Wilkins Urges North to Reconsider Attitudes Towards Negro Problems

Northerners must not allow the South to succeed in absolving the guilt of 75 years through "its vicious, dirty, lying campaign" of propaganda, Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, told an informal audience last night in the Littauer Lounge.

Many cities of the North are now faced with a vast increase in their Negro populations, caused by the mass in-migration of Southern Negroes and the exodus of the middle classes to suburban areas, Wilkins said. "After mistreating Negroes for decades," he explained, "Southerners are now shipping them north and saying 'you take care of them."

According to Wilkins, housing is one of the greatest problems faced by the urban Negro. "I cannot think of a Northern city without a Negro ghetto," he said.

Greatest Problem

Wilkins feels that "a whole complex of factors" ties the Negro to his original mid-town settlement. "Young couples are often disillusioned upon learning of the extreme difficulty in having a new home financed." He cited instances in which banks have refused to deal with Negro clients.

The Southern philosophy on race relations must be rejected for the United States to retain world leadership, he claimed. "We can't run America like the South has run the South."