Show Negroes Drive for A Position of Equality The history of the Negro's drive toward a position of equality in American society is a long full of detours and great stretches of time in which no progress was made at this drive toward equality is moving forward with such force and speed that it will cannot The obvious danger of such a situation is that the speed's friction can create the heat and anger which results In extremists of two kinds like the members of the White Citizens who resist all change in the relations between the races and like the Black who think that the changes are not occur ing rapidly The Negro's to achieve his full rights as a citizen has probably made more progress in the last decade than in the previous half even the Supreme Court's momentous decision on school desegregation with which the decade began has been carried out with a speed that must strike Negroes as altogether too Nine years have passed since the School-desegregation To the mere fact that all 50 states have integrated their schools to a certain degree might seem adequate The Negro in the summer of 1963 Is not content with this He points to the fact that in most southern states the integration of schools is only two Negroes attending the University of Mississippi does not make an integrated school system in that Negroes are also struggling against the de facto segregation of many large-city schools which results from ghetto housing conditions under which Negroes must Until a few years when the Negroes resorted to and forms of the battle for civil rights had been waged in the court Starting the Negro along his thorny path toward the full rights of an American was the Emancipation which was issued by Lincoln in do order and decree that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States and henceforward shall In with the adoption of the Amendment to the abolition of slavery was extended to include all of the states rather than just those in the slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate The decision which kicked-off the present full-speed-ahead course was the Supreme Court decision in 1954 which outlawed the but theory has no place in public The law has taken the Negro about as far as it The courts have given the Negro Important weapons in his battle toward but the Negro masses no longer believe that their battles can be won in the chambers of the This year will be remembered as the time when the Negro's revolution for equality broke out on all Negroes have gone to jail in They have been attacked by police They were spit and covered with and other Their homes were They were clubbed by Medger Evers was shot in the If the combined working of law and direct action could erase all racial discrimination In the United States the Negro would probably not be too very much better off than he already The Condition of the Negro does not result wholly from present Past discrimination has left permanent scars on many members of the Negro Even if race discrimination in employment were to vanish the deficiencies in education and training of most Negroes would still constitute an enormous barrier to equality with whites in jobs and The best argument in support of giving the Negro his civil rights is that It is morally It is as demeaning to each of us when any v members of our species is not treated with respect which is due one man from another from the simple fact of their common |