Atlanta Daily World

LETTERS TO
EDITOR

(Continued from Page 4)

rearrange the Board of Regents of the University as to enforce his opinion backed as undoubtedly it is by the majority of opinion of the white people of Georgia.

But the real and crucial question comes: Did Dean Cocking state his ideals as a matter of present policy or as a matter to be aimed at in the future? Very unfortunately in his defense of his position, Dean Cocking did not say frankly exactly what his idea was concerning the future of race segregation in Education, but simply insisted that he had not advocated any such present program. It would have been much broader educational statesmanship on his part if he had said frankly: Yes, I believe that eventually and gradually, race segregation in education must disappear from Southern schools. I do not believe that such a program is practical now and I am not advocating, nor have I advocated, any such immediate change."

But Dean Cocking did not admit this. He left those who were sympathetic with such a view entirely in the air and rested his case upon a question of verbal veracity as to exactly what he had said in a certain statement.

The point that must be insisted upon is that those people who believe that race segregation in education as well as in other matters must eventually disappear from the South and from the nation, if we are ever to have democracy, have a right to their opinion and a right to express it in Georgia and out.

That, on the other hand, the persons who are backing and supporting Governor Talmadge have an equal right to express their opinions and to follow those opinions by legitimate and lawful action.

What really is happening, however, is the attempt to deny any person, even a dean of the University of Georgia, any right to express an opinion which he holds, simply because that opinion is opposed to the majority of opinion of white folk of the state. There lies the kernel of intolerance and despotism. The white people of

Georgia are not being educated by their leaders in modern social thought. Once the issue was drawn and the scurrying of white Georgia leaders was pitiable. Not only did Dean Cocking himself refuse frankly to state his beliefs, but the City Superintendent of Atlanta Schools made the misleading statement that white children were superior to Negro children in intelligence, and friends of Cocking defended him as a man "born of a Democratic family in a Republican state of parents who sympathized with the South when it was fighting slavery!" The only clear thinking statement was made by a certain Judge Jo Ben Jackson, member of the Board of Regents, who stated loudly "that the most ignorant white man was superior to the most intelligent Negro!"

The attack upon the Rosenwald Fund which has given over a half million dollars for white and Negro education in Georgia found not a single defender in the open hearing. White Georgians are going deliberately misled along the lines of their prejudices: and just as long as the intelligent social leadership of the South permits this denial of freedom of thought and opinion, just so long the South is going to continue to be the major social problem of this land.

W. E. B. DuBois
Atlanta University
Atlanta, Ga.