The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
HIGH COURT AIRS CASE OF SIT-INS
Constitutionality of Statute Pondered
Constitutionally of a statute under which four persons, three Negroes and one white, were convicted and sentenced for a “sit-in” demonstration here last September was taken under advise-ment Friday by the Louisiana supreme court.
The four were convicted before Judge J. Bernard Cocke, in criminal district court, and each was fined $350 and sentenced to serve 60 days in Parish Prison, for a demonstration at a white refreshment bar in McCrory’s five and 10-cent store, 1005 Canal.
District Attorney Richard A. Dowling argued that R.S. 14:59(6), under which the four appellants were convicted and sentenced, was constitutional by all tests “as it merely protects the right of the people to be safe in the use of their property and to protect their property against trespass.”
Appellants in the case, Sydney Langston Goldfinch Jr., Rudolph Joseph Lombard, Gretha Castle and Cecil Winston Carter Jr., the last three Negroes, were represented by Joh P. Nelson Jr., Lolis E. Eli and Nils R. Douglas.
The sit-ins, according to Dowling, were charged under a statute which reads in part, as follows: Criminal mischief is the intentional performance of an of the following acts: . . .
“(6) Taking temporary pos-session of any part of a place of business, or remaining in a place of business after the person in charge of said business or portion of such business was ordered such person to leave the premises and desist from the temporary possession of any part or parts of such business.”
The four persons involved in the case, it was brought out, entered the establishment, took seats at a counter and refused to leave after they had been denied service and after being asked to leave by the store manager. It was after the four refused to move that the police were called.
Nelson contended that the law is aimed directly at preventing sit-in
demonstrations by Negroes, and that if there had not been Negroes with the white man on the occasion of the demonstration, the latter would not have been arrested.
Nelson also said that the four had been deprived of constitutional rights in a number of respects, and that the trial judge had erred in refusing to permit questions to determine whether the McCrory manager had conferred with other store managers, or with the police, on what plans would be made to stop the sit-in demonstrations.
Members of the high court, at several times during arguments, expressed the opinion that Mayor deLesseps S. Morrison had acted within his rights and properly in attempting to put a stop to the sit-in demonstrations, or so-called peaceful picketing outside retail stores here
