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A Negro may give a white panhandler a handout but he may not follow him into a bar with the sign, "Whites only." He may attend the graduate schools of state universities (about 1,000 do), but he may not attend undergraduate colleges—with some exceptions (e.g., University of Louisville, University of Delaware). In such schools Negro and white students get on without friction, and form friendships; but the Negroes, while they eat with whites, may not belong to white fraternities—but they are allowed to attend dances as guests.
In many important industries of the South, e.g., Haspel, Chrysler, International Harvester, Glenn Martin, Firestone Tire & Rubber, Negroes work side by side with whites (only South Carolina still has a law requiring segregation in work areas). Union meetings are nonsegregated, but some locals have raised hell when union headquarters ordered an end to segregated toilet facilities. But in one plant near Atlanta, when the "colored" and "white" signs over the fountains wore out, nobody bothered to repaint them, and segregation for drinking stopped. (But if someone had protested formally that it should stop, it would unquestionably have been furiously enforced.)
Struggle in the Soul
Mob violence is rare. The year 1952 was the first without a single reported lynching. Many of the South's "better people," who for years tacitly condoned the Klan, have now abandoned it. It is socially as safe to back antimask bills as it was once to take hot broth to an ailing Mammy's cabin.
The principle that Negroes must have "separate but equal" facilities* was an empty phrase a decade ago; today, it is rapidly becoming reality. Most Southerners feel that unless they make "separate but equal" a fact, the courts are sure to saddle them with "whole hog" rulings, i.e., complete equality. Many states are hastily building fine new Negro schools and hospitals, although from a purely economic standpoint, "separate but equal" schools are insanely wasteful. Most Southerners no longer sneer at the educated Negro as "biggety"; many want to help the Negro get a better education, better jobs and better housing, and let the rest take care of itself.
However, some Southerners are afraid that this formula may prove too little and too late. Southerners complain that there are too many "whole hog or nothing" Negroes. This is only partly true. No Southern Negro seriously wants or expects complete equality overnight. But all Southern Negroes want it as an ultimate goal—and they want to see faster progress towards that goal. They have become suspicious of "gradualism." They want to know, as one Negro leader puts it: "When does Old Man Gradualism run out?" The Southern Negro's mood may be summed up by the case of the successful Negro attorney in Birmingham who recently built a new home. "Look at it," says a friend. "Look where it is. Over there, on Dynamite Hill. You don't build a $35,000 house in that location—unless you are a Negro and haven't got a better place to build it. Some say he wanted to