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No decent citizens in the South condoned the night rides, the fiery crosses and the lynch mobs. No one but a fool condoned them. But what about the Negro's right to an education, a job? As far as Strom Thurmond was concerned, he would not deny the Negro the right to an education and a job. Thurmond had to accept a federal judge's decision that the Negro had a right to vote; 35,000 voted in the South Carolina primaries this year. The so-called Southern "liberal" went further: he would and did encourage the Negro to better education, to enfranchisement as a self-respecting citizen.
But what about segregation, which was also a denial of rights? Segregation was not peculiar to the South—it was simply more universally enforced there. In the North, not only in the eyes of hotel owners and real estate dealers, but in the eyes of the vast majority of people, the Negro was still a second-class citizen. Those whites who considered the Negro their social equal were a minute exception to the general rule. As a Southern Regional Council report recently pointed out: "The South certainly has no monopoly on prejudice and discrimination." But, added the report, this is no excuse for the South. It is no good for the South simply to say: "You are as guilty as we are; therefore leave us alone in our guilt."
Because of the Negro, guilt haunts the whole U.S., South and North. But the North's guilt is glossed over by the hypocritical assumption that it has "solved" the Negro problem—in principle and on paper. Behind the South's gloss of "states' rights" is defiance and fear.
Beyond a certain point, the Southerner will not or cannot give a reasonable answer to the Negro problem. It is not, he feels, a reasonable problem. And it was not a problem that he brought on himself. It is his business to live with it, but it is no more capable of overnight solution than any other vexation he inherited. This sense of irrational frustration reduces most Southerners to the flat statements of defiance with which they commonly respond when a Northerner—especially a Northern "liberal"—attacks them on the subject.
On his part, the Northerner—and not just the Northern "liberal"—often finds this Southern attitude baffling, incoherent or plain infuriating.
The Line Drawn. The Southerner talks about his personal solicitude for the Negro, but to the Northerner it seems much closer to the solicitude of the master for his slave than to the friendliness of neighbor toward neighbor. What most Southerners seem to deny the Negro is human dignity, even in such small ways as refusing to call them "Mr." or "Mrs." "You've got to keep niggers in their place," they say.