The Augusta Courier

STRICTLY PERSONAL

By ROY V. HARRIS

Southern leaders and Southern people have gone to sleep again.

Once again, they are sitting down and twiddling their thumbs.

Because we have made a lot of progress in our fight to preserve the Southern way of life and to restore constitutional government, they think the fight has been won.

Then too, the NAACP and the wildcat liberals are holding their fire for the time being.

Just because there isn't a lot of hullabaloo going on over the country, more National Guard troops and more soldiers being called out and more law suits being filed, people are being lulled into a sense of false security.

THE AUGUSTA HERALD, a daily newspaper published in Augusta, Georgia, on Monday, May 12, 1958, had this to say:

Those who like to lull themselves into believing that the school integration issue is dead or dying simply because of recent events in the North, or because the drumfire in the South has abated, should have their minds disabused.

The issue is quiescent-yes. But dead—by no means so.

The news some of which looks, on the surface, favorable to the South—bears this out.

The President's decision to defederalize the Arkansas National Guard unit which has enforced racial integration in Little Rock's Central High School during most of the present school term, sounds good on the surface.

Unfortunately, however, the troops are simply being released on a sort of extended summer furlough, subject to the good behavior of Little Rock citizens and law enforcement officers at the beginning of the fall school term.

In Montgomery, Alabama, a three-man federal jury has refrained from striking down the state's anti-integration law only upon a technicality. What would seem to be a strategic victory for segregationist forces is, in actuality, only a tactical stalemate. The court's own ruling has opened the way for further attack on the law, and going beyond that, has carefully pointed out what it regards as the law's weakest point.

Again in Little Rock, a federal court has fixed June 3 as the date for a hearing on the city school board's petition to suspend integration at Central High. The hearing was rescheduled from April 28 at the request of attorneys for Negro students who are plaintiffs in the original Little Rock integration suit.

Little Rock has had but little luck in its dealings with federal courts on the matter of integration, and there is but the palest hope that the court will now reverse itself, even on the plea that numerous racial clashes have resulted from the forced integration.

And in Congress, the so-called "liberal" pro-integrationists are poised with their heavy artillery unlimbered. They have committed themselves to a more stringent "civil rights" bill this session, and only a flood of urgent legislation before adjournment this summer can forestall them. Meanwhile, they are doing their earnest best to dry-gulch the Jenner bill, the only piece of legislation to make any progress thus far towards curbing the Supreme Court.

These do not strike us as the characteristics of a dead issue—or even a very sick one.

We fervently wish it were dead and well-buried; that matters were once again at the 1953 status quo; that the South might be

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left to conduct its own affairs peaceably under the Constitution of the United States.

Unfortunately, however that just isn't the way matters stand.

Now THE AUGUSTA HERALD has very appropriately summed the situation up.

This is just the lull before the storm. As a matter of fact, "storm" isn't the word for it. It would be better to say "tornado".

The Herald is right. We can take no consolation from Eisenhower's withdrawing the troops from Little Rock.

Don't forget that he has ordered the troops removed the day after school closes and not before.

The government has spent $4,577,496 in keeping eight little Negroes in the Central High School in Little Rock from September until now.

The expenses for the last two months is not included in the figure given above. The figure is more than four and a half million now.

This goes to show how far the government will go and the government will undoubtedly continue to use troops in isolated spots.

The only salvation lies in the fact that there aren't enough troops and enough money to go around and to guard every schoolhouse in the South.

But the spending of all this money at Central High School shows how far the bunch of rascals in Washington are willing to go.

Now, Prince Edward County, in Virginia, has been holding out for four years. Prince Edward County was a party to the original suit when the original Supreme Court decisions were handed down on May 17, 1954.

They still have segregated schools, but the NAACP is planning a drive against Prince Edward County.

On May 6 of this year, Roy Wilkins announced that the NAACP will renew its effort to race mix the people in Prince Edward County, Virginia.

Prince Edward County has planned to close its schools when this happens and they will open up private schools for the white children and let the Negroes look out for themselves.

Wilkins made one statement which I think explains the cause for the lull.

Here's what he said:

"When the chips are down and it gets to be a dirty fight over whether the Negro should press for his rights now, the Northern liberals run for cover."

Now, the truth of it is that very few Northern liberals believe in all this race mixing. Most of them feel as you and I do.

But they are afraid of the Negro vote and consequently they are bowing and scraping to get the Negro vote.

When the Northern liberals saw that race mixing was meeting a solid wall of opposition in the South and that from now on it would take the National Guard, the local police force and or federal troops to force race mixing in the South, they slowed down for a time.

They slowed down also because they found that public sentiment in the North was becoming more favorable to the position of the South.

The NAACP and the Northern liberals also discovered that even with the use of troops there could be no successful race mixing unless the local officials of the community and the governors of the various states were race mixers and ready to use all the force they had to bring about race mixing.

So, the NAACP decided that they would have to register more Negroes to vote and they would have to do more politicking.

So, they retired temporarily from the field of law suits and went in for politics. They are now trying to register more Negroes in the South and to get more of their friends in the South into public office.

They also withdrew until they could go back into the bailiwicks, threaten the Northern liberals and see if they couldn't develop enough political strength to force them to take a more positive stand on race mixing.

Now the NAACP has failed in its effort to get large numbers of Negroes in the South to register to vote.

The NAACP is failing in its efforts to get more of their friends in public office in the South.

So far this year Virginia has already elected and installed a governor who stands flatfootedly for no race mixing. Georgia and South Carolina will follow suit as soon as the elections come off.

It looks as if Alabama is going to elect a strong segregationist for governor there.

There is a chance that Tennessee might come through and elect a governor in sympathy with the Southern way of life.

So, the NAACP will, in my opinion, back away from any great efforts in the South and will make a determined effort to get more representation among the Northern liberals and to get the Northern liberals committed to a policy of forcing race mixing now even if it takes federal bayonets.

Now, all of this shows how foolish we people in the South are to sit

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back and feel that we can now take it easy.

It is no accident that we do not have race mixing in our schools now.

We have kept the pattern of segregation because the white people in the deep South are determined to abandon their schools and to fight to the last ditch to maintain the pattern of segregation.

This lull is giving us time to re-organize, re-group and to plan for a more vigorous campaign than we have ever planned before.

The States' Rights Councils and Citizens' Councils ought to re-organize and become active again.

Unfortunately, it has required some incident like the admission of "Miss Lucy" to the University of Alabama and the calling out of troops at Little Rock to stir Southern people into activity.

This lull means that they are withdrawing to re-group, re-plan and to come back with a stronger effort than ever to force race mixing down your throats.

When they strike again it will be like a tornado hitting you.

So, we had better look out; we had better wake up; we had better organize and get ready to do something.

Some of our own politicians need their backbones stiffened.

Seven of the United States Senators from the South voted against us when it came to confirming a radical to head the Civil Rights Commission.

We have some weak-kneed governors and some that are openly advocating race mixing.

Some of our own people are willing to sell out.

Senator Lyndon Johnson, who led the parade of Southerners against us last week, is a candidate for President.

Senator Estes Kefauver has been a candidate for President for some time and Senator Albert Gore, of Tennessee, hopes to be a Vice Presidential candidate.

Then Senator Bob Kerr, of Oklahoma, has been a candidate for President before and still has ambitions.

Senator Smathers of Florida hopes to be a candidate for Vice President and the governor of his state is openly running for this office.

The Governor of North Carolina is also a candidate for Vice President.

Now every one of these Southern politicians is courting the Northern liberals and the Negroes in an effort to realize their ambitions.

The rascals are willing to sell out their own people, their own states and their own families and daughters for a mess of cheap political pottage.

In Georgia today the immediate danger lies in the hands of the local politicians.

The local politicians have registered practically all of the Negroes that have been registered in Georgia.

Had they let the Negro alone, very few would have registered.

The local politicians are bidding for the Negro vote. They are bowing and scraping to get it.

The time has come in Georgia when we must look after these local politicians who bid for the Negro vote. It is time to quit putting up with them.

We have recently had another election in Richmond County. Both sides openly bid for the Negro vote. Both sides sent speakers out to them offering concessions in return for their votes.

Both sides spent money and bought Negro votes right and left.

There is only one thing that is appropriate for a white man who will join in this effort and that is tar and feathers.

Here's what they do in the counties where they do openly bid for the Negro vote: They set the Negro vote up as the balance of power and then when they become a balance of power the politicians are forced to bow and scrape.

This is the Trojan Horse in our midst today.

There is one remedy only and that is for decent white people to take an oath that they will not vote for or support any candidate for public office who goes out for the Negro vote or either bows and scrapes or buys the Negro vote.

There are a lot of reasons why we should bind strong States' Rights and Citizens'

Council organizations in every county and in every town in the South.

There are a lot of other things that we can and should do.

But the main thing is that it is time to get busy.