of well-paid people, it is a school and college town. There are 6 negro University in Atlanta. How did this start? Right after the Civil War most of them were founded with capital from Boston and other places in the north and they did a very great job. Those methodists, for that day and time John D. Rockefeller, the original, helped to found the great negro woman's college, Spellman, and thats the name of Rockefeller's wife The prescence of those great schools and colleges, both white and negro has given us

an educated faculty class of people, the presence of so many governmental agencies there, thousands upon thousands, I think about 25,000 people work there, on desk jobs for the federal government, it is the little Washington of the south. The presence of all those people plus the presence of hundreds and hundreds of branch managers, of great companies, with their plants or warehouses in Atlanta gives us together an excellent white collar class of people, You might say that Atlanta's a typewriter and a computer town, Now Birmingham, and I hate to say this, is an overall town, the steel mills and the heavy industries give them a preponderance of overall type people, I don't say this to

make invidious comparison, they have another trouble over there that Atlanta avoided, I worked for 15 years and I hope I'm not stepping on any toes here in Boston because uh its a little different.up here I worked for 15 years to extend the limits about town, now here;s what's going on in the average American city. The young citizen, the child bearer, the active young fellow who is the cream of the crop. [claps hands] moves to the suburbs he leaves the central city, and what stays, while many of them now, and I learned a long time ago not to denounce people I've seen some of the finest people I know when you live in what they call a slum but generally speaking, the people who inherit the 2nd hand house

and the management of a town don't equal that guy who moved out. And so a city to keep progressive and to keep in its borders, young, active citizenship, got to extend its limits, something else had had happened, all the wealthy people had moved out of our beautiful suburb we call Buckhead, and they had their beautiful homes out there, they were the leadership class, they were the owners of the banks, the newspapers,of central real estate the people who influenced a town, what the social workers call a power structure of the town. We worked for 15 years until we got 'em in, I got beat on referendum after referendum and every time I'd get beat the papers would say How about it? and I'd say well, we'll have another election as soon as we can recover.

[laughter] And we kept on pressing it until they decided that I wasn't ever going to quit and it looked like they never could beat me, I'd get elected everytime, they'd try that you know? and so they formed a committee on both sides, got together and made certain readjustments or functions, in the city, and in those populous areas of the county they were getting competing services, they were taxing Atlanta to run a fair system out in the suburbs and the police and parks and everything else that was unfair and so we adjusted it. We held a referendum this time of all the people including Atlanta, including the area, the annex. And it passed.That was in 1952, We took in 100,000 fine citizens,including presidents of corporations and bank presidents and all the people who usually live out in the suburbs, in great splendid

and fine homes, we brought them in, my friend [inaudible] we solved the school segregation of September the 1st 1961. Then in 1952 nearly 10 years ahead. Now let me give you another city that didn't do that, Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham tried to extend its limits . If you'll go there, all the beautiful homes over the mountain bound brook and beautiful mountaina around Birminham, and all the fine homes out there, it is beautiful Birmingham's a drab place downtown. But when you go up in the hills and over the mountain beautiful homes! the leadership class, the should be I rather, the folks that own the banks and the newspapers and the real estate and the big store, all out there.

outside the city limits of Birmingham, and the city under a different mayor than they'd had here in the last four-five years tried to eh- bring 'em in, they turned it down they turned it down. Consequently Birmingham was dominated by a class of people that supported the violence which you've seen there.When the mayor of Birmingham, a couple of years ago representing what was in his town ordered the parks close rather than to admit the negro citizens ordered the libraries closed rather than to admit the negro citizen Ordered his auditorium closed where the traveling cultural events were coming. And created a cultural desert out of Birmingham all the businessmen came down to see him and said Mayor, You're ruining the image of Birmingham

to the outside world and those who would come here and do business and the mayor ooked at him and said, glad to hear from you but you don't live in Birmingham Now that was a price of a city that didn't watch.It's citizenship, a city is is people and it's just exactly like growing things in a greenhouse or out on a farm, you can devise and work and plant the most wonderful plants in the world and the most beautiful flowers on earth, but unless you've got our soil to plant it in, it won't grow, and the soil of good citizenship is the people, there is no substitute in a democracy for an intelligent, or at least a majority a working majority of intelligent informed people.

That's what we had in Atlanta, Thats what they didn't have in Birmingham And there's a great lesson to be drawn from that. Well I've tried to tell you what makes Atlanta, a little different city Now for details, uhh we had a Supreme Court case involving our golf courses and we got a lot of publicity about it. I knew what we were going to do all the time but we had a lot of uninformed people to work with you good people up here who haven't uh been living in a section with all of that vast tragic history behind it. Of poverty and devastation. Probably you don't realize it, the people who for all thoses years have clung to those ideas

of race, you can't get it out of them all overnight I don't think I could come up to Boston and destroy the traditions of the Roman Catholic Church or the traditions of the Christian Science overnight, If something required me to do it. To bring it home to you So you have to work with them persuade 'em educate them and hope that the march of advance, increasing education increasing communication, the automobile , the fast train, the jet the airplane will also do its work. I'm one who's seen, lived to see the automobile change the face of American cities And now we see the jet plane changing in the world in exactly the same way.

Communication with each other. We are becoming nearer to one world and that's having its effect on the south people moving about, going, coming up here and you going down there, its having its effect. Well we got rid of that little thing I had to- Ku-Klux element down there very strong, made their usual threats, and Ijust arranged with the federal judge to uh, delay his order [laughter] until Christmas. You know nobody can hate anybody around Christmas, everybody is so busy buyng, Santa Claus and things We desegregated them on Christmas day ,and who could get mad on Christmas day. [laughter] uh We got by with that With the exception of uh

one of our uh the negro apellant Dr, Holmes by the way he's the grandfather of Hamilton Holmes, the first negro student in uh uh Georgia University the family is very wealthy I must tell you they could have sent Hamilton to Oxford or Sorbonne, anywhere, but he wanted to go to Georgia, he made a very good record there and Dr. Holmes fell for uhh a CBS- or- NB- or senior cameraman came down there to wanna make pictures you know for you folks to look at of terrible things going on in the south, And he uhh arranged with a doctor to play it a certain time ,Now this old mayor, who was by then, a pretty old rat in the barn knew that wouldn't do, because what he was going to do, was to give those rabble rousers a time and a place, when you're dealing with arrested people, when you're dealing

with people where there's alot of hate, you can't give them a time and a place to demonstrate or do something, Our great president is a dead man today, because somebody knew what street he was coming down, if he had walked unannounced down that street he'd be living today, and that we all know when you move great men on an announced route, thats where your danger is, you can walk'em right through any street in America unannounced, but he was giving the rabble a time and a place to gather, so I had to say to the doctor No, you're not going to play golf on that morning, you're gonna postpone that, and he did postpone it, and the camerman didn't get his picture, but our negro citizens quietly went to the golf courses started playing, there wasn't any place that the rabble could gather to demonstrate

and everything came off alright. Well comes our most uh famous case that was publicized, the desegregation of our schools. Now that was on September, September,1961. Why was that important? Our Negro friends have said that is a mighty small number of children. Well thats a token, it was, but a tremendous principal and precedent was involved. Can a big city in the south desegregate without trouble that was a question, the country had seen example of Little Rock with the troops it had seen the example of Clinton, Tennessee with the dynamite and Casper uh cuttin' up, it had seen the example of New Orleans with the women spittin' on people and cursing into the TV sets, and the whole world wondered, when Atlanta's time came, can they do it, because

if they don't do it, here is the headquarter city of the south, leadership city of the south, if Atlanta fails the whole south will more or less uh take its cue from Atlanta, and we were determined to meet that challenge, cuz something more than Atlanta was involved, Atlanta had been for years a lighthouse, and a beacon for a better race relations. If we stumble then we would be indeed in trouble and we resolve not to do it. and how is it done? For months before, the women, the white women of Atlanta met, the church organizations, saying we must do this thing without trouble, the ministers met, the newspapers the radio and the TV stations, everybody that was anybody in Atlanta cooperated, saying this we must

do without trouble We organized the police department and I want to tell you now, it takes a little fast thinking about police you know we, down there we got the whole their loyalty more than anybody else, one of the troubles was Birmingham, Montgomery is that the police when you send out. hate the negro and you can't trust him we saw to it that our police, were educated. We got one of the greatest cheifs of police in the nation, One of the greatest! and I'm proud to say and I firmly believe it, if President Kennedy had come to Atlanta Mr Oswald would have been in our jail at the time, because we maintain there in that police department a special group of loyal men who have no other duty but to keep their finger on every rabble rouser in town, every professional Ku Kluxer, every profesional anti- semite is known to that little tight group of police. They attend

their meetings if you please, undercover. When Little Rock was boiling a representative of the Atlanta Police Department was there in the crowd. Watching what Little Rock did wrong, when New Orleans had its trouble, and those women were spittin' in front of the television cameras and cursing. Representative of the Atlanta police department was there question. watching, seeing what was wrong, and what should be done differently, when the violence erupted at the University of Georgia, ahead of Atlanta's day And those students were running around, largely they made the mistake of having a basketball game that night [laughter] too close to that dormitory, police wise, that was their mistake, but while they were running around on that campus two

representatives of the Atlanta Police Department were there, seeing what was wrong, and what could be avoided to come back and compare notes. Long before the school desegregation our chief had prepared literature and sent and had seminars with the Atlanta police on the proper way to conduct themselves in this field of race relations And the men were required to read it and report on it, what they about it A job was done well in advance beginning a year ahead, to instill and inculcate in the people the idea that the law must be respected. And when that day came. The press from the world came to Atlanta, we knew they were coming

it was going to be the test in the first big southern city leadership city if you please, and they came from foreign countries from England, Canada, France All of the press agencies were there and we felt that we had the situation in hand. Four schools were to be desegregated. We were determined to uhh show that it could be done in all parts of the town.We didn't just pick one that was a mistake you know that one of two of the cities we learned that by watching these other cities that if you desegregated one side of town. They got jealous and said Now you have done this to us you have't done it over there. See, you you you you you you've ruined us and all these other fols across town you've been nice to them and you must like them you let them alone see. Well we saw to it that four schools, in four sectors of the city.

were to be the subjects of desegregation so the rich and the poor and the north and the south couldn't say Well you did it to us not to the other side. Then we ran direct telephone wires to the city hall where I live into the council chamber, a great big hall three times or four times the size of this room, Then we ran the police radio in there and put it on loudspeakers, so every car in the city, when they spoke we have two way radio, either way that conversation came out in that council chamber. Then we ran the wires of all of the press services, the Western Union. We installed in that room 50 or 75 typewriters and dead. We put.

All of the radio stations, receivers in there we put the receivers for the towns 3 television stations in there.We amassed. Every bit of communication there was into that council chamber. And then we announced to the press that came from every corner of America and from foreign countries that this was the command station. This would be where the mayor was, This would be where the police chief was. This would be where the superintendent of schools was. Well you know the press is suspicious. And uhh naturally their first thought was huh, this mayor has done a magnificent snow job.[laughter] he's gonna lock us up in this place so

we won't see any of this violence that we all know is going to happen see. Some of them come down expecting it. [roomtone] Some of them come down, Well they're human, they- like to do a job and if the violence breaks forth why that guy is a hero, he stayed steady through it, and he got the picture,or he transmitted the story it's a good thing for him but not good for the town. So when they saw all of that equipment I made them a speech I said Fellas they were all gathered, I'll never forget that night before, the day when the whole world from the White House on down was watching us, Atlanta,and I said you're going to think we got you in here to fool you, you're going to think I gotcha and he had to hide something. I said You fellows couldn't cover four schools in four different parts of town if something happened out here and you were over there, you'd miss it

and I already know that, I have fixed it so you know everything [laughter] I have fixed it so you know as much as I do, and I'm a principal actor in this drama. [laughter] And if you think that the chief of police don't want to know what's going on he's going to be here with you and I. and who's the next principal actor on this high drama, the superintendent of schools, now fellas we've got everything on loudspeakers, so we can't fool ya. If anything goes wrong you're going to be the first to know it. I want to say to all of you that you will hear all the police radio everything that happens if anybodys shot and injured or arrested. You will hear it yourself just like we do. We set up this command station and now we want to say to you that we got taxis outside the door.[laughter[ The minute anything happens at a specific place. The city of Atlanta will send you there in a taxi.[laughter] If anybody's

arrested the city of Atlanta will send you immediately to the police station and you'll meet them before they get there because you will have heard the arrest over the loudspeaker. Well if I do have to say it myself, the press of the nation was amazed when it came to Atlanta and found that set-up it was a sight, we photographed it, because its now history And that day came. And don't you think we were nervous We had worked for a year. To see that nothing happen. We had sequestered and run off and scared all rabble rousers. [laughter] we thought. [laughter] At seven o'clock. All of the students who integrated the schools will be assembled at a certain point under the kindly guidance of the school department and the school detectives and you will have ample privilege to photograph them and ask them anything you want.

Their parents will be there and so, at seven o'clock. They all went out and interviewed 'em and then at eight o'clock I arranged to complete the desegregated party at our leading hotel. A cocktail party at which the press enjoyed themselves and [laughter] went away with no story much but a very happy and pleasant impression of Atlanta [laughter] and I was rather proud that night, for the president, at his news conference. John F. Kennedy who lies in death today. A man that I greatly loved and respected to say on his news conference. We congratulate Mayor Hartsfield And chief of police Jenkins and superintendent of the schools Lexan for the fine work. Which the problems of desegregating

Atlanta's schools have been handled and for the example that they have set for the balance of the South I thought pretty well for that. And so that is well that's the story of how. We got by, but a lot depends on the attitude of those in charge of a city. You can't, a police department is quick to see the attitude of the man above them. They're not going to do anything that their spirit moves forward and they will not affectively polies or situations unless they know that the man above them wants it done is going to back him up when it is done and stand between them and a criticizing group in this town,you will get no more peaceful segregation anywhere than the mayor and the governor wants

and the great trouble with some of those men down there, is they predict violence and indirectly, they are begging for violence when they do it. The story of trouble in Birmingham there's a story of Wallace and of Bull Connor The man with the firehose and the police dogs who gave civil rights the greatest impetus its had last hundred years Bull Connor. And the story of Mississippi was a story of a governor, who likewise invited violence by predicting it,and the old trick you know, why everybody in politics knows what it is, the old trick of letting these people assemble in some place where they know it's going to be exploited and no police. They want to get there later. I want to tell you in my town I'm proud of the fact that whenever the rabble has been ready to do business we've been

before them, and not afterward, and thats the only way it can be handled. I was born in my city and I acquired and still retain a deep love for it. Any mans got to love a people that would go into this secrecy of the ballot box for six times leave his name there, you know the first time you are elected. You can make a fool of yourself and that's your fault. Second time, that's the people's fault. And they elected me 6 times and would've elected me again and made the em- male emeritus. I appreciated it. I love that old town. I worked hard to give it a good image. I wanted the world to respect Atlanta and it has paid off. We have a growing town a prosperous town. Men come there from everywhere and invest money, they're

building great office buildings and building more every day in our sister city of Birmingham is in the doghouse [coughing] There is a price to be paid and that is one of for that sort of violence. [room tone]