Atlanta Daily World

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SEEING And SAYING
By WILLIAM A. FOWLKES
More On "Rights"

THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT rights today as never before. It is the reddest hot issue before the land of the free and the home of the brave.

One of my friends, discussing the Civil Rights revolt by our Southern neighbors, remarked in slang the other day. "These people talk about us like we're something too spoiled to eat."

In its connotation, my friend spoke a pitiful, though stinging truth.

One would think that Americans of color were not citizens of our country which boasts of an exemplary democracy.

One wonders what the politicians of the South will do next They have proposed everything from bolting the Democratic party to the absurdity of leaving President Truman's name off the official ballot of several southern states to be considered by the people of this year's national election.

They say they won't respect the rights proposals of our Chief Executive. What they are really saying is that they won't respect the rights of Negroes, who were freed through a bloody, civil war. It is the same old political ruckus but in the new light and new intensity one wonders what will happen.

One also wonders what the people, the rank and file of people, think of the civil rights issues and whether, if let alone, they would accept the pure mandate of justice and right. I have a vague suspicion that many white people would accept the fact that Negroes are citizens of the land, entitled to all its privileges and opportunities, if the professional haters and politicians would let them alone. It is this group which vows of Negroes that "they will not get by" and who eagerly harken back to bygone days and conditions to refresh the people in a backward march.

If in the framework of Jim Crow institutions there could be a real accomplishment of "separate but equal" accommodations for the citizenry, there would be no contention for civil rights such as we know today. Not too many want actual association with whites The truth of the matter is that there was no equality intended in the minds of those making the laws and mandates of Jim Crow.

The result has been that the great masses of the descendants of black American slaves have been relegated to a position as closely akin to their previous condition of servitude as possible. They are dependent upon the barest sort of economy to live: they are maltreated by civil administrative and protective officers; they are denied equal facilities by governmental and social practices; they are in dire straits most of the time between birth and death, both of which come most often because of their denial to the good things of life.

If America does not accept the mandate to democratize its democracy, there is little that the world can expect but anarchy and confusion until the end of time.

We cannot expect too much from the ideologies of confused Europe and her present masters. We must aim to get as much as possible from the tenets of our own great Constitution and the Bill of Rights we long have known needed only implementation