THE SOUTH'S MOMENT OF TRUTH
Smith, Lillian
the Souths moment of truth by LILLIAN SMITH The student sit-in movement in the South, hardly half a year old, has exerted so great an impact on American life that it was the subject of bitter...
...their sense of "belonging" has come to them in other ways...
...Then it will come...
...But millions of Southerners, young and old, and of both races, have had similar experiences...
...they have wobbled in their beliefs...
...but even so, the students may have to struggle a long time...
...they have thought and studied and examined their own souls, many of them, and have given their children better training in human relations—certainly in terms of race —than my generation had...
...To speak out for law and order is not enough, today...
...Once the silence is broken the South will change quickly...
...But even as I say this, I know the new life that is beginning, this spiritual renascence, can be snuffed out by you and me...
...The false lumping of all Southerners together by those who speak and write of us is not a good thing and makes for identifications which we don't feel...
...Thoughts like these are forming in the students' minds as they live out their new purpose...
...And now suddenly, completely unexpectedly, the students' sit-in protests began, spreading from college to college, school to school...
...How can he do and think these things and fail to see the moral inconsistency, the intellectual absurdity of his position...
...This may be as true of Russia as it is of the South...
...We think we are a free people but we have lost our freedom to question, to learn, to do what our conscience tells us is right, to criticize ourselves...
...I think what has impressed me most has been the way they have done this, and their attitude toward the white race...
...All our Southern people need is something that will fire their imagination and stir their good feelings, until leaders can rise up and open the way...
...not only in terms of the sexes...
...and imagination, and intelligence—and enough love to respond to Gandhi's love of mankind, and enough truth-seeking in his mind to realize the meaning of Gandhi's teaching of non-violence and compassion and their redemptive and transforming power...
...What is it we feel...
...a sudden rush of both pride and humility...
...There will be accusations of the most vicious kind, and misinterpretations, idiotic and dangerous, and there will be persistent persecution...
...They have the power and the money, the education and the technics to create an atmosphere of vigorous, healthy-minded concern wherein good words can be heard and the good act carried through...
...he had his memories of childhood and its racial hurts...
...What else was there in this young student that caused him to be capable of this moment of truth...
...freedom is a dialogue between man and his God...
...Courage, of course...
...But there are other Southerners who have changed, who don't like discrimination, who don't believe in segregation...
...Martin Luther King—certainly he knew about him...
...We who are young can free ourselves—you and me, white and Negro...
...No wonder so many Southerners of my age cling to it...
...It can't be divided up...
...Here, once again, we have the result of a rigid, inflexible training in early childhood, given to us during a time of panic and dread...
...From this small beginning, this almost absurd beginning, so incredibly simple and unpretentious that we Americans—used to the power of big names and money and crowds and Madison Avenue and Gallup Polls— can scarcely believe in it, there started the non-violent students' protests which have caught the imagination of millions of us...
...at least, I have found it possible to write and speak without using them...
...Was this all the young man had...
...faltering sentences, perhaps, for the language of the human spirit is complex and subtle, though its grammar is structurally simple and strong...
...The South and its people are facing a spiritual crisis...
...But the psychic result has been that a deep anxiety possesses them and they feel that any change would be only for the worse...
...Do you actually think they are so extraordinary...
...No, I don't...
...its foundations go down to babyhood...
...They will need friends during their ordeal...
...You can't segregate a hunk of it for white folks and then tell the Negroes there's none left for them...
...all of us have lost our freedoms...
...They did not know a time was ahead when the politician would exert more moral force than the preacher...
...Why can't we have a change...
...The tragedy of the South lies just here: segregation has made psychic and moral slaves of so many of us...
...And a short time afterward, the four of them went on their historic journey to a Greensboro ten cent store...
...How can he fight Communist dictatorship and surrender himself to the dictatorship of an idea like white supremacy...
...But afterward, they must have felt an exaltation...
...And yet, I doubt that the young man knew he possessed this special quality, or even now knows it...
...Every leader and every hero, and many artists and scientists, possess this talent for fusing their lives with the future...
...And, too, differences go beyond the groups...
...There is a serious lack of communication between liberal Southerners...
...These women are informed...
...I cannot answer for you...
...There are eloquent and courageous young ministers in the South who oppose segregation, who have something fresh to tell the country...
...And while we are speaking of these matters: the vocabulary used by nearly everyone today divides the South into three moral categories: the two extremes and the moderates...
...This silence that is today so dangerous to us and so puzzling to others is a built-in silence...
...but all of us are human beings...
...But what we are now facing is not localized and cannot be...
...By their acts, they are saying something like this: "Look, I may be Negro and you may be white...
...they had made their decision in all earnestness and they were going through with it...
...What is terrifying to the older generation doesn't bother the young students...
...I was born at the turn of the century when the first segregation statutes were being put on the law books of the Southern states...
...Actually, I suspect they were pretty shaky, those first ones who walked in the stores with their books and their Bibles to make their protest...
...We have been in ordeal a long time and have had outbursts of violence and localized crises again and again: in Little Rock, Montgomery, Clinton, Nashville, Tallahassee, and in other areas of the South...
...In this article, adapted from a recent speech, Lillian Smith, the celebrated novelist who has lived all her life in the South, interprets the scope and significance of the extraordinary movement built on the doctrine of non-violent resistance.—The Editors...
...This hour of decision—and it is that for the South, certainly—was precipitated on February 1, by a Negro student, age eighteen, a freshman in a college in Greensboro, N. C. He had seen a documentary film on the life of Gandhi...
...I think it is anxiety...
...We were told as children never to question it, never to talk about it...
...I don't think so...
...Why, then, are they silent...
...As many people use the words, an "extremist" who actually says segregation is wrong is put into the moral category of the "hoodlums and dynamiters...
...there is a hypnotic quality about such learning and only the rebellious mind, the critical intelligence, or the loving heart can defy it...
...I don't know...
...It makes poor sense, but they think it explains their acute anxiety...
...it has a new quality of hope in it...
...and they were probably praying that they would find the strength just to sit there...
...freedom is the sacred ground on which the human spirit lives...
...and the "moderates" are supposed to be the "nice people" who don't talk at all—but who are being urged to speak out...
...Why do they evade their responsibility at this time of crisis...
...an atmosphere where people can plan, think clearly, and find ways to do what is right...
...nor have the national forums been opened to them...
...But many Southerners can...
...Our responsible people are silent not because they are in the minority: they outnumber the demagogues and Klans and hoodlums and crackpots twenty to one...
...but into generations: there are gradations of opinion in all of these groups, and gradations of moral strength...
...In their hands are the media of communication: the pulpits, the television and radio stations, the newspapers...
...For what these students are doing in the South is awakening students in the North and the Midwest to action, and something is happening...
...and because we are human, we have moral and intellectual potentialities...
...the South is chock-full of individuals each with his own ideas—this, despite our somewhat totalitarian training and our one-party political system...
...not simply racial segregation but every form of estrangement that splits man and his world into fragments...
...They have been as surely injured in mind and spirit by segregation as have Negro children: both have been warped, both have been kept from a free, creative life...
...Wait now, you say: You are giving these students quite a build-up...
...hundreds who preach strong, eloquent sermons against segregation...
...we, as a region, can have our moment of truth only when we begin to think of ourselves as persons, when we open up our imaginations and our hearts, by taking the walls down within us...
...It is exciting to watch them discover a freedom and purpose within themselves that they have not experienced in the outside world...
...hundreds of them...
...They did not dream that segregation would become a ritual so sacred that it would be given priority over the teachings of Christ in our churches...
...The older generations, to which I belong, have found decisions so hard to make...
...I know that a few men in strategic places, by saying irresponsible things, as former President Truman did recently, can throw pretty big obstacles in the students' path...
...there is a higher law which we Southerners must take a stand on, a law that concerns justice and mercy and compassion and freedom of the spirit and mind...
...The price our fathers paid for security was exorbitant...
...I am aware that a terrific effort will be made by certain powerful groups in the South who have close economic ties with the North to smother the movement by hushing the national press and the television networks...
...I think that commentators and reporters could bring a little more clarity into the situation—perhaps a great deal more—by taking these words and throwing them into the waste basket...
...It is difficult to analyze a complex state of mind in just a few paragraphs but let me try: We white people of the South think of ourselves as free but we are chained to taboos and to superstitions and weakened by memories and beliefs that are in passionate conflict with each other...
...not only psychologically...
...But we are not right today...
...they have postponed the right action until the right time for it had passed...
...Americans in other sections can help them and should, for this not only concerns the South, it concerns the entire nation and the nation's relationships with the rest of the world...
...Again and again, on TV, the nation sees Senator Talmadge and Senator Eastland and other racial demagogues and hears them say the same old things they have said for years about mongrelization...
...Somehow it is involving not only students but all of us, and there is a growing sense that what we say or fail to say, do or fail to do, will surely shape the events that lie ahead...
...The truth is that our parents and grandparents paid a terrible price for a security which they believed segregation could give them...
...he had heard about Montgomery and the non-violent protests made there...
...The situation is murky enough, twisted as it is by ambiguities and inconsistencies...
...We who have accused the young of hungering for security, of not really caring about the big important things of the spirit...
...It is quite possible to talk about the South without using them...
...How can a man believe simultaneously in brotherhood and racial discrimination, in human freedom and forced segregation...
...just sit there, that's all...
...They may not find within themselves enough moral resources, enough psychic strength to carry them through the bitter and bleak days ahead of them...
...and it is, I believe, of tremendous moral and political signficance...
...It is something different, something that has not happened in this country before...
...all of us are crippled by segregation...
...When they permitted the system to be set up, they did not foresee that emergency measures would be frozen permanently into state laws...
...And some of them are educated men who think of themselves as the community's moral and civic leaders...
...People may act the same under pressures and not feel the same or believe the same or have the same values...
...They probably didn't have a single grand, noble thought in their heads...
...In certain areas of work, there is no racial competition...
...to see them acting out, actually living, their beliefs in human dignity and democracy and in the redemptive power of love and nonviolence, and going to jail for their beliefs...
...Is it fear...
...what paralyzes the men often releases the women...
...both find it difficult to be courageous, strong individuals who can defy conformity and find their own responses to the world...
...And it will be a healing time for us and perhaps for the whole world, for we are so sensitized one to another, so closely related, with the common purpose of creating a future, that whatever brings wholeness to us as persons will bring wholeness to others across the world...
...In some strange way, however, his thoughts and memories and hopes came together and he talked about what was on his mind with three young friends...
...And it may be that these young students won't have the stamina to hold out...
...Groping, slow words, maybe...
...not only vocationally...
...this lack of conformity in feelings and beliefs keeps the door ajar...
...we can create our future, we don't have to be prisoners of our grandfathers' past...
...he had probably listened to Dr...
...There are so many ready for change: thousands of ministers who have taken a good stand...
...This is one way to help break the taboo of silence...
...in others the competition is severe and exacerbates dormant race feelings...
...That is why I have such hopes for the students' non-violent protests...
...it is ours, together, or it is nobody's...
...I am often asked, "Why don't they say so...
...I hope so but I do not know...
...Instead, they talk about inter-marriage...
...The local radio and TV forums have not as yet been opened up to many white Southerners who oppose segregation...
...It was in this atmosphere of terror and brutality, of internal and external disorder, that we were taught our lessons in segregation...
...and there are hundreds of them working hard every day to rid our state of a system that has hurt everybody...
...Why are we stirred so deeply...
...If white students will join with Negro students, their experiences together, their self-discipline and philosophical training will create a fine reservoir of new leadership for the South...
...by our apathy and stupidity and lack of imagination...
...We are torn apart inside by a conflict that never lets up, and we wall our minds off into segregated compartments...
...But I believe the movement can succeed if enough of us have the imagination to see its significance and its creative possibilities and to interpret these to others who do not see—and if we give the students the moral support and the money they are going to need...
...we who have called the intellectual ones "beatniks" and the livelier ones "rock-n-rollers" may have been right four years ago, or even last year...
...But will the Southerners do it...
...But there are some things that only the South can do...
...not only culturally...
...and he had his hopes for the future...
...I think they are probably quite ordinary young people in most ways: they are extraordinary only in their awareness that the hour we live in is an hour calling for courage and commitment, and they are making their commitment, and in doing so they are finding their courage...
...Only they can create a new climate of opinion in which mob violence and the hoodlums and the police and the white Citizens Councils can be controlled...
...They would give encouragement to those in the South who have never heard any Southerner state in a public speech that he is opposed to segregation...
...But some white Southerners are speaking out, and more would if they could hear others do so...
...There is a vast difference between the two...
...It also concerns each person's relationship with himself and his beliefs...
...I know police measures can become so cruel and massive and overwhelming that the students may not be able to take it...
...When they are asked why they fear the crumbling of segregation they cannot tell you that what they really fear is the crumbling of the walls inside them...
...we should not make it more so by the language we use...
...the poor and ignorant often feel a psychic and social hunger to belong "to the white race" as if it were a club, while the more sophisticated, the more secure economically and culturally, do not have this need...
...the Souths moment of truth by LILLIAN SMITH The student sit-in movement in the South, hardly half a year old, has exerted so great an impact on American life that it was the subject of bitter debate and platform pledges at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions this summer...
...to our mother's hushed whispering...
...Some are speaking out, of course...
...These differences I have been speaking of are potentially good...
...and they can do this only by breaking their silence and speaking out...
...there are close to a hundred thousand women in Georgia who are willing to give up segregation in all public places, including the schools...
...Thousands of us must also speak out against segregation as a way of life...
...yet if they speak out, of course they must move over into the "extremist" groups...
...There is a tremendous power in the non-violent protest that the sensitive Southern conscience and heart will find hard to resist...
...During the first ten years of my life there were a thousand lynch-ings in the South...
...others want to but they are afraid they will do "more harm than good...
...We cannot change the South until we change our leadership and ourselves...
...Freedom is not an object: freedom is a relationship that each man creates with his world...
...For me, it is as if the No Exit sign is about to come down from our age...
...We can't hear each other speak because there are so few places where the person who opposes segregation can speak in the South...
...It is important for us to break the word "South" into a thousand pieces: not only geographically, but economically...
...their white children are still paying today...
...The time has come when we must face the fact that only by speaking out our real beliefs, and then acting on them, can we avoid a bitter time of hate and violence and suffering...
...No, there was more: an indefinable, unpredictable potential for creating something new and lasting, and doing it at the right time...
...What are we hoping for...
...I know, too, that the white students of the South may not be able to break out of their apathy and moral paralysis in large enough numbers to help the young Negroes in this struggle for a new life, and without help the burdens may prove too heavy...
...freedom is like the air: we'll breathe this air, together, all of us—or we'll suffocate...
...it is almost as if a door is opening in a wall where there was no door...
...Things that only good, responsible, decent Southerners can accomplish...
...More quickly than we think...
...This is not only false but dangerous, for as people use these words, the two kinds of "extremists" are supposed to be equally dangerous people who talk too much...
...By their acts, they are saying: "All of us — white and Negro—are dominated by white supremacy...
Vol. 24 • September 1960 • No. 9
