The Charlotte News

Wednesday, September 23, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: A letter writer, W. C. Ethridge, had presaged in August the topic of Tim Pridgen's second in the series of articles on race relations in Charlotte appearing on the front page, this one concerning the demand for equal rights, opportunities, and privileges, in fair exchange for society making equal demands from the normal incidents of citizenship, i.e. taxes and induction to the armed forces, mutual demands being represented by the "Double V". (As we made allusion on August 14, whether this idea provided the Nixon camp with the inspiration in 1968 for him incessantly, from beginning to end, to sock it to 'em with his own hoisted variant version of that Double V, perhaps as a sigil emblematic of the "Southern strategy" which proved so successful, we don't know. vVv.)

We think that for all the good intentions of Mr. Pridgen, his nomenclature could have stood some improvement. He consistently refers to "privileges" under the Constitution--perhaps only echoing the phraseology employed by those to whom he spoke, those somewhat reticent to couch demands in 1942 to the ears of the more volatile whites in terms other than "privileges". But privileges are matters granted by law by virtue of qualification for a license, the privilege to drive an automobile on the highways, for instance--anything requiring a license.

The "Bill of Rights", however, is just that, not a "Bill of Privileges". These rights, not limited to those enumerated, as expressly stated in the Ninth Amendment, belong to every citizen, either by birthright or naturalization.

Moreover, the First and Fourth Amendments, arguably the most precious of the rights and arguably as well the most controversial through time, do not deign to speak of granting the rights which are the subject of each amendment, but rather, as to the First Amendment, mandates that Congress shall make no law in derogation of the rights it sets forth, and, in the case of the Fourth Amendment, assures the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. Both amendments, in other words, presume, a priori, the existence of the rights as granted, not by the Constitution, but by virtue of citizenship.

Force of habit, however, force of tradition, force of ignorance in persisting in those stubborn traditional patterns, had worked to dehumanize in the minds of many white people the black race, and to the extent that it became something separate from ordinary humanity in their minds, a subspecies readily susceptible therefore of dehumanization as so many draft animals, just as the rationalizing notion had been maintained during slavery. Absurd superstitions, self-delusions of lack of sanitation, were employed as myth-mongers to maintain segregated facilities; yet many of these same white people who supported, even drafted, these laws, had not a hint of hesitation in inviting black domestic servants into their homes.

The whole system thus, when poised in the abstract, was based, not on any even perversely supportable rationale, but merely the need to feel psychologically superior to someone. It was, stripped of all sociological and psychological analysis, the result of stubborn stupidity and ignorance, absence of experience of interrelationship between the races on any level of equality, thus enabling the assumption of superiority by the person routinely cast in the dominant role, the questioning of which status was to question the very essence of the individual white man's worth as a human being. In certain places, one did so on peril of death.

Pleas by the better lights on both sides of the apartheid fence notwithstanding, the stubborn traditions continued to prevail through and after the war and well into even the early 1970's before the old ways slowly began to give way under the pressure of both law and demands made from the streets, all too often amid the fresh memory of another killed in the cause, all unfortunately made necessary by the Lesters of the world and their minions.

India was granted its independence from Great Britain after the war. In the United States, African-Americans were not accorded equal opportunity or equal rights under the law--equal opportunity to hold employment and receive equal pay for equal work, the right to live in white neighborhoods, the right to eat in white restaurants, the right to stay in white hostelries, equal rights to vote and attend the same schools as white people--, until these rights and opportunities were obtained by demonstration and demand, holding the nation spellbound the while.

That is not to say that the civil rights movement existed, as too often portrayed, with a clearly defined line between black and white, even in parts of the South. Many unsung white heroes of all ages, at the local level, the neighborhood level, existed in the civil rights movement, quite without demonstrating, quite without formal organization, but nevertheless following the precepts of the leadership of the movement, encouraging peacefully, often at the risk of reputation, their fellows to accord equal treatment to all. Society could never have begun to integrate, court intervention or not, were it not for these unsung heroes, white and black.

It was not only the demonstrations in the streets, the blood dripping from them, which brought about a better integration of society, though obviously this part of the movement was the indispensable ingredient to its ultimate success.

We are still, as a society, coming to grips with integration, though great strides have been made in the last 50 years. Neighborhoods, churches, the last vestiges of apartheid in society, still have a long way to go.

We struggle onward, in spite of our ugly past, and seek to understand it better, in order to improve and better embrace the kind of future which Martin Luther King so eloquently set forth as a vision on that August day of 1963.

DeWitt MacKenzie reports on the tenuous neutrality of the Swiss and why they had been able thus far to maintain it: geography on the one hand; significance as a neutral listening post for each side, on the other. There was also the notion that Switzerland provided neither a threat to Hitler's empire interests nor a boon to it in geopolitical terms. While it could be attacked from the air obviously, it afforded no easily obtainable raw materials which could be shipped out of the country with facility and neither provided a strategic locale for launching military operations. Thus, it remained largely aloof from the war by virtue of these natural insulators.

The map on the page provides a quick glance at the Nazi battle lines in Russia. The reports told of the fiercest close combat yet in the war, inside Stalingrad--block by block, building by building, Nazis often occupying one corner structure while Russian soldiers and civilians shot back from a pock-marked shield on the opposite corner.

The war had come down to this solitary linchpin. If it failed, Russia would likely be lost, and with it the Mediterranean and possibly therefore the entire war.

Thus, the tribute in the editorial column to the valiant people of Stalingrad was not at all misplaced. Indeed, had more people after the war possessed and maintained the thought and spirit of "Grindstone", there might have been no need for those Redstones; there might have been no need for hydrogen bombs; there might have been no Cold War. But too much political capital was at stake to be turned down in the post-war era by the likes of Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon, both of whom exploited the old Red Scare and brought it quite quickly back to life in the post-war era of the United Nations--not that the Soviet Union's post-war demands and aggressive strategies in Eastern Europe didn't contribute plentful easy grist for those who loved to see Red everywhere, becoming then easy emotional pickings for those politicians who were predisposed to exploit those proclivities and prejudices.

Colonel Hugh Knerr, a major force in the building of the Army air corps in the 1920's, writes persuasively from The American Mercury anent the prospect of American-piloted Flying Fortresses, geared for high altitude daylight raids with precise bombing accuracy, dovetailing with the RAF raiders who preferred low-level bombers for night attacks and consequent lack of accuracy; and that despite the RAF pilots' rejection of the B-17 as so much worthless junk.

And, Mamie, the Latin type, seems to have inspired another, perhaps a little later, judging by her outfit anyway.

Oh no, not her--another.

The Bible citation of the day, incidentally, refers, instead of the verse quoted, to this one: "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." That quoted is from John 7:37.

We always like to be of service, Mamie.

Framed Edition

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