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University Daily Kansan
Page 3
Negroes Wait Hopefully
Cedar's note: Dan Warrior, chairman of the KU Civil Rights Council, recently attended the Montgomery Improvement Association Institute on Non-Violence and Social Change in North Carolina, ten following his trio to Montgomery, relates some of his observations of aspects of segregation in the South.)
Bv Don Warner
About 11:30 p.m. a bus arrives in New Albany, Miss., for a rest stop. The bus driver has informed passengers they may enjoy a cup of coffee or a hamburger in the cafe next door to the bus depot.
Most of the Negro riders, who have been intermingled with whites from front to rear of the bus, either remain in their seats or drift back to the colored waiting room; but one game Negro bounces down the steps, scurries through the white waiting room with a half dozen white men, and strides out the door on the cafe side of the depot.
SUDDENLY, five feet outside the depot, he slams on his brakes. A startled expression on his face reveals both embarrassment and fear — embarassment because he has not thought about the cafe being segregated, and fear of what might happen to him if he proceeds farther.
Although the Southern Negro rejoices over the freedom he has tasted in recent years, he experiences the pain of segregation each day. More examples of racial conflict in the South were provided by a group of Negro students in Montgomery, Ala., who gathered to discuss their role in the struggle for freedom. A high school girl offered one of her experiences for the students to analyze.
Acting as if he has forgotten his wallet, or watch, or something, he spins around and heads back to the bus--forgetting about his cup of coffee.
While shopping downtown last fall, the girl noticed men along the streets distributing leaflets about Pres. Kennedy and the crisis in Cuba. Inside a department store she saw one of the leaflets on a counter. She started to pick it up, but a clerk grabbed it from her and angrily told her to get one outside. The Negro girl lost her temper, snapped back at the clerk, and marched out the door. She felt she would never return to the store.
STUDENTS DISCUSSED THE incident and decided the girl's first mistake was losing her temper. She should not have allowed herself to become aroused by the clerk's voice. She should have attempted to talk calmly with the clerk and ask why the leaflet had been taken from her. If the clerk refused to speak, or continued to insult her, it would have been better for her to leave politely and return another day, making a special effort to be friendly to the clerk who had abused her.
The students joked about the absurd effort of city officials to maintain segregation by closing city parks rather than conform to a court order calling for integrated parks. They laughed about the removal of chairs and tables from
public libraries since recent integration there. The absence of these facilities prevents Negroes and whites from sitting together, but the Negroes declared they would "outstand" the segregationists. Even closed parks and tableless libraries provide hope and mark progress for the Negro.
DURING THE student workshop, two detectives entered the room and observed for 20 or 30 minutes. As recently as three years ago, these same two men might have made arrests at the gathering, which included two whites as well as the Negroes. Now they are only a reminder of scare tactics employed many years by Southern segregationists. Several years ago, the presence of these two men would have frightened most participants in the group into leaving. The detectives no longer frighten Negroes; but they at least serve the subtle purpose of reminding the Negro that if he gets into trouble, he can expect law officers to be against him.
Actually the end of segregation will free many Southern whites from bondage as severe as that which chains the Negro. Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Durr, a white couple in Montgomery, have very few close friends in their city because of their convictions on racial equality.
Not long ago, Mrs. Durr helped organize an inter-racial prayer group. The group met regularly in Montgomery churches to worship and study together, but they soon met opposition from the White Citizen's Council. The council took down license numbers of the cars women drove to one meeting, checked ownership of the cars, and printed the names of participants in a newspaper article. Members of the group began receiving obscene, threatening phone calls, and businesses of their husbands were endangered. The women were forced to disband.
MR. DURR, a Rhodes scholar, studied corporation law at Oxford. Negroes in Montgomery now come to him seeking an attorney to defend them in court. Mr. Durr would rather have the cases taken by younger men who need court experience, but too few lawyers are willing.
Actually little can be done in Southern courts to defend Negroes. Mr. Durr speculates that he has helped Negroes more by
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filing suits against policemen who have treated Negroes brutally. The possibility of winning his cases is very small, but Mr. Durr explained that policemen dislike the bother of a lawsuit, and they especially dread taking the chair while a prosecuting attorney fires questions at them regarding their unnecessary attacks on Negroes. It appears that Mr. Durr's lawsuits have considerably reduced police brutality in Montgomery.
Courageous Negroes and whites in the south experience the pain of segregation each day, but they accept it with the hope and expectation of a mother approaching childbirth. They watch the fruit ripen and understand that suffering may be greatest in the last hours before it is plucked from the tree. But they remain confident that a pregnant South will soon deliver her child, a child they have already named—freedom.
Worth Repeating
The need for new knowledge has not always been fully recognized by the authorities, as the story of Adam and the legend of Prometheus remind us-J. Robert Oppenheimer
As Mr. Stevenson discovered, the support of Harvard is not a sure sign of inevitable victory in a Presidential campaign.James Reston
Society has become a great salesroom—and a network of rackets; the gimmick of success becomes the yearly change of model, as in the mass-society fashion becomes universal.-C. Wright Mills
I have seldom seen one of these young men (social scientists) in a condition of genuine intellectual puzzlement. And I have never seen any passionate curiosity about a great problem, the sort of curiosity that compels the mind to travel anywhere and by any means, to remake itself if necessary, in order to find out. These young men are less restless than methodical; less imaginative than patient. . . Listening to their conversations, trying to gauge the quality of their curiosity, one finds a deadly limitation of mind. —C. Wright Mills
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