Negro-white relations in the United States; The continuing concern

I've been attending a segregated school all the days of my life. I attended a Catholic school elementary school Booker T Washington High School in New Orleans Louisiana and now I was attending selle university until I was dismissed. The district attorney pointed out there is he said if you were born in the shower then you must have gone to the law are someone a doctor needs you in speaking out against evil. In other words no smart nigger in his work is ever bothering to share their satisfied any of this is his attitude on court. However when they fail to realize that even in their Sygate of schools they teach is Americanism. What would they teach is Americanism in a segregated school. They must realize that when we go out into the community we want the blessings of our American heritage. That was Ronnie Moore a negro's student member of the Congress of Racial Equality.

This is the continuing concern part one. One of a series presenting material from the Pacific archives of past programs exploring important areas of continuing concern or concern for this program. Negro white relations in the United States will concentrate on the various approaches to solutions of race relations problems. Our STARTING POINT Montgomery Alabama in the mid-1950s Reverend Martin Luther King describing the Montgomery bus boycott if a visitor had come to. My governor prior to do some of the 5th 1955. He would have noticed bus operators. Calling negro passengers names and one is almost ashamed to mention he would have noticed the times Nigro

passengers getting on the front door of the bus and paying the fare. And then being forced to get off and go to the back in order to board the bus. And often he would have noticed the bus cooling off before the negro passenger could get to the back. But even more he would occasionally an oldish negro passenger standing over an empty seat. Pretty soon it would have been revealed to him that these empty seats were reserved for whites only. This custom went even beyond that. Of white passengers feel of the reserve section which had about 10 seats for whites if they field all of these seats. And it became necessary aisle the white passengers boarded the bus. The negro passenger seated immediately behind the reserve section

were asked to stand and moved to the back and out of that the white passengers could be seated. If the Negro passengers refused to move to stand up they were arrested. On the 1st of December. Mrs. Rosa Parks was asked to give up her seat to move back and order that a white passenger could be seated. And it is interesting to note that Mrs. Parks was not seated in one of the tender is there seat she was seated in the first seat of the reserve section. And if she had given up her seat she would have had to stand while a male white passenger would have been seated and end up quiet. And dignified manner so characteristic of the radiant personality of Mrs. Parks.

She refused to move back and the result was no rest. The trial was set up for Monday December the 5th and almost out of no leaflets was circulated around the Negro community saying this must be stopped another negro woman has been humiliated and arrested because she refused to give up her seat for. A white passenger. And then it suggested that. The negro citizen should protest by refusing to ride the buses on Monday. The day that the trial was set. The word got around amazingly well. All of the negro ministers came together and in DOS the plan with hearty enthusiasm by Monday. The word was around the city. Then came Monday morning do some

of the things and the buses were empty. All day long. Negro passengers would constitute 75 percent of the bus riders. Refused to ride. The Negro community was now united in a way that it had never been united before. And from that day to the end of the protests which was three hundred and eighty one days negro passengers cooperated. With this endeavor more than nine and I was sent. Co-operating. It was more than 99 percent successful from the very beginning. From the very beginning Valois was. A philosophy undergirding the boycott. We often referred to it as difficult of nonviolent resistance.

The philosophy of passive resistance as you well know this is a. Method made famous by Mahatma Gandhi and of our generation. And he used it to free his people from. The political domination and economic exploitation and humiliation inflicted upon them by a Britain that was certain basic things that we had to make clear in the beginning. About this philosophy. We had to make it clear that this was not to be a method of cowardice. It does resist. It is not a method of stagnant passive étienne Deadman complacency. The nonviolent resistor is just as opposed to the evil that he is standing against as a violent resistance but he resists without violence.

This method is passive physically but dynamically active spiritually. It is non aggressive physically but strongly aggressive spiritually. Another thing that we have to get over concerning this method. Is the fact that the nonviolent resistance does not seek to humiliate or defeat the opponent but to wend his friendship and understanding. This was always a cry that we had to set before the people. That I came as not to defeat the white community not to humiliate the white community but to win the friendship. Of all of the persons who have perpetrated this system in the past. The end of violence of the aftermath of violence is bitterness. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the

creation of the beloved community. What is happening on the buses in Montgomery Alabama today. The buses in Montgomery federally integrated. They are running day in and day out on an integrated basis and we have not had any major incidents at the beginning of shooting in the buses. But now things are working amazingly well and we have not had any real dent but on the whole transition from segregated buses to integrated buses has been a very smooth and orderly transition. It was 1960. The place the US.

February 1st because I'm. From Greensboro across the river and. I live surveyed Forty one days in jail are on the chain gang since I've been involved in the movement. I've been arrested three times the first time that I was arrested was at Orangeburg South Carolina. This was March the 15th. One thousand eight hundred sixty. At the same time there were three hundred eighty eight other students who were arrested. Of course this is a demonstration that is probably one of the better known single demonstrations of the present movement because they arrested such a large number of students and the cost of the very brutal treatment that these students faced at at the hands of the police officers. As we start into the downtown area they pulled out fire trucks to try to

stop the demonstration after the students kept on going by the fire trucks. Then they pull out tear gas and of course this still didn't stop the students and as the students proceeded to the downtown area they fill the city jail and the county jail and the remaining students some two hundred fifty in number were made to stand outside in an open air stockade for about three or four hours and the temperature must have been about 29 and 30 degrees. And finally they were marched out of the stockade now out of the jails to the county courthouse and they were taken to the basement of the courthouse and the temperature down there must have been about 90 degrees and the house was in direct contrast. At first the law enforcement officers said they were going to fine each person $100 but realizing that they had more people on their hands and they could have only finally released all the people own $10 bonds and the trials of all of these people have came up with the exception of 47 and they've been all convicted of a breach of the peace. And this was a peaceful protest

demonstration. My other time of being jailed was in Miami Florida this past summer when I was attending a core at a racial action Institute. This was an institute wherein we discussed the philosophy of nonviolence and we actually got out and put the philosophy into practice and we were doing some routine tests at restaurants to determine whether there was a policy of discrimination. And at this particular restaurant name it was Shell City restaurants part of a big supermarket there. We were arrested some 18 number. They were both whites and negroes in the group and the charge was Ejay action of an undesirable guest. And rather than paying fines many of us chose to stay in jail and we stayed in jail for 10 days. And finally when our trial came up we were put on one year probation and they told us to get out of the state as quick as possible. The other time that I've spent time in prison was not too long ago really I was released from a roid gang in South Carolina on March the 2nd.

I got there for sitting in a micro in company five and dime lunch counter and the policeman and the manager ask us to leave in a period of about five or six seconds and before we realized anything we were being heard loud the bag go into the city jail and all trial came up and we were given this option of paying $100 fine a $200 pending appeal to the next court. Our serving our time. And because we had felt that staying in jail with a moral impact created there with it we would do a much greater service to the movement since we do think that the movement is one that must tend to emphasize a moral evil of segregation. We chose to stay in jail for 30 days. We really got into a little difficulty with the prison officials because we felt that our religion it was a definite basis of our desire and our willingness to suffer for taking the 30 day sentence on the child. So we started having devotional services inside the prison.

It's the period between 5:30 in the morning and the time that we would go out if we had a few minutes of free time what we would have devotional services and of course we would sing the national anthem our Faith of Our Fathers and we also sang a Negro spiritual that had the words before I'd be a slave I'd be buried in my grave in this really Earth the prison officials. And while we would be singing there would be prisoners on the white side and the negro side who would be keeping up quite a bit of noise. But it seems that our singing was the thing that really irked the gods and they would come up and they would tell us not to sing and because we know and we believe greatly in our heritage as Americans and our right to worship God as we please. We decided that we would not stop singing when the gods told us to stop saying so one morning we persisted with our singing. And as a result we were thrown into solitary confinement. Sure

sure. 3000 students just last year alone have been to jail in the over 300 Southern communities have had some form of sit in kneel in wait in stand in they just learned Thanks February 1st in Nashville they celebrated the first anniversary of the sit ins by starting the stand ins say last year they were able in three months time to get all of the major dime stores in

Nashville to desegregate lunch counters and then a few restaurants voluntarily came in but this year the movie houses in the train station and the drug stores are still you know segregated for the most part so that's their goal for this year well they had 500 students in the downtown area from Nashville in Tennessee and I Mary Medical College and a few from Vanderbilt still mostly Negro students. And they had all all of this month every they've been in the downtown area every day standing in line at the movie houses. And quite a few have been arrested again but people thought maybe this movement was just a big fan last year and would die out but it seems to be going on stronger in developing new forms this year. James Farmer national director of the Congress of Racial Equality telling about the Freedom Rides starting with the incidents in Anniston Alabama

the Greyhound bus had its tires slashed by hoodlums and Aniston. So when the bus proceeded to leave Aniston got a very short distance before it had two flats could proceed no further. Then the hoodlums were there waiting for it and their cars and they got out and with clubs and rocks broke the windows of the bus and threw a firebomb inside which created a great deal of smoke and then burst into flames and the bus was completely gutted and destroyed. The passengers including the Freedom Riders scrambled out through the windows and a. Policeman who was standing around merely fired one shot into the air at this point claiming that was to disperse the mob. This was after the damage had been done. Our contact in Birmingham a negro minister Reverend Shuttlesworth and dispatched several private automobiles from Birmingham to Aniston to pick up the Freedom

Riders. This was I should say after they had been treated at the hospital for smoke inhalation and other minor injuries. When I was second contingent of the Freedom Ride I arrived in Aniston an hour or so later. And when the Freedom Riders got off the bus to try and test the terminal facilities they found the facilities all locked up. They could not get in. They got back on the bus and the bus driver then announced that the Greyhound bus which preceded them had been burned to the ground and said he was not moving his bus until the quote niggers unquote got back into the back seat where they belong. The negro Freedom Riders refused to move. And at that point eight hoodlums who had previously boarded the bus got up and went to the front and beat the negro passengers who were sitting up front. When two white Freedom Riders tried to protest they too were beaten and were left lying on the floor of the bus in the

aisle and they reported to me by phone after the incident that they saw the negro freedom riders being hurled body laid over them into the rear of the bus by the hoodlums. The bus then went to Birmingham and what happened there is now unfortunate page in history. They were met by a mob and were badly beaten. Jane jumped back whom I had left in charge of the Freedom Ride. He's a white man from New York. He was severely beaten had to have 57 stitches taken in his face and head gash is all over his face and head from the beating they beat him more mercilessly than they had beaten the negroes he says that they had knocked him down and were kicking and slugging him with chains and with brass knocks as well as with bare fists. They were screaming Get him get him Jesus get him good. Mr Farmer replying to the question What is your view of the achievements of the Freedom Writers.

Well I think that it has pointed up to the American people very clearly the fact of the evil nature and the brutality involved in segregation and bigotry in the deep southern states especially Alabama and Mississippi. I think it has aroused more determination on the part of negroes throughout the country to call a halt to segregation as far as their own submission to it is concerned. I expect that large numbers of negroes will be traveling this summer by bus. Well seek use our demand use of all facilities at the bus terminal without segregation. I'm sure that this will take place. I think it is pointed up for all of us to see if we needed to see it that there are sections of our country in which. Americans who believe in equality cannot travel in dignity without risking their life and limb. And I do believe it has increased the determination of large numbers of Americans to do

something about it. We did run into some hostility. We ran into one situation where a white man boarded a bus in Georgia and asked the bus driver if he would. Are the quote niggers unquote to move together and sit in the same seats further so he could sit down. The bus driver refused to do it on the grounds that they were interstate passengers and legally he could not ask them to move. We ran into other incidents where white passengers boarded the bus at roadside stops and they themselves asked Negroes if they would move back so they a white person could sit down there. The negroes in every case the negro Freedom Riders politely and courteously suggested to the person that you may sit right here meaning by me. In some cases they did so and others they moved until they found a vacant seat negro or passengers would board the bus look around and see the Freedom Riders sitting in the front and then would take a front seat themselves and very proudly we found on other occasions. A negro bus passengers

who were not freedom riders would leave the bus at bus terminals and start into the negro facilities. Look through the window and see that the Freedom Riders had entered the white waiting room and were sitting at the lunch counter and were being served. So all of a then would enter and sit down and seek service. This is one thing we hope to accomplish and I think we did it. Lilian Smith put it well one several years ago. Well not several years ago two years ago when she said in the past Southern whites have been afraid of Southern Negroes now Southern whites are afraid of Southern whites. And I think that that is the situation. There are liberal voices. There are voices of goodwill in the south but those voices in the past several years have been stilled out of fear. They have not spoken up. This I might add was another object of the Freedom Ride to try to instill some guts into the decent white people of the south so that they would make their voices heard in the situation. I think that in some sense we did accomplish that.

We noticed that at some of the stops the bus stops after word had gotten through the south that we were coming. We would see automobiles standing at the bus terminal with a family and it a man and a wife obviously waiting for the Freedom Riders to arrive. We got off the bus and they would stand there and watch until we were safely in our taxis and then they would drive away. These persons obviously were not hoodlums who were waiting there to beat us up and give us trouble. They were there to watch and I think that on these occasions had there been trouble they probably would have intervened. Reverend Ralph Abernathy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference speaking in Nashville Tennessee. There I wanted to silent on this road to freedom which we must observe if we are too late to make this journey and I wish to leave one or two of these signs with you as I go to my seat this evening. The first sign.

On the Road to Freedom said is that where there is unity there is strength. Unless we come together and bind ourselves together as one group we will never be free in America. After New grow we would stand up. Eighteen million strong are known with the liberal white people of a better color today. We could to win our freedom. We kept the next. I. It was. If we would decide that we are not going to pay to be segregated in a long gun and we're not going to put dissipate it in room got it didn't suffer discrimination. I guarantee you we could win our freedom in America. We would come together and decide that we are not going to just sit

down and on the edge of town or somewhere. But we're not going. To sit down. Only a matter of cock we would have to sit down but no we cannot pay for some force and some algo. Will come because. I. Do you know railroad negroes in Montgomery. I don't guess they are in Nashville. I believe some of them who are still paying that insurance and bind him challenge from why didn't you and agents who come in their house without ringing the doorbell without removing their hat. And calling them by their first names Suzy. My how much you're going to pay that day and her new clothes are keeping them in business. Few weeks ago I was in San Francisco and I walked the picket line

in front of the Woolworths store my shot was made to believe as I saw the New Grove. Crossing the line. Going into Woolworths only the bar popcorn. And ice cream and I said no for those in the wood that can free up people like this unless they are that good to wind down. And this mess of negroes separated them sails from well the Negroes now wave across the railroad track and feeling that they have been locked out of a negro and practice and segregation and discrimination in our own ranks is a sin and the poem of an eternal God. You're going to wake up one day and discover that you are no free not as

long as your skin is black and your brothers and sisters who are down in the madness of Nashville Tennessee. We're going to tell you this. I wanted. I. Pointed out that our unit attached that rear Strand says the sign. We can all be the leaders in this movement. We never would have gotten off the base and come away if we had not gotten back on a Martin Luther King and built. The greatest religious leader out. You know what I have today. And concept. Than I. Respect him all over the world and that is what we must do. There is too much jealousy and all right here but it will not be deleted and unless he can be the leader he is going to rock the

boat and from the movement and the organization the next sign on this road said leadership leadership for God's sake don't sail a race down the river for a pat on the back and for a mess of pottage far too often I wonder leaders have sold the people who shot only for their own advantage in order that they might get it. In order that their picture might get in the papers somewhere in order that they might be praised a man in order that they might. Get some money. They have sold the reefs down the river. There is nothing for us to do but to get on this road to freedom and observe the sun the third sign on the road to freedom saying that if you will reach your destination then you must be willing to suffer.

You must be willing to suffer. I wish that I could assure you this this evening that you won't lose your job but you may lose it. I have no guarantee to offer. They lost their jobs in Montgomery Alabama during the bus protests. These were made Cookson but those who lost their jobs the they lost their jobs when they closed the pots in Montgomery. But now we're talking about here the greed in the schools and the students sit ins have scared the life. Out of the teachers in Montgomery Alabama and now they come to us over and over again. After enough to please distill down the movement to you don't want to lose that teaching jobs. Let me tell you that it's no no not for skilled teacher the use of $500 a month job that it is thought but to Lucy is $15 only. Cutler.

Nah you. Had something. To say. He had to live out the kiddies and you have to leave him out of your holes. You must be willing to suffer on the wayside. Thomas Hayden field secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee describing his group's activities. They established. A pilot project. In. Mississippi. This summer on the basis of reports starting last summer by Robert Moses who was a. 26 year old negro from Harlem was down there. In the Delta region which is north central. North. North of Jackson but in the north central part of the state. Somewhat to say. To the west. Well Moses who was in

that area last year. Came to conclude along with local leaders there that not by truck direction was. Not the kind of thing that. Was a genuine possibility yet in a rural. Area. Where there are not only no running water no serious electricity. Like trickle system operating but there's just no communication at all. No Verman ization no education none of the kind nothing no contact with the world beyond the kind of things that. Give rise in heart. To. Correct action. Most of these people are world powers. Reverend Clarence Jordan one of the founders of cornea an interracial rural cooperative in Georgia and we agreed that the way of

Christ was not the way you know. But the way of active goodwill I might digress a little bit to say that I don't believe in nonviolence. Things White Citizens Council applying a tremendous amount of nonviolence against colony right now. There's a little bit of violence going along with it. But on the whole they are depending upon the boycott which is nonviolent. Jesus taught more than that it was not just but it was active goodwill and agreed to commit to actively trying to to love even those who are opposed to it and to overcome the evil by doing good and I could cite you a lot of opportunities that we have along that line. We also had along that time we were having our difficulties particularly because of the right situation.

One reform from an earlier post said the way to go. Breakthrough black cattle like something that killed very quickly and the only cure for an occupation agent was a way to vet in there and couldn't get anybody to do it and somebody told me that they're very apologetically. If we could do that when it was over he said well how much. He said it's a privilege to do so from there. Well it seemed to touch it couldn't understand how somebody opposed would be responded

closest friend. I don't believe in nonviolence nonviolent. All right old boy let you die. You been me. We'll be nonviolent you know. Well I know I know what I'm saying. I'm just trying to push this very strong Christian approach to that extra push of goodwill and Dr. Charles McCoy a professor of religion at the Pacific School of Religion who visited with other religious leaders the attorney general of the United States in connection with the freedom writers and as you know Attorney General Kennedy believes that one thing's very important is voter

registration only pression After this things out I think that the Freedom Writers can only spotlight the problem. But what is going to be done toward solutions is going to be as citizens in the South and elsewhere take up the burden of putting pressure on the government to carry out the laws that are already on the books. And this is reason I think voter registration Negros is one of the most important long range things that can be accomplished. And the attorney general's office is carrying out investigations of instances where this is. This is not being done I think this is very commendable. It's a problem. Part of it. His Attorney General Kennedy suggested of applying pressure on the churches to get more action out of them both in North and South and the problem racial justice as well as applying pressure on our political leaders to enforce the laws and the court decisions that already have been made. There was a reporter in Jackson that summed up the matter for me in one way. He was apologizing for some of our treatment that we had been

recorded there. And he said I hope you folks realize that we in the south are in large measure the victims of our public officials. Well I think this is one of the things we need to do is help the chains of public officials and find public officials who will enforce the jail and the laws of racial justice that we already have in this country. James Walker a negro attorney practicing in the south. It happened at the climax of this particular time was a college student. Had just come back from the Air Force where he held the rank of sergeant he'd been in for four years had been off to school and had come back to try to get ready. I thought that would do the city. To get rid of him. It happened that. He came in late. It was an afternoon the readiest Cross had been instructed not to let any more Negro registered. So only you the famous literacy test to disqualify.

Someone this college person came to me. Then the registrar said he was unable to read and write. I said maybe she does not understand your background. So it was for that purpose only that I I said went with the Klein. To the registrar's office but it just happened as I got there there were about two dozen persons that had been denied in the last hour or so all complaining about the same thing. Now they heard that a lawyer was out there and they all came around wanting somebody to bring them some type of relief. I'm qualified and I want to register it anything and we can do about that time to cleave only to the reason of the registrar. But that was a mistake. Because the registrar first refused because it was a Negro involved. The registrar refused to even talk about the person that had been denied

and the second place certain violations of the unwritten law took place. Number one was that. I was told to to. Get out of the registration place and my placard had here. So I thought at least I should be able to present the matter placard in time to a hearing before the person as an administrative. OFFICER And the second place that in the Southern Custom were to decide what disobedience of a white woman command that's a serious Valley. That's a serious violation and the second one was I differ with her judgment on a matter that she had already said that was another serious violation IMO nothing took place. She finally said Well I'm not going to register them and there's nothing you can do about it. I depart.

I hadn't gone about three or four miles before a Sirene from a police car troll car. Found me. And I stopped and I said are you James M. Walker I said I'm not. My name is James R. Walker. Where you want. To be wanted for. I don't know I don't have a war. But you won't. I said what I asked beedi said no and I run through a stop sign no that I'm not going with you anyway. I haven't violated the law in your presence. And I don't see you know what you do around here he said I don't know I've gone to the next county. Or in the next county. I'm not new around here as if they were waiting I'll get the warrant so he used a two way system and called somebody and the man comes out

like a house on fire flour non-road stopped up behind the car jumps out ran ran up and grab your nasty old gold bricks me grab me go pull me in his car to bite him and off I said what you reckon before we have to answer that later. I said no no you know take me away I have to be by and large as he was asked to phone them back. So he said you were resisting arrest. I said I'm going to continue to resist and fact I'm going travelling into well where I was going but the UN office said well you can arrest him until you serve a warrant and he said no no he's a lawyer he knows it. They had to read the rest of it without any cites you know you never saw me. Also one in his pocket and because he got up to go in his pocket came out with the walk and said here do want now come on go back with me to see Bill.

Oh no I'm not going to see people because I found out you know what she told me and I'm not going and you will do because you know I won't protect. So he insisted. But however are they off seemed to be quite in like he said you know you can arrest him out here because you're with us. You can stop three miles back. Said you you can arrest the money I'll have to read what he said were you arrested. So he said I can do it you have to give me the thought. OK. So he said Well how do I give you two started. He said you. Know what to do. We had the sun some place on it then and then asked me Was it all right I didn't look at I guess oh. Man. Because I knew if he arrested me I'd have to go to Jackson is going to see Brooks Jackson with the county seat. What do you know what I didn't want to go to see people get the city so what to Jackson and when I got to Jackson they said are you are hereby charged with assault on a registrar.

Trust pay or interfere with the registrar and just on the condom. How do you plead. Before the magistrate and I plead not guilty. When I buy new Over trial. Put put on a certain day and if you can get get by to go to bail I'm such a bail of $300 only charge so the jailor opened the door and said go on in. I said I'm not going in there. He said you know what happens when you don't do what we tell you I said I don't know what happened I will find out I'm not going in there. So what I tell you what he called me called me a smart nigger aspect of what he called so I said I might not be so I might be smart. Because you just found probable cold with no evidence. The registrar was still in a polling place then they are all

a person who could have testified I plead accept you can't I don't see how you can find. Probable called on a not guilty plea and no evidence. I said now nice for him that's an epic that bet or you got and I want to begin with No. I said I'm a lot of it going on by the bar. But meanwhile I had arranged a bonfire I went over there with outside waiting. So I told him that I could waive my right to live here so you can set bombs but I would not let you wait far so that is an instance where they were applying the assault on law and other laws but I'm not trying to discuss the case but only from the assault standpoint assault charge there. The overt act with the shaking of a thing they said not at my core. My client is qualified to read that I stick my finger pointed to the floor and that with the soft left over back. Now. That makes it hard to know how to defend against a case that is part of the day. The point I'm trying

to read that you have constitutional infringement because the song is faced with its constitution. But when you look at overt act and so forth that they find to make up the element you go find certain basic constitutional infrared mist which you cannot detect until after the evidence is in the car in the first place you don't know what they go on sale and the evidence and very seldom will the public officials tell the thing get that hat. But in this case the registrar did tell most of that as it actually happened. And of course I was convicted on all the charges I will get into that Ronnie Mordor of the Congress of Racial Equality. No longer will we except this thing of the Democratic Party are adopting this historical platform. And they put all of these things on paper and do nothing about it. You see no longer will we accept the national politicians telling the negroes we going to implement the platform at the same

time telling Governor Davis and and the other southerners govern southern governors that don't worry about it we do it in time. We cannot accept this any longer and therefore we must protest and the whole freedom struggle have been political football. Other national politicians we we talk about are liberals in the north. We talk about our beloved President Kennedy. We talk about the good brother Teni General John and Robert Kennedy but yet we find that these good liberals are complacent right now. They're not doing what they should about the problem. I think that quite a few Caucasian in the south. I deeply concerned about the injustice. Many of them believe that save a Geisha must be maintained in the south. However they believe in maintain it by legal beings. But there are some races like the district attorney in other parish officials who don't believe in

fairness. They don't believe in justice they believe in maintaining segregation by any means. One gentleman from the district attorney said he says you can't talk about fairness because you're winning he says but in my book there is no fairness when I'm losing the struggle. And are we going to preserve segregation in the south. Legal or illegal. Howard Zinn writing in Nation magazine for March the 17th one thousand sixty two the Freedom Writers behave nonviolently but their action did bring violence against themselves and against others. Nonviolence theorists will insist that the responsibility for the violence rests with those who committed it. But this dodges the question. The fact is that there was more violence in the world after the Freedom Writers began their rides than before. And for this there is only one justification

that the amount of violence was insignificant compared to the amount of justice one. Ronnie Moore responding to the question are the negroes in the south tending more to meet violence with violence as the opposition of the authorities gets more intense. Quite to the contrary. We have a few radical groups like the Muslims I think. However most students in song here to the philosophy of Gandhi and even Jesus Christ and even the philosophy which is advocated by the Congress of Racial Equality and this is the philosophy of nonviolence. We believe that if we're going to expose the injustice we submit ourselves to it. We don't believe that by striking back. We'll answer the problem. It will only add turmoil to the situation. Are we firmly believe this that.

None violence is not a technique. With us is not a method with us but nonviolence is a principle which we exercise in life daily. For instance when I was coming up and I like to put this on a personal basis are are avoided fights period because I don't believe that a man could sell an argument by rolling up his fears and fighting back. He only. Causes strife from the other party. But if they can they could talk together. For this reason we didn't go downtown and boycott the stores automatically. We attempted to negotiate to see if we were to become violent then negotiation would go out the window. You see because no one talks in a war and so therefore we desire not to fight and we will never fight back.

Tom gave her another corps representative answering the same question about the tendency of negroes toward the use of violence. I think I think that is a marked minority of you view especially when it involves students on demonstrations because I recall very recently being on picket lines in the south and seeing large numbers of white hoodlums gathering. And of course we knew that the situation would possibly become very explosive and very violent. But because most of us were dedicated to nonviolence we felt that if violence came from the other side of the fence and here are making reference to the white hoodlums that our accepting the situation or accepting the inflicting of violence upon us by them would make us stronger in our conviction to be nonviolent because we feel that nonviolence is really the only possible way of solving our problems in the south. Now of course there are minority opinions that we should be fighting back but I think that this is strictly being circulated among some of the adults and namely some

specific individuals in the south. And I think it certainly represents a very small faction of the southern community. Now it might be applicable to adult groups. Persons who are not at all involved in the demonstrations should they be attacked in this not an organized demonstration. You might find that violence would be resorted to but if it's a student group and it's a specific demonstration that it organizes a protest against segregation you're going to find that the students are going to maintain the attitude of being nonviolent. John Lowery a freedom writer giving his view Birmingham Alabama is now on I don't know how long it's been on. I know now that it is. I also know that the people in McComb Mississippi are on. I have driven off the Klan. I know that tent city in Fayette Tennessee is on and has driven off the Klan. I don't know whether this is spread or whether it is just now becoming known and whether it is this has been so all the time I suspect that this is been the

condition all the time and it is just now becoming known. LOWERY describing his experiences in Monroe North Carolina. Thirteen of us went from Jackson to Monroe. We join with the local people there and we formed an organization called the Monroe Nonviolent Action Committee. And we set up our picket line. It lasted for a week. Began on Monday the 20th of August. It ended on Sunday the Twenty seventh of August in a race riot. The riot was condoned and I feel instigated by the police I say this because it was started by a man with a shotgun. The man got the shotgun from the police. I knew right after the riot the Negro community armed itself in preparation for a Klan attack the Ku Klux Klan. Had had many attacks. I had performed many attacks on the Negro community in the past in fact there was one one the previous day Saturday the twenty sixth. So the community expected an attack had reason to expect

such an attack in on itself in preparation. No word of this race riot that was going on in downtown Monroe spread throughout the whole county very fast and people sharecroppers and tenant farmers day laborers and you know rural Negro people began to come into Newtown which is the negro district of Monroe of the city itself for protection. Clowne know that they were familiar with a Klan rising with their tactics and they were also familiar with the defense guard that had been set up in Monroe. They came for protection. Many of them had their own guns with them. And the feeling in Newtown was very tense. It was almost a. Feeling of rebellion there was a feeling of rebellion was almost a situation where and insurrection might take place the feeling was that of resentment was so strong and the confusion intenseness was it was so strong. And just before dusk.

A car drove into the middle of this neighborhood district. The car was immediately recognized by the people there as one that had been active in Klan activities a couple of days previous to this. It participated in a counter pick up line. I thought time it had a sign pasted on its door. It's open season on Coons. Many of the people yelled as soon as the car appeared in the neighborhood. Their clansmen got them. About 20 people they group people rushed into the middle of the street and a car stopped. All these people were not citizens of Monroe. They were these rural people people who had come in to Newtown for protection. As I said many of them had their own guns with them. The car was stopped and the two white people in the car were taken out of it forcibly. And the Negro people there who had by this time become a mob without rule without order prepared to

assassinate them. I think the point that everything happened very quickly and describing sections of it but it was it all happened within a minute everything. At this point the defense guard moved through the crowd and rescued the two white people whose name is Steagall. Mr. and Mrs. Gee Bruce legal. They rescued them from the mob and brought them to rot Robert Williams house. This was a group of young men from one row of Negro men from Monroe who had been formed into a citizen's militia known by Robert F. Williams for the defense of the community. They were armed they were trained in the use of small arms and they had standing orders that when the clan attacked to fire over the heads of the attackers they never shot at anyone they just scared the attackers off. LOWERY answering the questions of Elsa Knight Thompson and Mike Tigar how you boast sending yourself is this other committee or are any of the traditional committees that are associated with

these Southern protests having anything to do with your case. Yes all of them are. But because now let's name them because the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People the Congress of Racial Equality the Southern Christian Leadership Conference the American Civil Liberties Union the Emergency Civil Liberties Union various labor unions including local 600 Detroit Cory's did that that's commerce racial Congress of Racial Equality. In other words simply because there were the negroes were armed and so on has not precluded. Non-violent organizations from trying to help people on their own. In fact the end of a place he passed a resolution in 1959 stating that in rejecting violence we do not deny it but reaffirm the right of individual and collective self-defense against unlawful assaults lessons. The NAACP was at the same resolution in which they suspended Williams Yes it was.

They suspended him for saying that violence of violence which is a little ironic when you hear the whole thing. The Congress of Racial Equality is one of the the biggest supporters of tent city officially known as Freedom Village in fact I said. And they haven't guards that intensity. So this is this is not the question involved in self-defense. The statement of Robert Williams which resulted in his suspension by the end WCP we cannot take these people who do us injustice to the court and it becomes necessary to punish them ourselves in the future we are going to have to try and convict them on the spot. We cannot rely on the law. We can get no justice under the present system. If we feel that injustice is done we must right then and there on the spot prepared to inflict punishment on the people. Since the federal government will not bring a halt to lynching in the south and since the so-called

courts Lynch our people legally if it's necessary to stop lynching with lynching then we must be willing to resort to that method as a result of his experiences with Robert Williams. John Lowery gives his conclusion about the use of violence and nonviolence. I approve of nonviolence as a tactic. I approve of passive resistance when you're on a picket line and when you are demonstrating. However I do approve of self-defense for the community. I do not approve of self-defense on a picnic not for the reason of publicity because when you're out on a picket line people are going to know about it and the public pressure can and should and will very often force the police to give you protection and this is who should protect you when you're out there on a picket line the police. And after. Well now they will. They usually will. Howard Zinn a Nation magazine again yet I must admit that there is a powerful and humane motive impelling the absolutist position.

That once you give the nervous hostile and ill informed people a theoretical justification for using violence in certain cases it is like a tiny hole in the dike. The rationales rushed through in a torrent and violence becomes the normal acceptable solution for a problem. In the tactics of social change however there are countless intermediate positions between total passive A-T and total violence. Still it is terribly important to understand that our starting point should be pacifism that the burden of proof should be placed on the arguers for violence just as a man should be considered innocent until proved guilty. A policy should be automatically nonviolent until the weight of reason undistorted by symbolism argues otherwise. And even here we need a court of appeals because a cardinal fact about violence is that once initiated it tends to get out of hand. Its limits are not predictable.

Julian Mayfield writing in Commentary magazine in 1961 as the real issue becomes more apparent to develop and seem certain First those who now yield power will refuse to yield beyond the minimal of token desegregation and will retaliate often violently and in defiance of federal law. And second the students will abandon the technique of passive resistance as it proves anything actual and seriously disturbing the power structure of Southern society. The challenge to middle class Negro leaders including the newer type like Martin Luther King remains. It is inherent in the rapid growth of the militant white hating Muslim movement among the working class negroes. The only time there is ever any violence involving Muslims with these women is when that policeman attacks the Muslim and in the only two brothers that night who resisted the police were the initial two and they resisted. Only to the degree that they could go they had to defend themselves against the violence

that the police was executing against them. But the other men who were sat down in front of the mosque in front of the temple in front of a house of worship. They were shot down in cold blood not because they were resisting but they shot down while they weren't resisting. That was Malcolm X a black Muslim spokesman giving his view of recent events in Los Angeles. Here are excerpts from a debate between Malcolm X and Ed Warren president of the Los Angeles chapter of the ACP on the question integration versus separation. Dr. James the former president of Harvard University in his recent book slums in suburbs pointed out that instead of taking a handful of Negroes out of the Negro community and forcing them upon the white people while the negro slums remained standing and the masses of negroes remain poverty stricken and on and on and on and on educated in the slums. Will never solve the problem for either the white man or the black man. Dr Conant recommended that the federal government

step in with sufficient funds to bring the Negro community in its present separate form up to standard. This is what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has been teaching us for 31 years that we will never solve our problems by forcing ourselves upon the white man that we should bring what we already have up to a standard that we should get maximum results for the benefit of our people out of what we already have before we beg others to let us be integrated into what they have and we who follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad believe firmly that complete separation. Is the only solution to the problem. But many of you misunderstand us and think we're advocating continued segregation. We're as much against segregation as you are. We reject segregation even more militantly then you do. We want separation but not segregation. What is the difference between separation and segregation. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches

us that segregation is when your life and liberty is controlled regulated by someone else to segregate means to control. To be segregated means to be controlled by others. Segregation is that which is forced upon inferiors by Sapir of yours. But separation is that which is done voluntarily by two equals as long as our people here in America are dependent upon the white man. We must beg him for jobs. We must beg him for food clothing and shelter and he will always control our lives regulate our lives and have power to segregate us. We go and to our total economic structure and you'll find if there is a call that must be some effect. And the cause is the white man himself believes in separation. If he did not believe in it we wouldn't have no need for an organization like the NAACP talking about

and the Gration. Somebody believe in separation or why do you have white communities white schools white job white counties. Somebody set it up like that. We say that to the separation is of the white and the separation is on the colored that if we would remove all of the causes clear out there Robin the facts of segregation you would then have no need to talk about whether we should withdraw in order to live. This is a struggle for survival and NAACP and the whole Muslim movement. We are in the same boat because we are dealing with the sleighing people. And there is a point.

When you are in a ship together and that ship is drugs a leak the fate of all of all you are there. The moves along and they see peers and everybody else that blood is fragmenting in the darkness and we are looking for the light the light of economic security that light a better education and light a better job. But our homes and to tell you the truth Asked Me Go is said nonappearance watching all of us to see which one is going to show me the light first. And that's the one he's going to follow. And I say that if we go to the extreme I blame the system. I do not blame NAACP and I do not blame the Muslims. I blame the system. Why should a group of citizens who were promised all of the qualities

in justice to all we say under God. Remember this. I pledge allegiance to our flag to the United States of America and to the republic where we could stand one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. We have never had to put God in it. We should have never thought about justice. As a Muslim we feel that black people should make their own job opportunities. If the white man came here as an immigrant poverty stricken and educated just 20 or 30 years ago and saved his nickels and dimes and set up stores and developed them into big businesses and industry and set up factories that today provide job opportunities for his own. And you and I call ourselves having been free 100 years ago and we control our market today. Twenty billion dollars per year. And yet you can't go into the negro neighborhood and find Negro business and Negro factories you should be ashame of yourself.

They can somebody for a job. This could go around in circles but they all the trouble is you have to face it realistic. You cannot sit beside a Rockefeller who has had generations of righteousness and do the same that he is doing. He controls economic social order controls also the ability of people to go in big business. If your banks would break down discrimination it would be easy for a group of negroes are going aborad a million dollars to establish a business. But as long as they will man you are nothing but automobiles and home. You will never be all right for nobody. When my friend my brother here mentions that.

Because we're all brothers that the bank will lend you a million dollars on con notes and things of that sort. If Negroes can raise enough money to build million dollar churches they can build a million dollar factories. The separate state is easy to maintain for 400 years 300 in 10 years we work for the white man. It wasn't free labor that put him in a strong economic position that he is then he's in today. We have never been paid a dime for the centuries of free labor slave labor that that white man 100 200 300 years ago robbed from the backs of our mothers and fathers. Now today we're all we're asking for is justice. We're not asking the white man for his house. He has proven that he can't integrate. If just if the supreme court can issue a desegregation decision seven years ago and up to right this moment you only have 7 percent

compliance with that top law making body in the land then I am inclined to believe that is not a dream sorry it's a nightmare already. The white man by his own action has proven that he cannot bring about integration. The SOME the problem remains. How will we solve it. If integration can not be brought into a reality then that doesn't mean that as black people in at this late date we should sit and wait for the white man to make up his mind that we're human beings the same as we are the same as he is. We should stand up on our feet. We should stand up on our feet and make ourselves his equal. Long as we wait on Him we will never be equal. But if we stand on our own two feet and do what we're supposed to do as a man like he has done as a man then we will our problem will be solved.

So we want separation some states right here some part of this territory. Part of this country the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says he should let us go back home. But since he doesn't want us to go back home and he can't treat us right mixed up with him then separate part of the house and give us some rooms that we can live in but not empty rooms or rooms with furniture in it. He says that we should have. We should have some separate territory. He should furnish us with whatever we need to start our own civilization and this is not asking too much because he's sending twenty billion dollars to Latin America to peasants who have never worked for America or sacrifice their life for America. He's sending hundreds of millions of dollars to Asia in Africa to try and buy their friendship. He's sending billions of dollars abroad to try and buy the friendship of people on the outside of his house who are his enemies already. He should spend some of that money trying to develop true friendship from you and me who have been his most most

faithful servants during peace time and his bravest and dumbest soldiers doing hard time. The old. And finally a different point of view from AM Brayton my husband and I work for an organization which I'm sure some of you are familiar with but which some of you may not be. Call the Southern Conference Educational Fund. This is the South wadded interracial organization operating in the 17 Southern and border states and the District of Columbia run by a board of 70 to 80 people from these states about equally divided white and Negro. And it has only one purpose really. And that's to work for integration in the south. Not that we don't think other issues are important but this is our job. Our main emphasis and really our reason for being.

In relationship to other organizations which are also working for this goal and all of which we work with but our particular emphasis is to try to stimulate white southerners into action for integration. This is our reason for being. We know that in the organization I work or that we're dealing with a minority of the whites. But we think it's a significant minority and we think it changes the whole nature of the struggle if there are at least some white people not just not opposing what the negroes are doing but actually working with them. The most important thing in a way about the movement among the Negroes in the south is not just the courage not just the determination these things you would expect but there's a tremendous quality of this movement that barque transcends and that's what I want to get to next the segregation nation. I often say that the most amazing thing about the integration movement so far as the Negro is concerned is that it is an integration movement if you'll stop to think about it. We get used to that word you take it for granted but why should it be really and in all. All of history shows that when people are pushed down when they are oppressed

when the that eventually they rebel that these things happen that's not surprising. But if you look at it logically why in the world aren't the negroes in Mississippi organizing to run the white people out of Mississippi. Why do they want to sit down at the lunch counters with white people really after the whole background of what's gone on in the south and yet they're not organized around the white people out of Mississippi. There's a quality among the active of the militant negroes in the south which involves far more than Negro rights and they have to do this. This is the thing you hear the students saying over and over. Not just the students some of the adults too but the this is not just a movement the negro rights is a movement for the revitalization of democracy that this and I'm quoting from lamb and what I've heard many of them say this is not a movement of negroes against white people. It's a movement of people against injustice. This is a spirit that pervades this movement it's been articulated of course the most.

Dramatically and beautifully by Martin Luther King. But I think Martin King's genius is the fact that he's been able to express and articulate the thing that is there in the thinking of many people. And I'm not saying that there aren't many negroes in Mississippi who would like to run the white people out who don't hate all white people with good reason. But these are not the ones who are active in the civil rights movement and the ones who are militant the ones who are active at this point. The movement in the south among the Negroes is an outstretched Trying to the white world saying let's join hands together and make a new kind of society. Exactly what this society is going to be is sometimes in everybody's mind but it's a great vision of something new. I'm not sure how long this is going to be the situation. I don't know whether we have one year or two years or five years. I think that a hand doesn't stay outstretched if the response from the other side isn't great enough. I think we as I've tried to say we have the potential we

have a response from the White South but not enough yet. If it's not enough the whole nature of the thing may change but at this point we may be one of the few spots in the world where there is at this point the door is still open the lines are pretty sharply drawn and a lot of them most of the world they have the tween the light skinned people in the dark skinned people. And you know what has all of this. But in our part of the United States at this point in history there is still the possibility of proving that. That people of all colors can live on this planet together and work together for a better life for everybody. And that's the great challenge that's the great opportunity that we face. It's something that some of us feel very deeply. That we simply can't know. This has been the continuing concern. One of a series presenting material from the Pacific archives of past programs exploring important areas of continuing concern. Our concern for this program

negro white relations in the United States this recorded program was produced from KPFA public affairs department material by Ernest Lowe and John older.