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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - XI. An American Dilemma - 45. America Again at the Crossroads in the Negro Problem - 7. Tension in the South
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Chapter 45. America Again at the Crossroads 1013
within the last year to speak out boldly. White persons who have for decades been
working toward interracial cooperation may now find themselves charged with fifth
column activity and Negro leaders may be denounced as communists or nazis.^®
Another prominent white Southern liberal describes in a letter to the author
the mental state of the white South as of summer, 1942:
... we are in the midst of a situation in the South where we seem to have been
thrown back with great losses where we had expected great gains: and . . . the situa-
tion in the South may be of the proportions of a crisis greater than we have had
in many years. For the first time in my experience the situation is so complex that we
do not know how to proceed to next steps. Just a few years ago we almost had
unanimity in plans for cooperative arrangements, in which Negroes and whites were
enthusiastic and in which representatives of nearly all phases of the South were partici-
pants. We had worked into entirely new patterns of fellowship and participation, and
there were many evidences that the South was beginning to be proud of this progress.
Today, as far as I know, there is practically none of this left. The South is becoming
almost unanimous in a pattern of unity that refers to white unity. The thousands of
incidents and accidents in the South are being integrated into the old pattern of
Southern determination against an outside aggression.^^
In the approaching conflict between the Negro and the South, this writer
sees that
... a South which was just coming into its own, getting ready for an enriched
agriculture, a more balanced economy, a more liberal viewpoint will sacrifice all this
in a pathetic blood and sweat episode reminiscent of the Civil War and Reconstruc-
tion.
Similar to this deeply concerned statement of a liberal white Southerner,
we may cite the equally troubled view of a Negro clergyman. Dr. J. S.
Nathaniel Tross:
I am afraid for my people. They have grown restless. They are not happy. They
no longer laugh. There is a new policy among them—something strange, perhaps
terrible.^®
The situation is so critical in the South today that fifty Southern Negro
leaders have seen fit to gather together, deliberately excluding Northern
Negroes, and to plead for racial amity. They accept social segregation, but
request the elimination of all other inequalities. This development was
made necessary by the fearful backing away of some Southern liberals
notably Mark Ethridge, John Temple Graves, and Virginius Dabney
from the social segregation issue. The meeting of the Southern Negroes
serves both as an attempt to prevent the racial lines from being drawn more
sharply and as a disclaimer of responsibility for future violence.
An important element in the situation is that the Southern Negroes, if
they are attacked, are more prepared to fight this time than they have ever
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