FORWARD, 2015 EDITION
This book was written in 1966 by my step-father Karl E. Lutze. Karl began his work as a young white pastor in a poor black Lutheran church in 1945. He challenged the Christian press the year I was born, asking why there had been no book written on the role of the Christian in the human rights issues of the day. He was told to write it himself and this book - To Mend the Broken - is the result. This version has been lightly edited to only change some outdated terminology but otherwise remains an honest record of Karl's perspective of the time.
As a lesson to anyone looking at the human relations issues we face in the current day, this volume is a priceless and concise insight into the roots of today's world. It is presented without blame or excuse, laying out the facts of the then-current situation. It forecasts many of the struggles we face today, both simply and with an understanding of the subtleties at play. I recommend anyone looking to act or even debate about human relations issues in Twenty First Century America take the time to read this record of our very recent past.
I encourage you to reproduce this work in whole or in part. Please attribute it to Rev. Dr. Karl E. Lutze.
Karl passed away this past week, on May 7, 2015 at the age of 95, at home in Valparaiso, Indiana, surrounded by family.
Chris Blask, May 15, 2015
[Due to DKOS limitations the first four chapters are published here. For the full text as well as original photography please visit the Motley Moose version].
To Esther
Karl E. Lutze, Concordia Publishing House, Saint Louis, Missouri, 1966 - [Updated by Gail and Karl Lutze, 2014]
PREFACE
If there ever was a day when one could discuss race relations academically and dispassionately, that day has passed.
The reverberations from instances of racial tension and interracial clashes have been felt in millions of lives. People have become fearful, distrustful, and defensive.
Many have packed their belongings and left their homes to run from the pressure spots. Few have remained by choice to see the issue through and to endeavor to solve the problem: to bring harmony, understanding, and cooperation out of chaos, suspicion, and antagonism.
Meanwhile the church has hardly distinguished itself. The fear â so prevalent among people â that if one exposes the trouble, the trouble will grow worse, has also gripped the church. Thus while voices were raised from crowded cities and from cotton fields, from halls of law and from tiny welfare offices, from classrooms and from hot little church buildings in the rural South, decrying the sickness and injustice and prejudice, the churchâs voice has at best been thin and for the most part silent.
While people in some corners whittled away at the problems, removing injustices little by little, others were bolding and daringly exposing the barriers of disparity, resentment, and hatred. Some worked tenaciously for new laws. Some spent their efforts gathering like-minded people into organizations that would effect solidarity. Others took to the streets and demonstrated. And through it all the church was often merely a spectator â and sometimes she even turned away and would not look at all.
It is hard to look at what is real and wretched, what tears at the emotions and causes us to be ashamed or bitter or angry. To face up to what is unpleasant and unpretty is not easy. To do so may mean pain, involvement, sacrifice, and all manner of risk. But not to do so is to shirk responsibility.
Does the church choose not to be responsible? In recent years there have been increasing evidences that she has indeed seen her responsibility and intends to take it seriously; crisp and cutting resolutions that censure lovelessness and apathy; clergy and nuns walking the sidewalks and carrying signs that denounce injustice. But the church is more than formal pronouncements and black-garbed representatives of institutions. The church is people â Godâs people responding to the love given them by God in Jesus Christ â responsive and responsible people.
People of God who act responsibly are the church at her best. It is for them that these pages are written. They are not intended to echo what other civic and secular organizations have voiced, nor are they conceived merely to prod church leaders into action.
It is the authorâs hope that the interest of the people in the pews will be enlisted here, that they will face up to the situation and become personally committed to assume the role assigned to them by their Lord, who said:
âAs my Father hath sent Me, even so send I you:ââ
TO MEND THE BROKEN!
Karl E. Lutze, 1966
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Finding the Pieces
Chapter 2:The Shattered
Chapter 3:The Crushed
Chapter 4:And After the Breaking?
Chapter 5:Who Will Pick Up the Pieces?
Chapter 6:Refusal to Look at the Broken
Chapter 7:The Assignment to Mend
Chapter 8:To Mend the Broken
Chapter 9:Enlistment in Mending
Chapter 1 - FINDING THE PIECES
When a radio or TV commentator begins his report with the words, âNews from the South today", listeners all over the world are likely to anticipate an account of some incidence relating to interracial tensions.
No More Magnolias
There was a day when the word âSouthâ conjured up a panorama of magnolias, white goateed gentlemen sipping mint julep, women in full skirts with parasols in hand, sweeping down the long white stars of the massive pillared mansion, helped into shining black coaches by faithful attendants with very white hair and very dark faces; and in the distance red bandannaed heads moving slowly along rows of white cotton in fields alive with singing workers.
This, however, never was a real, true, and full picture of the South. It is certainly not valid today. Today the South is a land of change â a place of changing industrial and commercial climate; a place of new business, of long economic strides and an inviting labor supply; of growing cities and increased production and vigorous trade.
Despite this new appearance of strength, the word âSouthâ is still equated with tense and strained Black-White relations. Shortly after the Supreme Court School Decision of 1954, an Oklahoma newspaper carried an editorial entitled âLeave the South Alone.â Reference was made quite specifically to the matter of interracial conditions of the states in our geographic South, and the plea was plainly that the rest of the nation cease its criticism in this matter.
This editor was not the first Southerner, nor will he be the last, to plead that non-Southerners desist from interfering with the Southâs way of dealing with the Black-White situation. This position is untenable. To begin with there is no reason to believe that Southern newspapers and citizens will reciprocate with considerable silence toward other sections of the country. Business, political, interracial, or other issues confronting the different sections of the country draw criticism and comment from all. This should not be avoided, deplored or suppressed in any area of the country. Criticism ought to be accepted as an opportunity for introspections, self-evaluation, inventory, and improved direction.
The Shrinking Nation
Furthermore, to divide the country into regions, particularly North and South, is to deny reality. Today no one area of our country is an island. The ease of transportation, the scope of communication, the increase of education, the requirements of military service, the development of new industries, all serve as parts of a complicated network drawing people closer together. With comparative ease and in increasing numbers families venture a good distance away from the confines of their immediate home neighborhoods. Education opportunities open new worlds to people. Compulsory military training whisks young people form their front porches to see new places, to meet new faces and to listen and look and learn. Charlotte, N.C. has been transplanted into Frankenmuth, Mich. Southerners have moved to the North, and Dixieâs cities and military installations have absorbed countless Yankees.
Among ourselves we Americans still indulge in good-humored sentimentality and loyalty to the soil of our sectional roots. People abroad do not classify Americans in such highly ordered groups. Georgian or Hoosier, Californian or New Englander, to citizens of others lands an American in an American â a citizen of the United States and not specifically a citizen of one section or another. This image should not surprise us. We have endeavored to maintain the image of unity and democracy, and not without success, in spite of the youngness of the nation and the mobility of her people. An interracial conflict then may occur in Detroit, San Francisco, or Birmingham, but in the minds of people overseas it happened in the United States. Thus the North does have a stake in whatever happens in the South.
Who Pays the Bills?
There are other ways in which the interracial tensions of the South become the âbusinessâ and concern of the North. The mass of litigation caused by the endless procession of plaintiffs parading from the lowest courts to the Supreme Court has been expensive to all Americans. In more cases than not, the black personâs complaint is judged righteous, but the cost is high in terms of expenditures and fees involved, of slower justice in case delayed and postponed because of the heavy legal traffic.
More than this, injustice is expensive in countless intangible ways. How can one assess the damage of a century and more in terms or morale, mental health, poverty, emotional tensions, frustrations, guilt? The South does not bear this cost alone.
The immigrant from the South quickly becomes the âbusinessâ of the North â of Northern African Americans as well as whites. Intolerable conditions that press beyond endurance cause the black person to seek a more reasonable neighborhood. All too often he comes to his new environs undereducated, undertrained and quite unequipped, with no financial, social, or commercial resources to help him be self-sufficient. The community feels the pressure of these deficiencies.
That he cannot afford his own house means he must move in with others.
That he overcrowds a home and ultimately, with others, a neighborhood may be a step toward home and neighborhood deterioration.
He may be contributing to the health and safety hazard of his area.
Social welfare assistance must increase.
Extended health and medical services must be provided.
Great police protection must be afforded.
Fire insurance rates must be boosted.
Community assistance cost rise and taxes go up.
And the North should not be concerned?
If ever there was an hour that called for mutually sympathetic and constructive collaboration of all citizens everywhere in working out solutions to what area admittedly great and difficult problems in the North as well as the South, it is this 20th century moment of interracial tension.
What is South?
Perhaps we would first of all do well to disabuse ourselves of the idea that South means interracial tension, for if this is true, we will find âthe Southâ exasperatingly elusive.
Atlanta, in the heart of Dixie, serves notice on a group of hooded Klansmen from a neighboring town that they are to leave at once and not return. Is not Atlanta the heart of the South? And is not the South where the Klan expects the greatest acceptance and support?
A group of citizens, black and white, sits about a conference table in Little Rock to find new Job opportunities of capable black people. Enter quietly a small church and see black and white members of the fellowship of worshippers receive on bended knee their Lordâs cup of blessing â in Tulsa, Oklahoma where long ago a bloody riot raged and not so long ago a cross burned on a black familyâs lawn and anotherâs home was bombed.
A black scientist chose to live in a house in Oak Park, Ill., and his house was bombed. A Lutheran cemetery in Illinois denied burial to a little child who had died. The reason; he was black. A northern Indiana motel refused hospitality to an African church representative. Churches have closed doors to black people who live next door and would rather sell out, close down, and move to the suburbs than stay and serve and love.
Nor is all well below Mason and Dixon. White ministers are beaten because they are ânigger-lovers,â and rural town black people are terrorized. Church people are still stammering and halting instead of decrying injustice, defending the trampled and witnessing fearlessly to a Christ who loves all.
Yet even in the awkward silence of a fearful Christianity are to be heard the exciting noises of the shackles falling from people who will not be slaves to fear and wrong. In the North the heartening instances, though pitifully few, are nonetheless observable. A Chicago pastor and his parish opened doors and hearts to almost a hundred refugees who fled a flaming hotel. Bereft, shocked, and alone, they were welcomed. But neighbors jeered, threatened, and hurled their abuses at the pastor and his people, resenting the kindnesses extended. Why? The fire victims were all black, and this was a âWhite community.â It was then that an entire district of church people in Illinois rallied in support of this clergyman and his congregation in their attempt to give the love of Christ to their brothers and sisters.
A Southern pastor was told by the members of his congregation that he was not to discuss race relations with the organizations of his parish. He called a special meeting of all members of the congregation. Quietly and simply he offered his resignation since he could not remain as pastor of a congregation which would not permit him to preach the full counsel of God.â The congregation rose to vote unanimously that the pastor be urged to withdraw his resignation and preach clearly and bravely Godâs will and Word to them in fullness and truth.
In a small Southern town mothers and leaders pleaded with a recalcitrant governor to take his troopers of their streets and stop his interference with their responsible efforts to desegregate their schools with dignity and order. In the South there are whites and blacks who have stood together to face the risk of brutal beating, loss of business, social ostracism, and utter loneliness. They cannot presuppose appeal to police protection and law enforcement which has often been put to the test and found wanting. Yet they speak with courage to denounce the sham and the shame, the carelessness and the callousness, the pathetic and apathetic patterns of behavior that have characterized the region of their birth, of which they so desperately desire to be proud. Who can name them all? But great names there are: Carter, Ashmore, McGill, Pitts, Dabbs, Mayes, Wright, Campbell, Boyle, and countless more.
It would be good if the term âSouthâ and all the implications with which people burden the word could be shelved for a period until the real issues become clearly discernible and people everywhere begin the bend their wills and expend their efforts toward resolving the problem. Then perhaps the name could once again be taken up and carried with dignity and honor as never before.
Chapter 2 - THE SHATTERED
In the face of all the abuse and hurt black people have generally stood tall and indefatigable, often serene, sometimes with a fantastic humor and joy, courageous and loyal and patient beyond what is normally and endurable. And with dignity.
A Personâs Dignity
âDignityâ is derived from a Latin word meaning âworth.â In a thousand lives, many of which ended on foreign battlefields in blood, the black American has proved his worth. Yet steadily and effectively the brutal expressions of racial discrimination scrape away at the black person to strip him of every vestige of dignity.
Who does it? To be sure, the loud, screaming, blustery haters with their whips and hoods and clenched fists and their stones, their bombs and their guns. But look more closely and see alongside these violent faces in the North and the South the proper, gentle people who by tacit support and aloof acquiescence tolerate and thus perpetuate this cruel devastation of human spirit.
With the Past in the Present
The black person in the poor backlands of the South lives in a world that is a strange mixture of the past and the present and the future. He may do his plowing with an old mule. At noon he may be listening to reports on a satellite placed in orbit from a site only a few hundred miles away. And his son may be attached to the branch of the military service involved in the launching. His gray-haired wife may have her closely braided hair tied in a bandanna, and his daughter may be coming home from high school with a hairdo resembling that of some current movie personality. He discusses the bills proposed to the Senate, yet he has never been registered to vote. He still raises a meager crop of cotton but knows the precise batting averages of a dozen major-league baseball players. He has seen every World Series for the past 12 years â through the window of the television and appliance store in town. His house is drab and unpainted. The sun plays on the tin-can patches on the roof. The White owner has never replaced the broken front steps; a large fieldstone serves the purpose now.
Often enough this farmer is totally dependent on a merchant in town who advances the seed for planting and the credit for clothing and staples until the next harvest. And the times when actual money is in the hands of the farmer are infrequent and the amount is rarely sizable. Of course the farmer would wish for the things he sees advertised in magazines and catalogs and in the windows of the stores. And his wife longs for the things she sees in the home of the lady for whom she cleans and launders. But there were not to be hand by great-grandfather or grandfather or father, and they are hardly likely to be had in this generation. The fields do not yield any appreciably greater income; the prices on the necessities for living only increase.
Survival
The possibility of altering the situation may lie in the prospect of the governmentâs coming to the rescue. After all, the government sends money to help people overseas. In many instances the government helps people in dire straits. How does one proceed? Not very far without a vote. But the town merchant does not want his black customers to vote. There are more blacks in this particular area than whites and it hardly seems right to him that people less educated and with less economic and political understanding and experience should be in political control.
The farmer may harbor some resentment of indignities or even unfairness he has felt at this merchantâs hand, but he remembers other things. During the thin years of bad crops and low income this man extended credit for a long time and gave without charge bits of fuel for the cold nights.
He knows that even in the 1960s Klansmen wearing their hoods and carrying their torches still had their meetings. He knows that if he should consider doing something to improve his lot â register to vote â write a letter to the President or to a national newsmagazine â he and his family stand to the terrorized by the rabid racists. When he and his wife are asked, âYou donât want integration, do you?â We treat you fine here, donât we?â âYou wouldnât want to be up North with that NAACP and all, would you? The black person knows how to answer. Then the white Southerner is assured that the communication lines are up and that he pretty well has his hand on the pulse of black attitudes in his community. He further assumes that his own attitudes are justified and that the Southern âway of lifeâ is best for all concerned. But what is this âway of lifeâ?
Southern Manners
In a small community in Florida the guest speaker was a woman who had just returned from the African mission field. At one point she stepped from the slide projector to the screen to point out one of the native church workers and identified him as Mister ___. That was more than one of the persons in the group could bear. He stood up and left the meeting, announcing his intentions never to let his family come back to this kind of "nigger-lovinâ church.â The speaker had offended the man by overstepping bounds of âproper talk.â
This is no subculture, backwoods-community idiosyncrasy. This has been simply a part of the normal public âmanners,â an upholding of Southern âdignity.â The standard policy for âwhiteâ newspapers in the South has been to delete the tiles of Mr., Mrs. or Miss from any articles which name black people. Traditionally the white Southern knows that tiles are never to be used when addressing a black person. Even the Professional âReverendâ or âDoctorâ more often become âPreacherâ and âDoc.â Though the person of color be a school principal, merchant of attorney, in ordinary conversation he or she is a ânigger,â or the more refined may call him or her a ânigraâ. He or she may be 87 years old; may possess a PhD or a Purple Heart; may be a skilled craftsperson and a mature community leader and even an exemplary parent of three college graduates, but the title is âBoy or Girl.â
In many instances even today, should a black person traveling out of the North into Alabama, Mississippi or South Carolina be accosted by a deputy or constable, the answer had better not be Yes or No. A black person must be sure to say and say explicitly, Yes, Sir or No, Sir. He must show that he âknows his place!â
The Place of the African American
Northerners and Southerners alike have endeavored to show the African-American person what his place should be by referring to the advice of Booker T. Washington, the outstanding black educator and leader who urged postponing the pursuit of social equality in favor of such immediate goals as education, job skills, and economic self-sufficiency. They interpret his remarks to mean that the black person need not seek benefits for himself other than the opportunity to be educated, and it will necessarily follows that he will quality for his place in the world.
The advice has been well taken. African-Americans have trained themselves for almost every working post. Automatic acceptance? Only in a relatively limited degree. The better positions traditionally open to blacks in the South were largely in the professions: ministers, teachers, nurses, and a sprinkling of people in medicine, law, and pharmacy.
These trained men and women were largely restricted to service in the black community. Office space was not available in the White community; white âowned and operated firms were not about to include blacks on their staff.
Dr. Lester Granger, former executive director of the National Urban League, pointed out in a 1963 interview in Chicago that there were at one time opening for black people in the skilled building trades. He added, however, that this situation ended with the arrival of Big Labor in the 1930âs, which organized also in the South and allowed the unions to exclude black craftsmen from âopenâ building opportunities. Thus the black person who was trained for some special vocation for which there was no employment in his own community was forced to take his âpursuit of happinessâ elsewhere. Or he might âput it in mothballsâ for another day, or discard it in the face of reality as a fantastic, impossible dream.
A Place to Do Something
It would appear that the African- American had at least the opportunity to be trained. The young people could study and learn. This is true, indeed, but study and learn what?
In one Southern city the black community high school, in addition to offering academic courses, taught barbering, cosmetology and shoe repair. Through the years this school must have graduated hundreds of shoe repairmen, barbers and hairdressers. All these for a black community of less than 12,000. That the supply of workers would exceed the demand for their services seemed obvious. If a person trained in one of these fields were to stay in that town, he could probably count only the loyalty of relatives to provide his with a clientele (and they would probably expect discounts!). More realistically, we would suppose that many of these people simply would not ply their trade or would have to migrate elsewhere to find a slot open to them. This same school also offered a course in automobile mechanics â in a city where garages would not hire black mechanics.
To say that this is cruel would be gross understatement. Can you envision those young men and women in caps and gowns, brimming with a sense of achievement, and with hopes and optimism, walking to the rostrum of their high school auditorium to get their diplomas? And can you imagine how months later (or perhaps only days!), when they discover that the words of their commencement speaker ring hollow and empty, they must be disillusioned? Their diploma proves no passport to opportunity but a symbol of frustration.
A Future for Nothing
Small wonder that as recently as 1962 a professional evaluator of a youth research survey conducted by a major church body felt obliged to comment on this finding in one particular parish (in a private document addressed to its pastor):
I am puzzled why these youth are almost masochistic in their attitudes towards themselves. The score on the Happiness Scale plunges to the bottom of the distribution of scores. Apparently they feel that many of the opportunities which young people dream about are ones which they cannot even hope to achieve. They want help relating to self-undemanding and self-realization as though they need assistance in accepting their lot.
He had no idea that this group was in a Southern African American community.
The youngsters find it difficult to envision a bright future for themselves when they see the inequity in vocation which their parents and grandparents have endured. One father was sufficiently qualified to serve on a Fulbright arrangement to help set up a school of agriculture in the Philippines. In his own Southern community he worked in a small market selling fish and fowl. Another, college trained in horticulture and business administration, packed ice in refrigerator cars for the railway for 15 years. In this time he accumulated no seniority benefits because his color excluded him from union participation. The frustration of these people and their families echo in thousands of black lives. The young people have reason to wonder what hope life holds for them.
Uncounted numbers of black teachers, especially in the South, have been reckoning the costs of this frustration in the new generation. They have found themselves stretched mercilessly between living for a principle and sheer survival. Ever since the mid-fifties they have worked and spoken and have given generously of time, talent, possessions, and person to support the cause of desegregation in the schools. They supported the NAACP in its costly court pursuits. Their all-black teacher organizations in many places have given overwhelmingly clear expression of concern against continued segregation patterns. They have done it for the sake of their children. They wanted these children of promise to have the highest quality education possible so that they might be able to take their place in a democracy and to share both in its responsibilities and its fruits. But all the while these teachers knew, and they have since been proved right, that when schools in black communities closed, many of these teachers, no matter how well qualified would not be readily absorbed into the previously all-white teaching force. The white person of the South will, with great reluctance, yield to desegregation rulings, but has not given evidence up to this time of any great zeal to take the initiative in seeking out blacks to stand next to him in vocational opportunities.
The South Loses
To find some measure of hope, to regain some part of his dignity, the African-American may leave his home. When he goes, the community is usually the loser. There is a loss of skills, responsible leadership potential, earning potential, sound character, and friends. The empty house stands as a symbol of hopelessness to the neighbors who stay behind and appear to be only a community of crushed spirits. Strong leadership often seems difficult to identify or even discover, but many of those who remain in their communities, taking on the magnitudinous task of raising standards and improving conditions are proving to be the real heroes in the struggle to bring America to full maturity.
No matter then that the white Southerner, gentle or volatile, is convinced that he feels the pulse of the black community, the communication lines are not up, and he is wrong if he thinks they are. No matter how well intentioned he may be, no matter how well he has rationalized his position to his family, his neighbors, black people, his God and himself â he is still wrong. The evidence is to be found in the overwhelming ballot cast by the black person against living in the rural South, expressed in the mass exodus to the urban centers of our country during the past few decades.
Chapter 3 - THE CRUSHED
People who find the Southern rural intolerable move north, or to cities in the South, only to find that their new âhomelandâ is inhospitable. It is not uncommon to read advertisements of cities inviting industry and people to move into their midst. It does not appear likely that national magazines will soon print ads extending a special welcome to blacks. We are still living in days when people have cruelly urged that the black people âbe shipped back to Africaâ; when groups from the South have underwritten the expenses of black people promising to move north; when real estate interests conspire and often pay black people not to move into certain areas or threaten reprisal if they do.
The Cold North
Wherever he lives, in the North or the South, the black person finds that the problems compound themselves in maddening and frustrating circles. Imagine for a moment the experiences of a black person moving to a Northern metropolis. The trip itself will probably exhaust his financial resources. When he arrives, the lodging available is either dirty or smelling or priced so way beyond his reach â or both. Perhaps he has relatives who have preceded him to the big city. They may share their quarters. But often enough the hosts already have a houseful of people living with them, and it is likely that they newly arrived family may number 6 or 8 or 10!
The cost of rental is reduced considerably if two or three families can share quarters, quarters that may well have been originally planned to house a family of four. But even that relatively small payment for rent must be med, and the children must be fed and given heavier clothes.
In most cases African Americans have been moving into cities where unemployment already is great. In Chicago they have been arriving in numbers as high as 2,500 per week in recent years. A few have learned crafts and skills, but only a few. A vast majority arrives inexperienced, undertrained, poorly educated, poor credit risks, without recommendation from previous employers. Firms at which they apply for work already have long waiting lists of applicants, people with experience, known and recommended. It is hardly to be expected that these people will welcome the newcomers with open arms. The very thought of the recent arrivalâs trying to go into business for himself is ridiculous. There is no place to set up shop; no capital for stock or equipment. He cannot qualify for or finance the licensing and permit processes; and he is often ill equipped to cope with the ways of big city life.
Feast and Famine
If he can land a temporary job at the market or store, sweeping or serving in some other custodial post, he is thrilled. The take-home pay for his first four days is over $40 â by standards of his experience a fantastic amount.
All the way home he exults. The ads and displays in a hundred store windows assume a dimension they had never held for him before. A television set can be had for $5 down and $1 a week. Well, of course he can afford it, and the salesman is so friendly. He buys a big bag of groceries with which to surprise the family, and he takes his wife back in the evening to buy her a coat. Back to work on Monday with good spirits and optimism. On Tuesday the man whom he had replaced has recovered from his illness and returns to work. The substitute is out of work.
He walks more blocks than he can count. Perhaps there is a small job here, a âcome back tomorrowâ there. But the prosperity was short-lived. Now the fears begin to engulf him. The payments are due on the clothes. The once friendly man comes to repossess the TV. It seems that every No is spoken by white people, increasing in frequency and volume.
Husband and Housewife
The prospects are more likely that his wife find employment. So now he stays with the children â hardly a situation that makes for pride. There is a constant smell of diapers in a crowded house with no laundering facilities. â It costs too much to use the coin-operated machines every day. The other men of the neighborhood can joke with him about playing housewife and staying home to have âcoffee with the other girls,â and though he may smile and have a retort, he is chafing and smarting underneath. He is glad to get out of the house once his wife returns. She is no longer the happy little girl he married; now weary, irritable, she faces the prospects of a full nightâs work with the children before she leaves for her job again in the morning. The house almost defies straightening. Tempers grow short. The husband is humiliated at getting an âallowanceâ from his wife. The children are glad for opportunities to get out of the house, too. And the mother is glad to have them leave if it means a few hours of peace. The drinking, the dope, the fighting, the infidelity all start to swell like an aggravated, infected sore. One after another men succumb and surrender to despair and flight from reality. Not all become derelicts; some, desperately eager to make a significant contribution to their families survival leave home so that their children may be eligible for increased welfare support.
Frustration and Defeat
With such frequent instances of deterioration of family unity, strength, and morale, and with so little real promise offered in education, the school dropout rate is high. The children who hear how their father took advanced education and now see him underemployed or unemployed find little incentive in the racially discriminating employment patterns to justify their own pursuit of an education and to vindicate their hopes and dream. How do they find a way to challenge this life and become equipped with hope? Thus, all over again, the cycle of frustration is begun in a new generation.
In vocation or on vacation, the black person must constantly strive to maintain his dignity in the face of humiliation. He may apply for a job by telephone, have necessary requirements, and be told to report for work. When he appears in person, he is awkwardly informed that âthe position has been filled.â If he wishes to travel, he knows he must secure motel reservations in advance. But the journey is taken in the constant fear that these confirmed reservations may melt away when he approaches the desk clerk.
Burden Bearers
The human constitution can persevere and endure at great odds. But are there not times when a man might retreat to relaxation and literal re-creation? Must he carry the burden of what E. Saunders Redding calls his âNegronessâ for 52 weeks of the year without 1 week of relief?
The bearing of the burden with dignity must somehow be explained by parents to their little ones.
A black Oklahoman tells of a trip he made back from the west coast though Arizona, where he stopped for gas. Having paid for his purchase he rolled out onto the highway only to find that his youngest child had dire need of a rest room. He returned to the service station and inquired about one. âWe donât have a rest room for colored.â Meanwhile the childâs urgent need could not be postponed and a little pool formed next to the childâs shoe. Men standing around began to roar in laughter. And the child wept. The father, feeling for his child, took him up in tenderness and left in bitter anger. In retrospect, he says, âI thank God I had no gun in my car or Iâm afraid I would have gone right back inside and killed that man.â
How can segregation be explained to a child? How can parents keep the child from being hurt? How can they guard the child from developing a feeling of inferiority or a feeling of resentment and hatred toward all white people?
Vision and Perception
There are those who will claim, âThe black should not be so sensitive.â Consider the man who is about to walk through a wooden swinging door, but before raising his hand is struck full in the face by the door because someone coming from the other side cares only where he is going, not for others. Is it not understandable that after such an experience the injured will be cautious when confronted by the next swinging door? And if this experience is his repeatedly, what is left for him? He might become calloused and broken and numb, a pathetic creature, and naively venture to the door again, and again, a comic-tragic figure. Or he may shy away to a corner and never venture out. Or he may choose to use some strange and unorthodox exit â perhaps a window. Or he may assume an aggressive offensive and charge at the door, caring only for himself, and either injure another who may be approaching, or fall and hurt himself. Perhaps, after all, it is the sensitive African American who can best call attention to this clashing confusion as it exists today and thus help install a new glass door which permits vision and perception, enabling the black man to understand the ways of the Caucasian and the Caucasian in turn to see and know both the heartaches and the aspirations of black people.
Soul Depreciation
It would be an awakening experience indeed, and a frightfully depressing one, to study the case histories of mental hospitals serving black patients and determine just how much the humiliating, shaming, and degrading processes of racial discrimination have eaten at the soul and heart and mind of the mentally ill. It might profitable to know how many crimes committed by black people have been a desperate bid for survival or sheer rebellion in the face of White expressions of superiority and exclusiveness. Richard Bardolph, in his book, The Negro Vanguard, cites a study by Nathaniel O. Calloway of the University Of Illinois College Of Medicine. Mr. Callowayâs study drew attention to the physical toll of discrimination by demonstrating the high incidence of black mortality tables. He attributes this phenomenon to social stresses and particularly to what he calls the âCompulsive servilityâ required of colored workers.
TVâs caustic humorist Dick Gregory has said that when white people refuse to welcome the black family into an all-white neighborhood they claim, âThey will depreciate the value of my property.â Gregory responds, âI canât get excited about depreciating the value of your lawn, when for more than 300 years you have been depreciating the value of my soul.â
Chapter 4 - AND AFTER THE BREAKING?
It is understandable that the black person who returns from a day of frustration â joblessness, loneliness, unwantedness, and poverty, assigned to his ghetto of dark-faced people because he had simply better not try to take his place in the white personâs world â it is understandable that he finds a tantalizing temptation in a movement of organized hate against the White enemy.
The Black Muslim
There are countless people who cherish and nourish such seeds of hate privately, and there are small groups that sing the theme of hate, âThe White manâs day is done.â They counter the principle of white supremacy with black supremacy. It is almost as if they were issuing an ultimatum. Books like Epistle to White Christians, Listen, White Man, and Goddamn White Man in their very titles breathe such sentiment. One can hardly avoid taking note of a highly organized and vocal group called the Black Muslims. Disavowed by traditional Islam and scorned by responsible black leadership, this organization has charmed thousands with its outpourings of scorn for White people and integrationists. A leader explains to his responsive crowd that since the Supreme Courtâs school desegregation ruling in 1954 there he has not been as much as 1 percent compliance per year, implying that his audience will all be dead before total compliance is attained. A record published by this group, called âA White Manâs Heaven; A Black Manâs Hell,â says in no uncertain terms that the white personâs attainments have been at the expense of the black. The call is to arise, resist, and overthrow the White person with the authority of Allah, under the guidance of his prophet Elijah Muhammed. It calls the white man âdevilâ and assigns him to hell.
In an evaluation of the movement, C. Eric Lincoln in his The Black Muslims in America has this to say:
True, the Movement in its present form may be crushed by an embarrassed and apprehensive citizenry, white or black. It can be stopped today â and it should be, if it seriously threatens the peace and security of the nation. But in shattering the Movement we shall not eliminate the tension and the need which created and catapulted it to its present momentum. Out of the ashes of the Black Muslims, another âblackâ specter will inevitably rise to challenge us, for we can destroy the Muslim organization but not the Negroâs will to freedom. The essence of the Black Muslim Movement will endure â an extreme expression of the American Negroâs rising dissatisfaction with the way things are and his deepening conviction that this is not the way things have to be. (P. 254)
On the other hand there are many who recognize that the extreme expressions of hate area also ânot the way things have to be.â Across the country a variety of demonstrations have occurred protesting the patterns of racial discrimination which through the years have shorn the black person of his dignity. Young black people who have objected to being good enough to stand up to buy toothpaste at one counter but not good enough to sit down and drink a Coke at another decided to âsit in,â occupying the stools and booths of the store that will not serve them. Result? A standstill. Until something âgives.â And in dozens of cities in the South, well before the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the reluctant bars had been lowered and lunch counters had begun to serve all comers.
Seeing these demonstrations, many merchants and townsfolk have been resentful â if not angered â by such a display of rash and brazen people whom they have always wanted to âstay in their place.â Trespassing, breach of the peace, and a dozen other charges are called upon to curb the protest expressions. But the demonstrations have persisted.
Here the young black person will perhaps find a recovery if not a discovery â of his dignity. Perhaps one can be objective at this point and take note of the students in Hungary and other nations who took their stand against communism. Often the students of American colleges and universities are chided for inane activities on which they bestow much time and energy. A few decades ago the fad was swallowing live goldfish. More recently efforts and talents were directed towards determining how many students could be piled into a telephone booth. Other college youth can find little more to express their deep feelings than to tear down a goalpost after a football game in celebration of victory. Still others have sought out a uniform for their nonconformity, usually a casual, ungroomed appearance. Now a new generation has arisen to stand with their forebears who refused to be degraded and denied. They take exception to the strange inconsistencies they see and experience on every hand. Responsible youth, black and a few white, have joined hands and hearts and voices to protest against that which has spoiled a peopleâs integrity, made a mockery of democracy, assigned religion to a role of irrelevance.
Millions have been watching: some with bitter resentment and a few with even violent resistance; a large number with the detachment of people watching a golf tournament on television; still others with furrowed brow, doubting the wisdom of this because some might get hurt; and still others enthusiastically in support but quite unwilling to become too involved because âthis could become dangerous.â
Dangerous Commitment
Some have called these young folk troublemakers. Such a judgment is wrong. These are young men and women who know that the trouble is already there and has been for a long time. They have been willing to go to the trouble and to take the trouble to see to it that millions of the next generationâs children will not be forced to see the promises made to past generations still unfulfilled. They are young people who for the most part have gone about their work with dignity.
Far from being impromptu, spontaneous, and reckless eruptions on the scene, the expressions of protest against the racially discriminatory status quo have in most cases been carefully planned and meticulously executed. The patterns employed first calls for a discussion with the management of the firm found to be practicing discrimination. Then quietly, orderly, and bravely youth take their places at a counter or around tables. The pattern also calls first for training of the demonstrators in the ways of passiveness, nonresistance, and nonviolence. They are taught how to cover their faces when struck, how to group about someone else attacked in order the share the blows, and they are drilled in the determination not to strike back. They are reminded â and taught to remind each other by conversation and song â that their goal is to bring about the freedom of opportunity that ought be accorded all people. They are told and they have shown that their course is a dangerous one. They may be struck with brass knuckles or whipped across the face with a bicycle chain, their bus may be burned, they may be kicked, stamped, and stoned. But they are to pursue their path with dignity.
Confronted by such composed and restrained conduct, some become bewildered, some lose their dignity and do things unworthy of mature and responsible people. They have smashed eggs on the heads of the demonstrators and poured sugar and catsup on them; they have held burning cigarettes against their backs; they have struck them and gashed them with knives.
Unlawful Law
Officers of the law and public officials endowed with responsibility to the total public good have suddenly become less than courteous and mature in the face of this request to be free. Officials sworn to uphold the principles of the Constitutions and of justice have menaced, harassed, and arrested those who seek justice. Citizens who are proud of their institutions dedicated to learning, to citizenship, to decency have answered the request of others for citizenship with mayhem and bloodshed. Mothers who have fond hopes and bright dream for their children have allowed them to watch and listen as they screamed epithets of hatred and spat at those who wished to obey the laws of desegregation.
The Suffering Children
In an address to the delegates of the 1958 National Urban League Conference in Omaha, Alfred Marrow, psychologist and businessman of New York City, caught his audience somewhat off guard as he expressed his pity for the children of the South, for whom he felt deeply. Then suddenly and sharply he broke the silence that followed: âNot the black child; the white!â He pointed out that the disparity in black education was obviously crippling. He conceded the frustrating effects of the proscribed life in Jim Crow communities. He acknowledged readily the flickering nature of the flame of hope burning within the black person who grows up in the South. But, the speaker pointed out, this child can forever point with pride to his forebears who with dignity and an indomitable spirit bore the burdens of an existence of abuse and rejection and yet emerged without bitterness, without violent rebellion and retaliation. It was the children of lighter skin who evoked this manâs pity. Theirs are the parents who with trembling voice could speak of democracy and justice and love, who saluted the flag and could not start a baseball game without rising and singing about the land of the free, the home of the brave; who recited their creeds and changed their hymns for love for job and His mankind and taught them the story of the Good Samaritan.
How could these children ever be proud of parents who so easily espouse righteousness by mouth but in their actions and in their inaction â in daily living disavow and repudiate such concern? How could there be respect and honor for parents who espouse by word the principles of love and justice but in living conform to and even support a legalized, systematized pattern of containment and repression for a fellow human â solely on the basis of racial background?
Unjustified Fears
There is something to be said at this point for the person who has real fears. Fears need not be justified to be read. The late Justice Holmes recognized this when he declared that the person who shouts âFireâ in a crowded auditorium when there is no fire violates freedom of speech. There is no fire; there is no real justification for fear. But it is obvious that fear â real fear and even panic â can be evoked by such irresponsible cries.
Through the years a momentum of tradition has developed from isolated experiences, distorted statistics, unsubstantiated reports, rumors as well as sheer gossip, fables, and falsehoods. Most fears stem for all this â fear that may not be justified but that are nonetheless real.
As an easily frightened child must by patience and persistence be helped to look in the dark closet and behind the huge tree to be shown that her fears are unwarranted, so the person who cannot face up to discussion and responsible action in the material of interracial discord simply because he has such deeply rooted fears needs the same kind of patient, persistent, and empathetic concern and attention.
Without understanding the âwhyâ behind naked statistical reports involving black persons on crime rate, juvenile delinquency, disease frequency, and a host of other areas, casual readers and amateur interpreters often read far more into the statistics than is warranted. Generalities and stereotypes result in the minds of these victimized by such superficial insight. While the term âvictimizeâ may seem a bit dramatic, it conveys well the inherent danger of such practice because here unjustified fears have birth and are nourished.
The printed page has often become a factor â sometimes unwittingly and sometimes intentionally â in helping people set fixed images in their minds about black people in far too generalized a way. Many newspapers have consistently through the years carried little or nothing about black people except when the African Americanâs role was criminal or in other ways reprehensible. In such instances the name of the person is given and he is identified by a racial modifier. Subtly the reader is led to assume that whenever black people do anything deserving of newsprint it is detrimental to society. It is a short step from such a premise to the conclusion that black people do little that is not detrimental to society.
Hence a host of fears. The superficial are convinced that the black people are oversexed and tend toward rape and have an avid desire for illegitimate offspring in order to profiteer from welfare departments. These same people are sure that most black people carry switchblade knives and concealed weapons and are prone to violence. People who think this way are haunted by fears. If a black man walks through the neighborhood, he is a threat to every woman and child in the mind of the frightened. There are people who help cultivate these fears. A mother in anger may threaten her child that if he is not good âa black man will come and get you.â
Racial intermarriage can become a real fear. Statistics demonstrating the small number of such marriages fail to convince the fearful. Politicians have played on this fear, promising with paternalistic benevolence to give protection to preserve the âSouthern way of lifeâ and segregation and thus guarantee their constituents safety from interracial marriage. To be sure there are those political aspirants who have played on this fear with less success. Shortly after the 1954 school desegregation decision it was reported that a candidate for governor visited a Southern campus and promised his continued stand against the inroads of desegregation. Attempting to defend his position, he warned that if things developed as the Northern liberals postponed, it wouldn't be long before some huge dark-skinned man would ascend the front steps where some little honey-haired blue-eyed girl of Southern birth lived and ask for her hand in marriage. In the dramatic pause that followed some diminutive co-ed chirped, âShe can always say No, canât she?â And the senatorâs point was lost in a volley of laughter. But even such backfiring neither dissuades the politicians nor renders their fear-planting and fear-nourishing efforts ineffective.
The fearful may concede that it is an individualâs prerogative to marry whom he wishes, but they insist that their real concern is for the children of an interracial marriage. They generally fail to see that where law has resisted marriages â even in the South â a great many children are nonetheless born of mixed parents (witness the shades and tones between very dark and near-Caucasian.)
The fearful often point out that the children of such marriages are accepted by neither group. This is usually little more than half true: witness the large number of lighter skinned black people well received and thoroughly integrated into black community life in both the North and the South. People who claim this plight for the children do not see that they may well be accusing themselves, for it is Christian people who are to go out of their way to âwelcomeâ others â even those of other backgrounds â as Christ has welcomed all. (Romans 15)
Christians would do well not to let their main concern become a vocal stand against interracial marriage. Their contributions would be far more useful and constructive were they to endeavor to understand and support such marriages where they have taken place. Admittedly these marriages are often attended by sociological difficulties. But it is just such cases that call for prayer and love and understanding rather than censure. Christians ought to make every effort to assure that these people and their children will find acceptance and welcome at least in Christian hearts and churches in the hope that their burdens might be lessened and possibilities for a full life of happy service to God increased.