During the wave of rapes and stabbings in New York City schools this winter, the South's segregationist dailies pounced jubilantly on the story as a Yankee-sent sermon on the evils of mixing the races in the classroom. When a Brooklyn principal killed himself during a grand jury investigation of violence at his junior high school (TIME, Feb. 19), Mississippi's extremist Jackson Daily News front-paged the story with a picture of a Negro policeman guarding the school. Caption: "Mixed school violence led to this."
The facts did not support such racist conclusions, and despite pressure...