Race Relations in Practice

LT. COL. MONTAGUE: When, last June, our own Dr. Harold Cranfield suggested that we invite Dr. F. Edward Lund-then President of Alabama College in Montevallo, Alabama-to address us on “Segregation and the South” (a subject he is known to deal with superlatively), there seemed to be but a slim chance of his being able to visit us from such a distance. However, fate was with us and Dr. Lund graciously accepted our invitation and advised that he was at that time in the process of leaving Alabama to accept the presidency of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he is now located. To say that we were and are delighted is to put it mildly, and subsequent events have intensified our interest in his subject.

Franze Edward Lund was born in China. His parents were Episcopalian missionaries; his father was American and his mother was Canadian. Dr. Lund’s wife is from Alabama. For eleven years, 1946 to 1957, he has been an educationist in Alabama; first as Chairman of the Department of History and Social Science and later as Dean at State College, Florence, and then, for five years, as President of Alabama College (The State College of Liberal Arts) at Montevallo. Prior to this, he was an Instructor at Washington and Lee University and, for seven years, Professor of History at Wisconsin State College.

Dr. Lund attended Trinity College here from 1928 to 1930; Washington and Lee University, where he secured his A.B. (cum laude) in 1933 and his M.A. in 1934; University of Wisconsin for his Ph.D. in 1944; Yale University in 1944-45, and then gained his LL.D. at Birmingham Southern College in 1955.

I have Dr. Lund’s permission to omit an impressive list of additional academic honours and recognitions, and to refer to him as a half-breed Canadian who has spent a great deal of time in the South and who is now President of Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio.

Gentlemen, I am happy to present Dr. F. Edward Lund.

DR. LUND: I should like to warn you at the outset, that you are not about to hear a solution of the race-issue, or even a studied and balanced exposition of the public school integration crisis in the deep South. I make no apology for this because the integration crisis is so charged with prejudice, so lacerated by political issues, so morally profound, and so emotionally dispersed, that any honest man had best refrain from throwing additional kindling into the fire.

What you are about to hear is a first-hand interpretation from an individual possessing a rather cosmopolitan point of view who happened to have lived in the South for something over a quarter century. If this point of view has become fixed, it is fixed in compassion–compassion for the negro, compassion for the blind ignorance, the bigotry, and the self-righteousness of all those who have convinced themselves of pat and easy answers.

If there is any excuse for such a limited report as this, I would ask you to consider that a true picture of the race problem does not come from the decision of the Supreme Court of the U.S. as delivered on May 17, 1954. Nor is it to be arrived at by a review of the history of the preceding sixty years when, since 1896, under the precedent of the Plessy decision, “separate but equal” was the law of the land. A knowledge of these facts we must assume, for they explain both the revulsion of anger, the betrayal felt by many of the native, white Southerners -as well as the exultation, the resurgence and rebirth of faith in human liberty of the depressed negro.

Perhaps all that I can provide today is something of a corrective to the headlines-some human details to frenzied publicity, the fiasco of bigotry, and the bumbling bureaucracy so vividly associated with Governor Faubus, and with Little Rock. In this connection and as an antidote, we should all recall the Louisville story, where in contrast a native Southerner, an Alabamian, Omar Carmichael, supervised the peaceful and orderly integration of the public school system of a traditionally Southern city of half a million.

Such big stories furnish the broad picture, the panorama of the unfolding development of integration. My purpose here today is to recall the personal detail-and within this extent merely to point out some considerations which you might otherwise overlook.

My first experience with segregation was some twenty-five years ago, when as a young college instructor in Virginia, I occasionally went quail-shooting with my coloured barber: Bob. (Now, the sociologist would stop here to note that in Virginia, or at least some parts of it, coloured barbers are common. In other sections of the South, no white person would permit his hair to be trimmed in a barbershop operated by negroes. Patterns of segregation are capricious, and even in the South, seldom uniform.) It is perhaps to the point to explain that Bob was the sort of man best described in any idiom as a “sport.” He was part-negro; that is to say, in at least equal portions, possibly seven-eighths, he was white. (And the sociologist would note here that this is not exceptional in the border-states. Only the whites of the deep South, as it were, have preserved their racial purity.) Bob was fat and jovial, and as it suited his purpose, both obsequious and impertinent. He was past fifty, almost white-headed; and as I reflect upon his behaviour it was directed toward attracting friends and clients, yet preserving his own self-respect. A man has to live also for a purpose; and to the best of my recollection Bob admitted to just two great passions: the pursuit of wild game, hunting and fishing, and the conquest of women.

If you are philosophically inclined, you will pause at this point, to consider as a moral issue whether it was proper for me to associate myself with Bob to hunt quail, yet to disassociate myself as a friend from his other interests. (I could evade this issue by asking whether it is permitted to sympathize with Uncle Remus?) As an issue of personal discrimination, it had never occurred to me that human association by its very nature is not partial-limited to those for whom one discovers an affinity, and limited also to the specific affinity shared. To push either friendship or human association further, to claim that one must open his life completely, or not at all, is not bending life to conform to a moral law; but it is twisting the moral basis of discrimination into indiscrimination, into immorality. This unrestrained logic disturbed neither Bob nor myself. Professionally, he was my barber, socially he was my hunting companion; within very limited application, and chiefly upon the level of camaraderie we became friends. Let me observe in passing that there was nothing surreptitious or even false about our association. In the South dedicated personal friendships between white and black are frequent. The Southern white likes the negro as an individual; he despises the race; the Northerner has convinced himself of a love for the race, barely tolerates the individual. (This is not a paradox; merely a generalization.)

When Bob and I were in the field, he carried his lunch and I carried mine. At lunch hour, we sought the advantage of a sunny slope, or shady tree, as the weather determined. We ate together quite as a matter of course. While eating, each one of us bragged greatly over his easy hits, and made plausible alibis and great lies for his misses. If I ever had any reservations about Bob on the score of his sportsmanship, it was for the unrestrained persistence with which he would “ride” me-especially when back in town, a good public had gathered in his shop, and he had me secure in his chair. Now I understand better that one simply should not place any trust in barbers!

Our companionship developed over several hunting seasons. One day it happened that we stopped at a farmhouse to ask permission to hunt, and were promptly joined by the farmer-a native and white. I thought little of it, let alone that any relationship between two people can become a social problem as soon as a third is involved. Nor did I think twice at noon when our host invited us back to his home for lunch. As I recall, we each took turns at the pump standing in the farmyard. Then the farmer said to me “Mister, you come with me.” And there must have been a shade of implication in it, for I turned to old Bob standing by the pump. Both of us were a trifle embarrassed, but Bob affected unconcern, which only made me more ill at ease, so ill at ease, in fact, that I cannot recall precisely what I said. I would like to think that I protested to my host that I should rather sit out in the yard and to eat my own lunch with Bob. Whatever the protest, faint or strong, I do recall Bob’s words:

“You go into the house, Mister. White folks eat up front. Coloured folk eat in the kitchen. And don’t worry about me, for it suits me fine.”

So Bob ate in the kitchen. And I ate with the farmer and his wife in the dining room-the farmer, his wife, myself, and Bob’s hunting dog. And it was the presence of the dog which brought me a flush of guilt and anger.

Yet when we got up in the woods together and off alone, Bob was barely amused by my self-righteousness. “Mister Buck,” he conciliated me with the use of my nickname, “this white farmer, he’s my friend same as you. He gives me his business. And he lets me hunt on his farm. And I’m sure he never sat down to eat with his coloured cook. So what you upset over?”

I’m not sure that I understood then, and I’m not sure that I understand now. I explained to Bob that if a man was good enough to hunt with, in my book, he was good enough to eat with. I am not sure this was not the most obvious, arrogant, and stupid comment I ever made. And Bob tripped me neatly on this sophistry:

“Shore now,” he accused me, “and this farmer also comes to my house of a Saturday night. And he stays to have a drink with me and the old lady. You ain’t never done that.”

To which there is no answer. But at least it brings us to perhaps the basic question of the segregation issue: personal discrimination is one thing, and legal discrimination is another. Somewhere, whether in work or play, or in daily living, or in sinning, the line of individual prejudice, taste or discrimination can and will be drawn-sooner or later. The South understands this, and the North is beginning to do so.

What the South has yet to learn, however, is that to take one’s personal discriminations, or even those shared by a locality or region, and to legislate these into law prescribing who shall sit with whom, and when; and who shall eat with whom, or where; and where one race may wash and where another; and to which school this child shall go, or where the other-to enforce this as a matter of law purely on the score of race is not justice but injustice; not equality but bigotry; for such laws restrict the concept of liberty to a favoured race, and it distorts all individual freedom into personal prejudice. Segregation laws are not simply restrictive, they are prescriptive; and they do not encourage moral choice, they destroy it.

The chief disagreement which I have with the Supreme Court’s decision is that it was rendered upon the grounds of sociological and psychological speculation, and not verifiable facts. The mass of evidence was easily obtainable. I regret also that there was no admission of the Supreme Court’s own complicity in the past sixty years of attempted “separate but not equal” judication. A good confession would have relieved the South from much of the burden of guilt. Frankly, I regret that the learned and self-righteous judges did not possess the spiritual humility to invoke the divine and moral law-at least to the degree consistent with the American Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution. Finally, though the Court’s decision for public school desegregation invited the South to participate in the “when” and “how”-as a federal and supreme court, the participation of the federal government could and should have been invited. The issue should have been frankly faced thatif a federal court possessed jurisdiction, then federal responsibility was equally involved. As it was, the Court’s “Black Friday” decision threw moral obloquy on the South, for having diligently pursued a principle which the Supreme Court itself had now suddenly reversed, and reversed with a self-righteousness which said “these are your schools” but “these are our laws.”

The result was quite predicable. Excepting for a few humanitarians, loyal Southerners were infuriated at what appeared from their point of view to be a betrayal. What lingering sense of guilt might have found expression was soon swallowed in anger. The well-developed sensitivities of the rebel South, still smarting from defeat in the Civil War, developed a chauvinism and self-righteousness which has smouldered ever since the days of Reconstruction. I know, because I was there. And even though more a foreigner than a native, I felt dismayed and angered-angered that the Court made no attempt to justify its break with precedent, and only a partial attempt to face the full implications of the race issue. My sympathies then as now are with the South.

Originally, of course, in the months following the May 17, 1954, decision the South was stunned. The situation reminded me of the “phony war”-those quiet days following the Polish “blitz” before the assault on the Maginot Line.

During these days the middle-of-the-roader, the men of good will, the social agencies, church leaders, and service clubs could talk of improving race relations. I remember in Birmingham, at this time, an especially zealous crusader for segregation in all public places-one known as “Bull” Connor-was thrown out of office on the City Commission. At the same time, the colleges and universities of the state joined with the Jefferson County Coordinating Council to sponsor a two-day conference on “The Status of the Negro” in the South. On the program and in the audience both races were equally represented. Other signs of inter-racial good-will were then fairly common.

I recall one rainy night travelling by bus across the northern end of the state. The bus driver had passed up several groups of coloured folk standing by the side of the road; but by the time he had left three or four groups standing in the darkness and the rain, he suddenly discovered that his bus load of white passengers, mostly local farmers and residents, were infuriated. That bus driver stopped the bus, switched on the lights, and explained to his passengers that a second section was following him to pick up local fares. This was clear evidence that the good folk of northern Alabama put a limit, at least, to what they would condone by way of discrimination.

After the succession of incidents and attendant publicity, however, the climate of opinion changed. After the Autherine Lucy case at the University of Alabama, the Till murder and trial in Mississippi, and the Clinton, Tennessee, agitation, the gradualist was howled down as a “nigger-lover”; and the man of temperate views who advocated moderation was tagged as a member of the N.A.A.C.P. What occurred was a sharp split in public opinion, or as the sociologists would describe it, “opinion polarized”: on the one side the shrill voiced, the self-righteous, and ritualistic liberals-the Americans For Democratic Action, the left and northern wing of the Democratic Party, the N.A.A.C.P.; on the other side practically to a man ranged most of the spokesmen and all of the professional leaders and politicians of the South. The middle-of-the-roader was silent for he was either knocked down or driven into the ditch.

For example, the Jefferson County Coordinating Council now disbanded. First, their financial support from the Birmingham Community Chest was withdrawn.

Then, they could not find any leader of prominence and stature in the community who would accept the chairmanship of the organization. Mr. Bull Connor who would arrest any white man, or coloured, who sat in a segregated audience, now shortly returned to office. And generally, throughout the state of Alabama at least, the Montgomery branch of the Citizens Councils raced for membership with the Councils led by that firebrand Asa Carter. The distinction between these two groups may not be so well understood in the North. The legitimate Councils led by Sam Englehart of Montgomery consists largely of propertied men, merchants and farmers, and this group advocates resistance to integration by all legal and peaceful means. The Asa Carter branch, like the Klan is generally thought to advocate force; and many of the members of this group have been arrested, and some convicted, for various acts of assault-including the very recent castration of an innocent negro.

These are perhaps just two aspects, related aspects certainly, of the integration crisis which are difficult to explain. The first is to explain how public opinion can be so organized as to blot out all dissent; the second is to explain how intimidation of the negro can be carried and pressed but without more serious violence, race riots and public protests. Perhaps three or four observations might be relevant here.

In the first place, it should be noted that the South generally–except when misled and goaded as in Little Rock-opposes violence. The influential majority of the Citizens Councils acknowledge privately that when violence breaks out, the cause of states rights and segregation will be lost. Newspapers as a matter of decency oppose violence even when they advocate the modern counterpart of secession-that is, interposition. And to sustain the rapidly developing prosperity and industrialization of the South, all financial interests and industry support a peaceful settlement.

In place of violence there is a cool-headed, resolute, and tight-lipped determination to hold-the-line. Any admission that a teacher favours integration, as happened at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, leads to a dismissal. Slighter concessions of softness on the racial question brings social ostracism, insults to one’s family, and for community leaders, such as preachers, cross burnings; lesser folk can expect a visit from the Klan. And, of course, if a college president, or politician, or semi-public figure should speak out too boldly or pointedly, there would be reprisals from his constituency. Not only do all the pressures of society operate to produce conformity; but there is also the taint of being disloyal-to a harassed and conscience stricken people alternately proud and rebellious, yet injured. What we are dealing with here is the whole book of chauvinism, magnificent loyalty, stubbornness, bigotry and self-righteousness.

And there is a second group of very major influences which should be mentioned, for every society is governed no less by hidden and unseen powers than by visible authority. A merchant needs bank credit, and customers, and the loyalty of his employees. A college needs also either state appropriations or gifts. (Some also need their alumni and football players.) Young men look for promotion and recognition. Old men look for peace and for the security of old age. It is difficult to generalize how public pressures operate; but I can mention a few brief incidents.

Our local congressman told me one day of a visit he had received from a constituent of his, a coloured undertaker who owned a smart, black limousine. He told me that after their business was concluded he had walked out to see his visitor off, and to admire his Cadillac. As the coloured owner slipped behind the wheel, he whipped out from beneath the seat a visored chauffeur’s cap which he slapped on his head. My congressman expressed surprise and received the following explanation:

“What chance would a negro stand with the highway patrol, driving a big, black Cadillac across the state?” Our own gardener, who doubled as official chauffeur, also had his difficulties. First, there was a loan shark who took him for $50.00 interest on a $100.00 loan, then threatened to sue for an alleged unpaid balance of $75.00. We arranged an advance in salary, and settled out of court. Two months later, my man got clipped at an intersection under a changing light. Three coloured witnesses testified somewhat reluctantly that the white driver drove into a red light; but the judge took the word of the white driver. Our gardener insisted to me in confidence, that justice had miscarried; but he also allowed that he did not believe the discrimination was clearly racial. It was just tough to be the underdog. That this was a charitable view was confirmed some weeks later when the said gardener came walking to work without his car. Suspecting another wreck, I asked, “Will, where’s your car?” And he very truthfully explained to me as one man to another: “Boss, I had a hell of a time! Got drunk last Saturday night. And the cops got after me, and I chased down some country road, and ran out of gas. And you know, Boss, by the time I walk to a gas station and sober up, I can’t remember where I left the car.”

His son found the car by noon; and I have never told this story before. But the fact that it is tough to be the underdog was proved a very few weeks later. His son turned the car over in broad daylight in downtown Birmingham and was lodged in the city jail for careless driving. I must record, with all faithfulness to the truth however, that no charges having been placed against the son, he was released without bond the next morning; and the father collected for the deductible collision on his car.

After these incidents, a certain degree of confidence was established between us. We talked frankly of the police, the courts, and the white man’s law. “Will” held to some very moderate views. He felt that one must distinguish between white men, and no less so with his coloured neighbours. The local justice of the peace he trusted implicitly. The local police, he felt, were exacting only toward those coloured who were thought to be “smart and uppity.” Finally, he thought also that all police were too severe on coloured bootleggers and wild parties-though he conceded that something might be said for the prevention of knife fights and the restraint of young bucks on a tear.

As a considered opinion, I would say that police powers of the South-the county sheriffs, city police, and the local and state courts generally-support “law and order,” first, and justice second. The negro is not harassed; he is definitely “kept in his place.” There are almost no visible agitators for negro rights excepting ordained ministers and big-city lawyers, both, in a sense protected occupations. Hence, real support for the negro must come from the North-generally through the N.A.A.C.P.

And as for white friends of the negro, excepting again for a few Protestant ministers and the Roman Catholic Church, almost no one speaks out openly against the certain censure of merchant and banker, the political organization, and the community leadership-what is generally described as the Establishment.

The establishment in the South, from the Southern delegation in Washington to the state capitals and down to the local courthouse gangs, have now grimly set themselves to retain segregation by all peaceful means; and to stifle any attempt at concession.

In the deep South, from South Carolina across Georgia; Alabama, Mississippi to Louisiana we have now either a stalemate or uneasy truce. Basically, I attribute the cause for this to the spectacle of federal troops and bayonets in Little Rock. Neither side now wishes to crowd the issue.

At this point, it is most hazardous to generalize, yet certain evidences are plainly evident. The membership in the White Citizens Councils has risen-and again I remind you that this is a stubborn group grimly determined to resist, but to resist peacefully. Against this, in the North the voice of moderation appears to have gained -the most recent evidence of this being the first article in the recent issue of the Atlantic Monthly, and the furor last week occasioned by a negro who denounced the N.A.A.C.P. for its aggressive tactics. In the South meanwhile, as though the center of the storm had passed, I find encouragement in the plea for moderation and Christian principle issued in Atlanta by the local association of white ministers.

Personally, I believe a breathing spell is needed-and that it will hasten and not delay a real solution in any profound sense. By this I do not advocate simply leaving the South alone. I deny that the issue of legal segregation is exclusively a Southern problem: it is in the United States a national problem; and it is a world problem. Let us not forget the primitive even demonic reversion to apartheid in South Africa. “No man is an island” nor is any region or society which admits the obligations of civilized decency or Christian witness. Therefore moderation must not be confused with stagnation. There must be a firm, consistent and positive pressure of enlightened opinion, of judicial and legislative reform, and popular education. In this it is my personal hope that our Christian churches will take the lead. Because the South is now defensive and passively upholds the negative side, the eventual dissolution of legal segregation is inevitable. Social discrimination, on the other hand, may never be completely erased. Sociology (for which I have no great respect, believing as I do, the wit who said: “Sociology is the study of jargon-invented for this purpose!”) Sociologists have a term for this situation. It is “accommodation.” I believe that with consistent, non-aggressive pressure the South will reach an accommodation. This will be some formulae which will abandon legal segregation, yet release social pressures through “freedom of choice”-where in urban centers and in larger counties there will be predominantly negro schools, and predominantly white schools, and some mixed schools. I do not know that this will happen. Yet in Virginia and in many of the larger industrial cities of the deep South this pattern is already emerging at least as an intermediary solution, a compromise.

Every compromise is simply another stage in the pattern of racial adjustment and the growth of civilization. But there is evidence to encourage the view that it is already here. Failing this, I sorely feel, the alternative may be “push-day.”

I shall conclude with a very brief explanation of an incident, a race riot, if you prefer, that never happened. At the very height of the Arthurine Lucy case in Alabama, I had occasion to drive into the steel-mill town of Bessemer. We had recently deputized six of the college maintenance staff to police the college just in case any hoodlums should cause trouble-and trouble could have developed from any number of circumstances, not the least being that one of our students had elected to deliver a speech the previous Sunday evening in the local Methodist Church, urging integration and Brotherly Love. This girl had then received several phone calls warning her to leave town within 24 hours. So while I judged the girl was safe, nevertheless, it seemed not unreasonable to have some watchmen available, and to sustain their courage I thought they should have at least one battered second-hand pistol to wear with a badge. The storekeeper in Bessemer laughed at me. I tried a second store. The same curt refusal even though I identified myself as the chief administrative officer of a state institution. But the second merchant asked rather incredulously if I had not heard of “push-day.”

Push-day, it developed, according to a wildfire of rumour, had been expected imminently. On push-day, every negro worker in the town was to push the white folks off the sidewalk into the gutter. And so, every old pistol, every new pistol, and all ammunition had been sold out in the city of Bessemer. On push-day, if it ever came, there would be bloodshed.

Push-day, of course, has never come anywhere in the South during the current crisis.

I have some bright eyed, zealous friends who despise compromise. Whenever they ridicule my concept of accommodation, I remember the tenseness in Bessemer, and the push-day which never came, because apparently no one-either black or white-has so far pushed too hard. I find hope in this and the greatest assurance for a peaceful solution.

THANKS OF THE MEETING were expressed by Dr. Harold V. Cranfield.