The Alabama Experience; A Voice of Justice and Reason: Buford Boone Tuscaloosa News

You You You Every issue of the paper presents an opportunity and a duty to say something courageous and true, to rise above the mediocre and conventional, to say something that will command the respect of the intelligent, the educated, the independent part of the community, to rise above fear of partisanship and fear of popular prejudice, Joseph Pulitzer.

If you tested the Pulitzer ideal on newspapers in the South during the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 60s, most would fail miserably. Many newspapers refused to cover stories related to the desegregation struggle, especially if they were in their own backyards. Other editors called for massive resistance to civil rights for blacks. Among the handful of white newspaper editors in the South who stood firm against popular opinion, there was a man who at a time of incredible racial turmoil in the state of Alabama said something courageous and true. This is the story of a community newspaper responding to one of the most important and emotional issues of our time. The story of Buford Boong and his Tuscaloosa News.

You cannot appreciate fully unless you lift it, how total the demand was for conforming within the white community. They had no use for Mr. Boong. They called him a negative lover. If it had not been Mr. Boong's call for a reason that the situation would have really accelerated into something there's no telling what would have happened. I believe sincerely that he had a very fine influence on the whole town in shaping their opinion that we're going to do this thing right, whatever the right thing is. On May 17, 1954, race relations in Alabama and throughout the country would change forever. Years of legal efforts by the NAACP resulted in the Supreme Court's Brown versus Board of Education decision. The court unanimously ordered desegregation of public schools saying separate but equal facilities were inherently unequal.

More than 100 Southern members of Congress denounced the ruling and urged their constituents to defy it. The reaction of the Southern White Press was much the same. The average newspaper in the Deep South after Brown versus Board of Education was much like the average politician. A pause for consideration about what it all meant followed by a growing vociferous assault upon its implications and a demand for societal uniformity in the white race behind opposition. At the Tuscaloosa News, Beaufort Boone's attitude was one of acceptance, an opinion not shared by many editors in the South or people in Tuscaloosa. This development is another in the chain of inevitable rulings which hold that if a man is a citizen, he has all the rights and privileges of every other citizen. Any other theory just isn't consistent with our federal constitution.

I think you have to say that the general feeling was we hope it would go away and most of the people didn't really know that in any way they could make it go away. No matter if fact, there wasn't. Constitution didn't let it go away. But the idea of finding a way to comply with it was the last thing they wanted to do. It wasn't surprising that Boone's editorial ignored local popular opinion. A few years earlier, Boone startled many in town by openly fighting the growth of the local Ku Klux Klan. His series exposed secret meetings and threatened to publish a list of Klan members. The Klan paraded in front of the Tuscaloosa News in protest, but due primarily to Boone's editorials disappeared into the night, at least for the time being. Boone's childhood and early career were laden with influences which formed the basis of many of his editorial stands. Born in 1909, James Buford Boone grew up on a small farm near Newton, Georgia, and worked the cotton fields alongside a family of black tenet farmers.

After attending Mercer College and editing the student newspaper, Boone was hired by Mark Etheridge of the Macon Telegraph. Etheridge would become a leading progressive editor with the Louisville paper and be a long-time friend. During World War II, Boone took a position in Washington as a special agent with the FBI and found himself among other things writing speeches for J. Edgar Hoover. After returning to the telegraph, Boone was asked in 1947 to run the paper's newest acquisition, the Tuscaloosa News. Despite having powerful mentors, Boone would soon be on his own, maneuvering in uncharted waters. Many Southern editors ignored the implications of the Brown decision. Their communities would not be affected for years. Buford Boone was not afforded that luxury. As a person, he was a fine man. As an editor, he was a fine editor. And as a civic leader, he was as good as you can find. He was always conscious of what was good for this town. By 1955, Tuscaloosa was a growing town of over 50,000, with a third of its population black. A giant rubber plant, paper mill, and other manufacturing companies made Tuscaloosa an industrial center. In contrast, somewhat isolated within the community was the lush and charming campus of the University of Alabama with more than 8,000 students, faculty, and administrators.

The University's Board of Trustees had been determined to prevent the integration of their campus. But after years of stalling tactics and other efforts to sabotage the admission of blacks, the University was the first educational institution ordered to desegregate under the Brown Decree. 26-year-old Arthurine Lucy, who grew up on a farm in Maringo County, Alabama, had first applied for admission three years before. In step with the Brown Decision and flanked by her NAACP attorneys, including Thurgood Marshall and Arthur Shores, Lucy showed up to register for the spring semester February 1, 1956. Her arrival didn't go unnoticed. They came here in a Cadillac and she didn't have to go through the student lines that they made her way easier than the other students had to go, and the students themselves resented that. Plus, the city folks didn't like her being escorted through in this kind of line. I was apprehensive. I didn't know what would happen. It was no way for me to know. But I felt that I didn't have the right to fear for my life because I thought I had the law on my side.

On Friday, Lucy attended her first day of classes. There were no major incidents, although the clan made symbolic threats. Boone asked for column and reason. But for the next two nights, crowds of students gathered on campus and marched downtown with shouts of keepbam of white. On Saturday night, things turned ugly. One report said it was a mob swelled by townspeople, factory workers, malcontents, and a few town drunks. Leonard Wilson, a pre-law student, climbed a flagpole and encouraged demonstrators to gather in front of Smith Hall Monday morning when Lucy would be back on campus. Blacks and several cars found themselves in the middle of the demonstrators. The Greyhound bus had stopped at the red light right next to what used to be the student union building. And they looked up and saw some black people on the back of the Greyhound bus. And they were rocking the Greyhound bus from side to side so that the wheels on one side were completely off. And the people on the other side were pushing it back. No one was hurt, but the mob activities attracted national media coverage. University president Oliver Carmichael and his staff met Sunday morning. They hired 30 Tuscaloosa policemen and received authorization from Governor Folsom to use 30 state troopers.

But they planned without the benefit of precedence. It was, after all, the first time a university campus had faced the prospect of a race riot. She was a symbol. And the white attitude was that we absolutely have got to keep this girl out of the university together. She stays in the middle of this country. We had nice coach of ladies who said that this girl already dragged in the streets of Tuscaloosa. The crowd was much different on Monday. Outsiders had invaded the campus. Spotted in the mob was Dynamite Bob Chamblis. Seven years later, he would set the bomb that killed four young girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. When authoring Lucy showed up for class at Smith Hall, only 14 officers were there for her protection. The rest were late in arriving. President Carmichael encouraged the crowd to disperse. As the situation worsened, Episcopal chaplain Emmett Griven circulated among the crowd urging people to go home.

Some listened and some agreed with me saying, well, we've got to be calm about this. Take it easy. Don't get excited. But there were other people who were doing different things. And some of the people who were later, I believe, identified as clan members were there at being an agitating influence. As Lucy left Smith Hall, she and her university escorts were pelted with gravel and eggs. She was driven across campus to her next class in the education library, where the group was chased into the building by what was now a dangerous mob. As we sat there, the crowd shouted, hey, hey, hold, when the full letter word did the nigger go. Hey, hey, hold, where did authoring go? For being trapped for some three hours, Lucy was rushed out the back of the library. Lying face down in the backseat of a police car, she was sped from the campus. That night, students and outsiders set off firecrackers, waved Confederate flags, and when Mrs. Carmichael appeared on the balcony of the president's mansion, she was egged and cursed.

Police finally fired tear gas to break up the crowd. Meanwhile, President Carmichael and the University Board of Trustees were meeting at the McCluster Hotel in downtown Tuscaloosa. They unanimously agreed to suspend authoring Lucy from the University of Alabama for her own safety. For the first time in America, court ordered desegregation had been successfully resisted. Buford Boone, sitting in his office a few blocks from the McCluster, went to his typewriter. His editorial, what a price for peace, would heat both scorn and praise on its author. When mobs started imposing their frenzied will on universities, we have a bad situation. But that is what has happened at the University of Alabama. The target was authoring Lucy. Her crimes, she was born black and she was moving against southern tradition, but with the law right on up to the US Supreme Court on her side. What does it mean today at the University of Alabama and here in Tuscaloosa to have the law on your side? The answer has to be nothing, that is, if the mob disagrees with you in the courts.

As matters now stand, the University administration and trustees have knuckled under to the pressures and desires of a mob. What has happened here is far more important than whether a Negro girl is admitted to the University. We have a breakdown of law and order, an abject surrender to what is expedient rather than a courageous stand for what is right. Yes, there is peace on the University campus this morning, but what a price has been paid for it. It is difficult now for a lot of people to look back and put it in the context of potential violence and just ramping the motions that existed there. I thought it was, he had very strong convictions and he had the courage to state them.

I was in the new room, I mean the press room and picked up the first copy of the paper that came off with this editorial and I handed it to Mr. Moon and I asked him was he trying to put me out of business again and he says if necessary, yes. By that he meant we must obey the law or we have to suffer the consequences. Was it here was a guy who in the eye of the storm, no, in the center of the storm, not in the calm, but in the center of the storm itself, was speaking with more courage than nine out of ten of us could have mustered. George Lemater, a local attorney and businessman, felt the strongest part of the editorial was the stinging criticism of the University trustees who were prominent representatives from across the state. They were willing, seemed to be that they were willing to get rid of the mob at most any cost and I think is what he, why he titled his editorial as he did, what a price for peace. I think he's right, they paid too much, they lost the respect of people who were looking to them for some leadership.

Boone's editorial was widely discussed, he had crossed a line by criticizing the popular belief among many in Alabama that they were above the Supreme Court ruling. Boone had also upset many of the local citizens including friends and neighbors, he would now wear the label integrationist. I needed it as coming and I needed we had to accept it and I was ready to accept it, but I was not promoting it. Despite some merchants pulling ads and phone calls, canceling subscriptions, circulation of the Tuscaloosian news jumped by 2000 after the Lucy incident. Coupled with general coverage of the desegregation attempt, Boone's criticism of the University was printed in papers from London to Milwaukee. He was asked to write a front page editorial for the New York Carol Tribune and did so with the knowledge that many white Alabamians considered such Yankee papers communist propaganda. Gradual change has been taking place, but sometimes when the change can't be made in a slow step, there has to be a jump.

That is what has happened here, when authorine Lucy took the jump, all Hill broke loose. Most of the jumps will come for a period of years only as a result of a court order. This south it appears is going to lose this one too. Insofar as the rest of the world is concerned, give us your patient understanding and your prayers. Otherwise, leave us alone. The line reflects Boone's passionate commitment to his region, like editors hiding Carter Jr. in Mississippi and Mark Etheridge in Kentucky, Boone felt northern pressure on the south to desegregate quickly would only result in stiffer southern resistance and more violence. After being targeted by the Ku Klux Klan, Boone had his shotgun at the ready by the front door of his modest Tuscaloosa home. Late night calls were filled with taunts and threats. One night a brick crashed through the living room window, but no one was hurt.

As the abuse continued, Boone and his family became extra cautious. Meanwhile, authorine Lucy, showing her own quiet strength and courage, refused to condemn the students at the university for the mob violence. Firstly, I feel that the majority of the students are forming. At least those who are not, if they would be left alone by the outsider, I don't feel that we could work out a favorable situation. But a favorable solution was not forthcoming. By the end of the month, Lucy was expelled permanently by the trustees after her attorneys charged that the university had conspired with the mob to prevent her admission. Even those in the black community of Tuscaloosa greeted the news with a great sense of relief. No one had been killed or seriously injured despite a month of incredible tension. I told myself that even if I got back, how could I study in such atmosphere? Could I really put out of my mind the things that would probably happen? That perhaps Alabama was not ready to receive me, and then what you have to realize is that when you step out in a situation like this, more than likely they may prefer that someone else would complete the task rather than the one who makes the first move.

In the two weeks after Lucy's expulsion, the White Citizens Council had enrolled 40,000 new members in Alabama. Tuscaloosa's version of the segregationist council attracted over 1,000 members in a front page picture in the New York Times magazine. The council was chaired by 20-year-old Leonard Wilson, who had been expelled for inciting the mob during the Lucy Integration Attempt. Are we here in this audience tonight for maintaining segregation? Are we? Boon was asked to speak to the council as a representative of the integrationist element in town. It promised to be such a dramatic moment that radio station WTBC decided to broadcast the speech. In a packed room on the second floor of the Tuscaloosa County Courthouse, Boon spoke to the raucous crowd.

What are you going to do when the next neighborhood appears on the University campus under the protection of our courage, and with the right to expect assistance from law enforcement officers, if need. We need all of you. Yes, we need to blame our troubles on things that are far away. We can criticize the Supreme Court and mentally and order the horse with the NAACP. Our problem is with ourselves. And what we are going to do is responsible American citizens to recognize or deny privileges which our courts have said are the proper rights of the New York City. I believe that the Supreme Court decision had to come and that it was morally right. This inconsistent misconception of democracy, even though a background of Southern living, Southern custom and Southern tradition tells me it will be strange to seek color faces at the University of Alabama. In May 1957, word came that Buford Boon had lived up to the Pulitzer ideal of courage and truth in the face of popular opinion.

He was awarded the sole Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Boon played down the award locally and refused to be profiled in Time Magazine telling the reporter, please be kind to me and forget it. I was trying to exert influence and I felt very strongly that to do so, I must remain identified with the community as much as possible to it, try not to become a national figure. I was asked to testify before the House Judiciary Committee and I declined. Among the letters of congratulations, there was one Boon would never mention for fear of being further ostracized in his own community. It read in part, ever since I read your editorial, what a price for peace. I have had an unspeakable admiration for you. The moral courage and profound dignity you have evinced in so many situations will long be remembered. To my mind, there is nothing more majestic and sublime than the determined courage of one willing to sacrifice and even face abuse for the cause of freedom and truth.

It is my hope that many other persons in the White South will rise up and courageously give the type of leadership that you have given. Sincerely yours, Martin Luther King Jr., President, Montgomery Improvement Association. Fuford Boon's 1956 editorial, What a Price for Peace, was a defining moment in his career as a newspaperman. His later stands respond from the same basic philosophy, respectful law and order, adherence to the Supreme Court rulings, and southern acceptance of the hard-fought rights of Negro citizens. The Pulitzer Prize established Boon as one of the few moderate voices in the South. It also assured he would be shunned by many in Tuscaloosa. It didn't take much. Still, in 1957, there were many challenges ahead. The Civil Rights Movement was in its infancy, and for another decade, Boon would write with a conviction few southern journalists could match. Stay away from the University of Alabama if you want to stand up with and for George Wallace and the State of Alabama.

On a hot June day in 1963, seven years after Lucy's expulsion, Vivian Malone and James Hood successfully integrated the University of Alabama. The most vivid image of that peaceful day was Governor George Wallace's stand in the schoolhouse door. Boon decided early on that Wallace was more interested in short-term political gain than what was best for Alabama. He often sharply criticized the powerful governor. Governor George Wallace's defiance of federal authority, his condemnation, and contempt of federal courts, his frequent reference to resistance, and his general antagonism to necessary change, encouraged the violent and the lawless. He was the chief architect of an atmosphere that permitted, and to some extent, approved a record which is so familiar to you that its bombings and its murders do not have to be detailed here. By the 1960s, Boon's efforts to prevent the development of a local Ku Klux Klan were futile.

One of the largest Klan organizations in the country was now based in Tuscaloosa under the charge of Grand Dragon, Robert Shelton. He just made a talk on time, which he said that if you put Buford Boon and George Lameda in the barrel and rolled him down a hill, you could be certain of one thing. It'll always be an SOB on top. Despite the integration of the university campus, Jim Crow laws were still ever present in Tuscaloosa. But in July 1964, with the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the previously all white restaurants and movie theaters were integrated by test groups of blacks. Local whites, led by Shelton, reacted violently, forcibly throwing blacks out. The Klan threatened and boycotted local businesses who served or employed blacks. It reached the point where the business community was about to submit to the rule of the Ku Klux Klan. They were afraid.

And I wrote the first editorial and put it on the editor's desk and said, I'm not going to let this bunch of cut throws take over this community if I can help. The editor was violent. Boon's editorials rallied the otherwise silent majority of whites against the efforts of the Klan. Robert Shelton reacted by filing two civil lawsuits for libel claiming $1 million in damages. In 1968, a local jury found in favor of Shelton and ordered Boon to pay just $500 in damages. Boon paid up the same day. A few months later, Boon retired from active participation with the newspaper, turning it over to his son who had been running a paper in Virginia. We realized later that all white people were not anti-black. And what those editorials did was to unify those white people who were not willing to sit down and see the state go down the drain. Today, the Tuscaloosa News is owned by the New York Times regional newspapers and continues to serve West Alabama.

Forty years after first applying, authoring Lucy Foster earned a master's degree from the university and graduated alongside her daughter in 1992. After retiring, Boon took up golf, did some fishing and traveled with his wife Francis. He received numerous awards including an honorary doctorate from Alabama. On campus, his scholarship program continues to provide funds to help promising journalism students. Buford Boon died February 7, 1983, 27 years to the day after the publication of his award-winning editorial, what a price for peace. I think the staff would have thought for him if it was necessary. He was a good time advertising folks and editorials folks in those days. I think that they thought it was not another greater man in the country. He always knew what was going on. He did not live in a make-believe world. He lived in the real world, warts and all. And he did what he could to remove some of those warts.

Extreme attitudes hold no promise, peaceful extension of the blessings of democracy. I believe that if we really stand for liberty and justice, it must be for all. And I believe that if all of us will combine these great principles, with the teaching of our religion and of the Bible, we shall find the correct answer. That is what we must do. The way that is fair, the way that is just and the way that is right. If you have a question or comment about this program or if you'd like to purchase a copy of it, please write the Alabama Experience, box 87,000, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487. Please include the word boon on your request. You may also call 1-800-239-5233.