Wilkins said his organization feels its regional office for seven Southern states could remain open in Birmingham if it excluded Alabama business. It,too had been closed.

"We will be heard from," he commented regarding the legal action.

Earlier, Wilkins said fewer Negroes will mark ballots for the Democrats this election year than in 1952.

"There will be smaller percentages of Negroes voting for the Democrats than last time," said Roy Wilkins, New York City. "I won't say the Negroes will come away in droves but instead of voting 70 to 80 per cent Democratic it will slice off this year."

Wilkins, after his address before a meeting of Mississippi NAACP branches, said:

"We are still hoping that the Democrats will put through some of their campaign promises of 1952 during this session of Congress. It is their last chance to deliver."

The Negro leader said "of course, the big city machines won't lose the Negro vote where they have had gains afforded them. The Negroes in Michigan, for example, are not going to kick Gov. Mennen Williams in the teeth or in New York where Sen. Herbert Lehman (D-NY) has done so much for them."

Wilkins said that where the Republicans in 1952 promised "delivery on the executive level as well the legislature," the Democrats "put all their eggs in one basket on the legislative level."

The NAACP secretary said in the present campaign all of the statements of the leading candidates for nomination in the Democratic party about the segregation question were about the same. He referred to Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-Tenn.), Gov. Averell Harriman of New York and Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, by name.

"But we want the platform planks this time that are more than mere declarations that the Supreme Court ruling is the law of the land. That won't be enough. There must be an affirmative step put forward."

The NAACP secretary addressed an audience that more than filled the lower floor of an auditorium that seats 2,500. The NAACP said it estimated the crowd between 2,500-3,000.

Wilkins said Sen. James Eastland (D-Miss.) was a problem to the Democratic party and had moved into a position as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee where, "he can affect the nomination of federal judges and other offices."

"It has been successful wherever it has been tried," he declared.

"It can't be stopped by smearing the NAACP as a Communist-front organization . . . The onward march will not be stopped, either, by personal persecution . . . nor . . . by fancy words like 'interposition.'

NOT BE STOPPED

"And the desegregation campaign will not be stopped by vicious talk of Negroes being diseased and criminal and incapable of learning.

"There is nothing about the desegregation campaign that cannot be solved by honest people sitting down and talking over ways and means."

Surveying the situation in Southern schools, Wilkins said:

"There has been no difficulty with students or administrators."

"In western Texas, through almost the whole of Oklahoma, all of Missouri, more than a third of Kentucky, three towns in Arkansas, one in Tennessee, three-fourths of West Virginia, half of Delaware, Baltimore and five counties in Maryland, and the District of Columbia, the change is being made.

"In three states which have resisted on the elementary and high school levels," Wilkins said, "We have Negro students attending the state universities: Louisiana . . . has about 100 students at Louisiana State University; Virginia and North Carolina have students at their universities . . .

"Next September Negro students will be admitted as undergraduates in the University of Texas. Already Negroes are attending 17 public colleges in Texas and four in Louisiana.”