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Footnotes 1337
to justice. One reason for this is that the Negro has too little confidence in our courts.
We must give him that, above all things.”*
Woofter eloquently expresses the view of Southern liberalism today when he says:
‘‘In the successful adjustment of the legal relationships of the two races democracy
is vitally involved. The right to a fair trial by an impartial jury of peers is one of the
bed-roc?k-s upon which freedom rests, and if it cannot be preserved when the courts
serve two races, then democracy itself rests on quicksand. The problem of legal justice
is, therefore, fully as important to the white race as to the Negro race. Any tendency
to weaken the feeling that the court system is entirely impartial, unaffected by passion
or prejudice, and meticulously just, or any tendency to strengthen the feeling that the
court can be biased or made the instrument of a particular class, is a tendency which
may wreck society.”**
® For example, Robert A. Warner describes the situation in New Haven, Connecticut,
in these terms:
“Only occasionally are justice betrayed and the colored people robbed of the protec-
tion of the law, when the judges of the city court suspect acts of violence in which
Negroes are involved are simple assaults. One such case was appealed to Criminal
Superior Court successfully. A white man, drunk, was surprised in the act of stealing
the car of a reputable Negro couple. When they chased and overtook him, he slashed
the woman so severely that a blood transfusion was necessary to save her life. The city
court disposed of the case with a cursory $25 fine and costs for breach of the peace,
and suspended judgments or penalties for the motor vehicle violations involved. The
higher court gave the miscreant a deserved year in jail.” {New Haven Negroes [1940],
p. 224.)
® The classic case study on this subject is the survey undertaken by The Chicago
Commission on Race Relations. {The Negro in Chicago [1922].)
^
In Detroit a federal housing project, the Sojourner Truth Homes, was the scene
of a riot between whites and Negroes. The project was designed for Negro defense
workers. On the day set for occupancy, February 28, whites who lived nearby picketed
the project. Moving vans containing the furniture of prospective Negro tenants were
stopped. When one van tried to pass the line, the white men climbed all over the truck;
a stone was thrown, hitting a Negro driver. Then mounted police charged in. Life
magazine reports: “Cops charged down on Negro sympathizers of excluded tenants.
Police devoted most attention to Negroes, made no effort to open picket lines for vans.
Said one inspector: ‘It would be suicide if we used our sticks on any of them [the
whites].*” {Life [March 16, 1942], pp. 40-41.)
® Henry Hill Collins, Jr., Americans Own Refugees (1941), p. 156. See also, David
W. Anthony, “The Cranbury Terror Case,” The Crisis (October, 1939), pp. 295-296.
® Of 1,247 Negro lawyers, judges, and justices reported in the United States in 1930,
only 436 were from the whole South, where over three-fourths of the Negro popula-
tion were concentrated. (U. S. Bureau of the Census, Negroes tn the United States:
ig2o~igS2, pp. 9 and 293.)
• Ray Stannard Baker, Following the Color Line (1908), p. 49. The statement was made
by a Mr. Hopkins, leader of the Civic League of Atlanta, composed of the foremost white
citizens of that city.
*T. J. Woofter, Jr., The Basis of Racial Adjustment (1925), p. 125.
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