THE MOOD OF AMERICA
Jack, Homer A. & Timboe, Guy P.
THE MOOD OF AMERICA Notes on Passive Resistance in Montgomery and Non-Partisans in North Dakota Christ and Gandhi In Montgomery By HOMER A. JACK Montgomery IN THIS "Cradle of the Confederacy,"...
...When the owner of a clothing store gave me an ad, he said with a touch of bitterness in his voice, "They've forced us to go over to the Democrats...
...Below the surface, however, the Citizens Councils appear to be readying for a bitter, violent battle...
...Rosa Parks sat down next to a Negro man in about the third row of a crowded bus...
...The Eisenhower Administration feels the small farmer is inefficient and the present pattern of agriculture obsolete...
...The Republicans maintain that only the law of supply and demand can solve the farm problem...
...45 per cent have no central heating...
...But in this "age of plenty," the scourge of hunger is still rife in much of the world and even in America millions do not have all the food and clothing they need...
...At every point the white leaders seemed to have acted only to bolster what otherwise could have been sinking morale of the 50,-000 Negroes during these five long months...
...What has been the effect of this protest on whites, especially in Montgomery...
...There are whites in Montgomery who agree with the current demands of the Negroes—and would concur in even greater demands— but none feels he can afford risking his job if not his very life by publicly supporting the protest...
...King, the leader of the movement, repeatedly emphasizes love and non-violence...
...Exhortation seems to be the only tool in Dr...
...The beginnings of the New Deal saw the Democratic Party grow in popularity as friend of the farmer and small businessman, but Langer, as NPL's recognized leader, succeeded in keeping the League tied to Republicanism...
...Success seems certain, for everything favors the Negroes...
...The Eisenhower-Benson solution to the farm problem is largely negative: the under-utilization of our land in order to reduce production...
...Gandhi worked in a fish-bowl...
...Various factors, including World War II and the U.S...
...Too many people are trying to stay in agriculture that would do better some place else...
...The Montgomery Improvement Association meets in an old night club and its strategy is not completely above-board...
...We want to love our enemies...
...Be good to them...
...These arrests focused nationwide attention on the protest, since it was obviously a spiritual crusade and not a mere legal battle...
...For almost the first time in recent Southern history, the Negroes have suddenly realized their own strength—moral, religious, economic...
...III What has been the effect of the protest on Negroes...
...And the liberal League, through its tie-up with the Republicans, aided the reactionary elements in the state and national governments...
...The movement has a broad mass following, cutting across class lines in the Negro community...
...But such initial white support has disappeared, although occasionally white motorists still offer Negroes rides, despite the admonition from Montgomery's mayor: "When a white person . . . helps a Negro with his transportation, even if it's a block ride, he is helping the Negro radicals who lead the boycott...
...It was during this era that North Dakota hit the front pages of the nation's press with its "socialistic" ventures, such as the Bank of North Dakota, the State Mill and Elevator, the State Hail Insurance Department, and the Workmen's Compensation Bureau...
...After all, there is no segregation vertically in Montgomery: Negroes ride the same elevators as whites...
...How Gandhian is the protest...
...Delegates to the NPL convention in Bismarck in late March voted to file the 1956 NPL candidates in the Democratic column...
...In fact, the magnitude of the farm revolt in this traditionally Republican state leads many thoughtful observers to believe that despite Eisenhower's personal popularity, the Republicans may lose much of the farm belt this year...
...Thus Montgomery's Negroes feel terribly alone and isolated and almost unable to communicate with their white neighbors...
...This peaceful, determined protest caught Negroes and whites alike in Montgomery completely by surprise...
...and 68 per cent have no television sets...
...Supreme Court decisions, have produced the New Negro who is no longer a sycophant, no longer cowed by whites...
...Since 1921, the League's victories have been spotty...
...The Negroes didn't believe they had the courage, the unanimity, the leadership, or the discipline...
...Moreover, in Montgomery there is no "moderate" leadership among the whites, perhaps because time has diminished the moderate middle, although the Southern Regional Council in the name of the Alabama Council on Human Relations is trying desperately to play at least a conciliatory role...
...The police harassed the Negro car pool, the mayor announced a fake settlement, the homes of several Negro leaders were bombed, and the city fathers in desperation publicly announced their membership in the White Citizens Council...
...While since 1941 the Committee of Racial Equality (CORE) has tried to use Gandhian methods in American race relations (and has succeeded in a minor way), this demonstration in Montgomery was quite spontaneous...
...Loyal workers have gone into every community...
...From the beginning, the NPL filed its candidates for office in the column of the dominant Republican Party because that looked like the best way to win...
...These rallies not only have the practical function of providing communication between leaders and the people (in lieu of a campaign newspaper which Gandhi always preferred), but large free-will offerings are collected that pay the weekly costs—$3,000—of the 200 or more autos in the car pool which the Negroes are using instead of the yellow buses...
...At what point," he exclaimed at a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing, "will the 140 million Americans who do not live on farms rise up and demand not revision but outright elimination of all direct aid to agriculture...
...While the surpluses have brought down farm prices, the cost to the consumer of food and fabrics has gone up...
...Two stops later several white passengers boarded the bus and the driver told Mrs...
...The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is watching Montgomery carefully...
...King told his excited neighbors: "Don't get panicky...
...He is not afraid of arrest, jail, or even violence...
...There was even greater resentment of Republican inaction during the wave of mortgage disclosures that followed...
...King's conviction will be appealed, while the cases of the other 89 leaders were adjourned pending this appeal...
...In the background is the Montgomery County Citizens Council...
...His only comment was, "We sure need a change...
...He is editor of the recently published volume, "The Gandhi Reader...
...Two Leaguers, Republican Senator William Langer and Representative Usher Burdick, carried along on reputations established in the farm depression years of the twenties and thirties, still represent North Dakota in Congress...
...It was this kind of argument at the grass-roots level that got the League rank and file to move decisively in the Democratic camp...
...1 enemy...
...We are moving on to victry, with hope and dignity...
...Representative Adam Clayton Powell, a shrewd observer of Negro opinion, called a National Deliverance Day of Prayer because he sensed the silent prayers of Negroes everywhere...
...The farm problem is the result of poor distribution, not overproduction, and its solution calls for ' constructive and imaginative government action...
...The League stayed on in Republican ranks through the years despite the growing awareness in NPL ranks that the GOP was no friend of its approach to the agricultural problem...
...THE MOOD OF AMERICA Notes on Passive Resistance in Montgomery and Non-Partisans in North Dakota Christ and Gandhi In Montgomery By HOMER A. JACK Montgomery IN THIS "Cradle of the Confederacy," whites sit in the buses beginning at the front and Negroes sit —or sat—beginning at the back...
...This klan in gray flannel sheets also has borrowed a few terms from Gandhi: "non-violence" and "no hatred...
...31 per cent have no telephones...
...This movement is religious as well as political, and twice weekly there are mass rallies in the churches not unlike Gandhi's afternoon prayer meetings...
...As the Negro leadership faced mounting problems of potential violence and counter-violence, they found themselves practicing a srange admixture of Christianity and Gandhism...
...We know love is the watchword for peace and liberty...
...Don't get your weapons...
...I saw the South African version of segregation, apartheid...
...On March 15, 1955, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz said, "Agriculture is now big business...
...Montgomery's mayor announced that he had received donations from Atlanta and elsewhere to supplement the diminishing income of the bus company, which is barely keeping in business with bus traffic down 30 per cent, fares raised from 10 cents to 15 cents, and Sunday bus service almost completely curtailed...
...Love them and let them know you love them...
...On December I, 1955, Mrs...
...King the maximum sentence, admitting that he "discouraged violence...
...they are beginning to swing over to the NPL-Democratic coalition...
...each member pledges to "defeat the NAACP, Integration, Mongrel-ism, Socialism, Communist ideologies, F.E.P.C., and One World Government...
...Perhaps nothing since the March on Washington movement has so captured the imagination of the entire Negro community in America...
...The white press in Montgomery has been stunned by reporters coming from all over the world to give the protest the widest news coverage in the city's long history...
...King was hailed as a martyr of his people...
...Take a look at the "greedy" North Dakota farmers: 38 per cent of them have no running water in their homes...
...Initially, a few whites signed letters to the press endorsing the demands of the Negroes for this slight lessening of discrimination and discourtesy...
...As Gandhi baffled the British and made them perform unwise acts, so the quietly determined Negroes have baffled the white city fathers of Montgomery and caused them to play repeatedly into the hands of the protest movement...
...King was convicted of conspiracy, despite ample evidence—necessary under the state anti-boycott law—that the Negro community had a "just cause...
...But it is clearly evident that this "law" works against the farmer's interests...
...That night a theme song was officially adopted, sung to the tune of Old Time Religion: We are moving on to victry, with hope and dignity...
...The details of this dramatic protest are now familiar to most Americans...
...be contagious and may yet bring about the widespread social revolution in the South which could culminate in true emancipation by 1963— a hundred years after the proclamation...
...II There are obvious similarities between the Montgomery protest and Gandhian campaigns, both those Gandhi personally directed and the more recent movements in South Africa (1952-55) and Goa (1954-55...
...His church is showing new social relevance (and where else but in the Negro church could this movement have started in the South today...
...Lapel buttons have been ordered with the slogan, "Victory Without Violence...
...Since 1952 they succeeded in wresting control of the League machinery (the NPL committee and The Leader board), and they have led a grass-roots revolt in the state's 2300 precincts...
...When demand slackens, instead of cutting prices they cut production, and in the process new surpluses in the form of unemployed plants and manpower are created...
...All over the South whites are watching Montgomery and are urging the city fathers to hold the color line firmly, for they sense the revolutionary implications of this non-violent protest...
...They are reading the Sage from Sevagram the better to adapt his universal techniques to then-situation...
...A farm implement dealer put it this way: "I never thought I'd go Democrat, but what else can I do...
...There appears to be no preparation for non-violence in extreme provocation...
...The leaders are beginning to think in terms of an alteration of emphasis so common in Gandhi's own campaigns...
...Meanwhile, the liberal forces in the state were split into two opposing camps: the NPL and the Democratic Party...
...indeed, even horizontally, Negro maids can ride next to white children in their care in Montgomery —as in Johannesburg—buses...
...While farmers constitute 13 per cent of our population, their net income is only four per cent of the total...
...When the leaders were arrested, the NAACP entered with legal assistance...
...Now a groundswell against the Eisenhower Administration has at last brought the League and the Democrats together...
...An old woman summed up the community's determination when she said, "It used to be that my body rode, but my soul walked...
...Where will the protest lead as the ghost buses continue to run and the spirit of Gandhi continues to walk the streets of Montgomery...
...II But with all this discontent, the move to the Democratic Party would still not have taken place except for the men and women who have provided the new dynamic leadership of the League...
...After the protest continued three months, five Negroes did file suit in federal court to end bus segregation altogether, but the Association has not gone beyond its first-come, first-seated demands...
...Disillusioned too are many of North Dakota's Main Street businessmen, who depend upon the farmer for their livelihood...
...The Eisenhower Administration is clearly vulnerable in this farm state, and no one here will be very much surprised if North Dakota in protest goes Democratic this year...
...As one Leaguer put it, "We have been feeding the hand that bites us...
...Except for a 27-year-old white clergyman of an all-Negro Lutheran church, not a single white person in Montgomery has publicly endorsed the protest...
...The Association significantly did not ask for the end of bus segregation...
...Money is pouring into Montgomery...
...The Negro ministers in Montgomery called a one-day protest (they try not to use the word "boycott") for December 5. It was so effective that it has continued to this day...
...It was not Gandhian in its inception...
...Many regret the whole affair...
...Its objective was to protect the farmer against gouging from the elevator operators, the grain gamblers, the millers, the railroads, and the bankers...
...Here in brief are some of their arguments that were used to swing sentiment in behalf of the switch to the Democratic Party: • The Republicans propose to get rid of the farm surpluses by withdrawing government supports...
...there seems to me to be fewer whites in Montgomery speaking up against segregation than whites in Johannesburg speaking up against apartheid...
...One lawyer stated that the appeal might take three years...
...Also the member pledges to "preserve the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, States Rights, Segregation, and our Godfearing American nation...
...He was formerly administrative assistant to Congressman Usher Burdick...
...A druggist in the same town gave me $5 for a League membership and a subscription to the NPL newspaper, The Leader...
...They are praying, but also watching, for they feel the Montgomery protest will HOMER A. JACK, minister of the First Unitarian Church of Evanston, recently made a first-hand study of developments in Montgomery...
...Today, the Montgomery leaders are studying Gandhi, and the world headlines are dubbing them Gan-dhians...
...More than 200 of the 228 elected delegates represented counties which voted unanimously or by lopsided majorities to discard the Republican banner...
...After the 90 leaders were arrested, the Negro community, in order to prove its solidarity, abandoned all transportation and 50,000 Negroes "walked with God" the one day their leaders were arraigned...
...This is the same NPL that started the political prairie fire in 1915 that swept through North Dakota and spread into Canada and a dozen neighboring farm states...
...After the trial, Dr...
...now my body may be tired, but my soul is free...
...These big operators who are swallowing up the small farms get their equipment and supplies direct from wholesale sources and they don't need retail outlets like mine...
...They shouted, "Long Live the King," as they chanted, "We Ain't Gonna Ride the Buses No More...
...But in direct line with declared objectives, they are getting rid of the small farmers instead, so that large-scale operators can take over...
...An automobile dealer in the northern part of the state told me the other day, "I was raised a Republican, I have always voted Republican, but I got over it...
...Christian ministers applied what turned out to be Gandhian techniques...
...While they are focusing their energies just now on the bus situation, they have in mind what Gandhi called a "constructive program," which in their minds means the establishment of a new bank in Montgomery and the encouragement of many more Negroes to register and vote...
...At the present rate, it won't be long till I'll lose all my customers...
...She was arrested for breaking the segregation laws— and the entire Negro community of almost 50,000 persons in Montgomery has refused to ride a bus almost ever since...
...Just as the North Dakota farmer was angry in 1915 when he was being victimized by the grain gamblers, commission brokers, banks, and railroads, he is angry today about being played for a sucker...
...Also, there has not been the kind of careful organization of the protest that Gandhi would have insisted upon, although the machinery has been bettered as time has gone by...
...Parks and three other Negroes to stand up so that the whites could sit down...
...During the trial itself, significantly during Lent, many of those in attendance wore cloth crosses with the words, "Father, Forgive Them...
...not since 1936 has it elected its candidate for governor...
...King has affirmed...
...Black and white all are brothers to live in harmony...
...He shows new race solidarity...
...County rallies have been staged, with trained speakers loaded with facts and figures showing why the Eisenhower Administration is "the farmer's No...
...The answer is that the processors of agricultural products, and all other producers except the farmer, set their own prices...
...When the final decision was made, only three delegates voted against the switch...
...His wrath rises every time he reads in his daily paper about sagging farm prices and soaring corporation profits...
...But the fact is that the technical progress made by the farmer, through increased use of fertilizer and machinery, has been more spectacular than that in the industrial sector...
...It did win in those early years and, despite fierce attacks, succeeded in inaugurating its reform program...
...The judge did not give Dr...
...They found themselves aided by two old instigators and agitators—Jesus and Gandhi...
...There was great restiveness in NPL ranks in the 1920's when Presidents Coolidge and Hoover vetoed the Mc-Nary-Haugen farm bill...
...GUY P. TIMBOE, raised on a North Dakota farm, is contributing editor of The Leader, official paper of the Nonpartisan League...
...There is a just, long-standing grievance, not only in the extreme segregation of bus passengers (more so than in Mobile, for example) but in the rank discourtesy shown Negro passengers (as was poignantly revealed in the trial of Dr...
...Agriculture Secretary Ezra Benson accuses the farmer of living off the fat of the land...
...There is also an emphasis on love, not hate, of the white man, and an insistence on non-violence...
...It was a moment of high spirit and serious determination...
...There is a deep willingness to suffer and not to make others, even whites, suffer...
...The higher wages that have gone to labor," Benson declared September 20, 1955, "have been siphoned from the economic bloodstream of the nation at the expense of agriculture...
...But the League stayed Republican...
...Parks, tired from her day's work as a seamstress and tired of her forty years of submission under Alabama segregation, just refused to move...
...The Gandhian—and Christian— symbolism which has developed during the protest is significant...
...We shall all stand together, 'til every one is free...
...The protest will continue no matter how many times they arrest me," Dr...
...Actually, the total amount of direct aid given farmers is but a small fraction of the billions of dollars given industry in the form of protective tariffs, free land, tax write-offs, generous government contracts, guaranteed earnings, and postal subsidies...
...Identified as "insurgent" Leaguers, the hard core of the new NPL includes farmers, lawyers, school teachers, physicians, dentists, and businessmen...
...Martin Luther King, Jr...
...He remembers President Eisenhower's emphatic promise of price supports of at least 90 per cent of parity, and he is furious over the President's current opposition to such legislation...
...The protest is not all Gandhian by any means...
...Farming takes capital and managerial capacity...
...The three Negro men stood up and moved down the crowded aisle toward the back...
...The Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, which controlled both the price of wheat and the price of flour at that time, was its central target...
...If he were in fact on the side of the farmer, he would admit that the worker provides the farmer's principal market and that the bigger his take-home pay and the better he eats and dresses, the more prosperous agriculture is...
...The drivers have special police power to draw the color line, especially when the bus is filled...
...These irresponsible responses by the whites culminated in the arrest of 90 leaders of the protest, including two dozen ministers, for conspiracy to boycott...
...When his house was bombed, and his wife and three-months-old daughter escaped, Dr...
...There are other Gandhian parallels...
...The Negroes formed the Montgomery Improvement Association and made three quite moderate demands: 1. More courtesy by white drivers...
...Non-Partisans Go Democratic By GUY P. TIMBOE Bismarck THE historic Nonpartisan League in North Dakota has upset four decades of tradition by severing its affiliation with the Republican Party and joining forces with the Democrats...
...The New Negro is fearless, courageous, creative...
...Success has already been attained in the miracle of confidence engendered in the whole Negro community...
...Even Senator Harry F. Byrd's "massive resistance" against integration has a strange Gandhian echo...
...2. Negro drivers to be hired, when vacancies occur, on bus routes in predominantly Negro neighborhoods...
...King's non-violent arsenal, although Gandhi tried to select and train lieutenants who would know how to stand up under violent attack and not retaliate...
...Initially it had no part in the protest since there was no attack on bus segregation per se...
...It is watching Montgomery, watching to determine whether it will add Gandhism to its repertoire along with the device of legal attack which it prefers and on which it has relied so heavily...
...The car pools are getting the Negroes to work, and their morale has never been higher...
...3. Negroes and whites to be seated on a first-come, first-served basis, whites from the front and Negroes from the back, but with an elastic dividing line depending upon who sits down first...
Vol. 20 • May 1956 • No. 5
