Trouble threatened to flare up last Friday afternoon in front of the former A. & P Store in Edgartown, where Mrs. Robert W. Nevin of Ed­gartown and Woollcott Smith of West Tisbury were collecting signa­tures on a petition to Congressman Hastings Keith urging him to bring their concern over the Vietnam policy to the attention of Congress.

 

A group of four youths adjudged to be about 18 or 19 years old, ga­thered around the place where the members of the Vietnam Summer Project had set up a cardtable, and two of them :began to heckle Mr. Smith, one of them physically threat­ening him.

 

When the youths persisted in mak­ing • remarks, and after they had burned some of the literature farther down the street, and others began standing about watching, Mrs. Nevin went to the police station, and re­ported that she felt a police officer should come to the scene in order to avoid trouble.

 

Mrs. Nevin then went back to the front of the A & P, and on her way there could see a police officer walk­ing away from the scene toward the Four Corners.

 

 

Meanwhile, the two hecklers had continued to bait Mr. Smith, and according to Mr. Smith later, one of them told him that one of the police officers had told him to go ahead and heckle as much as he wanted to, that he was going to look the other way.

 

Sometime later, two officers came back up Main street, and Mrs. Nevin approached them as to why they had walked away from the scene. It was while they were in conversation that George A. Willoughby, the manager of the Edgartown A & P, arrived and informed Mrs. Nevin and Mr. Smith that they could not use the location to gather signatures.

 

Mrs. Nevin told Mr. Willoughby that she had the permission of Al­fred Hall the owner of the building, but Mr. ‘Willoughby answered that the A & P Store still had a lease on the vacant building and had the say-so as to its use.

 

Mrs. Nevin said that that was a point Mr. Willoughby should work out with Mr. Hall. Mr. Willoughby then went across the street to Mr. Hall’s office, and shortly afterwards, the two of them returned, and Mr. , Hall told Mrs. Nevin that he had made a mistake in granting permis­sion to set up a cardtable on the pro­perty.

 

At Mr. Hall’s suggestion, Mrs. Nev­in and Mr. Smith, who had originally planned to stay on the street only another hour anyway, decided to abandon their project for the after­noon. At Mrs. Nevin’s request, Mr. Willoughby remained on the scene, until they had gathered up the lit­erature and other effects, in order to avoid further trouble with those standing about.

 

 

Mrs. Nevin had asked Mr. Hall’s permission to set up the cardtable in the recessed entry of the vacant Store after having been denied per­mission by the selectmen to set it up on the sidewalk on Main street, on the ground that it would obstruct the flaw of traffic. When a member of the project had pointed out that other groups frequently have card-tables on the sidewalk to sell tickets to various benefits and that, indeed, some stores display merchandise on the sidewalk, one of the selectmen, Robert J. Carroll, had answered that the selectmen usually tried to ignore such things, but since in this in­stance the group had made a point of it, the board would have to deny permission.