The Town Talk (Alexandria, Louisiana) April 10, 1961
U.S. Supreme Court Will ‘Sit In’
Negro students staged a sit-in at lunch counters reserved for white customers in Baton Rouge, La., some time ago. Sixteen of them were tried and convicted on misdemeanor charges. The Supreme Court has decided to review their conviction.
The agreement of the court to consider this case raises a number of questions. Suppose we consider a few of them.
1. If the Supreme Court is going to hear police-court cases from all over the country, how long will it be before the court will have a docket as long as from here to Kingdom Come?
2. Is any conviction of any colored person final until the Supreme Court has passed upon it?
3. If a restaurant may not make its own policy as to what customers it will or will not serve, what becomes of the fancy-Dan eating places where diners are required to wear coats?
4. If the Supreme Court is going to tell us who shall be our table companions, will it consider white tablecloth and white napkins as unconstitutional on the ground that Gunnar Myrdal believes that they have an adverse psychological effect upon some of our citizens?
And finally, there is the question of the sit-in itself. If it is a constitutional right of colored citizens to sit-in at a restaurant which they do not own, to which they have contributed no upkeep and where they are not welcome, then how would it do for white taxpayers to sit-in on the Supreme Court itself?
After all, the Supreme Court belongs to the citizenry. They created it. It is they who support it. And if they decide to enforce what they consider their constitutional rights, why should not a sit-in ruling by the court be broad enough to cover sit-ins by everybody for every purpose everywhere?
If sitters-in occupied the bench, the swivel chairs in the private offices and front and back seats of the automobiles which transport the justices to and from their work, that could be considered as no more than the effort of amici curiae to aid the court in getting the full flavor of the sit-in. Or are we all wrong again? – Dallas Morning News.
