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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Oct. 30, 1963
Human Document
(Editor's Note: The letter below was written by a young Negro in the U.S. Air Force to Ralph McGill, editor of the Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution. McGill has long supported the Negro cause in his newspaper.)
Dear Mr. McGill: After watching you on television on June 11 following the telecasting of the Alabama espisode I decided I would write you a letter. I am a Negro currently serving in the Air Force and I am from the South (N.C.). I have always been proud of my race and the strides we as Negroes have made and are making but I must confess that I had very little pride in being an American. You must find this quite hard to believe. I do not consider myself an extremist and I deplore such organizations as the Black Muslims as you must certainly deplore the Ku Klux Klan.
Until recently I felt nothing towards the white race, neither hate nor love. Even though I suffered numerous indignities as a Negro youth growing up in the South I did not hate; I was confused and could not understand why the color of one's skin made him superior or inferior. But as I grew older my confusion changed into a feeling of distrust and finally dislike but not hate. When I read of incidents taking place in other Southern states such as the murder of Emmet Till and his murderers being allowed to go free, or when a Negro prisoner accused of rape was dragged from his cell and murdered in broad daylight, or when a Negro girl is raped by six white soldiers and they get suspended jail terms of 18 months, when in a similar case the woman was white and the attackers Negro they were all put to death, I felt that a gross miscarriage of justice had occurred and true I felt I should hate all white persons but this feeling was short lived.
I did not really begin to hate your race, Mr. McGill, until I saw pictures of Negro women and children being bitten by police dogs and being battered by fire hoses. I felt a consuming hatred which stripped away any feeling of national pride that I might have had. Members of my race have died to protect this country. What did they die for? Did they die in vain? Did they die so that their children and their children's children would
be forever discriminated against? Did they die for a country safe so that the Bull Connors, George Wallaces and Governor Barnetts would be free to persecute their children? Is a Negro death on the battlefield justified by the type of society we are forced to live in?
During World War II both white and Negro soldiers died together on the battlefield fighting an intruder who would have destroyed our way of life, or should I say your way of life and the kind I was some day hoping to have. Who were these intruders? The Germans and Japanese, of course. Now a German or Japanese can come to this country and move freely in a society from which I am barred. What type reasoning dictates this?
I ask you these questions, Mr. McGill, because you are white and you are a Southerner. I would like your side of this issue explained to me.
I know that we as Negroes have a long way to go and that we should be prepared to assume the responsibilities as well as the privileges of first class citizenship. There is an untapped reservoir of talent in the Negro race. As soon as the Negro can escape the stigma of being a second class citizen, as soon as it is found that he can do more than dance and play baseball, or to be a house maid or elevator operator, the faster his talents can be discovered and guided into the proper channels, the sooner we will as a race be able to make some concrete contributions to our country. Did you ever think of what a country might have had if this racial question had been settled years ago as it should have been?
I know that being a moderate or liberal in the South has its drawbacks, but being a Negro is far worse.
It will only be through the efforts of men committed to doing what is right that this problem can be solved. Demonstrations won't do it and police dogs can't do it either. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your efforts to bring about a solution to this problem. If we can have enough men of commitment on both sides there would be no Black Muslims, Ku Klux Klan, Adam Clayton Powell or George Wallace.
About These Athletes—
High school athletics is the most overemphasized institution in American society today. It is my contention that instead of building strong bodies and keen competitors as advertised, they are for the most part making a national physique of fat-heads and jelly-bellies.
The fat-heads are the young athletic heroes and the jelly-bellies are the young worshippers. Eventually—around the age of 25—the two rendezvous around some middle ground—the throat (a strong siney organ, the most notable function of which—in the athletic world—is to holler with at the game).
TAKE THE AVERAGE high school hero—call him Easy Ed. He has poured his guts out from age 5 up to get the big holler from the stands. What's more, he's working on sports that will be as beneficial to him in later life as a banana in the ear—show me a man past 25 who is running at the track, shooting baskets at the gym, or hitting the tackle dummy down at the stadium and I'll show you an idiot or a saint, the latter being as secrese as brick-layers at the Stork Club.
Easy Ed gets a distorted view of society. He may sit by a genius in class, but to our hero the genius is "that squirrelly guy." Big and smiling, a friend to all, our Ed learns that he isn't expected to contribute anything useful to others except his athletics. All he has to do is play at the current sport of kings and let the world slide by, which it does as soon as it can find a new hero, leaving Easy Ed discarded and unloved and talking his head off to hark back to the good old days.
Now the worshippers—Lil' Albert. Albert is a hearty fellow who wants to be one of us, or one of you, or one of them. When he was a kid, Albert was no great shakes at basketball, but he was good at kick-the-can and annie-annie-over. He would go down the slippery slide backwards if it wasn't a rainy day, and the girls squealed almost as loudly when he pushed the merrygo-round as when our future fat-head did. Come high school time, Li'l Albert didn't make it—maybe he grew slowly or his mama wanted him to play a clarinet in the band. Now Albert is on the side-lines at the game.
BUSTY LITTLE SUZIE MacAfee is leading the cheers and there's nothing for him to do but holler till the arteriosus grandus pops in his forehead. Can't look like a bad sport. He sits and cheers and his belly sags.
And that, precisely, is why the system stinks. The physically endowed are encouraged to participate in sports too strenuous to be of lasting value. The masses are expected to genuflect before the hero. The net effect is a nation which talks about athletics instead of participating in them.
However, Albert's advantage over Ed should by this time be obvious—he has a head start on exercising the organ making the greatest contribution to the athletic world—the tough, sinewy throat.
Archery, hiking, sailing, golf, and other such sports are overlooked in high school sports education programs, and the person who happens to learn one of these to carry with him in later life is lucky indeed.
But, perhaps this is just as well. We Americans might not have anything to talk about, and then the throat—the mighty, sinewy throat—would become as flabby as the rest of the national physique.
Tom Coffman
"Why Should I Debate Rockefeller?"
BOOK REVIEWS
THE REINS OF POWER, by Bernard Schwartz (Hill and Wang, $4.50).
Without pretending to do an all-compassing job on the Constitutional history of the United States, Bernard Schwartz has provided for the new Hill and Wang series on American history what is at least an illuminating essay. It is a small book, but one with interesting perceptions.
Schwartz, for example, gives somewhat more background on the legalistic backgrounds of the American system and less discussion of developments. To him, English constitutional history is highly important, but not merely because of the platitudinous name of John Locke. Sir Edward Coke, he feels, may be even more significant, for Coke's views were not academic speculation but the law of the land, and as a judge himself he handed down important pronouncements on the law.
Beyond this early phase, which Schwartz calls "Seedtime," the predictable history unfolds—the American Revolution, the fight over the Constitution, the important decisions of Marshall and the beginnings of judicial review, the pre-Civil War disputes over state rights and nullification, the crisis of the war itself, the high-riding Gilded Age days of Congress supreme, the early 20th century power of the Supreme Court, the revolution of the thirties and the ascendancy of the executive, and the recent series of decisions that culminated in Baker v. Carr on legislative apportionment.
Of this last case, Schwartz suggests that the court may have handed down a decision that will lead to revitalization of the legislature itself, a thought that obviously has not occurred to the many who have damned the high bench for daring to encroach once more upon political property of the states.—CMP
THE SANDBOX and THE DEATH OF BESSIE SMITH, by Edward Albee (Signet, 60 cents).
These are two one-act plays by the playwright now riding so high because of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Albee is a man in his early thirties who made his debut with "The Zoo Story" and followed it with "The American Dream" and "Virginia Woolf."
"The Sandbox" is a little episode taking place at the beach where Mommy and Daddy are shown preparing Grandma for her burial. "The Death of Bessie Smith" is based on a newspaper account of the death of the great blues singer in Memphis. And a third play, "Fam and Yam," a dialogue between two playwrights, is included.
Al Sh
University of Kansas student newspaper
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