The Augusta Courier

STRICTLY PERSONAL

By ROY V. HARRIS

Newell Edenfield, last year's President of the Georgia Bar Association, in a speech to the annual meeting of the bar, held in Savannah recently, recommended that the State of Georgia abolish all of its segregation laws.

The immediate object would be to permit the City of Atlanta to accept integration under some kind of a pupil placement plan.

If the State should adopt his suggestion, then the Atlanta school board could immediately start integration as ordered by Judge Frank Hooper without running afoul of any Georgia law prohibiting race mixing.

If Georgia should follow the former president of the bar association, then we would be compromising all of our principles and compromising with the greatest evil which will confront the American people during this century.

Georgia people have always stood for segregation. Until recently, segregation has been both legal and the Christian way of life.

Segregation did not become illegal, or un-Christian until the Negroes moved into the large cities of the nation in great numbers and until they, by voting in a bloc, became the balance of power in these cities.

Their balance of power in these cities has given them control of the politics of the large key industrial states of the nation.

As soon as the Negroes, by voting in a bloc, grabbed this power, then we began to hear for the first time that segregation was illegal and that it was un-Christian.

Prior to the seizure of this power by the Negroes every court in the land, for at least a hundred years, held that our segregated way of life was legal and met the requirements of the federal constitution.

Prior to the seizure of this power by the Negro bloc vote in these key Northern states, the segregated way of life was accepted as the Christian way of life by our church leaders.

But, just as soon as they seized this power, the Supreme Court of the United States changed its mind and our church leaders began to preach that the segregated way of life was un-Christian.

Now, we in the South have believed all of these years that our judges of the past knew the law and that the leaders of our churches were Divinely-inspired individuals.

Consequently, we have, by following our judges and our church leaders, been raised on the doctrine that our way of life was both legal and Christian.

When the Supreme Court and our church leaders bowed the knee to this voting bloc and became a part of the conspiracy to turn over the politics of the nation to these voting blocs, it came to us as a shock.

These pronouncements by the Supreme Court and the manifestos by our church leaders placed us in a position where we must either stand by our traditions, our heritage and our principles, or else compromise the principles we hold to be most sacred.

It involved the acceptance of what the sociologists are now calling

the "coffee-colored compromise" and the creation of a new race of people in America through interbreeding of the white and Negro races.

Now, to ask us to follow such leaders and to embrace such a compromise is unthinkable.

We must never surrender our position that the Supreme Court's sociological decision is wrong.

If we repeal our segregation laws we then, in effect, embrace the Supreme Court's decision.

If we repeal our segregation laws we then accept the Supreme Court decision as the law of the land.

If Georgia accepts the Supreme Court decision then we have compromised our legal position.

We should never embrace this decision.

We should resist it and fight for our own laws which stood for more than one hundred years. We should resist and fight until that decision has been set aside, either by saner judges or by an Act of Congress.

There is a difference between having an unconscionable law forced upon you and in enthusiastically embracing it.

Now, to pinpoint this situation to Georgia. Just suppose worse should come to worse. Just suppose some federal judge should force some degree of race mixing in some of our schools.

We should never repeal our laws. We should never agree to race mixing.

We should never admit that it is right.

If such should ever come, we should not offer our hearty cooperation.

We might be forced to dignifiedly acquiesce for a time.

But we should continue the fight. We should stand and defend our own laws and continue every effort to have those decisions set aside.

We should never quit until we once again should be permitted to operate and run our own schools, which we pay for, as we see fit.

And, in this respect, no school board in Georgia, or anywhere else in the South, ought ever to submit any plan of integration to any degree.

The school board in New Orleans refused to submit a plan to the federal judge. Instead, they let the federal judge take over the situation.

Now, when September comes, if any Negroes are admitted into the white schools, they will be sent there by the federal judge and probably accompanied by federal marshals.

Every school board in the South ought to follow that same example.

If the federal judge wants to take over the assignment of pupils in the public school system, then let it be his responsibility and not ours.

Then, when he sends them in, let's resist as long as we can. If we should reach a point where resistance is no longer possible, we should consider renting the schools from the local authorities and permitting the legislature and the local communities to make grants to the parents or the guardians of the children to pay their tuition to attend a private school system.

In the meantime, there may be other plans which are just as good or maybe better.

The people of the South ought to be resourceful enough to devise some plan for their own salvation.

But, again, I say if worse comes to worse, we should not accept it.

Let the federal judge have the burden on his shoulders.

Then, if the federal judge sends little Negroes into your school, accompanied by federal marshals, as soon as they get there, let's start figuring a way to get them out.

It can be done. You can't whip a dedicated people determined to protect and to defend themselves.

Race mixing and the "coffee-colored compromise" are evil things. It will destroy the public school system.

It will destroy communities.

It will destroy a race of people.

There should never be any compromise by white people on this evil thing.

We should never accept it. We should never quit fighting.

It is time now to sit down at home every night and begin to teach your children about the evils of this dastardly scheme.

It is time now to train their young minds that they should never accept social mixing and mingling with the Negro people.

We should do this before some misguided teacher takes charge of their young minds and begins to teach them that it is their Christian duty to love, date and marry Negroes.

This evil thing can never be forced on a dedicated people.

As a matter of fact, it can only come if the people themselves give their hearty cooperation to the evil itself.

This speech of Edenfield's is a sample of things to come.

We can look for the Atlanta crowd to spring everything possible between now and this time next year to try to force the state government, and the rest of the state, to permit them to inaugurate race mixing in the public schools of Atlanta.

Even THE ATLANTA CONSTITUTION is getting bolder and bolder.

Ralph McGill and the CONSTITUTION's new editor used to argue for a little bit of "token" integration.

They said, in effect, "Give us just enough to comply with the law".

Now, their newspaper is filled full of statements by them that we are dealing with a new Negro. They claim that this new Negro is one that should be accepted socially.

They claim that this new Negro now is entitled to mix with the white people.

So, they have gone all out for mixing and they are no longer begging just for enough integration to comply with the Supreme Court decision.

They are now committed to a policy which leads to the "coffee-colored compromise".

They are now preaching that color means nothing. They are now preaching that this new Negro is no different from the whites except his color.

They are preaching that since we are dealing with a new Negro that we should forget color.

What they are trying to get us to do is to follow the example of ancient Egypt, Portugal and other such countries and begin that slow, steady process of race mixing so that in the end we will come out with a "coffee-colored compromise".

If we accept their theory, then there will be no reason for distinctions based upon color or discrimination based on color.

If we follow them, we will all wind up with the same color and the same odor.

These same coffee-colored compromises have destroyed every civilization and every white race that has participated in such an evil scheme.

So, listen for the next proposition out of Atlanta and be ready to fight it to the last ditch.