The South and Segregation: Where Do We Stand?
FLEMING, HAROLD C.
The South and Segregation: Where Do We Stand? by HAROLD C. FLEMING The South is surely one of the most rediscovered areas on earth. Since the end of the Civil War, the South's role in the nation...
...In fact, the pressures of Negro migration and efforts to change old patterns—particularly in housing— brought new manifestations of racial prejudice and tensions in the big Northern cities...
...Lack of moral commitment and unwillingness to prepare the community were no doubt grievous faults of the local school authorities...
...Outside the South, the Court's answer was generally regarded as the "proper" one, expected of us by a world full of emerging underdogs and required by our good opinion of ourselves—much as the politician is expected as a matter of good form to pay his respects to "the rights of every American regardless of race, creed, or national origin...
...if businessmen and industrialists, North as well as South, can begin to recognize their own stake in orderly desegregation...
...Yet what do the millions of words and television images add up to...
...Can anyone doubt that a scene from Little Rock would be re-enacted, at least for a short time...
...And this was in addition to the Congressional wrangle over civil rights legislation which dominated front pages during most of the long, hot summer...
...Here was a natural and dangerous combination—fear and fantasy among the rank-and-file, and a powerful sense of threat to self-interest among leaders long accustomed to manipulating this particular set of anxieties in Southern society...
...His adversary, confused and vacillating, dared not play the magnificent cards he held, but gave the impression that he didn't really mean to get in the game in the first place and wasn't sure he really wanted to win...
...Have they given Americans—to say nothing of foreigners—a clearer understanding of the South's malaise...
...These are the forces behind the often neglected success story of desegregation in the border states...
...Unfortunately, the opportunity went largely by default, and the precious time was used by the die-hard South to launch a crusade based on fear, frustration, and irrationality...
...Moreover, denial of the ballot is precisely the practice that the traditional Southern leadership can least comfortably defend...
...Let us suppose the Mayor of New York City suddenly took it into his head to block the admission of, say, a group of Puerto Ricans to a public housing project by the dramatic use of armed force, publicly declaring the alternative to be wholesale bloodshed...
...ever, finally went to the heart of "discrimination" and the question of whether there can be any real equality in legal segregation...
...Supreme Court's school desegregation decision of 1954, the tempo of the cycle has increased...
...The alternative is despair and its twin, hopelessness...
...Since the negative implications of Little Rock have been thoroughly aired, it is perhaps worthwhile to consider briefly the positive aspects...
...The wider use of the ballot by Negroes is an essential part of the remedy...
...Southerners as well as Northerners were shocked by the extent to which a previously placid and law-abiding community can be disrupted by mob action when a public official espouses defiance of law...
...Governmental, religious, intellectual, and economic leaders undertook little in the way of diagnosis of the Southern problems standing in the path of compliance...
...Here, in short, is a force the segregationists hadn't recokned with—a force that, in the end, will be decisive...
...A cautious start in the schools of three North Carolina cities had moved that state out of the "diehard" category, and a contested but successful beginning in Nashville had given desegregation a firmer foothold in Tennessee...
...Finally, there was the sequence of events in Little Rock...
...To assess the developments of the past year in these terms requires a review of what has happened since the Supreme Court outlawed the "separate but equal" doctrine in 1954...
...Then with a mixture of surprise, distaste, and avidity, the respectable relatives indulge in a journalistic orgy over the doings of their wayward kin...
...And that depended, in turn, on the tenor of leadership...
...Conspicuously lacking in most interpretations is any sense of continuity...
...The situation might have been likened to a poker game in which an aggressive player with a second-rate hand took the first pot by confident bluffing...
...But since the U.S...
...The pro-segregation "resistance" movement was founded on the assumption that it could apply enough legal, social, and economic pressure to stifle the Negroes' efforts to secure their newly defined rights...
...The Southern Regional Council, as an organization of white and Negro Southerners, has found plenty of evidence that the handicap can be overcome...
...Southern resistance to desegregation is rooted in the outdated political systems of the deep South, which give inordinate power to the rural strongholds of "white supremacy...
...There are reasons aplenty why Southern leadership failed this test...
...Soon this too palls, and the South slips back into obscurity—until the next time...
...One of the most hopeful signs was the calm determination displayed by Southern Negroes themselves...
...We can hope so, but not with much optimism...
...My own hopeful view is that it will be something like "The Death Agonies of an Old Order...
...hence, the harassment, the economic reprisals, the dynamit-ings that have plagued the leaders of the integration movement...
...But it is most unlikely that these defects would have proved fatal had Governor Faubus not interfered...
...Despite the turbulence of the year just past, there are some grounds for hope that it marked a turning-point in this uneven power struggle...
...Aptly-named Pleas-anton, Texas, had become the first community to approve desegregation by popular referendum, under the terms of an ill-motivated state law...
...2) it persuaded many white Southerners that the federal government and the "North" in general "don't really mean it...
...Can these sparks of hope be fanned into a brush fire...
...More perplexing was the failure of national leadership to provide a statesmanlike counter-force about which moderate and enlightened Southern opinion could crystallize...
...The answer is shrouded in ifs: if the Presidency can come to serve as more than a military command post with respect to this great national issue...
...Here the importance of leadership to successful desegregation stands out in bold relief...
...As a result of them, will the national shock be less or the insight greater if a similar eruption accompanies school desegregation in Dallas or Charlottesville or Knoxville...
...There is some evidence that inert "moderates" elsewhere in the South have been startled into awareness that their silence and inaction can have devastating consequences...
...The school decision was simply the most far-reaching judicial expression of our accepted national value system as applied to race...
...The school decision, howHAROLD C. FLEMING is executive director of the Southern Regional Council, now in its 15th year, which is widely regarded as the foremost inter-racial organization in the South...
...But one thing is certain: it is a drama of change and transition, and at its end not only the South but the whole country will be significantly altered...
...Hence, state actions aimed at ham-stringing the NAACP and cutting off Negro access to the courts...
...Basic to all these specific factors is our ability as a nation to meet the stresses and strains of desegregation with more maturity and understanding than we have yet displayed...
...The Supreme Court thoughtfully allowed a year of grace in which public sentiment and organized effort favorable to compliance could be mobilized...
...Another development of major importance in 1957 was the passage of the Civil Rights Act...
...The Supreme Court was conscious, of course, that its ruling had tremendous practical implications...
...There was some new recognition of the North's and West's own shortcomings, but nothing that could be described as a concerted demonstration of the national will to wipe out segregation and discrimination...
...At the end of 1957, 762 out of 3,008 formerly segregated school districts had begun or completed desegregation...
...Racial trouble in the South is now likely to make the headlines and newscasts several times a year, and is almost certain to do so at school-opening time in September...
...The dignity and courage of the nine Negro pupils in Little Rock, of Dorothy Counts in Charlotte, and of their counterparts in the other desegregating cities, symbolized the new self-image of the Southern Negro...
...The Council is composed of leaders of both races representing civic, church, newspaper, business, labor, and professional activities in 12 Southern states...
...No one, unless it was Governor Faubus, foresaw that the issue would be joined in his near-border state...
...Thus the Court spoke of "deliberate speed" and "practical flexibility" and left the details of adjustment to the discretion of the district courts...
...Nevertheless, there were new forces working, too—unprecedented industrialization, urbanization, mass communication, increased education, more prosperity, the ideological effects of the war experience...
...The leadership vacuum at the national level had two dire results: (1) It contributed to the demoralization of liberals and moderates in the South, facing pro-segregation intolerance with little backing by influential spokesmen for the national welfare...
...The title of the drama will have to await the last act...
...Many whites of lesser social status, beset by fears and insecurities, had an equally large psychological and emotional stake in the continued subordination of the Negro...
...Thus the waning belief that desegregation is "inevitable" has been revived and strengthened among reasonable Southerners...
...The NAACP is still in business in most states, and the pressure of court action continues...
...We need to renew our belief in the fundamental Tightness and workability of desegregation...
...We need to remind ourselves that Southerners are Americans struggling against the handicap of a blighted inheritance...
...For one thing, this unhappy affair demonstrated for the first time that the federal- government does not intend to let the orders of the courts be flouted with impunity...
...The analogy is imperfect (no doubt the anti-bodies in sophisticated New York would quickly halt the infection), but it may help to bring home the problem of leadership that bedevils the South...
...As that survey concluded, "Obviously a large reservoir of good will and capacity for change exists among private citizens, even in states where the official climate is harshly defiant...
...Only a few major newspapers, like the New York Times, a few thoughtful television and radio commentators, and a few good magazines sought to give a meaningful perspective to their reports from Little Rock...
...if Negroes wage a vigorous campaign of voter registration, and if the Department of Justice gives them the necessary support—these are a few of the variables...
...For the South, the decision presented the challenge of a social change more profound and far-reaching than any ever before required of Americans by court order...
...But these efforts were eclipsed by another strain of leadership, operating with the shrewdness and ruthlessness of professional gamblers...
...But the South might have choked it down without a crisis, given the necessary leadership and interpretation...
...Ever since May 17, 1954, thoughtful people have known that sooner or later there would be a head-on clash of federal versus state authority over segregation...
...The pro-segregation leaders, emboldened by the failure of a counter-force to emerge, stepped up their offensive to harden the lines of resistance and to stamp out dissent...
...To give the leadership and encouragement which will make that good will operative—that is America's challenge in 1958...
...The weight of history and tradition, augmented by outmoded but powerful political and economic institutions, meant that most top Southern leadership had—or felt it had—a great deal of self-interest at stake in this challenge to the status quo...
...The decision of the liberals in Congress to concentrate on the right to vote was strategically sound...
...That the voting bill was passed without benefit of filibuster is eloquent testimony to that fact...
...The upheavals in Tuscaloosa, Clinton, and Little Rock were not isolated events, but episodes in an unfolding drama of social change...
...There was a beginning, notably in the press and the churches, toward a constructive interpretation...
...The audience has grown, too...
...This is a time-honored process...
...The Montgomery Improvement Association, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., raised the morale of Negroes everywhere—and won the admiration of people around the world...
...A Council survey of Southern and border states in 1956 found 1100 instances of desegregation in all fields after the Supreme Court's 1954 decision...
...the headlines are likely to be as big in New Delhi as in New York...
...But apart from some temporary and localized success, these repressive measures have failed...
...The one representative of all the people—the President—failed to use the prestige of his office to promote understanding of this crucial issue by all Americans, white and Negro, North and South...
...There were few understanding offers of help, in the form of technical services and specialized resources, to Southern states and communities...
...Such expressions, through the courts, Presidential orders, Interstate Commerce Commission rulings, religious pronouncements, and so on, had been mounting since the end of World War Two...
...Instead, public officials and others in the South used major forums to saturate the public with the argument that integration is a Communist objective, that those aiding racial progress are Communist sympathizers or dupes...
...The most tangible evidence so far is the adoption of positive statements on desegregation by clergymen in Atlanta, Macon, and Columbus, Georgia, Houston, Texas, and elsewhere...
...There are also indications, though less concrete, that businessmen, educators, and police officials feel some of the same concern...
...Once he threw the power and influence of his office behind continued segregation, there was evidently no counterforce short of the 101st Airborne Division sufficient to enforce the court's order...
...if the new Civil Rights Commission can escape the paralysis of internal dissension...
...The Supreme Court's 1954 dose was a strong one, bitter to the palate of most Southern whites...
...Much depended on how the situation was defined in the public forum...
...At their last conventions, both national parties declined to take a clear-cut position on the Supreme Court decision...
...The national leadership, on the whole, practiced a pious inaction...
...Nobody of the requisite official stature did a persuasive job of spelling out the importance of our domestic racial practices to American world leadership...
...It not only stated the principle of desegregation, but later made it plain that community realities might be considered in the implementation...
...Those who view this development as an inevitable expression of grassroots opposition to desegregation might consider a hypothetical analogy...
...Since the end of the Civil War, the South's role in the nation has resembled nothing more than that of the black sheep who is conveniently ignored until some particularly scandalous behavior jolts the family into shocked attention...
...Little Rock was barely nosed out by Sputnik as the biggest news story of the year...
...Nineteen fifty-seven was a banner year for this perpetual rediscovery of the South...
...From now on it will be harder for the demagogues to persuade the public that the courts and the executive branch can be forced to back down...
Vol. 22 • February 1958 • No. 2
