Profile in black and white

by Howard H. Quint

The attacks on the NAACP contain many other phases. Among these are the following:

(1) The NAACP is pictured as the Negro counterpart of the white Ku Klux Klan. Such an association would discredit the NAACP, for the attempts to revive the Klan are decried by all except the most radical fringe of white supremacists. White conservatives are determined not to allow the opposition to the Negro to be taken up by radicals who would not only endanger their own dominant position but also completely discredit the white South in the eyes of the nation. A good example of associating the Klan and the NAACP was a statement issued by Federal District Judge Ashton H. Williams when the Edisto Beach case was pending before his court. The two organizations, he said, were “the real enemies to any progress” in the segregation controversy. No progress could be made by South Carolina until both were “wholly eliminated” from the picture. In a severe condemnation of the NAACP, interesting because he might be called upon in the future to hear civil rights cases sponsored by the NAACP, the Judge said:

It must be kept in mind that the rights given to Negroes by the Supreme Court are personal, and no one has a right to persuade them by unlawful threats or otherwise to exercise the rights given them by the Supreme Court. If the Negroes wish to accept segregated schools, or segregated beaches, parks and so forth, it is legally wrong for anyone, by misrepresentation, undue influence, or threats, to force them to seek personal rights given under the Supreme Court decision.[288]

(2) Personal and abusive attacks are made on NAACP leaders. In addition to questioning the sincerity and honesty of purpose of persons prominent in the association, a vicious racism has crept into many of the most extreme attacks. G. L. Ivey referred to Thurgood Marshall as the “mulatto chief counsel for the NAACP.” The writer of a letter to the editor of the Morning News advised the South to “get rid of the NAACP and the ‘halfbreeds.’” “History tells us,” he wrote, “that ‘halfbreeds’ have always been trouble makers. The Bible says that a bastard cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, even unto the tenth generation.”[289]

(3) Blame for originating the state’s race problem is placed solely on the NAACP. W. D. Workman, Jr., stated that responsibility for beginning a “cold war” between the races in the state rested “with the titular Negro leadership, national and state,” by which he meant the NAACP. The Record said the NAACP’s “appeal to the force of the courts to compel the elimination of segregation” created a climate in which “racial cooperation” could not exist.[290]

(4) The NAACP is presented as an enemy of the Negro, existing only on its ability to coerce. The purpose here is to alienate the Negro from the NAACP. Eldridge Thompson, a News and Courier writer, insisted that the Association’s progress was based on “the weapon of fear.” The Negro who did not subscribe to the NAACP was “afraid to be identified,” he claimed. The grip of the Association over the Negro community was so great that opposition could not be organized successfully against it. The reporter concluded that the rank and file Negro had more to fear from the NAACP than the white man. S. Emory Rogers told a Lake City Citizens Council that “our fight is not with the Negroes, they’re our hope, but we’ve got to get them under the correct leadership.... The NAACP is our chief enemy.” State Representative Charles G. Garrett of Greenville County, in supporting the bill to bar NAACP members from state employment, declared that “the NAACP should no longer be allowed to prey upon the Negro people of South Carolina” who are paid by the taxpayers.[291]

(5) The NAACP is pictured as an organization alien to Southern traditions. According to the Record, it was “not a local or indigenous organization.” It was “foreign to every one of the Southern states” and therefore owed no loyalty to them. Governor Timmerman stated that the NAACP was “largely sponsored and financed by white people who are professional Southern haters and alien to the South.” Therefore it was the “duty of every responsible Negro to repudiate the false leadership of the NAACP.”[292]

The NAACP has been the victim, not only of a propaganda campaign, but also of a program of action designed to harass and intimidate its leaders to the point of discouragement and thus stop the pressure for the end of segregation. The most effective portions of this effort have been those undertaken by the state government (discussed in Chapter VII) and the economic boycott popularized by the Citizens Councils. The remainder of the “ranting and panting and wringing and twisting of the South Carolina white professional rabble rousers”[293] has a nuisance value only for the whites and merely postpones the inevitable question facing the state: education or segregation?

In view of the many pronouncements by Southern whites to the effect that the NAACP is a “radical” organization, a brief examination of the association along these lines is necessary. In the last analysis, the labeling of any organization as “radical” depends upon the light in which it is considered. If the premise is accepted that segregation of the races in the public schools is a positive good and that the abolition of this policy would result in disaster, then the NAACP is “radical.”

However, there are many indications that the organization was and is not radical when viewed with detachment. Neither the leadership nor the membership of the association, noted Myrdal, were “recruited from the ranks of radicals.” Both its program and tactics were “well within the bounds of respectability” and its policy was based on the “acceptance of the fundamentals of the ‘American way’ of life.” An examination of the specific objectives of the NAACP upon which this observation was made reveals such “radical” aims as anti-lynching legislation, enfranchisement of the Southern Negro, abolition of all legal injustices based on race or color, equitable distribution of funds for public education, abolition of inequalities in employment opportunities based on race or color and the general abolition of “segregation, discrimination, insult and humiliation” in other areas based on color or race. In only one important respect, the abolition of public school segregation, had the NAACP altered its objectives between 1940, when the above goals were outlined, and 1954, when the Supreme Court ordered an end to school segregation. One of the main sources of strength of the NAACP in pursuit of its goals has been a willingness to work within the framework of constitutional legality. Still another has been a policy of compromise or opportunism—adapting its tactics to meet local situations. National NAACP headquarters directed local offices to “secure at least equal rights and accommodations for colored citizens” in cases where race discriminations were “too strongly entrenched to be attacked” directly.[294] In the post-World War II period there has been a hardening of this attitude and greater emphasis has been placed on securing integrated facilities.