Letter to A Georgia Gentleman

...in the South he does not...

...That's why Yankees should not stick their noses in the South's business...

...How can you know and understand someone you've never considered as an equal, much less treated as one...

...That madness in New Orleans last year showed how well Louisiana's lawmakers heeded his warning...

...But in the North a Negro has a right to his selfrespect...

...In fact, having now lived in New York for almost three years, I'm inclined to think the difference between Northern and Southern race prejudice is this: Northerners appear to love Negroes as a race and hate them as individuals while Southerners love Negroes as individuals and hate them as a race...

...How can he...

...And, for all I don't know about the Negro, there is one thing I do know: He is determined to win his rights, those rights guaranteed to every American, regardless of his class or color...

...Unbowed and unbroken, the Negro continues his march toward equality...

...The author, now living in the North, was born and raised in the South and is the grandson of a Confederate soldier...

...They know Negroes, Yankees don't...

...But I do think that right and might are both on his side...

...Know and understand the Negro...

...THE" EDITORS...

...I do think that it is high time for him to be admitted as an equal in American society, both North and South, not in the eyes of the Social Register but in the eyes of the law (like the poor and prostitution, prejudice has always been with us and probably always will be...

...That even more recent display in Athens showed how much recognition your fellow Georgians are willing to accord Negroes...

...I do think, in the words of Judge Learned Hand, that "the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind the lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten: that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest...

...Moreover, your kind of argument, the kind that says only misinformed or misguided people support integration, has been used time and time again by Southerners...

...Let us, the people who know and understand the Negro, handle our own affairs...

...It is equally obvious that the South hasn't the ghost of a chance of stopping him...

...If you won't even recognize a man as a fellow human being, then how can you possibly expect to know and understand him...

...You wrote: "I suspect, my dear nephew, that you love the Negro only in the abstract...

...Perhaps a few Southern whites have paused to think about these things, but chances are they are few indeed...

...Like him, I hope Dixie's epitaph will simply read R.I.P...

...That spirit is the antithesis of segregation and all it stands for...

...You can take the boy out of the South, but you can't take the South out of the boy...

...Nor do I have any particular knowledge of him...

...Now, rather than offering massive resistance, the South is slowly but surely making a massive retreat in the face of integration—and the inevitable...

...If you treat a man as a semi-savage unable and unworthy of being considered an equal, then how can you expect him to respect you for it...

...Regarding the Negro as an ignorant inferior, Southerners were completely unprepared for what was bound to happen after "Black Monday" at the United States Supreme Court May 17, 1954...

...It may well be true to say that you know the modern-day Negro in Georgia better than I do...

...That is obvious today...

...Unfortunately, most Southerners have never bothered to think about what the Negro wants for himself and his race...

...No, Uncle, I don't have any special love for the Negro...

...Being unprepared, they were bothered, bewildered, and ultimately beaten by such Negro movements as Martin Luther King's non-violent resistance campaign in Montgomery...

...Let us decide when 'separate but equal' is ready to be changed to 'equal for all.' Let us alone and give us enough time (it'll take another generation at least) and everything will work out all right in the end...

...There's one great fallacy in this kind of argument: The Southerner neither knows nor understands the Negro...

...That may well be a vain wish, but let us hope not...

...Unfortunately, most Southerners seem to have ignored what the late Earl Long warned the Louisiana legislature to realize after all these years: "You got to recognize that niggers is human beings...

...The gist of it is this: "Yankees don't understand the Negro, only white Southerners do...

...the Negro is determined to win his rights however long it takes and whatever the sacrifices to be made...

...Being unprepared, they were at first astounded, then angered by the Negro's determination and defiance once he had the law of the land behind him...

...Let us decide when he has become civilized enough to have a voice in our society...

...That's why Yankees should not try to tell the South what it should do about Negroes...

...On that, if nothing else, I'm sure you'll agree with me...

...Your suspicion is wrong...

...One can certainly see that, regardless of whether he knows the modernday Negro or not...

...I often wonder just how many white Southerners have ever so much as imagined what it must be like to be a Negro in the South...

...Now, having fumed and fussed, threatened and terrorized, Southern segregationists find that they, not the Negro, are in the wrong and on the run...

...Have they ever thought of the Negro as being in any way like themselves, having the same dreams, the same ambitions, the same desire to make the world better for himself and his children and his children's children...

...So, as Harry Ashmore has observed, the epitaph for Dixie is just about ready to be written...

...I don't love the Negro in the abstract or in general, though I have an abiding affection for the individual Negroes I grew up with in Charlottesville...

...Nor am I a fanatic supporter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, though I sympathize with its overall objectives...

...Devotedly, YOUR NEPHEW, STAIGE...

...But I don't think you know a great deal about Negroes in Georgia or anywhere else (that is not to argue that you haven't done a great deal for them—far more than I—both professionally as a doctor and personally as a man...

...Yet that is precisely what Southerners expect from the Negro—complete and utter respect, a respect that borders on servility...

...Let us decide when he is no longer a child just out of the jungle...

...The truth—and the tragedy—of the South is that its white people have never known and understood the Negro, have never thought of him or treated him as anything more than an ignorant inferior...

...Have you ever wondered what the Negro thinks about his place in Southern society—that of being, at best, a second class citizen...

...and you certainly don't know the modern-day one (at least in Georgia) as well as I do, nor have you done as much for him...

...Blackford's Atlanta uncle, the author notes, "is a true Southern gentleman of the old school, a doctor who has cared for Negro patients through his long career...

...DEAR UNCLE: In your last letter you intimated that I sounded like a Yankee liberal talking on a subject he knows nothing about—the race problem in the South today...

...And whatever kind of liberal I am, I am not a Yankee one...

...How can you know and understand someone you've done your best to keep down in a separate, segregated segment of society...