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THE MAROON TIGER
April, 1967
WHAT THE NEGRO HAS - AND HAS NOT - GAINED Continued
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11)
itself reacting to the reaction against Negro demonstrations
and gains—has softened the penalties for noncompliance.
•
HOUSING. Getting good housing is perhaps the most dif
ficult hurdle of all for most Negroes. One tragedy is that
urban renewal often means Negro removal—replacing
shacks with vertical ghettos for middle-income Negroes
and forcing lower-income Negroes to move to even meaner
slums. Because the Negro urban population has almost dou
bled since 1950, the ghettos are spreading. Negroes now
constitute 27% of the population in Chicago, 37% in St.
Louis, 39% in Detroit, 40% in Birmingham, 41% in New
Orleans and Baltimore, 24% in Norfolk and 63% in Wash
ington. Worried about being surrounded by Negroes, most
whites flee to the suburbs when Negroes move into an urban
neighborhood; there, barely 4% of all residents arc Negro.
When given the choice, most Negroes are not terribly
eager to live next door to the white man. Even in the 17
states and 31 cities that have enacted fair-housing codes
since 1958, thousands of huge, moderately priced apartment
towers are pure white. Despite a fairly large supply of open
housing, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission estimates
that, since 1958, fewer than 60 Negro families have moved
into white areas. The Negro's desire to enjoy the superior
schooling and housing of a white neighborhood is very much
tempered by his fear of striking out alone. He has a long
way to go before he will live side by side with the white man
even in moderate numbers.
•
POLITICS. The advances have been enormous: the poten
tial is even bigger. The number of Negroes running for
elective office has risen 25% to 30% in the Democratic
Party over the past two years alone. This autumn, a record
210 Negroes of both parties are trying for seats in state
legislatures, and hundreds more for other local offices. The
number of Negroes in the U.S. Congress has risen from
two in 1954 to six now; altogether, 17 are running for
Congress this fall (eleven Republicans and six Democrats).
Massachusetts’ Republican Attorney General Edward Brooke
is the first Negro since Reconstruction to campaign for the
U.S. Senate on a major party ticket. Last November, Cleve
land's Carl Stokes, a Negro state legislator, came within
2,000 votes of unseating Mayor Ralph Locher, and Houston
recently became the first Southern city to appoint a Negro
assistant district attorney, Clark Gable Ward.
Negroes will not live up to their full potential in politics
until they become more diligent at the polls. While the
number of registered Negro voters in the South has risen
from 1,900,000 to 2,300,000 in the past ten years, scarcely
35% of the eligible Negroes bother to vote in local elec
tions up North; by contrast, 85% of the Jews vote, and
get commensurate rewards when politicians pass out patron
age or nominations. New York's 16% Negro population
elects only one of the city’s 19 U.S. Congressmen, two of
the 37 city councilmen.
•
SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE. The most obvious and humiliat
ing forms of discrimination have become illegal or unfash
ionable (at least in the North), but there are subtler prob
lems. The Negroes, like the Catholics and Jews before them,
want to be welcomed in the private clubs, on the golf
courses and at weekend parties with their co-workers and
customers. As it is, the Michigan Civii Rights Commission
estimates that 90% of its state's whites have no contact
with nonwhites, and the situation is much the same elsewhere.
The Negro thus has to look inward and, in so doing, is
slowly beginning to discover a long-submerged sense of
pride. That sense is essential to remedying the lower-class
Negro’s other social and economic ills, since only pride can
overcome the defeatist attitude that has contributed so
much to his high rates of unemployment, illegitimacy, de
linquency and crime. In Rochester, St. Louis and a doz
en other cities, Negroes in the past two years have or
ganized to clean up their neighborhoods, finance small busi
nesses, pressure for school improvements and get police
action to chase out the “white hunters,’’ white men who
crash the ghetto in search of black prostitutes. There is a
trend among Negro coeds and career girls to wear their
hair “natural’’ instead of attempting to unkink it by. "conk
ing”—rinsing it with lye and binding it with handkerchiefs.
Yet for every Negro who flaunts his identity, a hundred try
to camouflage it. Advertisements in the Negro magazines still
hymn Nadinola skin bleach: “Lightens and brightens skin.”
•
If not all Negroes covet white skin, all of them without
exception seek after the white man’s freedom of choice.
The Rev. James Jones, the white Episcopal Urban Vicar
of Chicago, who moved into a Negro ghetto, argues that
Negroes will not live up to their full responsibilities and
potentials as citizens until the white majority grants them
that freedom. “In the ghetto,” he says, “there are no choices,
no power, no ability to make responses. Therefore there is
no responsibility.” Considering that the U.S. is the first so
ciety in history to adopt as its national goal the full eco
nomic integration and social equality of different races, the
Negro’s choices are widening with fair rapidity. The U.S.
has certainly come an incredibly long way since Abraham
Lincoln, shortly before the end of the Civil War. asked
his logistics experts to determine whether the U.S. could
muster enough transportation to export the Negroes—only
to be told that Negro babies were being born faster than
all the nation’s ships could carry them from the country.
The Negro has been a permanent part of America ever
since then, and perhaps the greatest advance of recent years
is the realization by white people that his problems cannot
be ignored. The Negro’s recent progress, far from making
him content, has greatly intensified his aspirations. The job
of helping him to meet his legitimate needs may well con
tinue to be the nation's most urgent piece of domestic-
business for decades to come.
A rEtranger
by Willis P. Callins
In our struggles to survive four
years at Morehouse College, we often
deny ourselves an interest in what is
happening to our fellow students across
the seas and south of the border. How do
their experiences differ from our own,
and what problems do we face in com
mon? We should ask ourselves these
questions out of concern for the world’s
future, if not in the name of intellectual
inquiry. Much could be revealed by con
sidering, for example, student life in a
French university.
Consider, first, some of the ways
in which the French student’s exper
iences differ from our own. He faces,
financially, fewer problems than we do,
for all the universities are government
controlled and education is free. There
are ample funds for those students who
need financial support for room and
board. I even knew several students who
were able to buy cars with money from
government grants. One national French
student organization suggested that stu
dents be paid as they pursue their stud
ies. Textbooks are expensive in France
and therefore seldom used in the uni
versities. This is one reason why uni
versity courses are taught in a slow,
sophisticated manner. Often I found that
lectures consisted of the professor’s
reading of a carefully prepared text. The
professor in France is not without the
complete respect of his students, for
tradition demands that they rise to their
feet when the professor enters the class
room. Do not misconstrue this form of
respect as a type of nonsense, for the
French professor reciprocates the re
spect of his students. It is not unusual
to find professors who go on strike in
sympathy with a student protest move
ment.
French students, in general, appear
to be more serious than their American
counterparts. This, perhaps, is an illu
sion; the degree to which a student is
serious may erroneously be associated
with his lack of distraction. It is cer
tainly true that French students lack
football teams, bands, and glee clubs.
The Communist Party, although it is
generally small, may often be the most
active and vocal student organization.
Rarely is there organized student life
in France and, consequently, the stu
dent is often more isolated and indivi
dualistic than his American counter part.
Yet he is required to pass only final
examinations, for which he has two op
portunities (June and October). The
French student receives no A, B, C,
D, or F grade; he simply passes or he
fails. How would we Morehouse stu
dents like that for a change?
Students in France may not really
be more serious than their American
counterparts, but they certainly travel
more on a normal school day. Often the
university is delocalized, with dormi
tories, several student cafeterias, and
classrooms located in different sections
of the city. It has been my personal ex
perience to attend classes in three dif
ferent sections of the city on the same
day and to eat breakfast at home, lunch
downtown, and supper in the suburbs.
How would you like to have to take a bus
downtown to eat lunch and supper on
Sundays?
‘What do we do with all the guys who ate meat on Friday?’