Word: baskins
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...Baskin in Sympathy
...have just finished reading your March 3 report of the Lakeland, Ga. school board's recent action against Teacher Minnie Lee Baskin. The Georgia gentlemen's reason for firing her [for letting one of her white students ride in a Negro bus] is undoubtedly the most shocking revelation of ignorance displayed in the South to date. But let's give Mrs. Baskin a break. She did not intend to promote interracial matrimony; she merely permitted a nine-year-old white boy to get home in time for supper...
After reading your article, millions of Americans will laugh those three Dickensian characters (Superintendent Threatte, Board Chairman Thigpen and Member Crum) to scorn, and that sweet little old lady in your portrait will be Baskin in the warm sunshine of public sympathy and approval...
...wrong. Huffed Superintendent Threatte when she showed him the statement : "This may not be the last you hear of this business." The same day, a school-board member called on Armstrong Baskin, told him that his wife should resign, or be fired. A few days later, Superintendent Threatte, Board Chairman Wallace Thigpen and Member John Crum visited Teacher Baskin herself. Confronted by the awesome threesome of Threatte, Thigpen and Crum, she decided to quit...
Last week she reconsidered, insisted that her resignation "is illegal because it was under duress." But no one around town really thinks that Schoolmistress Baskin will ever teach in Lakeland again. "What is my crime?" she once demanded of a school-board member. "Not a thing," said that worthy, "except you put a white boy on a nigger bus, and a lot of folks don't like...