The Negro in the South: II

The failure of Northerners to approach Negro-White relations in the South without quivering emotion and much finger-shaking has more often impaired better understanding than furthered it. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has several times done considerable harm.

An example of how the NAACP has lost much respect in Mississippi, among even the most fair-minded people, was its recent handling of the Till case. It loosed a stream of vicious accusations and threats, indicting officials, newspapers, ministers, and the so-called "better citizens" of the entire state. Moreover, it began its accusations as soon as the body was found, despite the fact that every person and organization in the state let out a cry against the murder. People from all types of occupations were asked about the Till case, and no one came near condoning such a brutal and senseless crime. The NAACP's continuing protest, however, turned the outrage over the crime into an outrage over its won accusation.

Two weeks after the crime, in Money, the scene of the murder, an already-growing reaction was setting in against outside interference. A good many intelligent people here feel that the NAACP deliberately aggravated the local populace in order to create a propaganda martyr, on the assumption that if the two defendants, Milam and Bryant, were convicted, its crusade would suffer. This indictment may be untrue, but the NAACP could not have gotten better results, even if it had tried. The obvious injustice of its accusations against the state has made residents more convinced than ever that they are right and that all Northern liberals are lying.

Just criticism of the Till trial did, of course, exist, Held as it was in an almost exclusively agricultural county, the trial could not avoid having a jury composed of dirt farmers, who have had less exposure to post-war shifts in attitude than any other group in the state. This fact was noted from the onset and motivated the prosecution's legal maneuvers to have the trial moved to an adjacent county where industry has brought a softening of racial ill-feeling.

The local sheriff is notorious for his Negrophobia and did little to obtain evidence. The state moved in quickly and sincerely, however, and indicted the two white men (something which might not have been done at all some years ago). It then went about trying to get a conviction. The two prosecuting attorneys made every attempt to get witnesses and evidence, and the judge was unanimously praised for his fairness, especially in having closed hearings on the racially tender issue of Till's supposed remarks.

The fact remains that there was not enough evidence for a conviction. Such a verdict would have been miscarriage of justice. That the body was never positively identified is due to the antiquated methods of the Mississippi police, which has never been noted for scientific medico-legal methods. What is surprising, however, is that the NAACP, which certainly knew that the body's identification would be the crucial issue, did not use some of its own resources to pin down the identification. It may have been, of course, that such was done, and that no positive evidence (dental records, X-rays, etc.) could be obtained.

The important thing is that the state, the legally constituted authority, acted in all apparent good faith to see that justice was done, but that as soon as the crime was announced, the NAACP began a heated denunciation of the state and its political morality. This kind of shot-gun slander produced the predictable result--the local citizens began to turn their condemnation from the murder of a Negro boy to the NAACP. This reaction was so strong that the subsequent acquittal of Milam and Bryant in another trial for kidnapping, in which the state's case was much stronger, appears to have been a direct expression of the "Keep them Northerners out" attitude.