The Saint Paul Sun

Carter Makes Personal Plea For NAACP Public Support

The 1957 NAACP membership campaign is drawing to a close. I felt, in view of the disinterest and apathy of so many of the citizens towards the work of our great organization that this would be an opportune time for me to set forth why it is important that you support the NAACP.

I write this letter to NAACP leaders and friends of the Association everywhere to Americans of all creeds, all colors, all races. I write out of a sense of instant urgency and from a deep faith in the ability of Americans to protect and defend their inalienable rights against all threats whether they be internal or external.

In many of the states of the union, in cities and rural communities, the klans and councils are organizing with powerful and bold supporters to destroy the very foundation stones of individual freedom which caused this country to grow to greatness and to become a beacon light of hope for the oppressed peoples of the entire world.

The men who control the klans and councils are ruthless in their desire to reweld around our ankles the heavy chains of discrimination and servitude so recently broken by the Supreme Court of the United States. Make no mistake about this. They are strong and they grow stronger. They have friends in very high places, men who are willing to use the ignorance of the klans and councils to further their own political ends. Their appeal is not to brotherly love but to hate and scorn. They spread fear; they feed on hostility; they use violence as a weapon to create and maintain terror; they intimidate the helpless with bombs; they have reached into some state legislatures and administrative offices in their attempt to destroy their most feared enemy, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The very focal point of their hatred is centered around the NAACP because this organization has won again and again in each contest of strength, in each struggle for the right. The men who use the klans and the councils know that if they can seriously weaken the NAACP they will have blunted the most powerful weapon that freedom loving Americans have. They also know that unless they can stop the progress of the NAACP their hope of returning America to the dark days of prejudice and discrimination is done.

They have thus set out to destroy the NAACP, to threaten and kill its members, to intimidate anyone, Negro or white, who speaks well of the organization, to smear it whenever possible in the press, to hamper it with discrimination legislation.

I am therefore appealing to all Americans to rally around and support the one organization which has consistently fought to bring the blessings of individual freedom to millions of Americans.

There are two great forces contending inside this country of ours. One force is attempting to hold back the rushing tide of freedom and right; the other force is trying to brighten the day of America's present and future. You cannot be neutral. You must either join with us who believe in the bright future or be destroyed by those who would return us to the dark past.

Sincerely yours,
Leonard H. Carter,
Membership Chairman,
St. Paul Branch, NAACP