The Deep South state of Georgia last week gracefully acknowledged that integration in its white schools must begin. Back to the University of Georgia came the two young Negroes who were the targets of a bawling mob only a few days before. In came local cops, private cops, state cops and quiet men from the FBI. Down came the Confederate flag atop the Kappa Alpha house, and coeds dutifully obeyed an 8:30 curfew. "Quiet as a good country churchyard at midnight," said Dean of Men William Tate, who had battled the mob alone. Surveying husky Hamilton Holmes, one football-happy alumnus mused: "The more I look at that boy, the whiter he gets." With a rueful smile, one white girl summed up: "Some of us have grown up a lot in the last ten days—and so have some adults."
Coming Round. The quietest people on campus were Students Holmes and Charlayne Hunter, well aware that the mob-sparked expulsion of Negro Coed Autherine Lucy* from the University of Alabama in 1956 was clinched by her charge that it was a frame-up. Last week their calm paid off. On the first day, they were each convoyed by one university official and two detectives, on the second by one detective trailing 30 feet behind, and on the third day they walked alone. By week's end, they were almost ignored.
"I think folks are coming round," said Premed Student Holmes. Journalism Student Hunter, the mob's No. 1 target, was delighted. The Roman Catholic daughter of a Methodist U.S. Army chaplain, she is a considerably more sophisticated girl than the average Georgia coed. Her reaction to last week's occasional insults: "I know that a lot of them are saying things at me, not to me."
Aroused Faculty. It was a measure of the change that only three white students quit the campus because it was now integrated. Hard-core segregationists, mainly law students with an eye on state politics, were cowed by the FBI men. Some even stopped wailing about "the long arm of judicial tyranny grinding us under the heel of its boot." In contrast to its former timidity, the university sternly suspended 13 riot ringleaders. Moderates formed "Students for Constructive Action," nailed up golden rule notices: "If I were in the situation Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter are in, I think I'D WANT TO BE TREATED THE SAME AS OTHERS ARE TREATED—NO BETTER AND NO WORSE."
Still worried about the extremists ("Wait till those cops leave"), the moderates plan to escort the Negroes after the police stop, have "400 people we can count on." They can also count on the firm support of an aroused faculty, which is not only doing sentry duty across the campus but is also speaking out loud and clear for reason. When the state legislature introduced a resolution to censure the faculty for its stand last week, one professor snorted: "If they're serious about telling the university what the faculty has a right to say, they can have their university without two-thirds of its faculty." At Mercer University in Macon, Emory University History Professor Bell Ervin Wiley, lecturing on Robert E. Lee, said: "It is inconceivable that Lee, if he were alive today, would advocate resistance to national authority or in any way abet social turmoil or racial hatred."