St. Louis is a Northern town with Southern accents, where Jim Crow walks a tightrope. Negroes are not segregated on streetcars and buses, in the ballparks, or at the Municipal Opera. But in restaurants, the public schools and movie houses, they are. Last week the delicate balance, a matter of timing and tradition, was snapped. A reporter casually asked the city's new welfare director, John J. O' Toole, whether Negroes could be allowed to swim in all the city's public pools. There was no law saying they couldn't, so O' Toole answered: "If the colored people apply for admittance, my...
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