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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 25, 19 June 1950, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Supreme Court s three decisions in cases involving the segregation of Negroes in the South has led to much comment and speculation throughout the nation. And although the real consequences of this judicial-political act cannot be gleaned from the immediate reactions to it by different groups, such reactions are of considerable importance.
The leading spokesmen of “white supremacy” in the South have run true to form. Herman Talmadge in Georgia has been stumping the state in his gubernatorial campaign. Playing on the ignorance and prejudices of the poor and not-so-poor whites in the farm areas, he proclaims that regardless of the Supreme Court Negroes will be segregated in the schools of Georgia as long as he is governor.
Ku Klux Klan leaders throughout the South also believe the court decisions will help them to recruit-members to the Klan byinflaming racial prejudices.
The Southern liberals are, as usual, worried. These are “men of good will” who are caught in an impossible situation. They want “justice” for the Negroes, yet they are powerless to do anything hut try to improve the lot of the Negro people in the South by providing them with better segregated facilities. They fear every governmental or non-governmental action which draws attention to the disgraceful treatment of the Negroes there. They themselves are afraid to oppose segregation as they are afraid to ally themselves with the Negros in the South.
On the other hand, the reaction of the Negro organizations and of almost all others who oppose discrimination and segregation has also been significant.
Most of them have hailed the court's decisions, while pointing to their limitations. The general agreement is that while the court in no way solved the problem of segregation in education and transportation, it opened a wedge which will make possible much more rapid progress toward the solution of these problems than has been possible in the past.
As was pointed out in last week’s Labor Action, the court refused to rule on the general principle of segregation as laid down in the. doctrine that rights of Negroes are not violated if they are provided with “separate but equal” facilities. It simply ruled that in the specific cases before it the Negroes involved could get equal treatment in fact only if they were, not segregated.
For the great mass of Negroes, this ruling will have little immediate practical effect. As the decisions in the Texas and Oklahoma cases involved graduate schools of universities, this means that only a tiny fraction of the Negro population stands to benefit directly.
Yet the actual significance of the ruling will probably be much more far-reaching, and that is what arouses bellows of rage from Talmadge and his ilk. There is already one suit involving segregation pending against the University of North Carolina, and three in the public schools of the same state. Four suits are awaiting disposition in Louisiana where Negroes demand equal education in public schools. Six suits are pending against the University of Florida, and two demanding equality in public schools in Talmadge's own state.
Though no one can say what will be the outcome of any of these actions, it is clear that the court’s decisions will greatly encourage those who have started them, and will stimulate individual Negroes and organizations to start suits in many other cases. For now there can be real hope that the courts will rule against segregation in individual cases, instead of falling back on the “separate but equal” fraud.
The fact that all these individual cases have to be fought, however, is a consequence of the Supreme Court’s strategy. It is clear that there was no legal reason for the court’s refusal to knock out the whole “separate but equal” fiction in its decisions. This was a political decision calculated to give the Negroes an inch in the struggle against discrimination, and even then an •inch which can be won only through prolonged and exhausting litigation and struggle.
This decision can only be understood if we keep in mind the politics which have been played with the civil-rights question over the past few years.
In his messages to the 80th and 81st Congresses, President Truman proposed a far-reaching civil-rights program. His proposals were based on the recommendations of the, President’s Committee on Civil Rights headed by Charles Wilson of the General Electric Corporation. The report stated that Jim Crow practices in America greatly weaken the international prestige of the United States in the cold war. It pointed out, further, that the cold war requires a maximum of national unity which is endangered by the rampant discrimination against Negroes practiced throughout the country, and specially in the South.
The report insisted that aside from these considerations, American industry needs an expanded market in the South, and that such a market cannot be created as long as millions of Negroes are kept in a degraded social, political and economic position.
That is, American capitalism, in the opinion of the President’s Committee, can’t afford the luxury of Jim Crow as it is practised today.
Yes despite this report and the president’s messages, not a single bill proposed to put them into effect has been carried in two sessions of Congress. Every time the issue has come up, both political parties have ducked it. Each has tried to shy around the problem in such a way that the blame could be made to appear to lie on the other one.
The explanation for this is simple. Both the Democrats and the Republicans have been wooing the Dixiecrats. Yet they both want to hang on to the important Negro vote in the North and the increasingly important Negro vote in the South. Thus they talk for civil-rights legislation, but refuse to take any steps which might further alienate the racists who hold political power in the South.
And the labor movement has been willing to go along with the game. Although the labor leaders know that the enactment of civil-rights legislation, and particularly a compulsory Fair Employment Practices Act, would greatly ease their job of organizing the workers in the South, they are determined to hang on to the shirt-tails of the Democratic politicians. Thus they also TALK about civil rights legislation, but do little if anything when their party lets it down the legislative drain.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other organizations which have as their chief aim the abolition of all forms of legal discrimination have done about the same as the labor organizations. They have pressed a strong propaganda for enactment of FEP legislation, and have taken cases of discrimination and segregation to the courts. Although they denounce the political deals made by both Democrats and Republicans at the expense of the Negro people, they do not permit their indignation to go the length of cutting their political ties to the two capitalist parties, nor even of advocating a new party which would not make such deals.
When we take all factors into consideration, the Supreme Court’s action becomes understandable. On the one hand Jim Crow is a burden to the political and economic role the United States seeks to play in the world. On the other hand, no major political force in the country is willing to risk a complete and final break with the powerful political and economic rulers of the South. So the court rules in such a way that the Negroes are prevented from losing hope of eventual justice, the Democrats can “point with pride,” during the election campaign, to an achievement in the civil rights field, the labor leaders can say that their alliance with the Democrats has paid off in the court decisiorf, and the “white supremacy” ruling class in the South can put up a big howl while hanging on to the hope that it will take ten thousand court cases before legal segregation is ended in the schools.
Whatever may have been the calculations of the justices, it is clear that the Negro people are fully determined to press to the full the slight advantage they have gained. In the South it takes tremendous courage and determination to fake advantage of even as restricted a legal victory as this is. But those qualities are not lacking among the Negro population. Every inch of advance encourages a thousand heads which have been bowed in hopeless resignation to lift up and look the oppressor in the eye. Every breach in the heretofore solid walk of terror and discrimination finds thousands eager to leap into it and hack away at the rest of the wall which still stands.
That is one reason why Independent Socialists consider these decisions of the court a real step forward. At the same tinje, all should be fully aware of the fact that they avoided the main issue of the continued legality of “separate but equal” Jim Crow facilities for Negroes; that whatever meager concessions are made to the Negroes are granted in significant measure because of the imperialist ambitions of the American ruling class; and that the Negro people are still being rooked in the political deals.made at their expense by the court or in Congress.
The important considerations are these: each small advance for the Negro people encourages everyone who is honestly against discrimination to fight harder.
Each advance weakens the practice and ideology of Jim Crow in both the North and the South. Each advance undermines the undisputed sway of reactionary politicians in the South, and increases the political weight of the Negro people who can and do play an overwhelmingly progressive role there. Thus each brings us closer to the day when the Negroes of the South will be able to join forces with the workers in all parts of the country in a united struggle against their common oppressors.
In rendering its decisions, the justices of the Supreme Court in all likelihood believed that they were cementing the political ties which bind the Negroes and the labor movement to the two capitalists parties. The immediate effect may well be what they desired. But the long-range effect of this aid given the Negro people in their struggle for complete political, economic and social equality will be to dissolve these ties. For the struggle intensifies with each success. And the more intense it becomes, the less likely is it that the majority of Negroes will be willing to confine themselves t» a political alliance which always results in their getting only a token payment on the full equality which has been due them for over two hundred years.
As growing numbers of Negroes come to realize that their present political ties hold them back instead of advancing their interests, they will seek to form other ones. Already the leading Negro organizations have come to a growing appreciation of the fact that the labor movement is their most natural political ally.
It would be unrealistic to expect the Negroes as a minority group to lead in the formation of such an independent political movement. But the political logic of their particular struggle is such that there is every reason to believe that once a strong sentiment develops for the formation of an independent labor party, large numbers of Negroes will quickly joint it and play a leading part in it.
And this is true specially in the South. Today increasing numbers of Negroes are voting in Democratic primaries in a section of the country where the Democratic Party is openly and viciously anti-Negro. They do this simply because they believe there is no realistic alternative. If they could see such an alternative rising on a national scale, they would rush to embrace it. And this alone would guarantee a labor party a base in the South which would make compromise with Jim Crow as politically foolish as it is morally degrading.
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