The Charlotte News
Friday, January 17, 1958
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Little Rock, Ark., that a bomb scare had resulted in a search of Central High School by a platoon of Arkansas National Guardsmen the previous night, but no explosive had been found and the soldiers had been withdrawn. Classes were not scheduled at the school this date, as teachers were grading midterm exams. An Arkansas Military District spokesman said that the normal complement of Federalized Guardsmen, about 25 men, had been on duty this date as usual. The shift had recently been changed to weekdays between 8 o'clock and 5 o'clock, whereas formerly, the Guardsmen had been on duty at all times. Other Army officers had insisted that the surprise maneuver had merely been "a practice alert". About an hour before the soldiers had arrived at the campus, military authorities, Little Rock police headquarters and a newspaper had received anonymous telephone calls that "something was going to happen to Central High School." A female caller shouted almost hysterically to a reporter at the newspaper: "They're from out of town. They're going to blow up the school." That had brought two jeeps and a bus carrying an estimated 36 Guardsmen to the campus the previous night, with rumors that something was happening bringing hundreds of onlookers to the school in automobiles. The troops had rushed into the dark building and flashlights had been observed moving from room to room. The unidentified colonel who headed the troops had been asked about their presence and he had replied sharply, "No statement," ordering news photographers to take no pictures. City police patrolled the area, stopping an Associated Press reporter and a reporter from the Memphis Commercial Appeal, warning them that they had better stay out of the area the rest of the night.
In Maxton, N.C., a Klan leader, the Rev. James Cole of Marion, S.C., had called the new owner of the weekly newspaper, The Scottish Chief and Post, Bruce Roberts, and said: "The Klan never calls off a meeting, and the Klan never backs down." He was referring to the scheduled Saturday night meeting of Klansmen in the area of nearby Pembroke, a predominantly Indian community, designed as a "warning" to local Indians against race-mixing. Mr. Cole had told Mr. Roberts that the Klan was holding his newspaper responsible for "making the Indians mad at the Klan." Anti-Klan feeling among the Indian population in Maxton was running high following three reported cross-burnings by hooded men led by Mr. Cole, two on Monday night and one on Wednesday night, the latter having been reported the previous day in The Robesonian of nearby Lumberton, all aimed at Indians for allegedly being too close to whites, either "having an affair" with a white man in one case or moving into a white neighborhood in another. On Wednesday night, the Maxton Town Board had passed a resolution condemning the Klan and opposing the Saturday night Klan rally. A group of three ministers had endorsed that position the previous day. Mr. Roberts, in a front page editorial in his newspaper this date, had said: "Monday night's burning of crosses in front of Indian homes has angered decent and law-abiding citizens throughout all of Robeson County... Robeson, with its three races, has been fortunate in having not only good will between the races, but an unusually cooperative and friendly attitude. It is an insult to the people of our county when outsiders come in and attempt to frighten our citizens and stir up hatred between the races. The Klan preaches hatred of Jews, Catholics, and Negroes, and now our Indians. It amuses them to frighten people with burning crosses in front of their homes and threats to take care of them if they aren't living in a manner which meets with the Klan's approval." He closed the editorial by saying: "The regrettable cross burning of last Monday night and the Klan's activities this week should serve to draw all of us closer together in understanding, in unity against an outside group which would like nothing better than to disunite us."
Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson this date urged Congress to ease crop production controls and to authorize lower price supports as a means of opening new farm markets. In a statement prepared for a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing, the Secretary had asked specifically for quick action on a broad program which had been outlined by the President in his special message to Congress on agriculture the previous day. The program immediately drew criticism from many farm state Congressmen. As the President had done, Secretary Benson had characterized major features of the current farm program as failures. "The shortcomings of our past programs are quite clear. We have tried to legislate prices artificially, without full consideration for the inevitable forces of supply and demand. We have tried to control production artificially, without full consideration for the efficiency and ingenuity of farmers. In other words, we have lacked realism. Our farm programs—no matter how desirable in objective—have failed to get the job done." Many farm state Congressmen predicted that a key provision of the program, the proposal to lower minimum price supports to 60 percent of parity on basic commodities, stood no chance of adoption. Present limits ranged from 75 to 90 percent on basic crops. There was some evidence that members of Congress from consumer-minded states would support the entire package, in the hope that it would, as promised, cut both food costs and Government spending for farm supports. There was, however, only a scattering of Democratic calls for going back to the rigid 90 percent price supports for basic crops, which would revive a battle which the President had won two years earlier.
The Agriculture Department this date halted for the time being the signing of agreements with farmers to retire land from cotton growing during the year under the acreage reserve part of the soil bank program. While instructing state and local field offices to accept no more such agreements, the Department had asked the offices to keep a record of farmers still wishing to participate, in the order in which they applied, as it might be possible to allow some of them to take part should enough money become available.
At Cape Canaveral, Fla., the Navy had launched a Polaris test vehicle this date and for the first time had identified it as such. The rocket had taken off vertically and traveled to an undisclosed target down range. Observers had seen the rocket launch with considerably greater rate of acceleration than that of other large ballistic missiles launched recently. The Polaris was noted for its great speed. Almost immediately after the launch, the Air Force missile test center confirmed that it was a vehicle in the Navy Polaris program.
Youngsters who were experimenting
with rockets
Adlai Stevenson had accepted an appointment on the national council of the Atlantic Union Committee, joining many state and national leaders actively supporting greater unity among the people of the Western democracies.
Frank Porter Graham, former UNC president, the U.N. mediator for Kashmir, had arrived this date for talks in Karachi with Pakistani leaders in his search for a settlement of the India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir.
In Jakarta, Indonesia, Government shipping officials said this date that three foreign lines operating on temporary licenses had restored 20 percent of the country's disrupted inter-island transport traffic.
In Istanbul, it was reported that Turkey's Defense Ministry had announced the arrest of nine Army officers on charges of trying to involve the armed forces in a plot.
In Montceau Les Mines, France, four miners had died this date from burns suffered in a coal mine explosion the previous day, leaving 34 other miners injured.
In Fraser, Colo., it was reported that on almost any winter day, the town had colder weather than anywhere in the country, at least among those localities with weather observers who reported official temperatures to Federal weather stations. The usual temperatures were in the range of this date's low, 21 below zero. On New Year's Day, the temperature had been 3 below. The town had about 300 residents, none of whom appeared to worry that their town was usually the country's coldest, merely tossing another log on the fire and catching up on their reading when the mercury dropped low. There was plenty of snow for skiing and bobsledding close to the town, about 70 miles northwest of Denver. The local log-cutter and his wife were deemed to have about the toughest jobs in town, for every two hours, seven days per week all year, they took weather readings and telephoned them to the weather station at Denver's Stapleton Airfield. The wife said that because the town lay on a main airway, pilots had to know what the weather was like along the Continental Divide before they made their flight plans, and it was their job to let them know. The town was located on a tableland about 9,000 feet above sea level, with high peaks surrounding the town on three sides. At night, after sunset, the warm air rose rather suddenly and cold air flowed down from frigid layers high above the mountains, causing the cold air, which was heavy, to funnel down the valley, resulting usually in warmer temperatures on Berthoud Pass, 11,314 feet in elevation, than in the town of Fraser.
In Raleigh, the head of a State Bar Association committee studying the courts of the state this date praised the quality of the state's judiciary and at the same time criticized the political system under which judges were selected. J. Spencer Bell of Charlotte, speaking before the Raleigh Kiwanis Club, said that political election of judges tended to lower the quality of the judiciary and made its members subject to unnecessary pressures, stating that "a noble and high-minded judge" would reach a just decision no matter the risk to himself, but that it was grossly unfair to force a judge to endure unnecessary risks or unnecessary pressure or leave the judge open to the charge of acting from political or improper motives, no matter how untrue the charge might be in individual cases. He said it was no wonder that critics of the justice of the peace system across the nation referred to it as the "bargain basement of the law, where the goods are always shoddy but seldom cheap", indicating that like the Recorder Court judges, North Carolina's justices of the peace were chosen in different ways, some being elected by the people, some appointed by Superior Court judges, and at the start of every Legislature, through an omnibus bill appointing 500 to 600 justices of the peace throughout the state.
In Flax Burton, England, a minister, a teetotaler, had saved a pub called the Angel. The village had only 300 residents and the pub, across the street from the minister's church, had not been making much money. The brewers who owned it were about to give up when the 70-year old Anglican rector intervened, saying: "The inn is our social center. We all meet there, so please keep it open." A spokesman for the brewing firm said that the plea would be granted.
In Nettleham, England, the local vicar reported this date that he had been duped by the devil. He was strongly opposed to gambling and protested recently when a parishioner had donated one pound, the equivalent of $2.80, to the church restoration fund, specifying that it had to be used to purchase a ticket in the Government bond lottery. The vicar had finally relented, feeling certain that the number would not come up anyway; but it had and the church restoration fund had received the equivalent of $140. The vicar said in response: "I think the devil must have been at work and confounded me. But naturally I'll take the money. We need it for repairs to our 13th Century church."
In Manchester, England, a zookeeper had been forced to shoot to death his favorite lioness this date as fire swept through the Belle Vue Zoological Garden and park. Attendants armed with rifles had been called out when flames swept through two restaurants and two ballrooms, closing in on the wild animal den housing the lions, tigers and leopards. Firemen feared that the beasts might escape if the cages were broken, and so the zoo superintendent had sadly made the decision to kill the most excited of them, his favorite lioness, Judy, long a favorite of visitors to the zoo. Eventually, the fire had been brought under control.
On the editorial page, "U.S. Farm Policy Is a Museum Piece" suggests that the President's vision of the future of farming in the country was "laughably logical", seeing both the promise and the threat of the major breakthrough in agricultural science and technology, and the need for the underemployed small farmer to channel his energies into more productive fields, while sensing the folly of high price supports. He also had suggested refreshing ideas about expanding markets for increased production.
Despite the fine ideals in the President's special farm message to Congress the previous day, there had been riotous laughter in the wings because there was no market for pure logic in U.S. farm policy. The farmer used political strength disproportionate to the numbers of farmers to continue virtually intact a system of subsidies which had been out of date for nearly two decades. The President had attempted to point out that basic agricultural legislation presently on the books had originally been devised as an emergency effort to cope with the Depression, that adjustments had later been made for the sake of World War II and to meet the needs of peace thereafter. But it had never been adequately modified to deal with the effects of the technological revolution in agriculture.
The President had pointed out that farm production per man-hour had doubled since 1940 and that a century earlier, the American farmer usually fed himself and three others while at present, he fed himself and 20 others. Farming in many areas had become big business. Between 1950 and 1954, the nation had lost 405,000 family farms, those with gross sales of less than $25,000.
Since the services of farmers were less in demand because of the advances in technology on the farm, the underemployed farmers simply could be shifted somewhere else, to big-city manufacturing jobs, for instance, if the Government were dealing with pieces on a chessboard rather than human beings.
Many farmers desired farm life socially and were not trained for anything else, and there were not enough jobs for them in industry in any event.
It posits that there was a solution, but not in the President's proposals to lower Government price supports a few percentage points for the major crops. It was rather the process of economic growth and development which had been ongoing for centuries. As farming efficiency advanced, fewer people were needed to produce food and fiber and more could be employed in producing goods and services other than basic necessities. When the technologically underemployed small farmer could produce more and earn more in some other occupation, he would slowly find his way into that occupation, and the small farms could be combined into more efficient operating units with higher levels of income.
But occupational opportunities had to be present and the opportunities for better educational preparation as well. If the nation's industrial economy was weak, the farmer might prefer to take his chances back on the farm and manage to stay alive with his own produce. And if he had no training for the intricacies of industrial technology, he was better off in any event on the farm than standing in a bread line in Detroit.
It indicates that farming at present was the only major sector of the economy, other than national defense, which was subsidized and thus stood apart from the rest of the economy. The "farm problem" would not be solved until it was related again to the whole of society. Politics permitting, that would happen someday and the "laughable logic" of the President about the future of agriculture "might have the solemn ring of orthodoxy."
"Beneath Soaring Sounds, Aching Joints" indicates that the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra's economic future was as threadbare as ever, but artistically was reaching new heights of self-sufficiency.
Those who had seen the rehearsals for the following evening's concert could not help but be impressed by the swift, sure development of the hometown performers. Under the baton of guest conductor Earl Berg, the Symphony was growing in confidence and collective facility. The Oratorio Singers of Charlotte, guest artists for the Saturday concert, had added an additional inspirational lift.
Those who would attend the concert would be treated to fine music, coming into full bloom in an area once ridiculed by the late H. L. Mencken as the "Sahara of the Bozart".
It indicates that ticket sales alone could not sustain a symphony orchestra, that virtually all symphonic groups, from the New York Philharmonic on down, had to depend on contributions to operate, usually amounting to about half of the budget. It urges that the Charlotte Symphony needed donors, but first of all, the services of a public-spirited citizen of some influence and ingenuity under whom a fund-raising program could be organized. Some 30 civic leaders had already refused to accept the position.
It finds that most fine music institutions in the country shared the Symphony's problem. The Metropolitan Opera, for example, had been on the edge of financial disaster since its founding in the 1880's. But where there had been an extra effort on the part of devoted music lovers, that which had been worth saving had usually been saved. Charlotte's Symphony Orchestra, it urges, was eminently worth saving and so asks for the extra effort.
"Diplomat Herter Pays a Welcome Call" tells of a visit to Charlotte by Undersecretary of State Christian Herter conferring a signal honor on the community, as not in the previous decade had such a high-ranking official of the State Department been a guest of the city.
There was a growing interest in international relations in the community which had been accelerated and made more articulate by the work of the local Joint Council on International Affairs.
Mr. Herter had a long and distinguished record of public service and his present post was key to the nation's "war for peace".
His address at the annual meeting of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce this night, titled "Waging Peace", ought bring to the community a larger appreciation of the importance of the State Department in the conduct of national affairs. Its importance had grown steadily in an age which had brought the nation into a continuing crisis in the conflict between East and West.
It thus welcomes Mr. Herter to Charlotte and invites him to return soon.
Mr. Herter would succeed Secretary of State Dulles at the latter's death in May, 1959.
A piece from the Hackensack (N.J.) Bergen Evening Record, titled "Something To Be Done", indicates that to answer a question phoned in by a woman, something could be done about Sputnik:
"We can proclaim Be Kind to
Egghead Week.
"We can desist from chuckling about Yankee know-how.
"We can accustom the children to a world in which Americans can run second—maybe third, fourth, last…
"We can understand once for all that the satellites are a triumph of the human mind, not a political system…
"We can say that the town which honors its bookmaker more highly than its teacher is a town where a child will be afraid to be thought bright…
"We can believe anything that saps our valor weakens us—whether it turns up in a jukebox song or a bottle, an advertisement or a sneer at the color of a man's skin, a comic or a political speech or skinning through a red light or a joke of the kind that leaves people feeling degraded."
Drew Pearson indicates that the Moulder Committee, following an all-day backstage battle, had decided to sidestep an inquiry into the corruption inside the FCC, which decided who would receive valuable radio and television licenses. Congress had delegated $250,000 to pay for the investigation and almost all of it had been spent in advance preparation. The Committee had voted not to bring out the facts which its probers had discovered, even though the $250,000 might be wasted, as the facts were too hot to handle. The Committee had voted six to two against release of the facts, with Representatives John Moss of California and Morgan Moulder of Missouri, both Democrats, being the only votes to let the public know. Representatives John Heselton of Massachusetts and Joseph O'Hara of Minnesota, both Republicans who had cheered Mr. Pearson when, during the Truman Administration, he was exposing improper influence exerted by Democrats through gifts of hams, deep freezes and mink coats, were opposed. He indicates that he was now publishing some of the scandal which the Republicans wanted to suppress, one being the grant to a television station of broadcast rights in Miami.
After ten years of debate until 1957, the channel had gone to National Airlines, the first time in history that an airline had been granted a television station. Oral arguments had been heard on July 13, 1954, and then-FCC examiner, Herbert Sharfman, a competent civil servant of excellent reputation, had written a 50-page opinion recommending that the station go to Frank Katzentine, a prominent Miami civic leader. But in February, 1957, the FCC had reversed its examiner and awarded the channel to the airline, close to the President's brother-in-law, Col. Gordon Moore. George Baker, president of National, had admitted, when questioned, that Col. Moore had visited him frequently in Miami, the visits having occurred during and shortly after the preliminary recommendation against National. One reason Republican Congressmen had not wanted any FCC probe was that the White House had called FCC members attempting to dictate their decision.
Richard Mack, an alleged Democrat who voted for the President, had been appointed to the FCC by him from Miami in 1955, when the Commission was faced with the unfavorable recommendation against National, which the White House wanted reversed. There were reports that before Mr. Mack was appointed, the latter had promised a Miami attorney close to National that he would vote for National. When questioned, the attorney flatly refused to say anything; and so to get at the facts, Mr. Pearson's assistant, Jack Anderson, had called Mr. Mack. The latter had admitted that the attorney was his close friend and that Mr. Mack's personal assistant at the FCC had come from the attorney's law firm. He denied, however, having ever committed his vote to anybody in advance of his appointment. Mr. Anderson had pointed out to him that a series of long distance calls had been made between Mr. Mack's FCC office and the attorney's law office just before the decision to grant the channel to National. He denied, however, that the calls had anything to do with the FCC, stating that the lawyer was his personal lawyer and that he was discussing only a personal matter.
That seems to have become a popular dodge of late, also used by Jimmy Hoffa to get his acquittal the prior year in his bribery prosecution, claiming that the alleged bribe money paid to John Cye Cheasty of the Senate Select Committee investigating misconduct in the unions and management, Mr. Cheasty having been working cooperatively with the Government in the investigation, had actually only been a retainer fee and not intended as a bribe, Mr. Hoffa claiming that he never knew that Mr. Cheasty worked for the Committee until after his indictment. The bridge he wants to sell you is over there, in the general vicinity of Trump Tower.
Harry Ashmore, executive editor of the Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock and former associate editor and editor of The News until mid-1947, in a reprinted recent speech, the occasion of which is not provided, indicates that the problem of accommodating the black population of the country had always been, as Gunnar Myrdal had stated in An American Dilemma, published in 1944, a dilemma. "Now, in the wake of the great redistribution of the Negro population in a single generation, every major American community must face it in practical terms."
The horns of the dilemma were sharpest for the South, the home of the majority of American blacks, and the only region with a social structure largely shaped by their presence. The steady development of a public policy forbidding legal segregation in any activity prescribed by law or sustained by public funds had created for the average Southerner the dilemma of compliance with the law at the cost of severe dislocation of the existing social order, or defiance of the Government at the cost of disruption of the judicial process, receipt of moral condemnation from non-Southerners and concomitant political penalties while handicapping the blooming economy in the region.
He finds that Southern view to have appeared vastly oversimplified, that the alternatives thus posed before the region were emotional rather than rational, yet remained the prevailing view and therefore the reality with which any consideration of the dilemma in race relations had to begin. He indicates that the issue was emotional on both sides, as it had been when the debate was in terms of human slavery, not any less so at present when the argument was over second-class citizenship for blacks.
"In the march of generations, the condition of the American Negro has been steadily improved—in recent years by his own efforts, and earlier by the assistance of sympathetic whites. He has been the principal figure in a great moral crusade that has run through all our history, a crusade that had its roots in that part of the nation where, until recent years, the Negro did not live. But he has also received sympathy and support in his long struggle from those who have always been his neighbors—the southern whites."
He finds that, ironically, it was in part the advances economically and politically which had complicated the existence at present of American blacks. Their sights were higher, demands greater, patience having grown thin. But the forward progress had not yet significantly altered the basic attitude of the American white.
The late Howard Odum of UNC, a student of the Southern region, had once undertaken what he called a sort of hidden poll of the great mass of Southern folk and found at the heart of the Southern credo the central theme: "The Negro is a Negro and nothing more." He had added as advice to Southerners: "It was of the utmost importance that Southerners face the plain assumption that they did not appraise the Negro as the same sort of human being they themselves are."
Mr. Ashmore finds that to be the first truth in the dilemma of race relations, but there was another of equal importance, the fact that in its overall implications, the Southern white attitude toward blacks was not substantially different from the prevailing American white attitude. While Southerners had translated their viewpoint into legal barriers of segregation, now being systematically struck down, non-Southerners had not. But faced with a rising tide of black immigration from the South, they had erected extra-legal barriers which effected the same end. "With only rare exceptions, Negroes everywhere in the United States live in segregated communities; the lines in Chicago, for example, are, if anything, more sharply drawn than they are in Atlanta."
While the tradition in the South was different, the practice was not at present significantly different from that which prevailed in all the large cities where blacks had arrived more recently to take their place in the ghettos vacated by earlier generations of immigrants.
He indicates that the dilemma thus could be reduced to the summary statement, applying equally in every community where blacks had congested in considerable numbers, that the American white was not yet ready to accept blacks as equals, and the American black was no longer willing to accept anything less. Those were the polar attitudes, but there was a great range between them among the members of both races. Yet, they were the attitudes which had been most prominent in the current conflict, the attitudes to which the advocates on either side gave angry voice.
The Southern political leadership remained formally committed to working out a pattern of race relations within the old "separate-but-equal" doctrine, despite its rejection by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education in May, 1954. The new, militant black leadership, as a matter of principle, opposed segregation in any form, legal or extra-legal, voluntary or enforced, as a mark of inferiority. The immediate conflict centered at present in the area of public education, but its implications went far beyond that arena, requiring that society be reordered in many important respects. The people were being called upon to make changes in the patterns of their everyday life, changes which the majority of white Americans were reluctant to make.
He rejects the notion, however, that the current pattern of desegregation by law was bound to fail, rather embraces the belief that it was bound to succeed, based on all of the evidence. While there were powerful forces working to preserve segregation, during the previous 20 years, the forces working against segregation had proved stronger. It was not unusual to find the declared public policy in conflict with the public attitude in the area of desegregation. Public policy forbade the mistreatment of bondsmen in the era of slavery but did not effectively protect them. The 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of "separate-but-equal" had called for equal public facilities, permitting within the acceptable ambit covered by the 1868 14th Amendment, however, separate accommodations. But discrimination had then prevailed. "Bringing practice into conformity with policy is one of the ultimate tests of democracy, which must protect the declared right of the minority while it is bound by the will of the majority."
He finds that the polar attitudes thus described did not preclude compromise but rather demanded it. The white citizens of Louisville had accepted the principle of integration in their public schools and had begun the transition on a limited scale. The attitude of the white citizens of Louisville had not changed, still not regarding blacks as their equals. But, under the pressure of the law and the prodding of a few wise men, they had accepted the necessity of granting blacks a greater measure of equality of opportunity.
Equality of person was not a fact of American life and never had been, but equality of opportunity was the goal, a negative concept rather than a positive one, not guaranteeing children a certain place in society but rather affording them a clear field on which no child would be handicapped by race or religion. He finds that to have been the key concept embodied in Brown. Yet, it had been obscured by two false notions widely and stubbornly held, the belief that any association between whites and blacks beyond that of master and servant inevitably led to intermingling of the races, and the belief that any separation of the races was inherently discriminatory and therefore morally wrong. He asserts that even a cursory reading of the record ought dispel both of those notions.
The only widespread intermingling of the races had occurred in the days of the enforced degradation of blacks, and had declined almost to the vanishing point with the general social improvement of the minority. Thus, viewing the matter historically, the separate-but-equal doctrine could be seen as a necessary bridge in the transition from slavery to full citizenship. If it denied blacks certain rights granted to whites, it also guaranteed them certain privileges and immunities at a time when they were not equipped to compete on an equal footing with whites. The gross abuses and calculated exploitation which were cloaked in legal segregation had been an essential part of the record. They had been indefensible, but had provided the cutting-edge which had finally removed the legal underpinning of segregation.
Yet noblesse oblige was part of the system also, the obligation of the strong to protect the weak, disappearing in the transition period which was now underway.
He posits that both of the deeply-held ideas would survive for the foreseeable future and would provide the rallying point for those who, as stated by Ralph McGill of the Atlanta Constitution, were now engaged in "guerrilla fighting among the ruins of the old segregated society." They would continue for some years to shape political decisions and social customs, while an increasing number of Southerners were now groping for new accommodations, not because the old attitudes were necessarily changing but because they were beginning to understand that the shifting racial pattern was only a part of the great change which was sweeping the region, and not the most important part.
Legal separation was only one of three peculiar institutions which had set the South apart from the rest of the nation for most of its history. There was also the one-crop agrarian economy, made possible by the slave and also necessary by his eventual emancipation. There was additionally the one-party political system, brought into being as a means of denying the vote to the freedmen. All three of those institutions were so closely interrelated as to be virtually one, and none could survive without the other. Thus, the Southern leaders who were working with success to industrialize the region were undermining the system of segregation which many of them were so passionately defending.
There was not one South but many Souths, each significantly different in the racial composition of its population and in its tradition. Segregation in education was already dead in more than half of the states which had required it prior to Brown. That trend would only continue in the upland countries of the South, where the black population was sparse and the practice of segregation had never been buttressed by unyielding social sanction. In the Deep South, there was not yet any perceptible break. Yet, upon closer examination at the general scene, there were signs of significant change everywhere. The physical violence which many hotspurs had predicted and many sober Southerners had feared, had not developed except in isolated cases. The most extreme actions of the new Citizens' Councils fell far short of the outright reign of terror once undertaken a generation earlier by the Klan. There had been shocking examples of denial of such basic civil rights as the right to vote, yet even in the Deep South, the participation of blacks in the 1956 general election had been the greatest in history. Most observers, he notes, had given the black voters credit for cracking the solid Democratic fronts in such states as Louisiana and Tennessee.
Meanwhile, the great migration of blacks from the South continued, changing the complexion of the region yearly. Every Southern city had grown steadily whiter in recent years, while every major Northern city had experienced an increased proportion of its black population.
He suggests that the most significant fact in American race relations at present was that the city of Chicago presently contained more blacks than the entire state of Arkansas, taking place in the course of a single generation which had seen millions of blacks not only change their places of residence but their agrarian background, moving to urban environments.
Blacks were set apart as once had been Jews, Poles and Irish before them, having the worst housing, assigned to the most menial jobs, beset by inferior background. Blacks were still in the process of horizontal migration from farm to city and from South to North, but a vertical migration upward in society was beginning and would accelerate, enabling blacks to emerge from the ghettos and gain greater acceptance as improved opportunities enabled them to earn it.
The walls of prejudice were perhaps harder to scale for blacks than those which had confronted any of the other minorities who found their place eventually in the general social milieu. But time and the moral force which had made blacks a burden on every white American's conscience throughout the nation's history, were on their side.
"The dilemma is real. The horns are sharp. But its resolution is at least as certain as the survival of the democratic concept in a nation which has never attained its goal—but has never considered abandoning it."
Framed Edition
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