1.
LV EXT.. Court house and crowd.
0.05

2.
SV Crowd in front of court.
0.08

3.
TV Crowd PAN.. across street.
0.14

4.
CU Bailiff with loud speaker halers.
0.18

5.
SV Showing crowd outside window.
0.22

6.
CU Ditto.
0.25

7.
STV INT.. Crowd in court room.
0.26

8.
CU Judge John Harris seated.
0.30

9.
SV Coloured attorney.
0.33

10.
CU Judge listens.
0.35

11.
CU Coloured attorney.
0.37

12.
CU Stamping papers.
0.40

13.
SV White attorney.
0.43

14.
LV PAN.. Crowd in court room.
0.46

15.
TV Crowd in front of court house.
0.51



Initials TDH/N/AHS/AS



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: A crowd estimated at 3,000 thronged the court-house in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, February 29, when trials began for 76 Negro and 4 white Americans, who were arrested February 26 during a demonstration aimed at segregated lunch counters.

While they waited, the negroes sang "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and the American National Anthem.

As the trial began, Judge John Harris ordered the court-room cleared and bailiffs used loudspeakers to call witnesses from the crowd outside.

At the end of the first day, two Negroes and one white student had been fined a total of 160 dollars for disorderly conduct.

Police were brought into action in twenty American southern cities February 27-28, by threats of racial violence and rioting. Throughout the South, Negro university students have allied themselves with protests against segregation at the lunch counters, whereby coloured people cannot be served sitting at the counter, they have to stand.

Demonstrations against segregated lunch counters began in Wichita, Kansas, in 1958. Gradually more and more stores adopted this system, resulting in the present rash of widely scattered but dangerous outbursts of protestation in the Deep South. Only the skilful conduct of the police, combining firmness with restraint, has so far managed to prevent serious fighting in the streets of several large cities, and explosions of racial turbulence.