Jackson advocate., 1963-06-22
Time For Negroes To Start Being
Americans

From up IN New York City comes the news
this week that Attorney Robert L. Carter Chief
Counsel for the NAACP, has objected to plan pro-
posed by the City Department of Education to
transport Negro students from one district to an
other to achieve kind of equality in public
school ntegration, for the reason that Negro stu
dents would spend most of their time in school
buses riding from district to another, and in
stead of the plan proposed by the. city education
department, is demanding a crash program to bring
the schools in Harlem, solid Negro community, up
to equal the standard for schools in other commun-
tiles and districts of the city.
The opinion of Attorney Carter, because of the
organization that he represents, in this time of
crisis in relations in this country, should be
of special interest and to all thinking peo-
pie whether they live in the north in the SOUTH
who recognize the crisis reached in race re-
lations in this country having begun to develop
with the 1854 decision of the United States Su-
preme Court in the public school integration cases.
The cases having been brought on by the NAACP
in changing from it's campaign for recondition of
Negro equality under the law, to one now demand
ing integration of Negroes by law.
Despite the undoubted weight of the effect of
widespread objection to integration of the public
schools below the college level in both the north
and the south in helping to bring about the current
crisis in relations in this country, much of the
responsibility for said crisis rest also with those
organizations that continually enter their pleas and
demands for Negroes as special case, as special
people, among all the other racial and ethnic groups
that make up the American population, and proud
ly call themselves Americans.
Looking at the condition of Negro schools in
New Yorks Harlem so pointedly brought into TO-
Gus by Attorney Carters demand, we insist that
the time has come for those organizations repre-
senting and leading Negroes to start pleading for
the Negro American, and to start urging the
Negro to act like, and think of himself an Amer
ican insisting at the time that as an Amer-
can, more than any other thing, including in
tegration by law, Negroes should be defended and
protected from discrimination in the ALLEGATION and
distribution of public money for education, and
other purposes designed to raise the standard of
American citizenship.
We take the position now, that Negro is
American, and that whether in New York or in
Mississippi, school in Negro community, peoped
only by Negro students, unmarried by wanton dis
elimination, is just much American school
one in a community people by all white students;
and look forward therefore to the New York City
authorities responding to Attorney Carter's de-
mand, as did the state of Mississippi in moving TO-
ward equalization and the abolition of dscrimi-
nation until coming to a standst while weighing
the effects of the demand for integration by law.
In conclusion we see a continuing crisis in
race relations in this country that will have in
creasing harsh effects on the progress and well
being of Negroes; crisis that will not pass until
we as Negros ceased to look upon ourselves as just
Negroes and cease to demand from others those
things that and are capable of obtaining
for ourselves as American citizens