The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Manifesto Of the 100 The manifesto signed by a hundred Southern Senators and members of the House raises the conflict about school segregation to the level...
...And as to parents, in the segregated states they black or white are forced to send their children to segregated schools...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Manifesto Of the 100 The manifesto signed by a hundred Southern Senators and members of the House raises the conflict about school segregation to the level of a great battle of ideas...
...In the original Supreme Court decision and in this statement by the hundred palmetto statesmen, we have the ideologies of the opposing sides...
...A part of the answer is given in the words of a Kansas court: "Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children...
...First, a preliminary remark...
...The impact is great when it has the sanction of the law...
...They did not apply this principle specifically to education because at that time education at public expense had been barely started in a few states...
...The conscientious reports given us by the Southern School News and by the New York Times in its recent admirable survey show how the forces are lining up...
...Nothing is said to establish the relation between segregation and common sense or humanity...
...The nine Justices look hard at the Fourteenth Amendment: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside...
...As I read this statement of the 100 Congressmen, I feel that the time has come to turn this notion the other way around...
...It is founded on elemental humanity and common sense, for parents should not be deprived by Government of the right to direct the lives and education of their children...
...they keep repeating that the Northerners are outsiders and that we should leave race problems to the Dixielanders...
...A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn...
...The Southerners are always talking about the rights reserved to the states...
...This line of thought the 100 Southerners do not touch...
...It did not exist in the South, the area for which, in the main, these amendments were devised...
...But the principle could not be clearer: Citizens black or white or any other color must have an even start so far as it is possible for the Government to provide it...
...When you come down to the bare outline of what the Southern statesmen are saying, all it amounts to is that precedents must always be followed...
...Further provisions forbid the deprivation of "life, liberty or property without due process of law" and the denial of "equal protection of the laws.' The next amendment directs that the right of citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged "on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude...
...They pretend great regard for the Founding Fathers, hut shout bloody murder when the Supreme Court moves to put the ideas of the Fathers into practice in today s world...
...Or, as the Justices put it...
...Their decision with regard to it has vital meaning for the South...
...Very well...
...The 100 Southern statesmen could not do better than to read it carefully...
...There remains, then, only the question of whether "separate but equal" educational facilities do not satisfy the intent of the Constitution...
...This is the basic argument against racial segregation in the schools...
...It is time for the Southerners to try to understand the North and the West...
...Any one who looks squarely at these amendments must conclude that their authors wanted, so far as it was politically possible, to afford equal opportunities to all the people of the United States...
...No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States...
...I have the two manifestoes lying on my table side by side...
...In moving from the statement of the hundred legislators to the decision of the Supreme Court, the reader enters a totally different world...
...Segregation, therefore, has a tendency to retard the educational and mental development of Negro children...
...I propose to size them up and then ask the question: Which one of these statements shows the deepest understanding of the history and Government of the United States...
...This is the way the argument goes: The separate but equal principle, "restated lime and again, became a part of the life of the people of many of the states and confirmed their habits, customs, traditions and way of life...
...There is internal evidence that the Justices gave careful attention to this point...
...From the first word to the last of this manifesto, there is little evidence that the authors have attempted to get to the bottom of the Supreme Court's thinking...
...for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group...
...does segregation of children in public schools ? deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities...
...The spokesmen of the South are constantly asking for understanding...
...The only argument discoverable is the argument from tradition: It has been this way for a hundred years so it must stay this way...
Vol. 39 • March 1956 • No. 13
