St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1959-02-13

They now seek to subvert the pub
lie opinion of North. East and
West to the segregationist view.
OF course, they don't call it that.
They refer to it as education in
states rights, limitation of judicial
power. and other euphoniOus terms.
But what they mean is the preser-
walton of a caste system in the
South. Under one name or another,
your aid-you non-Southeners-
your aid is now being actively
sought. It's an old story-Confed-
crates capturing Yankees.
The movement to convert you
is well financed and well organ
lied. Certain states have their
propaganda bureaus financed by
public funds as we'll as by anti
labor money and reactionary sub
sides, They pour out pamphlets by
the hundreds of thousands. They
send speakers on foreign missions.
They flatter and fawn upon North
ern papers or writers who abet
their plan. -
This effort should not be taken
lightly. Already certain Northern
columnists, magazines and news
papers follow the segregationist
line. The effort to limit the jur-
isdiction of the Supreme Court
failed by one vote in the Senate.
And. most unkindest cut of all, the
Chief Justices of the State Su-
preme Courts gave that effort
their implied support.
There is something quite per-
suasive in this new Southern ap-
proach to the rest of the nation.
In the first place, the rest of the
nation hasn't perfectly solved its
own indignation problem. Our sense
of generosity finds expression in
the twin ideas, Who am I to tell
you how to run your affairs?' and
I can appreciate fully what you
are up against in the South And,
lamentably, there are many Amer
leans in all sections Of the country
who are not democratic at heart.
They listen with a sympathetic
ear.
This invasion of the North
a kind of second march on Gettys-
burg presents one of the anomalies
of the times. This is the age of the
sputnik. Each day the range of our
interests is extended. Each day we
become more acutely aware of the
inter-dependence of men upon each
other. We become more conscious
of involvement of our own de-
stinies with the destinies of men
in the worlds remotest corners.
There is daily borne in upon US
the essential unity and indivisibili-
ty of mankind with the result that
what affects one affects all
In such a context, how like
voice from the Dark Ages is the
white supremacists whimpering
plea that you in the North have
no concern with what happens to
your Negro brothers of the South!
That you have no license to be
heard! That your endeavor to in
fluence the Southern situation is
impertinent meddling in a matter
of only local interest and signific-
ance!
Certainly you will not fall for
that argument. Only one far gone
in schizophrenia can embrace at
the same time a sense of interna-
tional civic responsibility and the
provincialism of the segregation
philosophy.
You who share the worlds re
vulsion at the Russian treatment
of Boris Pasternak will hardly re-
main Indifferent to the stern fate
of hundreds of lesser Pasternaks
in the South who think and write
and teach and preach and speak
at their peril.
There is. then. this trend, this
effort to sell the segregation cause
to the on-Southerner. Beware of
its soft seductions."
Helen Fuller, herself Southern
born and raised and an able an
alyst of current social and political
developments, has cited chapter
and verse to the same effect in
her article in the New Republic
for January 20, 1859, The Segre-
gationists Go North" in which she