THE UNC NEWS
Thursday, June 29, 1961
Page 2
Integration: Needed Speed And Direct Action
We believe that racial integration in all portions of
the United States including the South is inevitable, and
that it is. completely justified, whether one's criteria be
morality, religion, constitutionality, social reality, or prac
ticality. We believe that the present speed of integration is
unnecessarily slow in Southern school and transportation
systems, federal contract employment and public places,
and in both Northern and Southern federal housing pro
jects, business communities, and recreation facilities. We
advocate increased speed in integration, with particular
emphasis on the more reticent South.
Our opinions are contrary to that of the majority
of Southerners. One opposing group accepts integration as
morally wrong (individually depending on their definition
of morality.) These people accept integration as inevitable,
and see that due to federal pressure, it must and even,
should, come to the South. But they think the integration
process must be slowed down, or at least kept steady, in
order for the transition in the South to be as easy as
possible on the Southerners. This segment of opposed
thought we respect. We will attempt to answer its ques
tion of, Why so fast? The task is much too large to be han
dled in a column of this size, but we will attempt to do at
least a superficial job xf it.
CHANGE: GRADUAL OH ACCELERATED?
Negro agitation for integration has more and more
centered in the churches, giving the entire movement a
religious slant, and its members a Christlike complex, of
ten exaggerated and sometimes hypocritical, but existant
nevertheless. The Candhian non-violent techniques of Mar
tin Luther King and the sit-iners, and the peaceful legisla
tive processes employed by the NAACP are designed to
bring the Negro quickest possible acceptance as a "first
class citizen" by peaceful (accent on the word "peaceful")
means.
This movement is supported by t"he United States
Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court; it is
supported by a majority of the elected U. S. Congressmen
and by each of the last three Presidents. The benefits of
'"equal protection of the law" are rights .... rights not to
be given to the Negro as a gift, but to be acceded to him
by a guilty Nation and a guilty region after years of with
holding them.
This is the foreground of the integration picture
which must be painted before the background can be filled
in.
The gradualists, on the whole, have sincerity behind
their arguments, if not reason. (But there is also the
theory of gradualism which, as Eric Goldman said in a re
cent New York Times Sunday magazine "is the argument
cr rationalization of those who want no change, gradual or
otherwise.")
The positions of the moderate is valid in neither the
ideal nor in the instance. His major fault is accepting, with
out doubt, that what is good for the white Southern segre
gationist is good for the nation. Whatever the degree of
their sincerity, the gradualists have, in recent years, nar
rowed their arguments down to a number of basic and of
ten convincing appeals.
"No one can expect to change in a few years," says
UNC News:
The majority
always
rong.
Jim Clotfelter
EDITOR
George Strong
John Tasker .....
Newt Smith
John Clifford
Bill Hobbs
CO-EDITOR
. Business Manager
Asst. Business Manager
Feature Editor
Photographer
Office Telephone 942-2336
The UNC News is published weekly every Thursday by the
Chapel Hill Weekly press. The News is the official summer
school publication of the University of North Carolina. All edi
torials appearing in the News are the personal expressions of
the editors, unless otherwise credited; they are not necessarily
representative of the feeling of the staff members.
Iff
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the gradualist, "what a century and cen
turies before that have built up. The
South has never known conditions other
than those under which she lived up until
the 1954 Supreme Court decision. Change
cannot be expected overnight.
"A great deal of progress has been ac
complished since Reconstruction and an
even greater amount since the Court de
cision." This the gradualist says, as if there had
never been another way of life in the
South before segregation and there could
never be another after. Yet there was no
segregation before the Civil War because
of the necessity for slave and master to
work together. After Reconstruction no
segregation laws appeared . . . the Negro
was not locked into a ghetto by the South
ern politicians, and in fact, his vote was
courted to stem the rising power of the
white rabble. Not until after the turn of
the century were the first wholescale seg
regation laws passed by Southern states
and even these were usually passed with
hazy provisions not necessarily referring
to the Negro.
Soon after World War II Negro organi
zations primarily the NAACP, but also
. other, smaller groups in the South and
elsewhere began working for an end to
segregation everywhere. The Negro had
fought in the war effort just as hard as
the white. He had been virtually a "first
class citizen" for four years, but when he
came home it was to the same old segre
gated system.
Change had to come. President Truman
issued an executive order in 1948 calling
for the immediate elimination of discrimi
nation in federal employment and the end
of segregation in the armed forces. The
same year he urged passage of a bill mak
ing it easier for Negroes to vote, and eli
minating segregation in interstate trans
portation. The South had been warned.
The Court decisions of the early and mid
1950's merely justified the warning.
The South apparently convinced itself
in a frantic, terror-caused campaign fol
lowing the implementation decision of the
Court in 1955 that it had a "Southern way
of life" and that this way of life was bas
ed solely upon segregation and that seg
regation was the natural system for the
South.
But now the Talmadges and Eastlands
and Barnetts say, with no feeling of con
tradictory expression, that the South had
been trying to work out its segregation
problems in the past and is able to do the
same in the future, if only it were let a
lone. It can never be positively proved
that the South wouldn't have made its
own progress if not pushed, but historian
C. Vann Woodward doubted it, as do we,
"Ten years ago there was little reason
to believe, or to expect that things would
change in the South at any more than a
glacial pace."
TRADITION OF SLOW CHANGE
The gradualist insists, "The historic tra
dition in the United States favors gradual
change. All social change in this country
has taken time and the people have al
ways allowed time."'
Gradualists point to all the liberal re
forms woman suffrage, labor power,
welfare state provisions which were
gradually evolved over the decades, to
support their position. . The "take-it-
easy" proponents claim integration must
take the same slow path.
We answer that America has lost its
time-honored perogative to reform grad
ually. It can not take a hundred years to
integrate (in 1960 only 6 per cent of
Southern Negro children were in integrat
ed schools, so at the present rate all
schools wlil be integrated in 2054, not
exactly "deliberate speed".)
It cannot take fifty years or even twenty-five
to integrate Southern schools.
Transportation, public facilities, federally-supported
employment and housing
projects should be integrated much soon
er, starting with the major cities and
working into the country . . . starting with
the border Southern states and working
into the White Man's Land of Alabama,
Mississippi, South Carolina and Georgia
.... starting with "token" integration
and evolving into "complete" . . . the inte
gration to be accomplished by local and
state work preferably, but if not, federal
enforcement.
Increased speed of integration is a
necessity, not a choice. The colored peo
ples of the world are on the rise and the
United States is increasingly put in the
moral position of having to share its
wealth with these new poor nations, and
in the practical position of having to value
their opinions. "It is in the context of the
present world struggle between freedom
and tyranny," said Truman's attorney
general, "that the problem of racial dis
crimination must be viewed."
We must be able to hold up our heads
in world society and to do this our hazy
principles must conform to our actions,
particularly in the field of race relations.
But this point about world opinion is often
over-stressed by advocates of integration.
The reason for speedy integration is not
as a balm for African states although
this would be accomplished, too but as
our means of keeping abreast of the New
Deal in international political speed.
Oppressed people around the world de
mand freedom and if not given it, they
take up arms. In the United States the
Negro does not take up arms to revenge
the injustice, and for this we are fortun
ate. And for this reason he should be giv
en his "equal protection under the law"
sooner, not later. His pacifism should not
be taken advantage of.
In this new, faster world of bombs, na
tionalism, and internationalism, of crying
poverty and hasty solutions to the cries,
America cannot maintain its mental iso
lation, it must become a part of the world.
And acceleration in the future is one of
the prices which must be paid for our lax
ness of the past.
IS AGITATION'S COST PROHIBITIVE?
Agitation and direct action by Negroes
in search of their rights come in as the
gradualist's greatest "evils" in the inte
gration movement.
"Agitation appeals to no underlying
sympathy among white southerners,"
says the gradualist, "It antagonizes the
moderates who are willing to work toward
integration gradually. Agitation fails in
the long run because it does not appeal to
the Southerner through his own institu
tions and traditions."
The claim that all change must come
through existing Southern institutions is
(Continued on Page 6)