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Meanwhile, urgent calls to the state police barracks five miles away got the playing-dumb response of "thank you" and advice to check with Governor Vandiver. Not a single state trooper arrived until long after local police broke up the riot with tear gas at about 11:30.
The troopers ignored screaming students who roamed the campus for another 90 minutes. The troopers' mission, instead, was to escort Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes straight back to Atlanta, 73 miles away. The Negroes were officially suspended—"in the interests of their own safety and the safety of the more than 7,000 students at the university," said Dean of Students Joe Williams. Holmes left in speechless anger. Charlayne went off in tears.
It was almost a precise parallel to the 1956 case of Negro Coed Autherine Lucy, suspended by the University of Alabama for her own "safety" after mob pressure and then expelled because she charged that it was a put-up job. The Georgia riot got an extra touch of disrespect for law when at 2:30 a.m. the Governor's executive secretary, Peter Zack Geer, commended the mob: "The students at the university have demonstrated that Georgia youth are possessed with the character and courage not to submit to dictatorship and tyranny."
At week's end Judge Bootle ruled unconstitutional the state funds cut-off law. The FBI came in to investigate the rioting. Three hundred teachers—half of the faculty—jammed the university chapel to pass a toughly worded resolution insisting that "the two suspended students be returned to their classes" and demanding the "preservation of orderly education." Swiftly ordering Students Holmes and Hunter readmitted this week, Judge Bootle left the maintenance of law and order squarely up to the state of Georgia.