Dynamics of Desegregation; 9; Resistance and Reaction

That's right. Epitaph for Jim Crow are in our Series 9 Take 1. The dynamics of desegregation. The banner headlines of our newspapers have chronicled the shocking story of the racist opposition

to desegregation of public facilities in the South. Angry mobs protesting school desegregation, and Clinton Tennessee, Little Rock, and in New Orleans. The beatings and arrests of passive city and demonstrators and freedom writers. The bombing of public schools in Clinton, Jacksonville, Nashville, and Chattanooga. In the tragic four-year period from 1955 to 1959 alone, well before the city and demonstrations of Negroes, racial violence over desegregation witnessed at least six Negroes killed, 29 persons shot and wounded, 18 of whom were Negro, 49 individuals beaten or stabbed, 12 churches

and temples bombed or burned, and 90 private homes bombed, burned, stoned, or fired upon. Newspapers and other mass media play up these more sensational events. For these events are news and gain the attention of a usually apathetic public. But the depth of the resistance and reaction to desegregation is barely hinted at its in such conspicuous episodes for it is the less publicized, less direct, day by day actions of intimidation and reprisal that comprise the real pressures against racial change. The hundreds of Ku Klang Kross's burning ominously before the homes and churches of integrationist leaders, both black and white, the tens of thousands of threatening letters and phone calls that have been directed at those who even suggest by word or deed that

they wish to cooperate with the Supreme Court desegregation ruling. The hundreds of personal slights and economic reprisals aimed against anyone who does not believe in white supremacy. These have made up the daily situation in many parts of the South, out of which have burst the publicized acts of open violence. Each of this intimidation is exerted against Negroes, who bravely seek first class citizenship by requesting their child be transferred to an all-white school or by trying to vote or by moving into a previously all-white neighborhood or by just expressing their per-integration attitudes publicly. Such a man was Clarence Braxton, a Negro of Huxie, Arkansas. After he had enrolled his son in a newly desegregated school, he received a letter with a clipping about Emmett Till, the young Negro who was lynched in Mississippi. And a note which read, your boy can get the same thing.

Mr. Braxton immediately sent his son to Washington State. Or consider what happened in 1956 to a Negro couple in Choktor County, Alabama. Mrs. Causing had told a national magazine that integration is the only way through which Negroes will receive justice. After the magazine printed her statement, Mrs. Causing lost her teaching job. Our husband's truck was confiscated and merchants even refused to sell them anything. The Causes had to resettle in another part of the South. White liberals in the South, and by the way they're considerably more of them than most Americans realize, have often suffered a fate indistinguishable from Negro victims. Newspaper man like Ralph McGill of the Atlanta Constitution, who insist on expressing their deviant opinions in print, have learned to face death threats, even some directed at their families. Perhaps the most courageous and hence most abused, white professional group in the South

is the ministry. The only a minority of even these men publicly defend racial desegregation, the ministers, Christ and rabbis who have spoken out attract special attention for the South is a devout region, which still grants considerable influence to its clergy. Consequently, the response to these outspoken men of God is often particularly vigorous. Summary dismissals of these men from their post is a common story, offering encouraging evidence that there still exists within the clergy Christians who are ready to face lions for their beliefs. But instead of my describing this phenomenon, let's bring the problem down to concrete human terms and hear firsthand the personal experiences of a native southerner, the Reverend Dan Whitsett, former minister of a Methodist Church in Silicaga, Alabama. The Ku Klux Klan was revived after the Supreme Court decision in 54.

It became very active in Alabama and many of the southern states in 1955 and 1956. Several bombings took place. The Montgomery Bus Boycott is a familiar story, but at the same time I felt the first effects of the Ku Klux Klan in my home community in Alabama, with the burning of a cross in February 1956. After the Supreme Court decision, there had been no legislation or action. So there was a vacuum which allowed them to reorganize and they became a very threatening and intimidating force throughout the state. So it happened that at that time I was acting as president of the Alabama Council on Human Relations, a state interracial organization and for many years had had interracial services in my church.

With some criticism, but after 54 it became quite difficult and after the cross burning in 56 it became almost impossible. Or they used every type of intimidation, for instance taking a very innocent statement which was made in one of our state meetings where I simply said we could have better race relations and solve our problems by patients and by discipline. They took that one statement except from the paper and on the opposite column produced their own leaflet implying that this was the propaganda of communists, of those who believe in mongrelization of the races. So that it appeared that even to work for better race relations meant that you were subversive. This was put out by tens of thousands across the state and in my own community placed on telephone poles and in automobiles subjecting of my church to much criticism as though their minister was very radical when I considered myself a moderate, but any action was dangerous

supposedly. They likewise organized the telephone committees and having people around the clock to call your home, disturbing all hours of the day and night. Having a 17-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son, they were subjected to much vulgarity, profanity. It should be remembered that much of this happened by from people on the periphery of the city. People are very low social and economic and intellectual levels, but some of them religious fanatics and some of them criminals forming the Ku Klux Klan. But it thrived over the state, one thing which was very difficult to face on my absence from the city on one occasion. They called my wife to tell her that my son, who incidentally was out double dating that evening, would be taken by the Ku Klux that night and they were going to tear him

limb from limb. In about 15 minutes, a friend, so called, called back to say, I saw them take your boy, the Ku Klux put him in the car, you will never see him again. She was at home with a little three-year-old baby boy and thus did not know whether she would see him again or not. The police was called, but he was incapacitated and said he would be there the first thing the next morning. Fortunately, however, the young minister, as who assisted in our church, found my son an hour later, not molested at all, out enjoying the evening, but it simply meant for an hour. My wife did not know whether the son was dead or not. That continued for over a year and a half until burning another cross. My assistant minister kicked it over, kicked the cross over and they threatened to kill him

and my family, too, unless we left within ten days. However we waited that time out and they did not do anything, therefore they somewhat lost faith. Our church and community stood behind us, reprimanded the Ku Klux and thus we were able to live out the rest of the year without their intimidation. And it was only six months later at our regular annual conference that I accepted the other appointment. Let's look at the organizations that lie behind since intimidations as Mr. Whitsitt has vividly described. Actually, there have been a great variety of these groups stretching on a continuum from a statistically violent to the pseudo-respectable. But the violent extreme, of course, by the many Ku Klux Klanes was a combined membership estimated in 1960 to have been between 35 and 50,000, though they have steadily declined

in strength since that date. The many separate clan groups, some who set picturesque names as the knights of the white chameleon, are concentrated in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee. In these five states, they fight viciously among themselves for members and incidentally for membership news. Particularly vigorous is the competition between the two largest groups, the Georgia-based U.S. Klanes, knights of the KKK and the loose confederation of local clavurns known as the national knights of the KKK. Who would belong to such groups? That kind of people would dress in such an outfit, the mysterious sheet and the burning cross are mystic symbols of the one thing Klanesman have in common, the readiness to bomb, burn and batter their native region in the name of white Protestant supremacy.

In 1960, clan leaders put it this way. If it takes bookshot to keep the black race down, Klanesman will use it. If it means burning schools to save them from integration, then Klanesman will burn them. If it takes saving the American way at the cost of our lives, then let's make that sacrifice. These wild words were not empty threats. On one March Saturday in 1960, the national knights celebrated their newly formed confederation by simultaneously burning over 1,000 crosses across seven southern states. And in the Jacksonville, Florida, race riot of August 1960, Klanesman armed with ax handles figured prominently. While in the January 1961 demonstrations, protesting the desegregation of the University of Georgia, Klanesman were arrested with loaded guns.

Moreover, it seems likely, in view of their leader's public statements, that much of the bombing of southern homes, schools, and churches is Klan inspired. Dangerous as these modern Klanes are, however, we should not make the mistake of thinking they will ever again achieve the mass following their predecessors boasted in the 1920s and 30s. Nor should we confuse the present Klanes with the original Ku Klux Klan, organized in 1867 by Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forest. It started with a glowing preamble, concerning chivalry, humanity, mercy, and patriotism, and a willingness to suck at the suffering widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers. But just a few years later, it had become racist and general forest attempted to dissolve it. And ever since, each rebirth of the Klan has held less meaning for the south than its predecessors, sharing with the earlier ones only the name.

Look at what it had become by the late 1950s. You know, Eisenhower, in my opinion, he's supposed to be a Christian man. A Christian man ain't going to do what he's doing all next to neither, all the Supreme Court judges. Why he's going to love what God has created and not try to mix it up and mangle it up. These are old trees, after the words of my friends, just as much old trees they always have been. They always will be old trees. They don't integrate with one another. Out in the wild woods of beasts don't integrate. My friends are fishing in the river, and the fishes in the river don't integrate. The files there, they still say segregated. They got more sense, no Supreme Court judges up there, and I'll lead it down here. Why we got something down here. The Klan's are now the constant targets of public denunciation from all responsible southern quarters, indeed the present Klan's frequently get themselves into some ridiculous situations.

For example, a southern liberal friend of mine received a few years ago a call from a Klan'sman, warning him that a cross was going to be burned on the lawn of his home within the hour. My friends suggested it would be less strained on both of them, if they could bring one of their new, their newfangled neon crosses, and he even offered them the use of his outside electric connection. And perturbed, the Klan'sman agreed on the condition that my friend returned their expensive neon cross to them in good condition. But if the present-day Klan's are pallid ghosts of their ancestors, other resistance groups, more pretentiously respectable and less openly violent, have flourished throughout the South, though again there are a variety of such organizations, the defenders of state sovereignty in my native state of Virginia, or the Patriots in North Carolina, by far the most important are the White Citizens' Councils, organized by a young Mississippi planner named Robert Patterson in 1954, just after the Supreme Court school desegregation ruling.

The Citizens' Council spread at one time throughout much of the South, but their strength has receded in recent years, and today they are strongest in Louisiana and Mississippi. Three characteristics of these councils are of special significance. First, the central organization in Mississippi divest itself of all responsibility for the actions of local groups. And I'm an illegal tactic that suggests the top leadership would not be too surprised if some of their local units occasionally broke the law. The second feature, the councils is their desperate striving for an error of respectability. Not wanting to be confused with the discredited clients, the organization claims that its leaders are drawn from the best people, and that its program is necessary to prevent violence and racial hatred. Finally, their alternative to violence is charmingly simple. In addition to publicizing their racist views, the White Citizens' Council simply used

naked economic reprisals to enforce compliance and to suppress any expression of thought different from their own. Yet some members have resorted to clan-like actions when these economic pressures proved insufficient, as in the late 1950s and Little Rock, where a number of White Citizens' Council members were convicted of bomb throwing. Since the councils generally consist of a somewhat better educated and more influential membership than the clients, they are in a position to attempt economic boycotts of national goods in some areas. They have boycotted national brands of cars, cheese, cigarettes, and beer. Because these firm sponsored television shows with numerous Negro performers, or because they gave money to national Negro organizations. And in local situations, their reprisals have led to scores of Negro teachers losing their jobs, Negro farmers losing their credit, and Negro merchants being boycotted by distributors. Sometimes secondary boycotts are employed by the councils.

That is, say, a milk company may stop selling milk to Negro customers who would sign a desegregation petition. Because if it doesn't stop, it in turn would be boycotted by the citizens' councils. No form of opposition is tolerated. Newspapers have been boycotted if they did not editorialy support segregation. Relatives of Negro students who participate in the city in protest have lost their jobs. Professors and deans in state universities who support desegregation have been dismissed. And even a white college student who wrote a pre-desegregation article for his student newspaper lost his part-time job. Clearly, these economic lynchings, likely old physical lynchings, have been designed to scare others as much as to punish a specific person or business. The editor of the Montgomery advertiser, objected to these procedures way back in 1954. At that time, he wrote, the manicured cluxism of these white citizens' councils is rash,

indecent, and vicious. This economic thugory is rash because the Negro himself holds a powerful and growing economic power of his own. It is a two-edged sword that cuts wickedly in two directions. No prediction could have been more accurate. In fact, in Montgomery itself, the bus boycott of 1955-56 began to demonstrate the power of Negro southerners to answer in kind. More complete and enthusiastic than those of the citizens' councils, the technique of whole Negro communities with holding patronage from racist merchants spread rapidly to Orangeburg South Carolina, Tuskegee, Alabama, and other localities. Once the student's sit-in movement for lunch-counted desegregation began in 1960, the boycott was a perfected weapon and was usually needed to achieve the goals of the sit-ins themselves. In reaction, a number of states passed anti-boycott laws and applied them only to Negro organizations,

of course, aronic in light of the open boycotts of the white citizens' councils. And merchants report these laws have not brought back Negro customers. That's the sign that times it has resembled a complex quilt work pattern of boycotts and counterboycotts as the predicted two-edged sword cuts wickedly in two directions. Now, to evaluate realistically the future of sets resistance movements as the clans and the councils, we must first recognize their strengths, even though they're not nearly as strong in the 1960s as they were in the 50s. First, these movements feed on genuine strains in southern society. Their violent patterns draw upon the remnants of the region's violent tradition, a tradition stemming directly from the frontier and expressing itself in lynchings and high homicide rights down through the years. Moreover, their volunteers for violence can be drawn from the many uprooted whites who

have come to southern cities in recent years. These poorly educated, threatened people, finding urban life strange and militant Negroes even stranger, often provide the tender for racist fires. Second, the resistance groups are especially strong in the old black belt plantation counties of the South. Such a location has considerable significance. The black belt whites have the deepest racial fears and bigotry and offer fertile ground for racist exploitation. Likewise, Negroes are politically and economically weakest in precisely the same counties. Also the black belt areas are vastly overrepresented in state governments. Do they their historical prominence and their refusals to allow population reapportionment. Probably the third strength of the racist, particularly the citizens' councils, is their control of state governments in the South.

They virtually dominate three states and they are powerful in others. Fourth, the racists have gone publicly unopposed in many white communities of the South because of the fears of clan and council reprisals. Two few white southerners have shown the courage of our guest Mr. Whitsitt and publicly counter their pervasive influence. Many white southerners who do not feel strongly themselves about race but want only to conform have had no alternative to follow but that of the racists. Note however that each of these resistance strengths is short term in nature. The violent tradition of the South is dying out and migrant southerners are adjusting to city life. The black belt is rapidly shrinking in terms of both population and influence as out migration of both races continues and the political control and unopposed forum the racists have enjoyed are also waning.

By contrast the weaknesses of the racists are long term in effect. After all we are living in the 20th century and all the trends of history are against these movements. Just for example as desegregation progresses reaching now into the cities of the very deep size itself the racists arguments that it cannot happen that Supreme Court rulings can be nullified with dynamite these arguments have lost their ring. The inevitability of the process is rapidly becoming more evident to all or considered the effect of the steadily increasing Negro vote in the South. To lent the sleigh this vote is eroding the very political base underlying movements like the white citizens councils. And as the Negro southerners buying power slowly increases his color boycotts to council actions become ever more potent. The racist organizations have other long term weaknesses too. All major religious bodies in the South officially support racial integration causing the

resistors to oppose constantly these highly respected institutions and to rely completely upon segregationist sect ministers with little authority. Likewise the clans and citizens councils repeatedly adopt ultra reactionary political aims which conflict with the basic interest of their less educated followers. Thus their stands against organized labor and taxes and federal programs for low income groups may ultimately contribute to their downfall. The white citizens councils face yet another problem in maintaining their aura of respectability. On occasions they've distributed anti-Semitic and fascist literature originating from outside the South. Though in some areas outspoken anti-Semites have been expelled from the organization after one of these expulsions the leader explained that the citizens council just couldn't afford to have anti-Semites around because he said they were having a hard enough time just

being anti-Nigra. Now finally all the racist movements share a fundamental weakness. They have no positive program for they are all rear guard actions. Their wildly fluctuating memberships betray this weakness most openly. When major desegregation advances threaten their number swell. When desegregation is either not threatened or has been accomplished their numbers dwindle. We've been looking at the ugly, contorted face of the South. But there are of course many other faces of the South. The friendly South with its easy charm. The busy South with its bustling community pride and its expanding industry. But in the long run it is certain that these more winning features will prevail and in turn achieve a racially harmonious society.

Indeed the dwindling memberships of the racist groups in the 60s is evidence already of this. But in the short run there is no denying the significance of the snarling resistance and reaction of Southern racist. Clan and citizens council mentality still exist. And when the formal organizations have lost some of their force this resistance has slowed the desegregation process and it will impede it further as long as it is tacitly tolerated or even invited by both public officials and many self-styled moderates. Yet this resistance has not and it will not halt the continuing progress toward equal treatment for all Americans. The real question is then how much damage and suffering will the racist inflict upon their own legion before submitting to the inevitable changes of our times? Epitaph for Jim Crow is a presentation of the Commission on Extension courses Harvard

University 75 Mount Auburn Street came from 38 Massachusetts in association with the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council WGVH-TV Boston. Studio production costs were provided in part with the assistance of grants from the Anti-Defamation League of Beneb Brits, the Commonwealth School Boston and the Claudia B. and Maurice L. Stone Foundation. This is NET, National Educational Television.