Profile in Black and White: A Frank Portrait of South Carolina
9781465682161
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Although this book deals with South Carolina, it is in effect a study of the Deep South. What is happening in the Palmetto State is fairly typical of the situation in other Southern states where segregation, bigotry and prejudice remain deeply entrenched. To judge by what Prof. Quint points out in this highly discerning book, the situation in South Carolina hasn’t improved materially since the Supreme Court of the land ruled, in its historic decision of May 17, 1954, that students in publicly supported educational institutions may not be segregated because of race, creed, or color. A worsening rather than improving racial situation is indeed reflected by the views expressed by officials, newspaper editors, voluntary organizations and individual citizens, Negro and white, as cited in this book. Although Prof. Quint handles his material with admirable restraint, the reader, even if he is personally attached to the state, is likely to pronounce South Carolina’s record a melancholy one. Is the state behaving responsibly when it denies the law of the land, busies itself with contriving means of avoidance, threatens instead of addressing itself to the manifest mandate? When it revives the plea of peculiarity does it remember its own history of nullification and secession? Is it never to reject the demagogue who proclaims exploded notions of race and distorts the Constitution of the United States? In the interval for reformation which the Supreme Court has wisely allowed must South Carolina indulge bluster and vituperation in place of summoning candor and courage? Have ignorance, poverty, and prejudice fed on each other until the white community has sunk to second-rate capacity? Consider the spectacle of an ancient commonwealth in delirium because a black child knocks on a schoolhouse door. What are the causes of this fury? They are many, but the chief is that the applicant for equal opportunity is now in a superior legal and moral position. It is the Negro who rests upon rights, to be claimed through orderly processes. He leaves desperate remedies to those who refuse him. In the rap on the door sound the measured tones of judges, the command of the President of the United States and the voice of the nation. Echoes too the demand of deprived peoples in many countries.
