The Racial Turmoil

SPEED-UP ORDERED—It was nine years ago that the famous school desegregation opinion was written … call[ing] for dropping the racial barriers with all deliberate speed. But reactionaries have used even this concise statement for their own ends and have interpreted it to support evasion. This, the [Supreme] Court has now made plain, is intolerable. Gradualism will not hold up in court.… Civil rights must be granted to all at once.—New York World-Telegram.

SOURCE OF STIMULATION—Negro leaders are high-pressuring the Kennedy administration to coerce the dissenters on the segregation issue, even if it means the ruin of many private businesses which are caught in the emotional collision between rival groups in local communities. President Kennedy … has gone much further without law than any other chief executive to compel what is called “equal rights.” But the Negro leaders—stimulated by the immunity granted by the Supreme Court recently to participants in street demonstrations which have provoked violence—say Mr. Kennedy hasn’t done enough. So the President … [has asked] Congress for more sweeping authority over business than has ever been given a chief executive in a federal statute.—Columnist DAVID LAWRENCE.

WE ARE THROUGH—Because of our love for democracy we cannot wait. We are through with gradualism. We are through with see-how-far-you-have-comeism. We are through with we’ve-done-more-for-your-people-than-anyone-elseism. We cannot wait. We want our freedom now.—MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

LOSS UPON LOSS—The outstanding danger is a loss of confidence by the Negro people in the good faith of the white people. If confidence is lost that there is a legitimate remedy for genuine grievances, there will be lost at the same time confidence in the doctrine of non-violence. What will come after that is unpleasant to contemplate.—Columnist WALTER LIPPMANN.

CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE—Not in recent history has there been so much overt hatred of whites for Negroes and Negroes for whites. Both sides, it now appears, feel the federal government is against them—creating a climate of potential tragedy … all over the country.—Alabama Journal (Montgomery).

MONGERS ON BOTH SIDES—This country, which has not in fact ever been very strong on hatred, is being warned, rightly if excessively, against the “merchants of hate.” We ought, however, to be alerted to another sort of merchant, too, This is the monger of hysteria.… All over this land he is suddenly overstating and inflaming, rather than sensibly seeking to abate, the current racial tensions.—Columnist WILLIAM S. WHITE.

WORD OF WISDOM—Wisdom surely counsels the avoidance of action which inflames prejudice and which invites the most serious consequences by resort to such tactics as bringing school children into the streets to participate in mass demonstrations.… The Rev. E. Franklin Jackson has said that if Negroes can’t get what they want by non-violence, “you may look for blood to flow in the streets of every city in the country.” To be sure, these and similar statements are put in the form of predictions or warnings. But they could easily serve the cause of incitement to violence.—The Evening Star (Washington, D. C.).

VOICE FROM WITHIN—If we are to take on the same characteristics of our oppressors and our enemies—intolerance, bigotry and allowing no voice to speak but those that say what we want to hear—I feel that certainly our cause may well be doomed.—JAMES H. MEREDITH, first Negro student enrolled in the University of Mississippi.

GOSPEL GUIDANCE—While the Christian should have a special love toward other Christians because they are “blood” brothers, bought by the precious blood of Christ, he should never forget that, as Jesus taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan, all men are our neighbors.… Christian ethics cannot support segregationist ideas, for such ideas have no place whatsoever in a truly Christian view of life.—C. HERBERT OLIVER, No Flesh Shall Glory, Presbyterian and Reformed, 1959, pp. 59–61.

EFFECT ON EVANGELISM—We believe that the propagation of the Gospel is hindered in many foreign countries by these [discriminatory] practices, and we believe that many from these minority groups in our own country are alienated from the Gospel by these actions.…—Resolution of the 1963 convention of the National Association of Evangelicals.

FRUSTRATING DILEMMA—There is no place right now where it seems more difficult for the child of God to measure up to the high demands of the Christian religion than in the area of race relations. In some communities the pressure on the Christian is terrific. This is particularly true of many ministers who find themselves in a frustrating dilemma. They have a deep inner desire to proclaim what they interpret to be the Word of God concerning segregation and desegregation. On the other hand, the climate in the community and even within their churches is such that they are uncertain about effects of the proclamation of the truth. Would it do more immediate harm than good?… This much we can say: “If they are true prophets of God, they will speak the word the Lord delivers to them.”—T. B. Maston, Segregation and Desegregation: A Christian Approach, Macmillan, 1959, pp. 165, 166.

POSITIVE PROOF—We must never forget that the ultimate solution to racial injustice is a changed heart and life, wrought through the work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. Just as love for one’s neighbor is proof of one’s love for God, so one cannot love his neighbor truly until he loves God by personal faith in Jesus Christ.

Having said this, however, we would urge Christians to do something personal in the present crisis.—The Sunday School Times.

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