Southerner Tells Of Racial Strife

"When they burn a cross on your lawn that's not much; you just put it out. But when they call you up on the telephone twenty or thirty times a day and say, 'We're coming to get you, Jew bastard,' it begins to bother you a little."

Abram Eisenman, editor of the weekly Savannah, Georgia Sun, described his ordeal as a Southern supporter of integration at a Harvard-Radcliffe Liberal Union forum Tuesday night.

During the worst part of his harassment by Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens' Council members, "the only people in Savannah who were of comfort were three Protestant ministers," Eisenman related. "The police would say, 'You're a good guy, Abe, and you shouldn't take up for niggers.'"

Almost no one in Savannah seriously challenged the city's pattern of racial segregation until the sit-in demonstrations of 1959, Eisenman declared. Then racial tension rose to the point of "un-civil war." Demonstrators were arrested, street riots took place, and gun stores sold their entire stocks, he said.

Heavy-handed police action and a "probably unconstitutional" ban on picketing averted a crisis, Eisenman stated. But city merchants, who had unanimously refused to integrate, are still suffering heavy losses from a Negro boycott, he said.