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Chapter XV Southern Negro Leaders Challenged the White South For decades much of the white South argued that Southern Negroes were satisfied with their plight. They said this when lynching was widespread , segregation was "God," discrimination was rampant, and Negroes in large numbers were migrating North in order to escape the crippling circumscriptions which held them in bondage. It was said so often, so long, and so loud that I believe that much of the white South accepted this myth as law and gospel. All too many times I read in the press and heard from the platform—that if white Northern liberals and radical Northern Negroes would leave the South alone, the race problem would be happily solved. When the Negroes in the South expressed dissatisfaction with their conditions , it could always be blamed on the North. "Our Negroes are satisfied,'* the South said. Over many decades the famous phrase of the Southern whites was, "We know the Negro. We understand him and he understands us. If agitators like Northerners and communists would stay out of Southern affairs, all would go well." Up to 1942 Southern Negro leaders in a body had never spoken their mind to the white South. Now the time had come. The aftermath of World War I was fresh in the memory of many of us. We had seen the birth of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, which was brought into being primarily to ease racial tension that was mounting even before the First World War ended. We remembered the racial riots which followed that war. We had noted that the number of Negroes lynched increased in the years immediately following the war. In 1942 we were engaged in the Second World War. Interracially things looked gloomy, and Negroes did not want the tragedies of the aftermath of World War I repeated after World War II. One of the Negroes most concerned about what could happen was Gordon Elaine Hancock of Virginia Union University, Richmond. In 1941, Doctor Hancock released an article to the Associated Negro Press entitled "Interracial Hypertension." This article was on the gloomy side and 213 214 B O R N T O R E B E L aroused the concern of Mrs. Jessie Daniel Ames of Texas and Atlanta who was an official of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Hancock observed that racial tensions were mounting all over the place and that the white South was determined to put down any hopes of larger freedom that the Negroes might entertain as a result of their participation in World War II. In his article Hancock compared American society, with its racial tensions , to a man suffering from high blood pressure which, ifnot soon treated, would result in disaster. The author took note ofthe sporadic racial riots that were appearing across the country, and of a speech he had heard a prominent Negro make which he thought could only serve to stir up racial strife. This article stirred Mrs. Ames so much that she got in touch with Doctor Hancock and made an appointment to visit him in Richmond to see what could be done about the situation. The article is so important in the history and organization of the Southern Regional Council that I have included it here. Interracial Hypertension Hypertension is a fancy name for high blood pressure, just as delinquency is a fancy name for old-fashioned devilment, or prevarication is a fancy name for old-fashioned lying. Medical authorities tell us that hypertension is not a disease but a symptom; even so, unless it isproperly treated and relieved, it results disastrously by and by. There can be no doubt that there is today in race relations a hypertension which, unless treated with the greatest care, will have disastrous consequences. In spite of the preachments of religion and the promises of education, the fact remains that we are definitely entering a dangerous phase of the interracial conflict. In proof whereof we offer the a11-toofrequent riotous outbreaks here and there about the country. Thoseoutbreaks must be construed assymptomatic of an undercurrent of interracial bitterness that demands the most serious thinkingand careful planning,if unhappy results are to be averted. In this situation the better-class whites and Negroes have one of the mightiest challenges of this generation, and the future of both races is indissolubly bound up with the way this challenge is met.If serious trouble is to be avoided, both white and Negroes must face the ugly fact...

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