Can Robert A. Taft win the Negro vote of the United States? Again I express optimism. I am only one person, and do not pretend to represent the 15,000,000; but then, nobody else can either. Since the passing of the late Booker T. Washington, there has been no single Negro figure who could influence too much the national Negro vote.30 We have become as individualistic as the white electorate. In these days, candidates must appear before Negro audiences to state their case. They can no longer arrange with a leader to have the mass of Negro votes delivered. That is, except in some cases where votes are bought among the whites also—among the fringe which does not care what the issue is or who wins. All they want is a little handout.

  About all a Negro leader can do now for his candidate is to arrange for the most profitable spots for him to appear and get out the crowd. When a Negro subleader begins to tout his candidate to the average voter, he is told, “I have never seen the man. If he wants my vote, let him come and ask me for it. I’m a man just like everybody else. I’m not going to vote for anybody who iggs me.”

  “Igg” is short for “ignore.” The Negro voter is likely to be more sensitive than a white one. He fears being played down. The candidate must certainly not give that impression. He must, as far as possible, spread his platform before the Negro voter in person. Igg him, and he is sure to vote against you. My people will say, “He thought himself too good to come among us. To hell with him!”

  This far from November, 1952, thoughtful Negroes are already exhibiting tremendous interest in Robert A. Taft. “The man doesn’t do any bragging on himself,” a leading Negro minister told me, “so I haven’t paid too much attention to him until here lately. But when you come to study it, his record on Negro affairs is unbeatable. He reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt, and he was some man.31 I think I’ll get up a sermon on Taft.”

  Then the divine extended his remarks, “It’s about time this country went back to moral living. The trouble we are having with our young men and women is too distressing. Taft sounds like he stands for what we need right along in here. Yes, I think I’ll have to preach about him. Some morals have just got to come from somewhere or else we’re headed for hell.”

  The oft-repeated statement that Taft has no color disputes itself. Color does not necessarily mean exhibitionism, and that was just what Taft meant by his sarcasm when he told the reporters, “You won’t find any color in me. I’m too darned normal.” Taft has to have strong appeal to keep on winning and winning as he does. His very sincerity and truthfulness are a kind of color. People can feel sincerity. As an old woman told me, “What comes from the heart, honey, will go to the heart again.” Deceit may have flash, but truth has color.

  Say what they will about theatricals, despite his lack of those tricks Taft has aroused more genuine interest among us than any other Republican since Theodore Roosevelt. He has shown himself an old-line statesman with the affairs of today at his finger tips. He has fought the good fight and shown his integrity.

  Why assume that we are impervious to reason and indifferent to decency? There is the example of the Negroes of Ohio to look at.

  Never mind that we have run off after strange gods like the rest of the nation. We, too, can see the light and be reasoned with. Let Taft come among us with his blunt truthfulness, his bag of facts and his reasoning, and tell us what he has to say.

  Court Order Can’t Make Races Mix

  Editor: I promised God and some other responsible characters, including a bench of bishops, that I was not going to part my lips concerning the U.S. Supreme Court decision on ending segregation in the public schools of the South.1 But since a lot of time has passed and no one seems to touch on what to me appears to be the most important point in the hassle, I break silence just this once. Consider me as just thinking out loud.

  The whole matter revolves around the self-respect of my people. How much satisfaction can I get from a court order for somebody to associate with me who does not wish me near them? The American Indian has never been spoken of as a minority and chiefly because there is no whine in the Indian. Certainly he fought, and valiantly for his lands, and rightfully so, but it is inconceivable of an Indian to seek forcible association with anyone. His well known pride and self-respect would save him from that. I take the Indian position.

  Now a great clamor will arise in certain quarters that I seek to deny the Negro children of the South their rights, and therefore I am one of those “handkerchief-head niggers” who bow low before the white man and sell out my own people out of cowardice. However an analytical glance will show that this is not the case.

  If there are not adequate Negro schools in Florida, and there is some residual, some inherent and unchangeable quality in white schools, impossible to duplicate anywhere else, then I am the first to insist that Negro children of Florida be allowed to share this boon. But if there are adequate Negro schools and prepared instructors and instructions, then there is nothing different except the presence of white people.

  For this reason, I regard the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court as insulting rather than honoring my race. Since the days of the never-to-be-sufficiently-deplored Reconstruction, there has been current the belief that there is no greater delight to Negroes than physical association with whites. The doctrine of the white mare. Those familiar with the habits of mules are aware that any mule, if not restrained will automatically follow a white mare. Dishonest mule-traders made money out of this knowledge in the old days.

  Lead a white mare along a country road and slyly open the gate and the mules in the lot would run out and follow this mare. This ruling being conceived and brought forth in a sly political medium with eyes on ’56, and brought forth in the same spirit and for the same purpose, it is clear that they have taken the old notion to heart and acted upon it. It is a cunning opening of the barnyard gate with the white mare ambling past. We are expected to hasten pell-mell after her.

  It is most astonishing that this should be tried just when the nation is exerting itself to shake off the evils of Communist penetration. It is to be recalled that Moscow, being made aware of this folk belief, made it the main plank in their campaign to win the American Negro from the 1920s on. It was the come-on stuff. Join the party and get yourself a white wife or husband. To supply the expected demand, the party had scraped up this-and-that off of park benches and skid rows and held them in stock for us. The highest types of Negroes were held to be just panting to get hold of one of these objects. Seeing how flat the program fell, it is astonishing that it would be so soon revived. Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.

  But the South had better beware in another direction. While it is being frantic over the segregation ruling, it had better keep its eyes open for more important things. One instance of Govt by fiat has been rammed down its throat. It is possible that the end of segregation is not here and never meant to be here at present, but the attention of the South directed on what was calculated to keep us busy while more ominous things were brought to pass. The stubborn South and the Midwest kept this nation from being dragged farther to the left than it was during the New Deal.

  But what if it is contemplated to do away with the two-party system and arrive at Govt by administrative decree? No questions allowed and no information given out from the administrative dept? We could get more rulings on the same subject and more far-reaching any day. It pays to weigh every saving and action, however trivial, as indicating a trend.

  In the ruling on segregation, the unsuspecting nation might have witnessed a trial-balloon. A relatively safe one, since it is sectional and on a matter not likely to arouse other sections of the nation to the support of the South. If it goes off fairly well, a precedent has been established. Govt by fiat can replace the Constitution. You don’t have to credit me with too much intelligence and penetration, just so you watch carefully and think.

  Meanwhile, personally, I am not delighted. I am not persuaded and elevated by the white mare technique. Negro schools in the state are in very good shape and on the improve. We are fortunate in having Dr. D. E. Williams as head and driving force of Negro instruction.2 Dr. Williams is relentless in his drive to improve both physical equipment and teacher-quality. He has accomplished wonders in the 20 years past and it is to be expected that he will double that in the future.

  It is well known that I have no sympathy nor respect for the “tragedy of color” school of thought among us, whose fountain-head is the pressure group concerned in this court ruling. I can see no tragedy in being too dark to be invited to a white school social affair. The Supreme Court would have pleased me more if they had concerned themselves about enforcing the compulsory education provisions for Negroes in the South as is done for white children. The next 10 years would be better spent in appointing truant officers and looking after conditions in the homes from which the children come. Use to the limit what we already have.

  Thems my sentiments and I am sticking by them. Growth from within. Ethical and cultural desegregation. It is a contradiction in terms to scream race pride and equality while at the same time spurning Negro teachers and self-association. That old white mare business can go racking on down the road for all I care.

  EAU GALLIE

  ZORA NEALE HURSTON

  Which Way the NAACP?

  Beneath the sound and fury of the drive of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to integrate the schools of the South, what is the real intent? Is it conceived that a Negro child is “advanced” by sitting in the same class-room with White children, and if so, how and why? Or is the push a determined attempted jail-break from the imaginary cage of race on a national scale?

  Since in every state in the South the identical text-books are issued to White and Negro schools, then the implied inferiority must rest on the Negro faculty. That assumption is strange in this day and age, for now there are Negro instructors who are graduates of the finest schools of education in the nation, and in some instances, graduate degrees from foreign universities. Naturally, some teachers are more efficient by native abilities and preparation, as among the Whites. This is a very important point, for there is no denying that intelligence is an individual matter, rather than one of race.

  So it has to be believed that mere physical contact is advancement in itself. The inferiority complex which brought forth the “Tragedy of Color” doctrine has to enter in. One has to be persuaded that a Negro suffers enormously by being deprived of physical contact with the Whites and be willing to pay a terrible price to gain it. In other words, the Negro masses are expendable, and the end justifies the means.

  For example, it is reported from a reliable source that the reason for the troops entering the Girls’ restroom at Central High in Little Rock was that a group of the White girls had ambushed one of the Negro girls in the restroom and was forcing her head down into the toilet-bowl.1 The troops were summoned to rescue the struggling, screaming girl. Can such a degrading experience be gloated over as “advancement”? Yes, if more physical contact can be regarded as the ultimate goal and ideal. No, and emphatically no, if my own dignity and self-respect are taken into account.

  One has to be willfully blind and deaf to assume that forced physical contact will bring about anything but just that. Physical contact has always been bountiful in the South without bringing about social mingling. There has never been legal segregation in the North, because of historical circumstances too well known to go into here, yet social mingling is conspicuously absent. And there is determined segregation in residential areas. Nor do Northern Negroes, products of non-segregated schools, make a better showing in the Northern Universities than those from the South. To the contrary, the majority of entrants are from the South, and on the whole, come off very well indeed. Therefore, what is the interpretation of “advancement” in the minds of the NAACP?

  Then let us examine another word in the title of the NAACP. The choice of “Colored” instead of the more universal term Negro is significant. To non-Negro, and even to the uninformed among us, Colored and Negro are synonymous, but that is a kind of slurring over. It brings up that ancient line drawn during slavery between the usual classification of house servants and field hands. When the plantation owner had children by a slave girl, and most of them did, the master did not put his left-handed off-spring out into the field to work. They were the house servants—the valet or ladies-maid, the butler, the coachman, etcetera. They ate from the kitchen of the “Big House” and were given the cast-off clothing of the master, mistress and their sons and daughters. So far was as possible during slavery, they were privileged characters. Naturally, they were proud of their lighter color. The cleavage was as wide as their enslaved condition permitted. Indeed, some masters went so far as to free these mulattos and give them land. The records show that many of them, though held at a distance by the Whites, held black slaves, and fought in the Confederate armies to preserve slavery of the blacks. There existed the same difference in the South as the Tidewater and the Piedmont among the White. These mixed-blooded folk did not speak of themselves as Negroes, but “gentlemen of color.” It is very possible that this historical meaning of “colored” was taken into consideration when the organization was named. Very, very possible and probable, since being a Negro was looked upon as such a tragedy by the founders.

  Dr. William E. Burghardt Du Bois is the originator of the NAACP.2 However he did not call it that in the beginning. The idea struck him while he was at Niagara Falls, [and so] he called it the Niagara Movement. Later, it was reorganized with White people in high places in the set-up, [and] was re-named the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

  The early years of the NAACP were devoted almost exclusively to attempts to destroy Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.3 Other goals were announced, but the real drive was a “Get Washington” movement. Why this was so, provides interesting observations on the Association, and throws light on its meaning.

  Du Bois, of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, is a graduate of Harvard, and took his doctorate at the University of Berlin. He is in his late eighties at this writing. In his youth, indeed up to the time of World War I, the matriculation of a Negro at a White college or University was so rare that on graduation, he became a national celebrity on the face of it. He also became a Race Champion—the great profession of the time—automatically. It was assumed by both White and Black that such a Negro was a phenomenon for having been able to learn what the average White man could learn, college curricula being tempered to the average intelligence instead of genius. It was [d]ue to the fact that only recently had the Negro masses emerged from slavery and were overwhelmingly illiterate, but burdened by poverty that a scant handful of the 4,000,000 and Northerners who were free before 1865 got there.

  Imagine the chagrin of Du Bois when he returned from Germany to find that Booker T. Washington, a graduate of Hampton Institute, had the world by the ears because of the success of Tuskegee, and his “Dignity of labor” slogan. This was unfitting [o]n more than one count from the view-point and expectations of Du Bois. In addition, Washington had emerged from extreme poverty and [was] a Southerner. And though Du Bois was definitely brown of skin, and Washington the son of a White man, it is obvious that Du Bois could [not] conceive of such a person as rating higher than a Dr. of Philosophy from Berlin, to say nothing of ivied Harvard. The situation had no name. So, though Booker T. was a definite mulatto, and his accomplishments, it is obvious that the cultured Du Bois could not think of Washington as anything but a field hand out of place. To worsen matters from the point of view of Du Bois, when he landed in New York, a telegram awaited him from Washington, offering him a position at Tuskegee. He promptly refused it.

  Then began the bitter, even scurrilous attacks upon Washington, Tuskegee, and industrial education for Negroes. He and the organization lost no opportunity to ridicule skilled labor for Negroes. The implication was that these 4,000,000 recently freed people ought to take off for Harvard and Berlin. How this was to be done by this largely illiterate mass was never explained. The traditional cleavage between house servant and field hand was prominent, though lofty terms were used to name it, but it was the same old thing.

  Against Washington’s overwhelming popularity which amounted to idolatry among the Negroes, Du Bois and the NAACP could muster a small band who were encouraged to speak of themselves as the “Better Thinkers” although what this meant was necessarily vague. It was clear that they were merely “Think-we-are-better” without any excuse for the posture. Anyway, the wicked attacks continued until the death of Booker T. Washington in 1915. The founder of the famed Tuskegee fat with the success of his school and floating on a cloud of world-wide fame, never even dignified the attacks by a single answer, unless we take for an answer a statement he made on one occasion when he said, “I will not allow any man to drag me down so low as to make me hate him.”

  During these years, the inventor of the NAACP was spreading the drear gospel of “the tragedy of color.” In his autobiography, From Dawn to Dusk, he laments in deep crepe of his not being invited to the Junior Prom of his high school in Great Barrington, Mass.4 He was the only Negro in attendance. His works follow this theme continually. He is convinced that the Negro race was betrayed by the North because the Reconstruction was not prolonged sufficiently to beat the South to its knees in the matter of race acceptance, and that the nation would not have any problem of race in the 20th Century if this had been done.