Who: Editorial columnist for the Columbian-Progress and vice president of the Southern States Industrial Council
Worthwhile links:
http://books.google.com/books?id=QBetKzk-ZlQC&pg=PA260&lpg=…
Breakdown: Walter Payton grew up in segregated Columbia, Mississippi, during an era when whites were resistant to change. Compared to other southern towns, Columbia was somewhat progressive, in there was very little violence against blacks. Still, status quo was status quo, and most whites certainly didn’t want blacks sharing restaurants or doctors or (egad!) bathrooms. Leading the charge was Sensing, a brutally racist man whose columns ran regularly in the hometown newspaper and served as a call for whites to stand their ground.
Pearlman’s take: Were Sensing alive today, he’d likely be aligned with David Duke as a “refined” Klan member “not trying to hurt blacks, just trying to stand up for whites.” His columns served as a nonstop reminder to the blacks of Columbia that change would be slow. He was, in modern speak, a bad dude.
From Sweetness: Having waited long enough for Southern schools to comply with the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling, the government finally took definitive action.
On November 19, 1969— two and a half months into Walter Payton’s junior year at Jefferson High School—the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that Columbia and Marion County schools had to be fully integrated by year’s end. In a blistering editorial, Thurman Sensing, a columnist for the Progress and executive vice president of the Southern States Industrial Council, echoed the sentiment of many whites when he wrote, “How can it be just to compel a student to attend a particular school in order to meet a fixed racial formula? The fi nal say-so on a child’s education should belong to parents, not some bureaucrat whose mind is full of socialist notions regarding the way people’s lives should be managed.”
To men like Sensing and Williams, forced integration was a disaster waiting to happen. At the very least, the men believed there would be hundreds upon hundreds of picketers and nonstop violence. More likely, there would be anarchy.