The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Rebel Yell in the U.S. Senate: A Rift Between South and North I PROPOSE THAT we surreptitiously insinuate a few hundred first-class history teachers into the...
...Perhaps the history teachers to whom I referred may be able to explain all about that old war and the rough Reconstruction Days...
...We do object to segregation...
...We did object to slavery...
...Excerpts from the Civil Rights Commission's report were introduced to prove that dark-skinned citizens had been systematically denied suffrage in various sections of the deep South...
...But before jumping to conclusions about it, take a look at Senator Thurmond's solemn address...
...Now he leads the fight against allowing Negroes to vote and, incidentally, reveals the deep psychosis of the South...
...He is the man who led the "little confederacy" in 1948...
...We like differences...
...The debate on H.R...
...These and other Northerners, he affirmed, "actually seem to feel that there is something quite sad, something very unfortunate, about the South's not being exactly like the rest of the country...
...I wish I could reproduce the Thurmond speech, made in the Senate on Friday, April 1, and send it far and wide over the land...
...And they may have a word or two to say about qualities worth keeping and those better pitched overboard...
...Then the Senator from South Carolina spoke sadly of Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois and Senator Clifford Case of New Jersey...
...The judge can appoint a referee who will have the authority to investigate and see to it that the man's constitutional rights are protected...
...Anyone who can get hold of the Congressional Record for that date can find the full refulgent text of it...
...And I venture to predict that, when and if this should happen, the pressure for so-called integration that has been so intensively applied against the South for the past five years and more would die down almost completely...
...On the Northern side the argument for allowing Negroes to vote was carried on quietly and realistically...
...If my assumption is correct, there is a deep rift between the states down there and the rest of the country...
...I do not know exactly why it is that the North so strongly objects to the South's being different...
...Since it has lost control of the party, it is, we are told, being forced to conform with the rest of the country...
...They insist upon being different...
...This idea results from my reading of the Congressional debates on the Civil Rights Bill, H.R...
...They seem to consider it almost their duty, as a favor to us in the South, to change us, to mold us in the national image...
...I have said," the Senator proceeds, "that if events should take a certain turn—a turn which is entirely possible, though it is one which we still believe we can avoid—the South would become in its race relations pattern a replica of the North...
...If a citizen is illegally prevented from voting, he can appeal to a federal court...
...And then he went on to explain that the folks down there strenuously object to uniformity...
...With deep regret an old friend of that lovely South would have to reach the conclusion that those old rebel states are far more different from the North, the Midwest and Far West than is Canada, Great Britain or half of Europe...
...This is a shocking supposition...
...The basic motivating psychological factor behind the North's attempt to impose so-called civil rights programs and racial integration on the South is this powerful, subconscious desire to make the South conform...
...Senate: A Rift Between South and North I PROPOSE THAT we surreptitiously insinuate a few hundred first-class history teachers into the lovely, romantic South...
...I only know that the North does object and that for more than a century it has attempted to make the South conform to Northern ways...
...We love every sliver of regional originality in the South or anywhere else...
...8601 has revealed a highly dangerous situation between North and South...
...I am taking for granted, of course, that the 18 Senators who spoke for the South really represented the people of their states...
...8601—especially the argumentative masterpiece by South Carolina's Senator Strom Thurmond...
...The Civil Rights Bill, which is being debated as this is written and which will probably be passed, provides for a system of election referees...
...He spoke sadly of "the War for Southern Independence," and traced the descent of the Southern faction in the Democratic party...
...they feel sympathetic toward us, rather than vengeful...
...If you live long enough, you will be surprised...
...Other provisions will come in due course...
...And we do think citizens should be allowed to vote...
...Well, the eloquent South Carolinian couldn't be more wrong...
...Just hang on, Senator...
...The new law does not contain all that the liberals asked for, but it does embody the main point...
Vol. 43 • April 1960 • No. 16
