…they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
That was what passed for nonconformity then. The alarm next time would be triggered by the real thing.
TWENTY-TWO
With All Deliberate Speed
The average American male in 1954 stood five feet nine inches tall and weighed 158 pounds, according to Dr. George Gallup’s Institute of Public Opinion, a diligent collector of such Americana. The average female was five feet four and weighed 132. Husbands thought the knack of running a smooth, orderly household was more important in a wife than anything else, and most of them—55 percent—felt that American women were spoiled.
In announcing these and other results of an elaborate study of American life, the institute observed that “Throughout history, races and nations have sometimes been remembered for their small human quirks rather than for their great deeds and battles. Here,” it said, “are some of the small things that ‘homo Americanus’ may be famous for in 1,000 years’ time.” In fact they have become of interest after only twenty years’ time, and although some are frivolous, it is interesting, and sometimes even significant, to know the little details of everyday life—what people thought of themselves and others, what they worried about, and how they lived. Already some of the findings of this survey seem quaint.
No audible voices protested the traditional distinctions between the sexes. Wives believed that men drank too much and that one of the chief faults of husbands was “just not paying enough attention,” but nothing was said about chauvinism. The typical woman said she preferred marriage to a career. She wanted the word “obey” taken out of the wedding ceremony—it is rather astonishing that it was still there—but in other ways she accepted the double standard. For example, 61 percent of all women agreed that a wife should never open her husband’s mail, even if a letter arrived in a scented envelope addressed in feminine handwriting, and when asked, “Should a wife’s adultery be more condemned than a husband’s?” an overwhelming majority of women—four out of every five—replied, “Yes, of course it should.”
Most people listed money as their greatest worry; only 21 percent checked “the threat of world war, keeping the peace.” Confidence in the United States and pride of country ran high. Generosity was voted the most conspicuous American characteristic, followed by friendliness, understanding, piety, love of freedom, and progressivism. The American faults listed were petty: shallowness, egotism, extravagance, preoccupation with money, and selfishness.
There were still enough farmers for them to be treated as a separate category. They were the first to rise in the morning; 69 percent of them were out of bed before 6 A.M. The typical American, on the other hand, got up at 6:30 A.M. weekdays and 8 A.M. Sundays. (Women, surprisingly, rose a bit later than men.) The average bedtime was 10 P.M. weekdays and 11 P.M. Saturdays. The typical breakfast was served at 7 A.M., the typical lunch at noon, and the typical supper or dinner at 6 P.M. The postwar custom of a fifteen-minute coffee break was catching on, but less than half of the population enjoyed it; to the question, “At your place of work are employees given time off for coffee, refreshments, or rest?” 51 percent checked “No.” Farmers suffered more from the well-named common cold than any other group. The peak month for colds was February, when 15 percent of the adult population, or 15 million people, had them. The low point was July, but even then 5 percent, or five million, were coughing and sneezing and generally miserable.
Even without a war or scandal to divide the country, living was a strain. Every other adult complained of trouble getting to sleep. It was a greater problem for women than men, worse for the unmarried than the married, greatest for the divorced and the widowed. The main cause given was “nervous tension.” Sedatives had not achieved wide acceptance; most insomniacs just tossed and turned. Among other complaints, one American in three said his feet hurt, one in five had trouble hearing, two in seven were worried about being overweight, and two out of three wore glasses, half of them all the time.
By gourmet standards their eating habits were dull. If allowed to order anything for dinner, regardless of cost, they said they would choose fruit cup, vegetable soup, steak and french fried potatoes, peas, rolls and butter, apple pie a la mode, and coffee. Three million Americans were vegetarians. Nearly six in ten drank wine, beer or liquor, but they didn’t drink much; fewer than one in five had something every day. Their favorite sport was bowling. A startling eight million bowled at least once a week, and there were three occasional bowlers for every golfer or ping-pong player, the second and third most popular recreations. Only 52 percent of all adults knew how to swim, a reflection of the fact that opportunities for swimming were fewer then, for vacations were shorter and less frequent. Over 15 million, or 15 percent of all adults, had not been more than 250 miles from home—the equivalent, then, of one day’s ride in an automobile. After Sunday dinner half of all families with cars took an afternoon pleasure ride, but they didn’t go far. One American in four had not seen either the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific.
Nine out of ten adults had been on a train, and four in ten had spent at least one night on a Pullman sleeper. Trips by air, though rising in frequency, were still preferred by a minority. Cars were used for short trips, but traffic was lighter than it has since become. One reason was that there were about 50 million fewer people living in the country. Farmers excluded, the average worker lived two miles from his job, and he could get there in about eighteen minutes. One man in three went home for lunch. Less than one-third of all families said grace at meals, but 95 percent said they believed that prayer helped “in one way or another,” 94 percent believed in God, and 68 percent in life after death; 69 percent were in favor of adding the phrase “under God” to the pledge of allegiance, which was done on June 14, 1954. The highest proportion of Bible readers was in the South, the lowest in New England and the Middle Atlantic states. America’s two favorite mottoes were “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and “Live and let live.”
In winter the average family with a house kept it heated at 70 degrees in the daytime and 60 degrees at night. The smallest amount of money a family of four needed to get along in an average U.S. community was $60 a week. (In 1937 it had been $30 a week.) The impression fostered by movies and television was that twin beds had become increasingly popular, but only one couple in eight had them; the rest still slept in double beds. Men preferred showers to bathtubs. Women favored tubs, three to one. The average family had a pet, with dogs outnumbering cats two to one. Most Americans said they liked and trusted their neighbors. Prudence with money, instilled during the Depression, was habitual. If suddenly given $10,000, the average American said, he would buy a home. The next largest group would pay off debts, put the money in a bank, or invest in securities. Only a few said they would take life easy, travel, or go on a spending spree. A twenty-three-year-old Chicago stenographer replied that she would get married right away. Another working girl answered that she would move to California, “where there are plenty of men.”
On the whole, America remained a nation of optimists. In spite of grousing about high taxes and high prices—though even then they were considered high—a clear majority said they believed they were better off than their parents had been. The average American wanted to live to be a hundred, and more men than women wanted it, though women, with their longer life expectancy, had a greater chance of reaching it. Asked to single out the age he would most like to live over again, the typical adult chose twenty-one. Nearly half of all those polled had a pet superstition. The superstitions named most oft
en were knocking on wood, avoiding black cats when walking, and throwing spilled salt over the shoulder. Women were more superstitious than men.
Most people thought the ideal family had three youngsters. Mothers felt that the first child should not arrive until the second year of marriage. Parental opinions of 1954’s young people were high; they were regarded as more sensible and level-headed than the parents had been at that age. But the children were more critical: only one in five had no complaints about his father or mother. Nearly all adult Americans felt that a child ought to have an allowance, even though fewer than three out of ten parents had had one when young. While disturbed about juvenile delinquency, which had been rising since World War II and was already a source of anxiety, most adults took the position that parents, not youngsters, were chiefly to blame for it. Typical parents of that time thought a girl should not begin dating until she was sixteen.
Mixed marriages, a term which then meant marriages between Christians of different religious faiths, were a subject of lively discussion. Slightly more than half the people—54 percent—approved of them, but only one American in four believed they had much chance of turning out successfully. Marriages between Gentiles and Jews were statistically insignificant. Unions between whites and Negroes, as blacks were then called, were unknown to the great middle class. Their possibility wasn’t even discussed.
Negroes still did not exist as people for mainstream America. In popular entertainment they were more like pets. Stepin Fetchit, Hattie McDaniel, Butterfly McQueen, and Eddie Anderson—these were good for the nudge and the guffaw but they weren’t looked upon as human beings. If Hollywood wanted to portray human feelings in a man with a black face, it put burnt cork on the face of somebody like Al Jolson. Black America was unnoticed by white America. “I am an invisible man,” cried the hero of Ralph Ellison’s 1953 novel. “…I am invisible, understand, simply because other people refuse to see me. I can hear you say, ‘What a horrible, irresponsible bastard!’ And you’re right…. But to whom can I be responsible, when you refuse to see me?”
Now, after three centuries of black submission and black servitude, “the long habit of deception and evasion,” as Ellison once called it, was about to end. The Supreme Court of the United States had pondered the matter and concluded that Negroes were real people after all, and that as such they must become visible to their white compatriots and treated as equals everywhere, beginning in the public schools.
***
By the U.S. Supreme Court clock it was 12:52 P.M., May 17, 1954. A concealed hand parted the red velour draperies at the front of the Court’s magnificent chamber, and nine men robed in black, stepping past the gleaming Ionic columns, seated themselves in the leather chairs at the long mahogany bench. Editors all over the world were awaiting what was already being called the greatest moment in the Court’s history since the Dred Scott decision of 1857. Associate Justice Robert Jackson, who was convalescing from a heart attack, had left his hospital bed that morning so that the full Court, including its three southerners, would be present for the occasion. In a departure from custom, newsmen had not been given advance copies of the decision. They had no inkling of which way it would go. The new Chief Justice had been on the bench only six months. At the time of his appointment lawyers had been appalled by his total lack of judicial experience, and few in Washington had been willing to predict how he would stand in this case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. Earl Warren was no racist, but he had the reputation of being a staunch believer in states’ rights.
Wire service reporters who cover Court sessions scribble bulletins in longhand at the press table, just below the bench, and send them on their way in pneumatic tubes. At 12:57 the Associated Press A wire came alive:
Chief Justice Warren today began reading the Supreme Court’s decision in the public school segregation cases. The Court’s ruling could not be determined immediately.
Delivery of an opinion by the Chief Justice meant that he sided with the majority. This was Warren’s first important ruling, and for a while all that spectators could be sure of was that he was taking an unconscionable amount of time to say what the decision was. Instead of delivering a brisk text he was meandering, stopping to cite such psychologists and sociologists as Kenneth Clark and Gunnar Myrdal on the mental development of Negro children. At 1:12 the exasperated AP correspondent dispatched a second bulletin. Warren was clearly opposed to segregation on principle, he said, but “the Chief Justice had not read far enough in the court’s opinion for newsmen to say that segregation was being struck down as unconstitutional.”
The decision’s constitutional pivot was the Fourteenth Amendment: “Nor shall any state deny to any person the equal protection of the laws…,” but there was no judicial precedent for this application of it. The Supreme Court had never ruled on the issue of school segregation. In 1896 it had laid down a “separate but equal” doctrine in a case involving segregation of train passengers. Since then it had found against segregated housing and railroad transportation and ordered Negro students admitted to graduate schools of six southern and border state universities. Now at 1:20 P.M. Warren came to the climax of the ruling:
To separate [Negro children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way never to be undone…. We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.
Segregation in schools, then, was unconstitutional: against the law. And the decision was unanimous, a special triumph for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and its scholarly counsel, Thurgood Marshall, himself a graduate of Jim Crow schools. Acknowledging that compliance would take time, the Court said it would withhold further instructions until its fall term. Meanwhile all sides were asked to prepare arguments on when segregation should be abolished and who—a special master or the federal district courts—should establish and enforce the terms under which it would end.
In the white South there was gloom. No greater blow to its social structure could be imagined. In seventeen states and the District of Columbia public school segregation was required by law, and four other states permitted it. Altogether, schools with a total population of twelve million children were affected. The first reactions of the authorities responsible for them varied according to their geographical location. In Kansas and Oklahoma, border states, officials were calm; they predicted that the change would be made with little commotion, if any. In Austin Governor Allan Shivers said Texas would submit, though he warned that full compliance might “take years.” After studying the full opinion, Virginia’s Governor Thomas Stanley told the press: “I shall call together… representatives of both state and local governments to consider the matter and work toward a plan which will be acceptable to our citizens and in keeping with the edict of the court.”
The Deep South was more hostile. South Carolina’s Governor James F. Byrnes, now seventy-five, said he was “shocked.” He could scarcely claim to be surprised. In the hope of intimidating the Court, South Carolina had amended its constitution to allow for abandonment of the public school system. The question now was whether it would carry out its threat. Georgia had taken the same step, and its leaders were fiercer. Senator Richard Russell argued that racial matters were in the jurisdiction of the legislative, not the judicial, branch of government, and he accused the Warren Court, as some were already calling it, of “a flagrant abuse of judicial power.” Governor Herman Talmadge delivered a diatribe: “The United States Supreme Court… has blatantly ignored all law and precedent… and lowered itself to the level of common politics…. The people of Georgia believe in, adhere to, and will fight for their right under the U.S. and Georgia constitutions to manage their own affairs.” They would, he said, “map a program to insure continued and permanent segregation of the race
s.”
By autumn there was a lot of that sort of rhetoric as local candidates in southern elections fell to quarreling over who would be the greater defender of white supremacy. The Court, wary of civil disorder, set no rigid schedule for compliance. At the same time the justices let it be known that having laid down the law, they meant to see that it was enforced. Federal courts and local school districts were directed to evaluate their situations and study administrative problems. Then they were to take steps toward a “prompt and reasonable start” in carrying out the decision with “all deliberate speed” as soon as was “practicable.”
President Eisenhower was troubled by all this. He knew there was a certain inevitability in it—that the end of European colonialism in Africa and Asia was bound to be matched in the United States by rising protests against discrimination, and that Americans were increasingly aware that the country’s position of world leadership was being jeopardized by racism at home. Still, his innate conservatism distrusted sudden change. Privately he called the Warren appointment “the biggest damfool mistake I ever made.” While believing in eventual integration, he argued that “if you try to go too far too fast… you are making a mistake.” Nixon disagreed. He said that he felt strongly that “civil rights is primarily a moral rather than a legal question.” But Ike remained reticent on this very delicate issue. To one of his advisers he said emphatically: “I am convinced that the Supreme Court decision set back progress in the South at least fifteen years…. It’s all very well to talk about school integration—if you remember you may also be talking about social disintegration. Feelings are deep on this, especially where children are concerned…. We can’t demand perfection in these moral questions. All we can do is keep working toward a goal and keep it high. And the fellow who tries to tell me that you can do these things by force is just plain nuts.”
The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972 Page 110
