Atlanta Daily World

FROM MY STUDY WINDOW
By REV. J. C. WRIGHT

He Couldn't Remove His Hat

And there in lay the tragedy of his situation. I chose the word carefully. It wasn't that he would not remove his hat he couldn't. I judged from his general appearance and bearing that he had had at least a high school education or its equivalent.

He was a clean-cut, energetic, healthy specimen of the American manhood which has not yet been requisitioned for service in the Armed forces.

He was employed by a local laundry firm as a pick-up and delivery man. He had brought our laundry and placed it on the divan in the living room. After placing it there he had to wait a few minutes while I wrote a check. He was in the living room of a respectable American home, a lady was present. I could see that both instinct and training were urging that man to react as a gentleman should in such a situation.

Courtesy Struggling

I knew that courtesy, elemental chivalry and common decency were struggling for a hearing in that man's mind as he stood there in my living room with his hat on.

He would have been a gentleman if he could, but he was bound mind and soul by the shackles of prejudice and the myth of racial superiority, which have held, and are holding his section of the country in a bondage, which up to the present, neither education nor religion nor enlightened self-interest have been able to break.

With mingled emotions I watched the little drama, so simple, and yet so profoundly significant being enacted in that room. I couldn't find it in my heart to blame the man. I pitied him. For all the bondage known and experienced by mankind, none is so cruel and inexorable as that which enslaves the mind and will.

Symbol of South

That man standing there with his hat on when all his finer and nobler impulses dictated that he should remove it, was a pathetic symbol of the South today, that knows that democracy and racial segregation and discrimination are mutually exclusive and contradictory concepts, and is unable because of accepted attitudes and patterns of behavior to give a hearing to the dictates of justice and equal rights for all men.

I firmly believe that the South desires to solve her terrific race problem by according full rights of manhood and citizenship to her black brothers. But even according to the testimony of some of her most distinguished and devoted sons, they will never relinquish their prejudices and ingrained theories of racial purity and superiority to the extent of making such action possible.

There's Little Hope

We may talk of the relative efficacy of federal interference and states rights in seeking a solution to America's problem of race. We may pray and teach, and experiment. But until a man like that one in my living room can enter the home of a brother man and have respect enough for him, the sanctity of the basic social institution which he heads and the ideals of courtesy and chivalry which are the glory of any civilization, to remove his hat, there is little hope for an early and satisfactory solution of the race problem as it exists in the South today.

When prejudice, fear and hatred can triumph over religion, education, culture, chivalry and decency in the relationships of men, freedom and democracy become a mockery.

The day of real freedom and prosperity will not dawn in the South until a gentleman, entering any home, rich or poor; high or low; black or white; can remove his hat, even if his grandfather held slaves.