The Negro in the South: I

To the casual reader this article may sound one-sided. But most CRIMSON readers do not need to be convinced on the basis evils of white supremacy or the inherent equality of all races. On these racial questions however, they do need to apply the same criterion to propaganda put out by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as they would to any other interest group's, and to lend the South's position the same consideration they give to the Other side in any History of Government course.

It is probably a good sign that today's college student is willing to accept the ultra-liberal word of the NAACP rather than the mouthings of a Talmadge, but this is small consolation to the intelligent Southerner. In point of fact there is no need to accept any extreme. The NAACP just as much as any ultra-conservative group is helping to obscure the true picture in the South and to blur human understanding at a time when, if this country is to solve its racial problem, human understanding has never been so needed. As long as Northern liberals and Negro leaders fail to sympathize with the South's problems (and Southerners similarly refuse to admit to them), this country will be breached and weakened.

If the South is to be criticized, it must be criticized intelligently--that is selectively. To the person being attacked the least exaggeration or misstatement obviates the entire argument. When someone like McCarthy talks about "such atom spies as Fuchs, Pontecorvo, and Oppenheimer," we not only classify McCarthy as a liar or boob for so libeling Oppenheimer, but tend to forge that the other two really were atom spies. Similarly, the grouping of "such Mississippi stalwarts as Bibo, Rankin, and Fielding Wright" makes the average Southerner think that not only is all Northern criticism without basis in fact, but that Bilbo and Rankin were not so bad after all.

To begin to understand the intelligent Mississippian's dislike of immediate integration (not one of the five gubernatorial candidates showed any compromise on this issue in last summer's election primary), one starts with the fact that in this state the Negro is both plentiful and terribly backward, and is thus both a political and social problem. It does no good to blame backwardness on Segregation over the years; this discrimination may be the cause, but its recognition does not wipe out the backwardness.

Living in degrading poverty, with no hope for social or economic advancement, it is small wonder that the Mississippi Negro has little pride or ambition. The most ambitious ones go North (lending some justification to the classic Southern cliche, "You never see an unhappy one"), but it is amazing that more do not. Part of the answer, of course, lies in their family ties here.

But the fact also remains that today's average Mississippi Negro has found the last remaining way to beat Twentieth Century Responsibility. The old Protestant Ethic has passed him by. Even considering his economic position he pays little taxes (92 percent of West Point's taxes are paid by the minority white population); he avails himself of common law marriage, thus avoiding financial and legal responsibility (80 percent of the state's Negro marriages are so contracted); and he is not expected to be a steady employee.

Furthermore, there is a double standard of justice in Mississippi, one for Negroes, the other for whites. That for whites is, with a little more ineptitude, similar to the standard of justice in Massachusetts. That for Negroes is strikingly different, and is apparently predicated on the belief that "Negroes are like that." Crimes among Negroes are terribly wide-spread in West Point, but the police and the newspaper alike ignore them unless the wrong doing becomes habitual. If Negro violations were treated with the same strictness as white, the country jail would have to be tripled in size.

Because of ignorance, poverty, poor sanitation, and moral apathy, Negro disease rate is many times that of the whites. During the last five years here in Clay Country, which is equally divided between the races, there have been 499 gonorrhea cases reported among Negroes to five among whites, 85 Negro case of syphilis and one white. The TB rate is equally high. One cannot blame the Negro for this situation, but on the other hand, neither can one fail to se why white parents are apprehensive about opening the schools to Negroes on any large or immediate basis.

An interesting side commentary on these conditions is the total lack, apparently, of any Negro organization philanthropic or agitative, dedicated to sanitary and social uplift among the Negroes of the South. The NAACP may argue that it is strictly a political organization, yet this hardly absolves it of the responsibility to see that some reform agency exists in the Negro community. --DAVID L. HALBERSTAM, 55

(Mr. Halberstam was Managing Editor of the CRIMSON last year. At present he is the reportorial and photographic staff of the West Point, Miss (pop. 7000) Dally Times-Leader. His analysis of Mississippi politics appeared in a recent issue of the Reporter magazine, and his account of Negro voting is scheduled for next week's issue. This article is the first of a series complied from letter to his brother, Michael J. Halberstam, '53)