Bogalusa: The Economics of Tragedy

The press has done justice to the woeful catalogue of demonstrations, shootings, and court injunctions suffered by this papermill town in the past year. There has been little exploration, however, of the causes of Bogalusa’s agony: automation, economic frustration, and civic myopia. For Bogalusa is no redneck hamlet, dominated by musty tradition and the paternalism of an entrenched and locally controlled industry. Until recently the town has prospered under the influence of a progressive national corporation and strong Northern-based unions. Yet it was here that the economic urgency of the civil rights movement has most clearly come into focus: Negroes and whites fighting for the same jobs in a work force drastically reduced by tec...