The editor of the Richmond News Leader and a negro integration leader locked horns last night in a nationally televised debate on whether sit-ins are justifiable.
James J. Kilpatrick of Richmond, urging that the sit-ins be viewed in light of the total picture of Southern racial problems, stood for the rights of the store owners as private property owners.
He also said he believed it to be "a good thing" to preserve racial relations as they have existed for more than 2,000 years in the Western world.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., maintaining that the sit-in movement is a non-violent one, said the sit-ins are justifiable because they are "moral, humanitarian and constructive means to achieve a constructive end."
"These students (the sit-in participants) are seeking to square local laws with federal laws and moral law ... they are not just seeking rights for Negroes, they are seeking to save the soul of America," he said.
Kilpatrick, a member of the Virginia Commission on Constitutional Government, challenged Dr. King's assertion that the sit-in movement is a "non-violent" one.
Rather, he said, sit-ins in the South have caused electrically charged atmospheres, resulting in bomb threats, tenseness and shoving.
Mr. King replied that if there has been violence accompanying sit-ins, it did not come from the demonstrators, but from opponents of the movement.
The debate, which appeared on NBC's The Nation's Future program, quickly entered the legal realm of property rights of store owners.
Dr. King viewed the question as involving a matter of conscience -- that the individuals engaged in the sit-in movement have a high respect for higher laws which seek equal rights for all men.
Kilpatrick, declaring that he was "interested to see that Dr. King obeys the laws he chooses," said five courts have upheld the rights of store owners thus far.
Proposing a hypothetical case in which the Supreme Court upheld these rights, the Richmond editor then asked King if he would "call off your troops" and abide by this decision.
"No court has the right to use its power to deny an individual's constitutional rights," Dr. King retorted.
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