St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1943-05-14

Negroes who met recently in Dur |
ham in an attempt to bring some |
order and reason into the unsettled
field of race relations in the South. |
This statement outlined the Negroes |
aspirations for political, economic
and educational equality; then,
turning to the major question, it
said, eve are fundamentally op-
posed to the principle and practice
of compulsory segregation in our
American society,"" but it acknowl-
edged the strength and age Of
these patterns of segregation"
From this point it continued to fur
nish a thorough outline of the
Southern Negroes goals andmethods
of procedure in industry, politics,
education, agriculture and other
fields. The effect of this statement
has been to relieve the fears Of a
large section Of the white South
that the Negro might attempt some
revolutionary political coup, under
cover of the war, to abolish segre-
CATION, but at the same time, with
great skill, it declared itself funda-
mentally against the principle Of
segregation and thus has left a
basis for operations against this
primary and fundamental injustice
when the war is over and wartime
fears and excitements have ebbed
from the high-tide mark which
they reached about the time Of the
Durham conference in the fall.
Most of the Negro newspapers
wrote approvingly of the Durham
conference. They would do well
to adopt the Durham line as their
own policy toward the Southern
white people. It is a far cry from
the Booker T. Washington line
which accepted permanent humility
and segregation as a basis for race
relations. On the other hand it
gives the Negro possible goals to
work for during the war, and fur
nishes a positive program rather
than one of vague and negative Bit
terness. The strength of the Dur
ham statement is its honesty in re-
fusing to accept the principle of
segregation, and its realism in ad-
hitting segregation to be an estab-
lished fact, a deeply rooted South
ern institution too substantial and
too much in the forefront of the
thoughts of white Southerners to-
day to be successfully resisted by
Southern Negroes.
The fault Of overcompensation
grows out Of the fact that Negro
newspapers are m oney- making
businesses: their first function is
to put out a readable, and salable,
product. Negro publishers are apt
to be primarily business men whose
interest in race welfare is secondary
to their interest in selling news
papers. It is not they, but the men
they hire, who make their papers
worth while; the editors, the col
umnists, the reporters. These are
the men who are qualified to speak
of the sufferings and aspirations
of Negroes, for they are still part
of the race. Some Of their pub
fishers have been rich men so long
that they have almost forgotten
what it feels like to be a Negro.
The only one with whom I have
become personally acquainted is as
pleasant individually as his coun-
terparts in the white publishing
field. But he is also a patronage
politician, political reactionary
and an anti-Semite. And I soon
saw it was a travesty to speak to
him about race issues. The fact
that he had had to battle his way
up against ruthless odds made him
like this, but it did not change the
fact that he was what he was. He
was exactly like the majority of
white newspaper publishers. His
newspaper was guilty Of certain
faults and excuses which paral-
leled those of the average white
newspaper. He had rounded up a
good staff of writers and for that
reason his newspaper was some
what above average, by both white
and Negro newspaper standards.
Furthermore, its big issue was not
anti-iberal, anti-labor, pro-big-
business tub thumping-the pat
tern Of most white newspapers
but advancing the cause of an
abused minority in a democracy.
This gave it a certain intrinsic
worth which redeemed many of the
faults which grew out Of its COM
mercial character. And it seems
to me that this is not an unusual
pattern in the Negro press.
Thomas Sanction.