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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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1014 An American Dilemma
been before. A competent Negro social scientist, who has recently been
studying conditions in the Upper South, confirms this view and, in May,
1943, confides that he expects the outbreak of serious race riots in the South
within the next year.
The situation is grave, and the years to come will provide a serious test
of the political resourcefulness of white public authorities and of other
white and Negro leaders. But regardless of what happens, we do not believe
that this is a turn for the worse in race relations in the South. Even if there
are going to be serious clashes and even if their short-run effects will be
devastating to the Negroes involved and, perhaps, to Negroes in the whole
region, we believe that the long-run effect of the present opinion crisis in
the South, because it is a catharsis for the whites, will be a change toward
increased equality for the Negro. When we make this judgment, we recall
a remark once made in a conversation by a prominent and conservative
Negro social scientist in the South. He stated as his considered opinion that
tensions are not necessarily bad and that under certain conditions even race
riots may have wholesome effects in the long run. He continued in about
the following way: ^^They stir up people’s conscience. People will have
to think matters over. They prevent things from becoming settled. If the
race situation should ever become fixed, if the Negro were really accommo-
dated, then, and only then, would I despair about a continued great
improvement for Negroes. As long as there is friction and fighting, there
is hope.”
At this juncture the white North is moving in a direction contrary to the
South. The white South is becoming increasingly isolated. There has not
been such a great distance in the views of the Negro problem between the
white majority groups in the two regions since Reconstruction. Though
it is seldom expressed clearly, the outside observer feels convinced that an
increasing number of white Northerners mean business this time. It is true,
as James Weldon Johnson once observed, that ‘^essentially the status of the
Negro in all other sections will depend upon what it is in the South,’”®
but the North will find it increasingly necessary to have its say about the
Negroes’ status in the South. The North cannot well afford any longer
to let the white Southerners have their own way with the Negroes as
completely as they have had.
The national compromise has lasted for two generations j
it may now
be approaching its end, at least relatively. Ten years from now this period
in the history of interracial relations in America may come to look as a
temporary interregnum. The compromise was not a stable power equilib-
rium. Signs of its end have been frequent during the ’thirties: a whole set
of Supreme Court decisions, the New Deal in the South, the increasing
activity of federal agencies to stamp out peonage, the agitation for a federal
lynching law and for an abolition of the poll tax by Congress, the repeal
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