They came together from every state in the South and from many parts of the East and Midwest to protest the brutal KKK-Nazi murder of five anti-Klan demonstrators, members of the Communist Workers Party, who were gunned down in Greensboro last November 3.

The turnout for this broadly sponsored action was an impressive victory.

A victory over the Klan, which didn’t dare show its face on the streets of Greensboro, much less assault the demonstrators.

A victory over the cops, who had stood by and allowed the November 3 massacre but were forced to cooperate with the organizers of the February 2 march and to muzzle their Klan collaborators.

A victory over state and city authorities, who had done everything they could in the weeks before the action to sabotage it, resorting to red-baiting and baseless warnings that violence would occur.

Last but not least, the demonstration was a victory over North Carolina employers, who seek to use KKK terrorism and intimidation to keep Black and white workers divided and to block union organizing efforts.  
 
February 14, 1955
CLEVELAND—The first test of the legality of Jim Crow schools in the North since the Supreme Court decision last May which declared public school segregation unconstitutional has demonstrated the inadequacy of depending on the courts to uphold civil rights.

U.S. District Judge John H. Druffel denied a petition for an injunction to prevent the Hillsboro, Ohio, School Board from enforcing a zoning ordinance passed last September to compel Negro children to attend a Jim Crow school. The Plaintiffs, Negro parents whose children are being denied their constitutional rights, have announced they will continue to keep their children out of school pending an appeal.

In a decision smacking of the worst kind of Dixie “justice,” Judge Druffel called the request for an injunction “class action” and said “local conditions” guided his decision.

Rejecting the judge’s reasoning, local observers point out that: (1) Segregated schools are not the rule in surrounding communities. (2) Hillsboro itself does not maintain segregation above grade school level. (3) Ohio, unlike states involved in the cases on which the Supreme Court ruled last May, does not have a law requiring segregated schools. (4) Ordinances and rulings denying equal rights to one group in the population represent the most blatant kind of “class action.”  
 
 
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