The South in Conflict

...The resultant resolution attacking the Councils and the strong statement by George Meany were most welcome, but it will be necessary for the trade-union movement to act vigorously and promptly for its own self-protection in this matter...

...Where are the responsible and moral white people...

...Foremost of these will be vigorous attempts to secure the right to vote in those areas of the South where Negroes, in hundreds of counties, are prevented from voting through the use of many devices, including violence...

...The emergence of a new body of constitutional law and the militancy of the Southern Negro now pose the race question in a new way and end an era...

...In 1955, in four Alabama counties, Dallas, Perry, Hale and Morengo, Councils were formed with the admitted purpose of applying economic pressure to "troublemakers" who would upset "the Southern way of life...

...Today, this has much concrete meaning for the forthcoming national election, because Negro voters in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, New York and elsewhere have deep roots in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia...

...Within the first twelve months after the 1954 decision, school desegregation occurred in two towns in Arkansas, 29 counties in West Virginia, 30 communities in Missouri, five towns in Delaware, six cities in Kansas, and in scattered communities in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, among others...

...keep the mean white people from bombing my place...

...For the past 25 years, the struggle to destroy the Negro's second-class citizenship was in the courtroom...

...Not so long ago, Southern Negroes took the attitude that "Politics is white folks' business...

...The importance of the Negro vote was evident in the 1948 elections in states such as Ohio and Illinois, where the vote of predominantly Negro wards gave Harry S. Truman the margin which enabled him to carry these states...

...In North Carolina, where 55,000 Negroes voted in 1948, well over 100,000 registered and voted in the national election of 1952...

...In 5 of these 11 states, the desegregation move was made after the May 31, 1955 "implementation" order...

...As a result, pressure was put on whites who stopped locally around my place for service...

...This is undoubtedly the most important factor in the fight for civil rights today...

...It is clear that compliance with the law has not been insignificant...

...One farmer, who owned 73 acres of rich Mississippi delta soil, stated in his affidavit that, although his farm produced as much as a bale and a half of cotton per acre, he was unable to get loans for operations...

...After the dentist received a check from a patient, a Negro schoolteacher, the local school officials ordered her dismissed because of "a contribution" to the NAACP...

...At the beginning of the September 1955 school term, some positive action had been taken to comply with the Court's desegregation ruling in 11 of the 17 states which previously enforced school segregation...

...The decisive factor from now on in school desegregation will be the ability of local Negro communities in the South to conduct an intransigent struggle against what often appear to be insuperable difficulties...

...The White Citizens' Councils are responsible for the economic intimidation of Negroes who openly support the move to integrate Southern schools...

...Stringer soon found that his automobile liability insurance, compulsory under Mississippi law, was canceled...

...In 1956, the political careers of many so-called "liberals" in the North are going to be adversely affected because they belong to the party of Eastland and have done nothing themselves on behalf of the civil-rights fight...

...Of great significance for the political development of the entire nation is the sharp leap forward in the Negro's awareness of the electoral process...

...In the light of the magnificent personal courage of these Southern Negroes who are now insisting on their right to vote, the paralysis of the Federal Government in securing law enforcement and the collusion of the state Democratic administrations in preventing Negro citizens from voting has helped create a new voting consciousness among Negroes which will be sharply expressed in the coming election...

...During the past decade, the nation's highest courts have repeatedly struck down the validity of Jim Crow statutes in voting (the white-primary cases), interstate transportation and public recreational facilities, and finally, on May 17, 1954, in the school-segregation cases voided once and for all the 1896 doctrine of "separate but equal," which provided the legal basis for segregation and second-class citizenship for 16 million American Negroes...

...Ralph McGill, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, has stated: "Most newspapers seem to have forgotten that there is another side to the story, that Texas is going ahead with integration, that Arkansas is quiet, that North Carolina is quiet, that Tennessee is quiet, that southern Missouri, which is very Southern in attitude, is going ahead with integration...

...In 1952, more than 130,000 Negroes voted...

...Other such groups have organized in Florida...

...This unfortunate condition is characterized by Adlai Stevenson's proposal that the most conflict-ridden and violent issue in our national life be kept out of the political campaign...

...In Florida, where approximately 40,000 Negroes voted in 1948, more than 120,000 are now registered...

...Therefore, Negroes in the North as well as in the South vote on the basis of what appears to be the obvious interest of the Negro community and against those who are the enemies of civil rights...

...Their insistence on the right to vote will be, in effect, a direct confrontation of the traditional power structure of Southern communities...

...I was told," he said, "that their reason was to protect me from the "poor whites' and to...

...The large Negro vote cast in Detroit alone certainly made the difference...

...Under Dr...

...A comprehensive survey of the Southern Negroes' progress in their struggle for first-class citizenship, and their prospects in the months to come The South in Conflict By Herbert Hill The major unresolved issue in the history of the United States the Negro's status in American life has emerged again in the sharpest terms, more significant now than at any time since the Reconstruction period...

...Colored people throughout America have responded to these great legal victories in an unusually intense and dedicated manner...

...Mississippi...

...During this past year, officials of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People working in the South have been murdered precisely because they were organizing register-and-vote campaigns...

...Today, that victory has been substantially won and the battleground has shifted to the field of social action...

...This development all too clearly shifts the battleground from that of legal maneuvering to direct social conflict...

...What is vitally needed now in those Southern states where the segregation conflict rages is to create an atmosphere for a public dialogue between the white and colored communities, to permit the voices of the Negro community to be heard, to openly debate the issue and hear the Negro's point of view...

...his feeble subsequent attempts to explain away his position have done nothing to help...

...In Dallas County, a call brought in 600 members at $3 a person...

...This militancy is the product of a decade of victories nurtured and sustained by NAACP legal successes...

...Among these were Reverend George W. Lee in Belzoni...

...In 1956, Negroes will present themselves at registration booths and ballot boxes for the first time in many Southern communities...

...As the rights of labor were the acid test of American politics in the 1930s, so the rights of the Negro are the burning social issue of our day...

...I refused their request...

...We intend to make it difficult if not impossible for any Negro who advocates desegregation to find and hold a job, get credit or renew a mortgage...

...Let those who aspire to political power and statesmanship make clear that the law must be observed and help to create a condition where all may be heard and issues may be freely argued without fear and violence...

...Here we present a comprehensive report on the Southern Negroes' struggle for equality by man who has watched it at first hand through all the stages of its development...

...Because of drought and the demand for immediate payment of a $3,500 mortgage, he was in grave danger of losing his farm as had many others because of anti-segregation activity...

...The various "legal" schemes of several Southern states to evade school integration are but delaying tactics, a rear-guard action of the defeated, as is the matter of "interposition," which was decided once and for all in an Appomattox farmhouse in 1865...

...The fact is that the once solid pattern of school segregation in 17 Southern and border states and the District of Columbia has now been decisively shattered...

...My business is very young and I didn't have money for operation...

...E. J. Stringer, a young dentist...

...In many counties, Negroes have been threatened with loss of jobs, foreclosure of homes and farms and other steps if they tried to register...

...In 1946, 35,000 Negroes registered and voted in South Carolina...

...The Negro has now begun to intervene decisively in determining his own destiny...

...Stringer's leadership, the Columbus branch of the organization exceeded its 1954 membership quota by 300 per cent...

...Since 1946, a remarkable increase in the voting strength of Negroes in South Carolina serves dramatically to indicate a veritable political revolution...

...With very rare and isolated exceptions, white institutions and individuals have not come forward to join in the fight even though now the Negro who demands his rights is acting within the law and the whites who insist on segregation have declared themselves outside the law...

...The decisive character of the Negro vote was again seen in Michigan in 1952 when Governor G. Mermen Williams carried the state by a few thousand votes...

...No reasons were given for not granting my application...

...The slogan of these Councils is "no job, no credit, no loan" for Negroes unwilling to submit to segregation...

...But the time is now passing when violence, cross burnings, threats, intimidation and burning effigies labeled "this nigger tried to vote" can prevent large numbers of Negroes from entering the voter's booth...

...and Lamar Smith, who was shot down on the steps of the County Courthouse in Brookhaven...

...The strongest Councils are in Mississippi, where White Citizens' Councils were quickly established in 29 of the state's 82 counties...

...The attacks against Negroes who are working within the law for compliance with the Supreme Court order range from severe economic pressure, as a result of the activities of White Citizens' Councils, to mob violence and murder...

...Organizationally, the most important leadership in the struggles of the Southern Negro today is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which operates through a mass membership in 700 branches below the Mason-Dixon line (together with an additional 800 branches elsewhere...

...This tactic, of course, also has the practical value of preventing the accumulation of seniority and therefore vital committee control in Congress...

...But there is another and at least equally important record which has received little attention...

...In Arkansas, proportionately more Negroes than whites have been paying their poll taxes, and over 85,000 Negroes voted in the 1952 Presidential election...

...On January 20, 1955, the NAACP filed with the White House affidavits from Negro farmers, businessmen and professionals charging economic pressure against them because of their support of Negro rights...

...Thus, by 1955 all of the Southern state universities, except in five states (Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina), had admitted some Negro students into graduate or professional schools in addition to several junior colleges and a substantial number of Catholic educational institutions...

...In another Mississippi city, the president of an NAACP branch and owner of a $37,000 business stated that he was warned by a member of the City Council and two police officers to post a sign over his place, "For Colored Only," in order to boycott himself against white trade...

...In Louisiana, where 60.000 Negroes voted in 1948, well over 150,000 are registered today...

...It will then be remembered that it was the Negro who fought so well with so little to free the South and perhaps all America from its own evil...

...In 6 other currently desegregated states, one or more communities had initiated school desegregation following the May 17, 1954 decision...

...The White Citizens' Councils are one of many groups committed to open attack against the Negro community and organized defiance of the law...

...The important social forces responsible for this development are many, but the two most significant factors are the removal of the sanction of law from racial segregation and the unparalleled militancy and discipline of the Southern Negro in his quest for equal rights as a full citizen...

...In several instances, the White Citizens' Councils have already been used to prevent union organization and clearly pose a serious danger to existing unions in the South...

...Among others are the Southern Gentlemen of Louisiana, the National Association for the Advancement and Protection of the Majority of White People, the Southernaires of Mobile, Alabama, the Heritage Crusade of Gulfport, Mississippi, etc...

...The morale and militancy of local Negro leadership is such that spontaneous forms of dynamic action are developed and pressure is for the most vigorous challenging of the Jim Crow system...

...The Negro's decision on how he should vote is inevitably bound up in the struggle he has gone through to get the right to vote...

...I went to my local bank but was turned down...

...A most unfortunate aspect of the growth of these organizations is the participation of trade-union leaders and members in their activities...

...But even before this development cases involving the right of Negro students to attend graduate and professional schools had been won...

...The District of Columbia followed this latter pattern...

...Today, the Negro community and its important institutions are engaged in making a reality of the pronouncements of the Federal courts...

...In 1948, approximately 700,000 Negroes were registered voters in the South, and in 1952 the Negro vote in the South approximated 1.3 million...

...He has paid numerous visits to Southern cities large and small since the original Supreme Court decision in May 1954...

...For the Negro, effective action now takes many forms...

...Southern Negroes now insist that they, too, have a right in determining their status in the communities in which they live and work...

...Alston Keith, a lawyer, chairman both of the Dallas County White Citizens' Council and of the local Democratic party, summed up the aims of his group: "The white population of this county controls the money...

...It is, of course, interesting to contrast the hysteria and violence of the white mob on the campus of the University of Alabama with the calm discipline and order of the Negroes in the Montgomery bus strike...

...In retrospect, white Southerners may one day look on the Supreme Court's anti-segregation decision as the beginning of their own liberation, the dawn of the day when they may at last put down the burden which comes with constant tension over an unresolved moral issue and social conflict...

...Where Negroes do secure the right to vote and there is no choice between candidates, the policy will be to vote against those in office, locally and nationally, as the only means of expressing discontent...

...Georgia, South Carolina and elsewhere...

...Creditors who had given him a reasonable time to make payments suddenly demanded that he pay immediately...

...Today, the Negro constitutes one-fourth of the Southern population, with a present potential of 6 million votes...

...The extremely effective bus boycott by Negroes in Montgomery, Alabama and the subsequent arrest of 93 Alabama Negroes, including 25 ministers, is indicative of the organization and persistence with which Southern Negroes will continue to directly challenge all the forces of white control...

...In the South, practically all the respectable pillars of society the Governors, the doctors and the lawyers, the editors and the religious leaders have either joined with the White Citizens' Councils and announced their defiance of the law or, more quietly, have provided the respectable cover for those who engage in open violence...

...But Southern Negroes continue to struggle with a discipline and a courage rare in our recent history...

...Herbert Hill, Labor Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is co-author of the recently published Citizen's Guide to Desegregation: A Study of Social and Legal Change in America...

...In November 1954, the president of the Mississippi NAACP organization was Dr...

...White people will no longer be deciding all the questions...

...Recent newspaper headlines have been featuring and emphasizing the elements of conflict in school desegregation...

...Thus, we enter a new stage in the struggle for Southern school desegregation, in which whites use physical terror in attempting to stop desegregation...

...The temporary setback at the University of Alabama, involving Miss Autherine Lucy, represents the first instance in which mob violence actually stopped the enforcement of a court order establishing the right of a plaintiff to enter a hitherto "lily-white" school...

...Now it is no longer a matter of filing a "friend of the court brief" in some NAACP legal case or passing a resolution at a convention or voting a small contribution to help some "downtrodden colored people...

...An aspect of these developments that has ominous implications is that, by and large, the Negro has so far fought this battle alone...

...The Executive Council of the newly merged AFL-CIO, in its first meeting in Miami during February, received a confidential report on trade-union participation in the activities of White Citizens' Councils...

...Stringer and his wife today sleep in the middle room of their home safer, they explain, in the event of a bombing...