To the Editor:

In his article on Southern solidarity in the white community (“Racial War in the South,” August) Mr. Samuel Lubell sees hardly any chance for improvement in race relations. So pessimistic are the results of his survey that he ends on an almost mystical note. Mr. Lubell should not be denied his despair, but certain phases of the problem he dismisses too readily. Further appraisal of these phases would reveal possibilities for improvement.

Race-baiting provides a convenient release from the tensions of modern industrial society, Northern or Southern. The essential difference, Mr. Lubell points out, lies in the sanction and protection by law that race-baiting receives in the South. Thus, it is in the political and legal sector that the attack on this injustice must be pointed. The spearhead must take the form of Federal legislation and enforcement, since no local group or agency—the Negro community, Southern liberals, the state governments—is sufficient to break down the system of second-class membership in the community.

In a few sentences Mr. Lubell dismisses the effect of Negro enfranchisement. He does not, however, question the extent of Negro participation or its efficacy in white primaries. During the civil rights debate, Northern Senators pointed up the severe limitations and handicaps imposed on prospective Negro voters. (A recent example is the gerrymander of Macon County in Alabama, cutting to only 10 the already small number of Negro voters in Tuskegee, home of the famous institute and an 80 per cent Negro community.) The teeth in the proposed law which Southerners wanted ground down or yanked out were aimed at doing away with the subterfuges employed by whites to keep Negroes from voting in any numbers.

Southern liberalism’s loss of strength may be charged to its identification with Negro rights in the minds of most citizens. It was not to be expected that Southern liberals would succeed for any long time in white primaries where the mere appearance of Negroes at the polls, or the mention of their rights from the campaign platform, drove the mass of Southern whites into the arms of race-baiting reactionaries. For liberalism to recover even its former vitality it must receive support from other quarters, support which will resolve the basic question of a broad Negro vote, and eliminate it as a point of contention from the political market. Negro enfranchisement as a political fact and not an issue will remove the main block to the average Southerner’s consideration of the liberal program. Given new political conditions, with thousands of new voters in each constituency, liberalism will gain a new lease on life, and not have to rely on a white primary in one party.

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The foremost effect of Negro enfranchisement would be the restoration of a two-party system in the South. A major worth or the two-party system is its ability to adjust through the inter-party competition for group votes the more flagrant social and economic abuses. At different times in American history one or the other major party, in an effort to gain political power, has taken up the cause of some broad social group in the local or national scene. Thus have improvements for the working man, the farmer, or minorities been brought about. In the Northern urban centers, politicians of both parties, principled or practical, have seen fit to uphold the rights of minority groups. In the South the enfranchisement of millions of Negroes will destroy the century-old political imbalance and set into motion a competition by both parties for the new voters. Such a competition will mean promises for change in the social, economic, and educational sectors. Whatever promises will be made, some will have to be carried out for the parties to be trusted the next time at the polls.

It is perhaps such a threat of political upheaval which is behind the more intense refusal by the South to adjust to desegregation and the totalitarianization of expression which Mr. Lubell describes. For things don’t just happen in this day of manipulation and hidden persuaders. Especially afraid of the effects of Negro enfranchisement are the long-entrenched leaders of the Democratic party. So, by conjuring up a most frightful desegregated future, they can for the moment rally all whites round their flag.

However, a firm dedication by the national government to effect obedience to law has revealed most Southerners rather reluctant to engage in any long-range open defiance. Several years of alert law enforcement will set into motion a two-party competition in the South which will afford all groups their right to make progress, albeit indirectly in the beginning, but for the start to be made right now is most important.

Philip Fleishman
New York City

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