A leader of the organized Negro community in Mississippi last night severely criticized complacency towards "the greatest threat today to American democracy: Southern refusals to accept desegregation."

Dr. T. R. M. Howard, President of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership in Mississippi, and President-elect of the Negro Medical Association, made his attack before some 450 people at a meeting in New Lecture Hall sponsored by the Society for Minority Rights.

"Our great leaders sit idly by and preach a gospel of gradualism while the South is torn by violence," Howard said. It was the federal government's refusal to enforce desegregation that allowed violence to start at the University of Alabama, he asserted, "and unless prompt action is taken, such violence will spread."

Howard called for the use of troops to enforce desegregation if necessary.

Howard charged that the White Citizens' Council in Mississippi had begun a program of economic pressure in an attempt to force 500,000 Negroes to leave the state by 1966.

Thousands of Negroes are in serious difficulty because bankers refuse to extend credit, etc., he said.

"They figure that they can stall the federal government ten years by preaching gradualism. And if Negroes finally do get their right to vote, there will no longer be enough to command a majority," he explained.

"How can the Secretary of State go to Geneva and call for free elections behind the iron curtain when we don't even have them here?" Howard asked. "I'm afraid our actions make more of an impression than our missionaries' sermons or our money's ring," he continued.

Howard said he was disturbed by Northern complacency and especially "these people who sit in segregated churches feeling virtuous." People like Mississippi's Senator Eastland are as subversive as any communist and should be treated as severely, he stated.

"We must win this battle for democracy in order to win the battle against communism," Howard concluded.