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Footnotes 1405
responsible for this increase? Actually, of course, lynchings fluctuate in practical inde-
pendence of the efforts of such organizations, which have no means of attacking the
fundamental causes of lynching. All praise should go to the efforts of the interracial
pioneers who are sacrificing much for their ideals and who have fought valiantly for
the adjustment of interracial relations. Nothing, however, is to be gained by carrying
our confidence in them to the extent of believing that they may do more than battle
the symptoms of race prejudice, as a fever may be reduced by the application of ice,
affording some relief to the patient but not curing the disease.” (Donald Young,
American Minority Peofles [1932], pp. 589-590; compare ibH,^ fassim.)
Young’s proof against the claims of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation of a
good share in the credit for the decline in lynching is not entirely convincing. No one
denies that other factors than the fight of the organizations have influence on the
yearly fluctuations—and even t!ic trend—of lynchings. But this does not exclude the
fact that the organizations also have an influence, primarily on the trend.^ but also on
the fluctuations. (See footnote ^ on p. 423.)
“Now, while this legalistic approach has been successful in the sense that it has
sometimes served as a goal to the South and that it has won numerous important legal
cases—some of the United States Supreme Court decisions involving new precedents
—
it is doubtful whether it has brought the Negro any nearer his goal. The N.A.A.C.P.
has been, from the standpoint of the southern white man, in the same class with
abolitionists and carpetbaggers, an outside agency which has tried to impose its ideas
upon him. Sociologically the weakness of the movement is inevitable and incurable; it
attempts to undo the folkways and mores of the southern caste system by attacking the
results and symptoms of the system. Paradoxically, if it leaves the attitudes and folk-
ways of the white man out of its picture, it is doomed to fail; and if it takes those
attitudes and folkways into account, it is either forced back to the gradualistic and
conciliatory position of Booker Washington or forced forward Into revolutionary
tactics. One wonders then, whether its chief function, aside from its value in actually
obtaining racial rights [n.b.], has not been to serve as a catharsis for those discontented,
impatient souls who, while they see no hope of normal participation in American life,
feel that they must never give in and admit that they are beaten down spiritually.”
(Guy B. Johnson, “Negro Racial Movements and Leadership in the United States,” of,
cit,\ p. 67 [italics ours].) The obtaining of “racial rights” is, of course, the main
purpose of the N.A.A.C.P.
“. . . It can scarcely be claimed that these victories [won by resort to court] have
materially altered any of the fundamental conditions determining the relations between
the races in the country.” (Bunche, of. cit.^ Vol. I, p. 141; compare ibid.y Vol. I,
pp. 1 43-144; see also Chapter 38, Section 5, of this book.)
Negro Americans^ What Now? (1934), p. 39.
Ibid,
y
p. 38.
Bertram W. Doyle, The Etiquette of Race Relations in the South (i937)>p« 162.
72
interracial make-up of the N.A.A.C.P. is also an undoubted source of
organizational weakness. There can be no doubt that the Negro leaders in the organ-
ization have always kept a weather eye on the reactions of their prominent and influ-
ential white sponsors to any innovation in the program of the organization. These
white sympathizers are, in the main, either cautious liberals or mawkish, missionary-
minded sentimentalists on the race question. Their interest in the Negro problem is
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