The Augusta Courier

STRICTLY PERSONAL
By ROY V. HARRIS

In our feeble way, THE AUGUSTA COURIER, during the past year, has tried to present to our readers the case for the people of the South.

The people of the South do have a case. It is founded on law, on Christianity, on the Constitution, on reason and on righteousness.

Just consider our situation:

As we read our Bibles we find that the Lord made the white man and the black man. He placed them in different localities and he fixed the bounds of their habitation.

There was a Divine purpose behind all this. It was just no accident that one was created white and the other was created black.

The two races were created with distinct differences. There was a difference in nature and temperament and there is a physical difference.

Why the different races were created, we do not know, but a Divine Providence had a reason for the scheme of things.

The mixing of the white and Negro races throughout history was man's work. The Lord did not create a mulatto. He created them either black or white.

As we look around us in nature we see that He created the birds of different colors and of different kinds.

As we look around us we have never yet found the blue birds mixed with the red birds. Dove and quail are found in the South and no matter how plentiful they get to be we never find where the dove and quail race mix.

Even the old buzzards and crows refuse to mix. No one has ever yet found them nesting together and hatching out a mixed breed.

We of the South have always believed that human beings ought at least to have as much sense as an old buzzard or an old crow.

We of the South have believed and have been taught to believe that the separation of the black and white races was in keeping with the laws of nature and according to the plan of the Almighty.

And in this belief we have been supported by our churches. We have been taught that separate churches, schools and the separation of the two races was the Christian way of life.

For two hundred years, our preachers have taught this and it has become engrained in the minds and the hearts of the people of the South and is a part of their Christianity.

We have been told by our lawyers and our judges that segregation was legal and that it was constitutional.

We have been told by those who ruled the nation that segregation was legal and constitutional.

The very men who founded the government after we declared our independence of Great Britain not only believed in segregation, but practiced it.

For nearly two hundred years our Presidents and the members of Congress have told us that segregation was legal and constitutional.

We have been assured by the Supreme Court of the United States on many occasions that our way of life was legal and constitutional.

The Supreme Court of every state in the Union, where the question has been tested, has held prior to 1954 that segregation was constitutional and legal.

Every federal judge in the whole nation who has been confronted with the question has held segregation to be constitutional and legal.

The Congress of the United States, from the formation of the government until after the Supreme Court decision in 1954, has made provision by law for the operation of separate schools and for the separation of the races in the District of Columbia.

Every President of the United States, from George Washington to Harry Truman, has given his approval to this plan of operation and has from the White House witnessed this working of our pattern of segregation in the public schools in the Nation's capitol.

Up until 1954 we people of the South were led by every President of the United States and by every Congress and by every court in the land to believe that our pattern of segregation and our way of life in the South was legal.

Until after the Supreme Court decision in the segregation cases in 1954 none of our churches and none of our preachers questioned the Christianity of our way of life.

On the faith that we had in our public officials, the faith that we had in our courts, the faith that we had in our Congress, the faith that we had in our preachers, the faith we had in our churches and the faith that we had in the laws of nature which we could see with our own eyes, and the faith that we had in our Bibles, the people of the South devised the pattern of segregation as a way of life.

The people of the South had every right to believe their Presidents, to believe the various Congresses, to believe their courts, to believe their preachers and to believe their churches and to believe what the plain language of the Constitution of the United States says.

We had every right to believe our Bibles.

After the slaves were freed by President Lincoln, he told the Negroes himself that he did not propose social equality between the races.

He told them that there was a physical difference between the white and Negro races which made it necessary that the two races forever live separate and apart.

After the conclusion of the War Between the States and during the shameful period of the Reconstruction, and many years afterwards, the people of the South painfully sought a solution to the problems with which they were confronted.

After many years of bitterness and hatred between the races, after bloodshed and strife, there finally evolved the pattern of segregation as a way of life in the South.

It won gradual acceptance from both the white and the Negro people because this pattern of life proved to be the only way in which two such dissimilar races could live together in the same community in a state of peace and work together in a spirit of friendliness and mutual helpfulness.

This pattern of life has proved its value in the South.

Here in the South the Negro has made his greatest progress and here in the South the Negro has his greatest opportunity.

This progress and this opportunity is made possible through the pattern of segregation.

In the South, many Negroes own and operate their own businesses.

They are not operated as they are in Harlem in the City of New York.

In Harlem, the Negroes front for members of other races who live in other parts of the City.

In the South, they have the experience of independence and a business opportunity that they have nowhere else.

There are more independent Negro businesses owned and operated by Negroes in the South than there is in the rest of the nation combined.

There are approximately eighty-five hundred Negro school teachers in the State of Georgia alone. You can't find that many Negro school teachers in the rest of the nation outside of the South.

The State of Georgia has approximately 1,200,000 Negroes.

There are more than one and a half million Negroes and Puerto Ricans in the City of New York alone.

There are more Negro college presidents in the State of Georgia than there is in all of this country outside of the South put together.

There is only two places where the Negroes have a better opportunity outside of the South than they do in the South.

These two are in the fields of sports and entertainment.

But the same thing applies to Southern white people.

To achieve any great success in either sports or in the movies, the theatre or radio and television, it becomes necessary for Southern white people to go to New York, Chicago or Hollywood.

Now, segregation isn't altogether confined to the South.

They have segregation in the North, but Northern segregation is about on the same basis that speak-easies and bootleg liquor occupied during the famous prohibition days.

The liquor and the speak-easy were there, but it did not and could not receive official notice.

Segregation is in the North today as definitely as it is in the South and it is almost as complete there as it is here.

When you get out of the South, Negroes are not permitted in most of their communities. You do not find them in the average small town or rural community.

If one shows up in a small town or a rural community, he is simply frozen out. He can't find a job and he can't find a place to live.

Practically all of the Negroes outside of the South live in the large cities in the worst ghettos to be found anywhere.

As they move in, the whites move out. As they continue to spread over a city the whites continue to run.

That's the pattern followed in Philadelphia, New York, Detroit, Chicago and the other great cities.

When the Negro shows up, the white man fleeth.

The only white people who do not run are the ones who are not financially able to run.

Northern segregation is based on residential segregation.

No decent white man wants his family integrated with the Negroes.

The leading exponents of race mixing in the country see to it that their families live in segregated communities. their children attend segregated schools and they all attend segregated churches on the Sabbath.

They preach integration as a political philosophy and then refuse to practice it.

Of course. occasionally. some stupid politician. like Richard Nixon makes a tour and gets his picture in the paper with his arms around some famous Negro.

It is all a publicity stunt and designed for the sole purpose of gathering Negro votes.

The white exponents of integration are star spangled hypocrites.

There is not a drop of sincerity in the veins of any single one of them.

So, we Southerners of this day ask some questions:

If segregation be un-Christian, why was it not un-Christian five years ago and why was it not un-Christian fifty years ago?

Who changed the Christian religion?

If segregation be unconstitutional today, why wasn't it unconstitutional fifty years ago?

Fifty years ago every court in the land considered it constitutional.

Five years ago, every Court in the land considered segregation constitutional. Then what right do the political hacks on the Supreme Court have to tamper with the constitution at this late date?

If segregation be un-Christian and be unconstitutional, then we people of the South have been misled and deceived by our own leaders.

We have been misled and deceived by the courts.

We have been misled and deceived by the various Presidents of the United States.

If it be unconstitutional and un-Christian we have been misled by all of the Congresses in the history of this country prior to 1954.

If our way of life be un-Christian then we have been misled by your preachers and our churches.

If it be un-Christian our preachers and our churches haven't been honest with us in the past.

Our preachers and our churches have practiced segregation. They have told us that the pattern of segregation was a Christian way of life.

Now, if this doesn't make a case for the people of the South I would like to know what could possibly make a case.

And we conclude with the meanest blow of all.

If segregation be un-Christian, President Eisenhower is in one hell of a fix.

When he comes to Augusta he worships every Sunday at Reid Memorial Presbyterian Church. There segregation is practiced. The congregation believes in segregation. They insist upon segregation.

So, if segregation be un-Christian, Ike worships with the heathen when he comes to Augusta.