McGill States South Ridden By 'Fall-Out'

A non-radioactive fall-out is poisoning the South and the entire nation. Ralph McGill, publisher of the Atlanta Constitution, told an M.I.T. audience yesterday.

He defined the fall-out as the debased educational, cultural, spiritual, and economic situation in the South and said it resulted from the disfranchisement of southern Negroes in the early years of the 20th century.

"It has taken us almost a decade to see that the U.S. Supreme Court decision of May, 1954, was merely the opening of a door through which the whole problem of discrimination, injustice, and deprivation has been brought to the center of the national stage," McGill continued. "It will be there for some time."

McGill cited figures to support his allegations. He said that seven of the southern states spent less than $300 per pupil yearly, compared with a national average of $445.

Expressing fear of mass arrests this summer as college students join a vote, registration campaign in Mississippi, McGill said that the state's policemen are gathering new stores of shotguns and tear gas and are setting up concentration pens.

"It seems at times, looking at Mississippi's actions, as if there is a morbid wish to force the Federal government again to send troops to that state," he said.

The civil rights bill, now being "irrationally and demagogically fillibustered" is long overdue, McGill declared, and it cannot be compromised. If Congress deletes essential features of the legislation--such as the public accommodations title--it will find it necessary to put them back, he said.

"Individual rights cannot be compromised out of existence."