Stevenson, the Democrats and Civil Rights

...And even on that issue there seems no perceptible difference in policy...

...The party must not force Southern moderates into a corner Stevenson, the Democrats and Civil Rights By Reinhold Niebuhr There was an interesting bit of by-play at the recent convention of the Hatters Union...

...But any viable liberalism must also be conscious of the limits of explicit law, particularly ideal civil-rights law, when it comes in conflict with deeply imbedded custom...

...That decision hastened progress in some areas and stiffened opposition in others...

...It must be remembered that progress in breaking down the walls of segregation was real and wide even before the Supreme Court decision...

...But a policy which might enlarge the "hard core" of Southern recalcitrance and arrest the promising organic growth of racial amity would be unwise and perhaps tragic...

...It has placed the ideal requirements of the "civil rights" Constitutional guarantees into sharp contradiction with the stubborn mores of the Southern community...

...If Adlai Stevenson proved not to be completely consistent on the issue of segregation, or if the Harriman forces overreached themselves in appealing to the Negroes and alienated not only the Southern racists but the Southern moderates, the Democratic party might face a split...

...Yet, there is a difference in temper between the two camps which arises from the fact that Stevenson is acceptable to the Southern moderates, such as the Texas delegation, while Harriman is not...

...One must be grateful for the moral and political force of those guarantees, particularly when one compares our situation with the hopeless one in South Africa...

...If Harriman dissents from this view, there is only one issue on which the dissent could have any relevance: implementation of the Supremo Court decision on desegregation...

...For overt suppression of "unsocial" attitudes is always a mark of the failure of statecraft...

...If you push too hard and too fast, you run the risk of creating conflict between the races while seeking to abolish it...

...The general conviction that Stevenson is probably the only Democratic candidate who could defeat the ever-popular President is rooted in many factors, but the chief one seems to be that he is the most persuasive and eloquent spokesman of the Democratic cause...

...The party's future is not necessarily of transcendent importance, and a retreat on the segregation issue would be too high a price to pay for the unity of the party, which since Roosevelt has become the instrument of Northern liberalism, while preserving its Southern base, inherited from the Civil War...

...It may be politically unwise to advocate "gradualism," but it is morally wise to practice it so long as the gradualism is genuine, that is, so long as the progress is sufficiently real to give the Negro minority hope for a better future...

...But something more than the future of the party is at stake, to wit, wisdom in handling the age-old race issue...

...One of the dangers of a too-abstract liberalism has always been that it was devoted to "principle" but somewhat oblivious of the intransigent facts of life which must be beguiled into conformity with decency but cannot be simply suppressed...

...Both candidates want a platform in which the Administration is pledged to carry out the Court decision, but both have disavowed the use of Federal troops to force compliance...

...David Dubinsky, whose Liberal party was certainly influential in the nomination of New York Governor Averell Harriman two years ago, suggested that he quit the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination in the interest of the "liberal democratic'' cause...

...Most Northern liberals feel understandable sympathy for the Negroes, who have suffered so long from an unequal and unjust status, and they are inclined to act with more than "deliberate speed" in tearing down the walls of segregation...

...From this difference in temper a very tragic situation could arise...

...David Dubinsky seems to typify the labor opinion that Stevenson's eloquence is a real asset and that bis views are in accord with the most "'vigorous" Democratic opinion...

...The Governor, however, used the convention to transmute his inactive candidacy into a more active one, declaring for a vigorous "liberalism...

...The Prohibition experiment should have taught us the futility' of using federal power to coerce a whole community and thereby merely aggravate its defiance...

...On the other hand, Dubinsky and a considerable body of labor opinion favor Stevenson, since, while regarding the difference between the two men as negligible, they believe that Stevenson has a better chance of defeating President Eisenhower...

...In a day that has known Churchill, the power of communication in a democracy is, and should be, prized...

...He is honestly convinced, and so apparently is former President Truman, that he is a more consistent exponent of the principles of the New and Fair Deals than is Adlai Stevenson...