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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, April 10, 1962
An Interpretative Report
The Negro's Fight Against Discrimination
By James E. Alsbrook
(Editor's note: The following article was prompted by the recent fires in a newly purchased Negro home in Kansas City and was written after several days of investigation. What worse is an attempt to discover what home of the current trends and developments are within the Negro community itself in the fight against discrimination.)
KANSAS CITY, KANASAS — Four separate fires apparently set by segregationists on April 2 did $1,000 damage to the Vinyard Woods home of Lorenzo Worten, a Negro who was preparing to move into that all-white residential area of nearby Kansas City, Missouri.
"Whoever set those fires was trying to burn a ghost — the old Negro stereotype has practically ceased to exist," a Negro doctor told me as I sat in his office the next day.
We were discussing the new method Negroes here are using to fight racial discrimination.
This new method — according to sociologists and Negro business and civic leaders — is creating a new image of the Negro: the respectable, well-to-do business or professional man who is making a good contribution to society.
- High standards of personal performance that will earn admiration and help create a more desirable image.
- MORE SUBTLE than NAACP law-suits and more diplomatic than sit-ins, this new method calls for:
- The getting and using of money in ways that will reflect credit upon the Negro and combat racial discrimination.
The success of this new method is reflected in a statement made by Ellsworth Green, executive secretary of the Chamber of Commerce:
"Negro chemists and engineers are being quietly integrated into local industry, and manufacturing plants and unions are tending to upgrade persons solely on the basis of their ability."
This trend is explained by Felix
Moos, KU sociologist and anthropologist:
"Whereas in bygone days the exposure of whites to Negroes was most frequently a master-servant relationship, the role of the Negro has changed so that now he is frequently a public official, a physician or a businessman whose very responsibilities and performances invalidate the Uncle Tom stereotype."
Even the Black Muslims, a fanatical sect of Negro segregationists who oppose NAACP and interracial harmony, say more prestige and money are desirable for the Negro. The Muslims, however, would use these tools to conquer the white man.
SINCE PRESTIGE and money are most effective only when the basic voting and educational rights are practiced, the use of them here can be either the final stage of the Negro's ascent into first class citizenship or the first stage in the development of a black fascism led by a talented Negro elite.
Local leaders, white and Negro,
say now that civil rights battles are
being won — the Negro is being
thrown into fair competition with
whites and judged on merit. And the
community is saying, "All right —
the barriers are coming down! Show
us what you can do."
Following repeated victories in competition with all other high schools in the metropolitan area, those Sumner students who had lacked confidence gradually became convinced that they had whatever brains it took to keep pace with white students.
Reaction to this challenge was made by local Negroes in the early 1950s and is shown in the aftermath of Sumner High School victories in the Science Fair.
This new confidence was buttressed when they saw their friends compete successfully for high honors at KU, UCLA, the University of Chicago, Yale and elsewhere.
Infecting older Kansas Citians, this
confidence and desire for personal prestige resulted in the training and departure of many local Negroes to other parts of the country. They are lawyers like Arthur McLendon of Chicago, businessmen like William P. Grayson of New York, physicians like Melvin Jenkins of Howard University and teachers like Dr. Nicholas L. Gerren of Houston.
Some like James H. Browne, president of the Crusader Life Insurance Company, Cordell D. Meeks, Commissioner of Wyandotte County and the Robbins brothers, suburban area developers, remained in Kansas City.
THESE AND other achievement-conscious Negroes base their claims for prestige and equality not upon the fact they are law-abiding citizens but upon the fact that by dint of their accomplishments they are more valuable as citizens than are the average American white men who get better treatment.
There is also a growing number of employers who simply do not believe in racial discrimination, a growing number of state governments that practice non-discrimination in employment and a growing tendency on the part of the federal government to hire and upgrade without respect to race and require the same practice on the part of companies having government contracts.
A Negro educator in Kansas City summed up the new Negro attitude this way:
Lonneuer Pemberton, executive secretary of the Urban League of Kansas City, says the change of community attitude that made possible this increased Negro desire for personal accomplishment resulted from several things: The Kansas and Missouri State Fair Employment Practice laws, Federal government regulations, Supreme Court decisions and the altruistic activities of churches—all of which evolved in an atmosphere of protest created by the NAACP and the sit-ins.
"Winning theoretical and legal
equality of opportunity is all right, but we must go one step ahead of white people in order to reach equality with them. We must produce ACES to go with their KINGS.
THIS IDEA IS already reflected in Negro society. There the word "doctor" is magic and the title is avidly sought after, whether it is Ph.D., D.D., Ed.D., M.D. or any kind of D. The prestige of personal attainment, they believe, will justify their being treated as first class citizens and do what no Supreme Court edict can do: destroy the myth that the Negro is inherently inferior.
The founding of the Douglass State Bank, the Twin City Federal Savings & Loan Association and the Crusader Life Insurance Company—all owned and operated by Negroes—provided new and sympathetic financial resources for the ghettoo Negro desiring a different location for his home or business.
The use of money to fight racial discrimination in Kansas City is a post-war development. Negligible in 1946, the strength of local anti-discrimination money has grown to millions and is getting bigger.
"Before Douglass State was founded in 1947, there was a general reluctance of the financial community to lend money for projects in minority group areas," said H. W. Sewing, president of the bank.
"So Douglass State took by default what amounted to a captive market," he said, and cut a pathway to success—a pathway in which its business customers are moving ahead.
Now the "gentlemen's agreement" which gave white financial institutions a veto power over Negro business venture and home ownership has been broken. And some Negro business and professional people have developed their competence and resources to the extent that they are competing along with white men in all neighborhoods.
FINANCIAL CLIQUES are developing and they use the power of
money to break down racial barriers. One such group is the Midwesterners, a social organization, who recently outbid several white groups to buy a country club site overlooking Wyandotte County Lake.
Dr. Carl M. Peterson, former president of the club, said of the purchase, "Money is color-blind and doesn't give a damn whose pocket it's in."
The Brentwood Hills suburban development with some homes in the $50,000 and $80,000 class manifests the aspirations of an emerging group of money-wise Negroes. Others are in savings clubs, investment clubs, and mutual fund plans now popular in Kansas City.
The stock market has begun to interest Negroes more than ever. In one case a young professional man has pyramided $8,000 to over $56,000 in the few years he has been out of military service. He is a willing contributor to civil rights programs, and has been offered a position as stock salesman by a downtown Kansas City, Mo., brokerage firm.
There are a half-dozen "business clubs" whose tight-lipped members are looking for and getting "good money-making deals" which include the buying and selling of white-occupied real estate without the tenants knowing their landlords are Negroes.
THESE PEOPLE believe the power of money earned in fair competition will cause them to deserve and get first class citizenship.
The opposite view is taken by the anti-Christian Black Muslim sect. They say no amount of prestige or respectability or money will persuade the white man that the Negro is his equal. They say the white man is inherently evil and that manhood in America is possible only if you are "free, WHITE and twenty-one." They advocate preparation for a race war in which it would be better for the Negro to "die like a man rather than live like a dog."
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