Quiet Sunday in Crawfordville

Crawfordville, Georgia, has been the scene recently of daily demonstrations as Negro children try to board the buses which carry whites to segregated school in a neighboring county. CRIMSON reporter Lee Simowitz visited the town last summer before it became the target of national publicity. He describes his impressions here.

Crawfordville, Georgia, is an easy town to miss. On a road map, it is only a tiny bubble on the main road from Augusta to Atlanta. Travelers by the dozens pass through the town every day without knowing its name--and without caring.

The town creeps up on you, and is there before you realize it. First, are a few whitewashed, immaculately clean frame houses on either side of the road. Then there is a cluster of businesses with a sidewalk elevated above the street and shaded by the stores' wide porches.

On a knoll in the middle of the town stands the old Taliaferro County courthouse, an ugly red brick building rising above a frayed lawn. The town is the birthplace of Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy. A state park a hundred yards from the courthouse bears his name, and his statue stands on the lawn.

Liberty Cafe

Across the street from the courthouse is the town's only restaurant, the Liberty Cafe. After the demonstrations began in May of this year, its name was hastily changed to Bonner's Private Club.

As in any rural Southern town, the old men sit under the broad porches or in front of the cafe and watch the cars roll past. The only visible mark of the present is a single traffic light.

Through the town, past the courthouse, the park and the ramshackle houses of the Negro quarter, is the Friendship Baptist Church. There I found myself on a hot Sunday afternoon last July.

I had driven from Augusta with Bob Cohn, the city editor of the Augusta paper for which I was working, to cover a Southern Christian Leadership Conference march protesting the county's stolid brand of segregation.

The marches had become a routine, but this one was a little different: the town had just thumbed its nose at the demonstrators by hiring a broken-down, 60-year-old Negro as police chief of its two-man force.

We followed the marchers gathering in the cool interior of the white board church and we sat down in the back. I felt totally out of place.

The singing began, pulsing, fervent punctuated by clapping hands. The rhythm, which I had only heard when I occasionally tuned in a Negro radio station by mistake, tugged at my sleeve.

Love and a Collection

The speakers arose one by one, exhorting the marchers, decrying violence, and calling for unity, love, faith, love, patience, love. A plate was passed, and afterward the 200 people packed into the church exploded out into the brilliant heat and formed up two-abreast.

I climbed into the car and drove ahead down the road for a hundred yards. Bob, with a camera, walked through the shimmering warmth, snapping pictures.

Singing, the procession started to move, with a Negro schoolteacher and a white priest in front. It wasn't very big.

White people in cars blundered up the road, stared in shock at the column, and wheeled their automobiles around to get away.

The marches urged watching Negroes to join the procession. A few did, and the group wound by the state park, passing before the reproachful eyes of Alexander Stephens. The procession passed under a railroad bridge and climbed the courthouse knoll.

Around the courthouse and on the sidewalk in front of the cafe stood a small crowd of whites, watching indifferently. Six state patrolmen slouched with folded arms. The Negro police chief was nowhere in sight.

The marches puddled on the courthouse lawn. They sang, joining arms and swaying in union. Some white boys nudged one another and giggled. A few faces stand out in my mind: an enormous Negro youth in a bluejean jacket, a tiny Negro minister, a pudgy white girl in a baggy dress.

The speakers returned, reiterated their demands, and became excited. "You saying the truth," a few demonstrators murmured. The whites smiled, amused. Then the marchers turned and straggled back down the hill. Someone said it was the police chief's day off.

We went into the cafe to buy cold sodas. The troopers were already there, sipping cokes.

"You members?" asked the man behind the counter. When we told him we weren't, he refused to serve us. The troopers, it seemed, belonged.

So we drove back to Augusta, sweating and thirsty, leaving Crawfordville baking its life out under the summer sun.