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DELICIOUS - FRESH - OVEN READY
Recipes and prices on request.
Palmetto Pigeon Plant
Larrest Squab Farm in America
Phone 775-1204, write or wire
Box 1585—SUMTER, S. C.
Dial 2-5445
KHr
ERNEST BURWELL, INC.
265-281 N. Church Street
Spartanburg, S. C.
THE JONES SIGN
CO.
NEON
SIGNS
Outdoor Advertising
HENRY C. TURNER, Jr., Owner
249 North Liberty Street
DIAL 3-7756
Spartanburg, S. C.
SPAPCO
PAPER AND PRINTED PAPER
And A Division
STOR-M ARK
“Prestige Packaging"
SPARTANBURG. SOUTH CAROLINA
Show Room-F 210 Charlotte Merchandise Mart
cjCaw
A
Endurance svcjency
Established 1892
GENERAL INSURANCE
114 W. Dunbar S.
Spartanburg, S.C.
S. F. CANNON — JACK R. CANNON
Telephone 58 2-2334
TED HADDEN
SIGN
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545 S. CHURCH ST. • PHONE 582 9660
SPARTANBURG, S. C.
totally novel in America. We
all got oun lumps! Some of the
poverty I saw as a boy in New
York, on the Lower East Side
among the Jews and in Little
Italy among the Italians,
readily compares with the
wretchedness of Harlem.
What is relevant to the civil
rights struggle about the de
prived childhood is that we, the
Jews, Italians and most of the
others could somehow get out;
the Negroes couldn’t. Some of
us contended with prejudice,
to be sure, but only at the so
cial level. That prejudice did
not prevent a single one of us
from burgeoning out a career
and a life based on individual
effort, tJlent, character and
ambition. The Negro did not
get this, chance. Our society
had long ago established the
political, social and economic
compulsions which kept him
from fair participation in the
open society. To remove these
compulsions is what the civil
rights movement is all about.
Nor do Baldwin and Jones
offer us even the slightest hint
of humor. They insist those of
us who argue for Negro equali
ty in terms of sentimentality
and enthusiasm take unfair ad
vantage. Yet their studied at
tempts to shock with the mere
use of tough words is by far .a
greater imposition on the aud
ience.
It is indeed true that the
civil rights movement has been
successful because the Negro
for the first time has taken his
destiny in his own hands. But
Powell. Baldwin and Jones
need to be carefully taught
about white liberals and I’ll re
strict myself only to the bone-
of-the-bone and blood-of-the-
blood white Southerners.
Lillian Smith of Clayton,
Georgia, down among the red
necks, began an effective cam
paign for Negro civil rights
thirty years ago, long before
there was even a name for the
movement. In North Carolina,
Dr. Frank P. Graham, presi
dent of the university, desegre
gated an audience for the first
time in the state since Recon
struction. It was for a concert
in 1946 by the contralto, Doro
thy Maynor. Dr. Graham even
tually won his battle against
the most powerful trustee of
the university who had de
manded his ouster because of
this act.
Beginning in the early 1940’s,
Jimmie Street, a Mississippi-
born novelist, publicly waged
unceasing war against racial
segregation. He, along with Dr.
Graham, Reed Sarratt, Bill
Baggs, Wilma Dykeman, Jona
than Daniels, James McBride
Dabbs, Marion Wright, Hod-
ding Carter, Paul Green, Ralph
Creger, (Catholic) Bishop Vin
cent B. Waters, Sarah Patton
Boyle and hundreds of others,
helped give the Negro the
necessary push that got the
civil rights movement on the
road.
No one will ever know how
many white Southern clergy
men lost their pulpits because
they said, “The time has come
. . . segregation must go.” Most
of these clergymen were not
even permitted to leave their
church or temple with the dig
nity of making a sacrifice for a
principle. The laymen usually
ousted them for such devious
reasons as not visiting the sick
or that the church needed a
“younger” man (for “younger”
read “malleable.”)
Publisher Ralph McGill and
Mayor Hartsfield, and Harts-
field’s successor, Ivan Allen,
inspired a new attitude in At
lanta, the city General Sher
man burned, the emotional
capital of the Confederacy, the
birthplace of the modern Ku
Klux Klan. During the 1950’s
two Georgia governors promis
ed that the streets would run
red with blood before there
would be any desegregation.
Head-on McGill, Hartsfield and
Allen challenged these promis
es. Now Atlanta leads the New
South ih moderation and -
compliance.
The Ford Foundation financ
ed the beginnings of the South
ern Regional Council with
headquarters at Atlanta. The
Council helped support local
chapters in most of the larger
cities of the South, which usu
ally went by the name “Human
Relations Council.” These local
organizations actually tipped
the balance in many cases for
peaceable desegregation of
schools, public facilities and
public accommodations, espe
cially in Charlotte, Durham.
Richmond, Chattanooga, and
yes, in Little Rock. I remem
ber, too, when several Jewish
communities in the South
threatened the American Jew
ish Congress — allocations
would be withdrawn if the
Congress persisted in its legal
participation in the struggle
for Negro civil rights. The or
ganization refused to be inti
midated.
There must be, of course,
many opportunities among
white liberals in the civil rights
movement. There must be many
“hitchhikers of mankind,” as
Eric Hoffer so aptly calls them,
people who thumb a ride on
every movement that comes
their way, as a response to their
own needs or hope for their
own advantage.
But vast thousands of white
“do gooders” went into the
civil rights movement because
of a religious impulse, or be
cause of a dedication to social
justice, or for love of the Unit
ed States of America.
The Southern Israelite
32