Desegregation and Southern Bigotry
Schwartz, Jonathan
DESEGREGATION: RESISTANCE AND READINESS, by Melvin Tumin. Princeton University Press, 1958. $5.00. This book reports the results of an investigation conducted by Professor Melvin Tumin and his...
...In the fall of 1958, Governor Almond advocated "mas sive resistance" to desegregation—and the schools were closed down...
...A sizable majority of the citizens, for example, felt that the Negro was inferior to the white...
...By contrast, only three of the nine segregationists had defended their views in public...
...Tumin and his Princeton graduate students examined the attitudes of 287 white men of Guilford County towards the Negro and desegregation...
...Readiness," as he uses the term, is not necessarily willingness...
...When desegregation comes to the schools of the South, Southern ideologies will no doubt persist, but they will not be able to flourish as openly and with the earlier sanctions...
...Tumin's analysis can now be ap plied to Virginia...
...First, all of them felt that desegregation of the public schools in their community was inevitable...
...It merely shows that education is a valuable asset if one wants to be a leader in American society...
...In the end Almond complied with the latter group and a few schools were opened on a desegregated basis...
...By remaining passive, the majority of white citizens go along with what ever their leaders decide and will "change" when he changes...
...Pressure was put on Almond by two active minorities, one resembling Tumin's "hard core" and another his group of the "ready...
...Guilford County contains both rural and urban dwellers: farmers and factory workers, men in the professions and in business...
...The desegregated classroom can mean the beginning of the end of Southern bigotry...
...the second explored what he might do to act on his feelings...
...They are committed to Southern white ideology, but are not so committed to Southern white action...
...That is, the first part was concerned with the white man's "image" of the Negro, his ideology and feelings...
...Of the 23 leaders studied, Tumin found fourteen to be desegregationist...
...The hard core, on the other hand, had little socio-economic status, fewer years of education and little or no exposure to the mass media...
...Some of those who were ready, but by no means a majority, had worked for the enactment of the Supreme Court decision...
...Their proposed ac tion varied from trying to amend the Constitution, to withholding state funds from the schools, to using force...
...Eight of the desegregationists claimed to have spoken out in favor of desegregation...
...They had been exposed to more of the "informative" mass media (newspapers, news magazines, radio and TV news commentators...
...Tumin found another twenty per cent to be "ready" for desegregation...
...For the most part, these people were among the better paid and better educated elements of society...
...AN IMPORTANT SECTION of Tumin's book, therefore, was concerned with the leaders of Guilford County...
...This book reports the results of an investigation conducted by Professor Melvin Tumin and his assistants into the attitudes of white people in Guil ford County, North Carolina, toward the problem of desegregation...
...Prejudice goes on the defensive...
...The role of leadership thus remains crucial, as events in Little Rock have proved...
...Furthermore, and this is one of the few notes of optimism in Tumin's research: "The open posing of disagreements, i.e., the bringing of conflict into the open, is positively functional for the side desiring social change and disfunctional for the side seeking to preserve the traditional way of life...
...The experience in Virginia would thus seem to bear out Tumin's analy sis...
...Religion, as measured by church attendance, played no determinate role either for or against desegregationist attitudes...
...They can be swayed either to act in resistance to desegregation or, more likely, to comply passively to the desegregation of the schools when it occurs...
...Tumin's study of the leaders yields two significant findings...
...the maximum estimate was ten years...
...This twenty per cent became Tumin's "hard core" of resistors...
...but only about a fifth of these white men would take some form of action to prevent desegrega tion of the public schools...
...In a desegregated society, racial prejudice tends to become a much more private affair, perhaps accompanied by guilt and anxiety...
...The first was designed to find out how the white man felt about the Negro...
...Ideologies die slow, painful deaths, but they die faster if they are torn from their juridical and institutional settings...
...And when Almond "complied," his white constituency followed him...
...Representatives of both camps estimated that this would happen in one year...
...The interview posed two general kinds of questions...
...The second part involved social action...
...Tumin states that it is possible for a desegregationist leader, if his position is already secure, to speak on behalf of the Supreme Court ruling and not jeopardize his leadership...
...Desegregation, by its very nature, is a limited program of social change, but it does represent a breakthrough that bears possibilities for future changes...
...Tumin wanted to define which white elements in a Southern community would be "ready" for desegregation of the public schools and which would resist it to the bitter end...
...Tumin found the white men to be more "segregationist" in their attitudes than in their public acts...
...Twentytwo of the 23 had some college background, so that education, at least in the case of leadership, is not a decisive factor in forming attitudes pro or contra desegregation...
...Once leaders grant the inevitability of social change, then public debate will work in the direction of that social change...
...Actual ly, however, there was no such thing as massive resistance...
...These findings are all to be expected, but what is significant is that the majority of the white citizens fall somewhere in the middle...
Vol. 6 • September 1959 • No. 4
