Such were the early years of the NAACP. It is obvious that the drive since 1954 is to resurrect the Reconstruction era in our time. And there is at hand a weapon which was not available in the decade that followed Emancipation—the vast number of Negro voters. All office-seekers love votes. And even though the number of Negroes who are paid members of the organization is small compared to the 16,000,000 Negroes in the United States, office-seekers cannot be sure and are not inclined to take chances. Hence the present power of the NAACP in Washington.

  But even so, the “advancing” has its drawbacks and stumbling-stones. It is the reluctance of the Negro masses to come right forward and be advanced. This apathy creates the need for martyrs to the cause. Even martyrs or block-busters are in short supply for inappropriate individuals are too often selected. Too many are those self-conscious sample who are hungry for “note,” (Notoriety) get the call. Or perhaps hungry for extra spending-change. For the charge that these martyrs to the cause of advancement are generously paid by the NAACP to suffer publicly has never been refuted. Unsuitable candidates make the testing hard for the organization.

  For example, Virgil Hawkins, a teacher in the public schools of Florida for some years before his love of studying law, and studying law at the University of Florida, came down upon him.5 He is now fifty years old, and allegedly paid for his persistency by the NAACP, insists that his ardor is undiminished, and this despite a shabby showing in the entrance exam. He thus holds a high place in the martyrology of Advancement.

  Another sample [indicating] the hunger for candidates is Autherine Lucy, the Tactless.6 She had also been teaching before her overwhelming passion to be a librarian came down upon her. And though the School of Library Science of Hampton Institute in Virginia has an excellent reputation, to say nothing of the splendid Library Schools at Howard University, Washington, D.C., and at Morgan State, Baltimore, nowhere suited her taste like the University of Alabama. Mere learning was beside the point. She was a crusader for advancement, and seemingly, you cannot advance seated among Negroes. By a court ruling, she was admitted, but promptly talked herself out of the place. Her humiliating experiences for the few days that she was enrolled at the University must have left scars that will be there to the end of her days. Neither the stipend she is said to have received from the NAACP nor her brief notoriety can erase them. She was expendable.

  As to the experiences of the nine Negro students who were chosen to block-bust at Central High School in Little Rock, no matter how generous the stipend they allegedly received, it was worth it. One degradation after another. What price glory? What price for your head thrust down into a toilet stool? Or is the price regarded as cheap for the pleasure of bringing the White students and their parents to the place where they will eventually tolerate you in the same class-room? They too were expendable. The end, perhaps, justifies the means. What price proximity?

  The implications flowing from the present drive of the NAACP are tremendous and revealing. First, it is quite obvious that the drive had been planned by the organization before the Supreme Court ruling in 1954. The price of political support by the Negro voters of the large Northern cities in particular, and of the nation in general was the mingling in the class-room of both races during the tender, formative years. But why so picayune? Why not bargain for the end of all segregation at a whack? This is where the revelation comes in. The Reconstruction-mindedness; the glory of the house servant Heaven. Rather than new and progressive, it is a lapping back to the foggy past. In close to a century of education and progress by the American Negro, self-consciousness of race and an inferiority complex stemming out of the past, we should have come to the place where notice by the Whites and the bolstering of proximity as a sign of tolerance would be utterly unnecessary. Not what counts with the majority in the nation, but what counts within ourselves should have arrived by now.

  Why fumble around with old fogeyism in exalted phrases when the whole new world is before us? It has been thoroughly demonstrated that the old shibboleths of the early days of freedom never were anything more than meaningless sounds. Race Champion, Race Solidarity, Race-Consciousness—nothing but collections of syllables.

  There is no use in smothering the fact that Negroes hold Negroes in contempt. That fact cancels out all the full-mouthed phrases. It is universal among high and low. Negroes have never made a celebrity among themselves, but a Negro rated as a celebrity by Whites is immediately given applause. “Old Cuffy” an African word that means Negro is always looked upon as ridiculous. “The Buckra” (Whites) has the prestige even when complained of. This attitude is so general that it is deeply imbedded in Negro folklore.

  “This was a common-clad Negro, and one time they called on him to lead the church in prayer. He was not used to being called upon in public—him being too poor to have a lot of friends—so he felt bashful-like. So he hung back and begin to pray.

  ‘O Lord, I, I er, I got something to . . .’

  The church begin to bear him up and waited for him to go ahead. ‘Amen, Brother Stumpy, go on and ast Him.’

  ‘Lord, I got something to ask You but . . .’

  ‘Unh-hunhhhh, Brother Stump, go right ahead.’

  ‘O my high-riding, my conquering God, I got something to ask You, but I know You can’t do it. I . . .’

  ‘Aw, go ahead and ask Him. You know He can do anything, even to leading a butt-headed cow by the horns. Don’t hold up the church so long. Go right ahead and ask Him.’

  ‘Well then, Lord, I want to ask You to get the Negroes together, but I know You can’t do it. Amen, Lord.’”

  Folklore says that even before this prayer, another humble, but observant Negro was called upon to petition the Throne. His prayer went like this:

  “O Lord, here I is, knee-bent and body-bowed this morning before Your mighty throne, depending upon Your tender mercy. O Lord, I ain’t nothing; my wife she ain’t nothing, and my children, they ain’t nothing neither. And if You fool around with us, You won’t be nothing neither. Amen.”

  This refusal to be led by Negroes is well known to those Whites who have dealt with Negroes for any length of time. Through no fault of their own, Negro foremen and even military officers can not get the results from a Negro group that a White foreman or officer can. General Eisenhower found that out in Europe during the late War. Hence his desegregation of his troops.7 Nor does high education and competence in a Negro wipe out this attitude in either educated Negroes nor the masses.

  “The higher the monkey climb, the more he show his behind,” says it succinctly. Perhaps this attitude was taken into account when the Niagara Movement was reorganized into the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, when a White man became the head, and this has been true ever since. Yet, never has the organization found a home in the heart of the Negro population. Never has the membership reached anywhere near the proportion commensurate with the Negro population of the nation.

  This brings up the query as to who is the real directive power in the NAACP? The Secretary, editor of The Crisis, and attorney are no more than fronts. This is obvious because, with the exception of the late James Weldon Johnson and Dr. Du Bois, they became known by reason of their position in the NAACP, not because of any accomplishments which attracted national attention previously. Numerous Jews of wealth and influence hold membership in the organization. Many Gentile[s] in the same category are members. It is certain that the vast sums of money which have been spent and are still being spent since 1954, were not contributed by Negroes.

  The charge so frequently flung that the NAACP is a Communist front outfit has not been proven. There is some kind of an affinity, however. The methods of going about things, common friends, and the like. “We are not Communists,” several members of the NAACP have explained to me, “but we cannot be their enemies, for they have taught us how to get what we are after. We cooperate to an extent.” And certainly [neither] the organization nor its house-organ, The Crisis, has exhibited any distaste for such well-known Party members as Paul Robeson and Langston Hughes.8 The father of the NAACP, Dr. Du Bois has now been an outright Communist for many years. But it must be made clear that he had quarreled with the Association and left it before that, but still is looked upon as friendly there.

  That brings us to the type of cases which the NAACP has defended. The organization has a notable record against lynching. This crime of passion against established law took hold of the South after the Reconstruction—in reality was brought forth out of that unfortunate period. The spotlight thrown upon the practice by the NAACP definitely hastened its extinction. From the record, it appears that Negro men accused of rape against White women have been most interesting to the Association. Defense of Negro women for any cause has been rare except in the recent era of integration of schools in the South.

  One case that seemed to fit into the category of defense by the Association, but which was not handled was the case of Mrs. Spaulding, widow of the late C. C. Spaulding, founder of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company of Durham, N.C.9 This company is the largest among American Negro insurance ventures. Mrs. Spaulding is an intelligent, well-informed woman of the highest moral probity.

  Well, once upon a time, being a high-ranking Republican, Mrs. Spaulding was given an appointment under Oveta Culp Hobby in the newest Cabinet department, which is Welfare, Health and that sort of thing.10 Days and weeks shuffled along and Mrs. Spaulding took note of something which the NAACP has been doing quite some fighting over. It seems that a government-supported hospital in Texas discriminated against Negro patients. Or did not admit them. Mrs. Spaulding complained to Mrs. Hobby that this hospital should positively NOT receive government money if Negroes were excluded. Mrs. Hobby, a good Texan, not only sent the money, but fired Mrs. Spaulding.11 Naturally, it was expected that the NAACP would highly approve of her stand, and fight for her reinstatement from Hell to breakfast. But it did not.

  When Drew Pearson reported the case in his column, this writer did not query the head office, but asked a member why there was no protest to Eisenhower in the matter.12 The first statement was that Mrs. Spaulding was a Republican, and this was a party friction. It was pointed out that Mrs. Spaulding was indeed a Republican, but that was beside the point.13 The patients who might want to be cared for at the hospital could not possibly be all Republicans. The issue was not based on party. Then it was added that Mrs. Spaulding did not wish to be defended, and so the NAACP had taken no action.

  But Josephine Baker, an American Negro chorus girl, who had gone to France a generation ago and had become an over-night sensation in the French musical comedy theatre by crawling along a trunk of a tree on the stage dressed only in a string of bananas about her hips, and from this monkey-like start, became an international celebrity, fared infinitely better than Mrs. Spaulding.14 Miss Baker’s reputation was enhanced by her marriages to several European White men.

  Like the late Will Rogers, all that I know is what I see by the papers.15 It was stated that Miss Baker sashayed into the Stork Club in New York and ordered herself a steak. Walter Winchell, the famous columnist and radio commentator, was there, and seated a few tables from where Miss Baker and her party settled down.16 Now, the Stork Club servitors were accused by Miss Baker of acting down right trashy about fetching along the steak. The affair bloomed into a real fracas in words. It was a celebrated newspaper cause. Now, Walter Winchell, a close friend of Walter White, then Secretary of the NAACP, and a sympathizer with the program of the Association, was bitterly assailed by the NAACP as a traitor because he did not come to the rescue of Miss Baker in the fracas. The Communists joined with the NAACP to give Winchell a thorough working over. The violent and scurrilous attacks upon Winchell by these elements became national in scope. But it must not be overlooked that WW looked down his celebrated nose at the Party and all its works and members and continually spoke of them as “Scummunists.” That was the way he thought about them. Yet, he had ever been as helpful as he knew how to the NAACP. The much-married Miss Baker was elevated to the niche of a sacred icon.

  Why Mrs. Spaulding was made out to be corn-bread and Miss Baker to be high-class cake is hard to fathom. The only explanation is that Miss Baker has ever worked along the line of integration, while Mrs. Spaulding has been sort of neglectful about the thing.

  Which way the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People? It is reported that membership has slumped since the federal troops were planed into Little Rock. Be that as it may, it will remain a self-constituted dictatorship so long as it does not ask and receive a mandate from the entire Negro population of the United States. From the slow gains in Negro membership, it should be inferred that the organization has not found a home in the hearts of the people. It is possible that the people get the scent of the outsider around the place. And no Non-Negro can feel with Negroes, however hard he or she might try and wish to. It is something like the beautiful but dumb Marie Antoinette out of lack of comprehension saying, “Let them eat cake.”

  The term “advancement” needs a more precise definition, for the Association has not concerned itself with Negro promotion except along certain lines. It has certainly broadened its base in the last two decades—approved what it bitterly denounced when the late Booker T. Washington was advocating it.

  There must be some recognition of reality. One that cannot be denied is the fragmentation, the seeming distaste for cohesion for a common cause among Negroes. The eminent author, Richard Wright reports this stumbling-block from West Africa.17 The tribal masses do not want the same thing that the British-educated chiefs propose. In Ghana, formerly the Gold Coast, Kwami Nkrumah has succeeded to an extent with his Convention People’s Party because he discerned this and took advantage of it.18 Nkrumah was himself educated in the United States.

  And if the passionate drive for integration of the schools of the South is intended to speed up the absorption of the dark minority by the majority Whites, it is useless, the haste is. Nobody doubts that this will come in some distant time, but there are factors outside of White resistance to it to be gotten around. First that integrated schools have had no effect upon social acceptance in the North. Second, the open bid by the Communist Party in the thirties for the Negro population of America to come right forward and mingle and be mingled, was such a dismal failure. The Party itself has admitted it. Now would it have been anything permanent had the intermarriages come off [sic]. Negroes are aggravatingly, but persistently, some-timey and faddistic. They make over something new with great enthusiasm for a short time, then forget all about it. When the “new” had worn off of a marriage tha[t] had been for so long denied them, (say a month or so) he would remember that he had divorce in his heels. Then back to the life and ways to which he was accustomed. There were numerous cases of this during the Communist membership drive. And it should have been noted the dizzying speed—say a mile a month—with which Negro men rushed forward to take advantage of the offer in the first place. Again, Richard Wright points out (Black Power, by Richard Wright, Harper & Brothers, $4.00) Nkrumah was smart enough to leave the people to their customs instead of trying to turn them into black Englishmen. They yearned for “free-dooom!” from colonialism and that was what he set out to gain for them without interfering too much with ancient custom.

  The undisclosed master-minds who direct the program of the NAACP must take the realities into account if the organization expects to be of, for, and by the Negro people and cease to drive at what they feel Negroes ought to want or resent.

  Where are you bound, NAACP?

  Part Five

  On the Trial of Ruby McCollum

  Zora’s Revealing Story of Ruby’s 1st Day in Court!

  “Way down upon the Suwanee River; far, far away—There’s where my heart is turning over . . .”1

  SUWANEE COUNTY COURTHOUSE, LIVE OAK, Fla.—Stephen G. Foster could not have envisioned such a scene and situation when he wrote the lines that immortalized the river that flows not too far from this little courthouse . . . and the Negro musical idiom that he loved so well. Foster did lament in another of his world-famous songs that “The head must bow, and the back will have to bend . . . wherever the darky may go. . . .”2

  * * *

  Thus it is obvious that he did not contemplate a Negro woman on trial for her life for shooting to death a prominent white physician.

  FIGHT ON TO SAVE RUBY FROM CHAIR

  But in the Year of Our Lord 1952 . . . we see Mrs. Ruby McCollum seated at the table beside her defense counsel, under indictment of first degree murder . . . for shooting Dr. C. LeRoy Adams five times.3

  Ruby McCollum is not yet on actual trial for her life. The hearing here in the Suwanee County courthouse was announced as a sanity hearing.

  * * *

  IT IS HER attorney’s opening gambit in the struggle to save her from the electric chair. As the minutes drag on, it develops that it is not really a sanity hearing. It can be put down as a crafty move on the part of her counsel, P. Guy Crews, to disqualify two local white physicians as mental experts, and thus bar them from testifying as to his client’s sanity at the time of the slaying.

  Under oath, both Dr. Workman and Dr. Price admitted that they had NOT been trained in psychiatry, though Dr. Workman stated that he had some experience along that line for a year in Cincinnati, Ohio.

  With the way thus cleared, P. Guy Crews then besought the court to authorize the prosecution to allow the defense to call in a specialist, at the expense of the defendant, to establish the mental responsibility of Ruby McCollum prior to, and at the time of Aug. 3, 1952, the date of the homicide.

  SHE IS NOT GOING TO BE MOVED ANYWHERE.

  THERE WAS a pause during which Judge Adams chewed choppily and rapidly on his tobacco! Then he said:—“It is not that I object to it, but I don’t know for sure if it is legal.” After a minute of reflection, the plea of defense counsel was granted.