St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1959-11-06


elimination from American life.
This is welcome exhibition of
VigOr and plain talk. IL IL is fol-
lowed up with fortnight action on
civil rights legislation in the next
session of the Congress, the COP
might win back some Negro support
that has been disillusioned by the
operations of the Dixie bloc in coop
GRAFTON with timid Republicans, par
ticularly with respect to public
school desegregation.
SCHOOL ISSUE
The overriding issue, the one
which stirs Negro citizens from
is this one OF public school desegre-
cation. This is so because, five and
one-half years after the Supreme
Court decision, 100000 Negro chill
dren are still being forced to attend
raciaily segregated schools. This is
preme Court and the bold denial OF
Negro citizens constitute at once a
test of the citizenship states Of Ne
gro Americans and a far more i'm
portant test of the American DEM
OCratic system.
In more than a theoretical sense,
the rights of all Americans are i'm
periled by the present situation. 1t
is one thing to mark time for
twenty or thirty years on, say, a
St Lawrence Seaway, and quite
another to mark time on the grant
ing of the constitutional rights of
citizens after an adjudication by the
highest court in the nation
CAN'T IGNORE FLOUTING
White Americans who properly
put their trust in the Constitution
ana the courts cannot ignore the
flOuttng OF a court decision on Ne
gro rights by certain sections of
a No al l..
courts are to be defied. The cum
ming and the strong then take over;
the weak are beaten down; and DEM
ocracy becomes a dictatorship.
1t Is not denied that the segregat-
ed schools for Negro children have
oeen-and are-inferiOr, A frantic
attempt is being made to do in a
year or two what should have been
done fifty years ago, insofar as ply
steal plant is concerned. Southerners
viii talk about a new school for
Negroes here and there, but these
shiny exceptions only point up the
shabby general picture.
The simple truth is that Negro
children are being cheated of an
opportunity to prepare themselves.
equally with other children, for life
in the space age. Every opportunity
they are now denied, every year
they are delayed, will cripple them
TeSDOnSlDlll-
ties of citizenship in 1879.
Some progress has been made,
yes. However, in the hard-core Deep
South states of South Carolina,
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and
Louisiana there has been no change
whatsoever on the elementary and
high school levels, and only in
Louisiana has there been desegre ga
ton, on the college and university
level
A breakthrough occurred in Vir-
ginia where the massive resist
ance" policy was broken. Four Vir-
ginia cities now have some desegre-
cation, but device for delay and
for holding desegregation to a
trickle has received a limited bless
ing from the Supreme Court 1t is
the pupil placement law under which
school boards assign pupils to
schools on bases other than race.
II a parent wishes to challenge
such an assignment, a maze Of ad-
ministrattve procedure must be fol-
lowed before an appeal to the courts
can be had
The Supreme Court has held
that such laws are not uncOnstI-
tutiORRI on their faces, and that
only the demonstrated adnnInIstra-
ton Of them on n racial basis can
call forth court action and pos
stbie inVnlldatIOn.
The burden, financial and psy-
Geological, of challenging this de-
vice falls upon the Negro parent.
once again the whole heart-rending
procedure of poor citizens having to
scrape together their meager re-
sources. resist the enormous pres
sures of the hostile white commun-
ity. and battle endlessly for what
has been declared to be their right
under the Constitution, must be
started.
The pressures must not be min
imized only this week we received
in the NAACP office news of the
imminent foreclosure of two farms
in a certain Southern state and the
firing from his job Of an NAACP
president in another Southern state
because the parties concerned had
sought transfers for their children
to segregated schools.
Coupled with this pressure on in
dividuals is the concerted effort Of
southern states through special leg
islatiOn to prevent the NAACP from
offering legal or financial aid to
those who fight for an opportunity
for their children.
l am sure I do not have to tell
you that we shall press on. The
NAACP intends firmly to assist the
parents who request our aid We
urge them to request it. While
campaigning on the local, individual
front. we intend to keep up the long
and difficult struggle to get the
Congress to enact civil rights legis-
latiOn which will empower the Fed
eral government to enter these
cases of public school segregation
1t seems hard to believe that our
great government which the rest
of the world regards as the hope of
free men, which other peoples en-
vision as the champion OF the Free
World, should stand, fumbling and
mute, while seventeen millions of
its own citizens are humIliated,
bounded and cheated in defiance Of
a ruling of the highest court in the
land.
GOVERNMENT MUST MOVE
The government must move. II
conditions in Pakistan and Wet
Nam are grave enough to demand
the attention Of Washington, con-
ditions in the Deep South should
certainly receive more than technI-
cal tight-rOpe walking.
The struggle to achieve this ac-
ton and to correct the evils I have
touched upon are part OF the Free
dom campaign which this dinner of
the st. Paul branch marks tonight.
And the freedom we Of the NAACP
seek Is not alone for ourselves, but
for all disadvantaged Americans
and for the vindication Of the glor-
ious promise our nation must offer
in the troubled and dangerous world
OF our time.