St. Paul Recorder

Faulkner, Mississippi
Author
Calls Boy's Murder A
Threat To Entire Nation

Rome, Italy.-William Faulkner, Mississippi author and
Nobel prize winner in Rome, Italy on a State Department spon-
sored tour expressed strong disapproval of the recent lynch
murder of a 14 year old Chicago Negro youth, Emmett Till, be-
cause he allegedly whistled at a white woman.

Faulkner's outstanding author.
born in Mississippi wrote his re-
action for the United Press. He
wrote:

When will we learn that if one
county in Mississippi is to sur-
vive it will be because all Missis-
sippi survives? That if the state
of Mississippi survives. it will be
because all America survives?
And if America is to survive, the
whole white race must survive
first?
Because the whole white race
is only one-fourth of the earth's
population of white and brown
and yellow and black.
So when will we learn that the
white man can no longer afford,
he simply does not dare, to com-
mit acts which the other three-
fourths of the human race can
challenge him for. not because the
acts are themselves criminal, but
simply because the challengers
and accusers of the acts are not
white in pigment?
Not to speak of the other Aryan
peoples who are already the West-
's enemies because of
political ideologies. Have we, the
white Americans who can commit
or condone such acts. forgotten
already, how only 15 years ago.
what only the Japanese--a mere
50 million inhabitants of an is-
land already insolvent and bank-
rut, did to us?
How then can we hope to sur-
vive the next Pearl Harbor, if
there should be one, with not only
all peoples who are not white, but
all people with political ideologies
different from ours arrayed a-
gainst us after we have taught
them (as we are doing) that
when we talk of freedom and lib-
erty. we not only mean neither, we
don't even mean security and just-
tice and even the preservation of
life for people whose pigmenta-
tion is not the same as ours.
And not just the black people
in Boer South Africa, but the
black people in America, too.
Because if we Americans are
to survive. it will have to be be-
cause we choose and elect and
defend to be first of all Ameri-
cans present to the world one
homogeneous and unbroken
front. whether of white Ameri-
cans of black ones or purple or
blue or green.
Perhaps we will find out now
whether we are to survive or not.
Perhaps the purpose of this sorry
and tragic error committed in my
native Mississippi by two white
adults on an afflicted Negro child
is to prove to us whether or not
we deserve to survive.
Because if we in America have
reached that point in our desper-
ate culture when we must murder
children, no matter for what rea-
son, or what color. we don't de-
serve to survive and probably
won't.