Atlanta Daily World

THE HIGH COST OF EVASION

What is left of the Old South is determined to defy to the bitter end the mandates of the Supreme court declaring segregated schools illegal. The Old South simply cannot take it, forgetting what the poor Negroes have taken these 300 years.

Of the original southern states which fought for the Confederacy, only four are left committed to defying the Supreme court's decision to the bitter end; these are Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina. Several of the border states are setting to the task of integration, and what is more, it is not only going on apace but successfully and satisfactorily.

There is varied vacillation on the part of the other southern states with various devices of evasion in the offing. Just how the Old South is going to manage to defy the New South, the nation and the world is not at present apparent; and it is this stubborn fact that is currently vexing the segregationists of the Old South.

These scions of the Old South are wont to project the price that it must pay for integration; but it fails to project the price it must pay for not integrating. To eternally evade the moral responsibilities that go with integration would most certainly morally bankrupt the Old South and make it the nation's moral problem Number One.

What is more, there is already being done what some say cannot be done. Wherever integration has been honestly tried, it has worked successfully. There lies before me at this writing a pamphlet entitled "Integration in the Armed Services" where Negroes have been given opportunities ever since the organization was established. Camilla William and Larry Winters are standbys there, with other young aspiring Negroes following them.

In other words, what is now going on, and fast becoming an accomplished fact, makes all the more formidable the task of the never-say-die segregationists. What more, evasionism as a policy will call for more and more desperate means for trying to stave off the inevitable. So it is just as well for the rear-guard of the Old South's vanishing thin line to sit down and count the cost of not integrating.

It means in the first place that the South with its decline in education will be in a state of comparative impoverishment. Any attempt of the Old South to finance segregation will set back the wheels of its progress and fortunes. The already economically handicapped South cannot afford the economic setback that continued segregation will impose.