The 50s

by The New Yorker Magazine

  Of all the worries that might beset a Negro leader setting out for Georgia, this was one I had not anticipated. I asked Marshall whether he ever had qualms about his safety when he went South. On several occasions in the past, I knew, he had had some close calls. “I’m a Southerner,” he told me. “Born and brought up down there. I know my way around. I don’t go looking for trouble. I ride in the for-colored-only cabs and in the back end of streetcars—quiet as a mouse. I eat in Negro cafés and don’t use white washrooms. I don’t challenge the customs personally, because I figure I’m down South representing a client—the N.A.A.C.P.—and not myself. So up until about six months ago I had no qualms when I started out on one of these trips.” He paused, rubbing his long nose, and then said, “But I got ’em nowadays. Those boys are playing for keeps. My wife followed me out to the elevator when I left today, begging me to be careful.” His laughter over his wife’s concern was fond and slightly wistful. Their marriage had taken place only nine weeks before. (It was Marshall’s second marriage; his first wife died a year ago.) “There won’t be any trouble in Atlanta, though,” Marshall added confidently. “I like Atlanta. That’s a pretty civilized town.”

  It was growing dark outside. The stewardess came along the aisle taking orders for drinks—Scotch-and-soda for me, for Marshall coffee. He seemed to feel that the coffee called for an explanation, and said that, as an Episcopalian, he was observing Lent. “It doesn’t hurt to take a month off once a year to prove to myself that I don’t need liquor,” he added. “Having proved it, I can really enjoy the stuff the other eleven months.” He removed his glasses and put them in his pocket, and then drank his coffee, gulping it rather joylessly, I thought. I asked him if he’d care to give me some sort of summary of the situation in the South as he saw it. He replied that he did not know what the situation was himself. “That’s what I’m going down to find out,” he said. “That’s what the meeting’s about.” Didn’t the N.A.A.C.P. branches send reports to keep him up to date, I asked. “Some do, some don’t,” he said. “Some are leery about putting everything they know on paper. And when they phone and hear clicking on the line all the time, they get leery about that, too. I can’t blame them. It’s not safe to be an N.A.A.C.P. leader in some parts of the South today.” He lit a cigarette, then turned toward me and said, “Some of them speak out without hesitation, though. I don’t know how they do it. They have more courage than I would have in their place.” He bent over and picked up a Manila folder from beside his seat. “Here,” he said as he opened it. “Here’s a letter I got a while ago from one of our people in South Carolina. Would you like to read it?” The letter, typewritten, was from Levi G. Byrd, correspondent and secretary-treasurer of the Cheraw branch of the N.A.A.C.P., Cheraw, South Carolina. It read as follows:

  Mr. Thurgood Marshall

  20 West 40th Street

  New York 18, N.Y.

  DEAR MR. MARSHALL:

  Just a few words to let you know how things is going arond Cheraw, People is not making Much Fuss hear in Chesterfield County But I am obayen just what the Bible says, I am watching First and Prayen with my Eys Open at all times) (at all Times keeps my Power Dry to pretict my House And my Self, God takes cear of all that tryes to take cear of them self’s VERY SORRY THAT I LIVE IN A STATE LIKE THIS BUT WE ARE DETERMED TO MAKE IT A DECEN PLACE TO LIVE FOR OUR CHILDREN ALL THAT COMES AFTER US. BY ABAYEN THE LAW OF OUR GREAT AMERICA AS A WHOLE.

  The papers. The State has just Published about the Thugs shooting in Rev. Hintons Home Monday Night, People is so Dum at least some of them We will see just what The Gov. of S.C. Will do about this. Nothing of course

  Trust that your Office will I know look after this matter in the right way.

  AS LONG AS I AND SOME OTHERS THAT HAVE NINE LIVES THE N.A.A.C.P. WILL NEVER DIE IN S.C. RIGHT WILL WIN.

  Trusting that you is injoyen your Married life,. I wish you much sucess and a long life.

  Very Truly Yours

  LEVI G. BYRD, Corrisp; Secretary-Treas;

  “Mr. Byrd is quite a man,” Marshall said, with undisguised admiration, as he glanced over the letter after I handed it back to him. “He knows what’s right and nobody can frighten him. He thinks education’s real important. He’d like his children to get some.” Marshall looked at the letter again and laughed. “ ‘Trusting that you is injoyen your married life,’ ” he repeated with relish. He peered out the window into the darkness. “Where are we now—somewhere over Virginia, North Carolina? Won’t be too long before we’re over Mr. Byrd’s territory.” He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. I could see why he would have wished God to be a little more permissive about what went on in His house.

  Marshall talked of how much the N.A.A.C.P. had grown in the past twenty years, to the point where it now has over five hundred thousand members, most of whom pay annual dues of two dollars. “You know, they didn’t use to have people like Mr. Byrd in the N.A.A.C.P.,” he said. “The organization used to be much more of an élite affair, with everybody trying to be so refined. I remember when I was a kid”—his eyes suddenly gleamed with humor—“we used to say that N.A.A.C.P. stood for the National Association for the Advancement of Certain People. There was a redcap at Grand Central Station who brought more than three hundred members into the organization. Somebody proposed that he be put on the executive board. The other board members were horrified. A redcap!” Marshall mimicked them, sighting down his nose and pursing his lips fastidiously. “ ‘What college did this person attend? Who are his family?’ ” His imitation dissolved in laughter.

  I asked who the people were that would be taking part in the Atlanta meeting. “Oh, people of all sorts,” Marshall replied. “Lots of lawyers, of course, because the law’s what this meeting’s about, and a few schoolteachers. And then there’ll be the state presidents—one works in a post office, one’s an undertaker, another’s a dentist. And then there’s a college president—let’s not go to the other extreme and leave him out. When I get to this meeting, I’ll not only find out from them what the situation is but also find out what they want to do about it, because they’re the ones that are gonna have to live with any action that’s taken. Then I’ll try to figure out how to help them do it. That’s my part, actually.”

  · · ·

  In the lobby of the terminal, J. H. Calhoun, president of the N.A.A.C.P.’s Atlanta branch, was waiting for us. The lobby was a long, crowded room, but it was not hard to find him. Other than Marshall, he was the only Negro in sight—a large, carefully dressed man, standing with his hat in hand in the middle of the floor, with a small island of space around him. Under the bright lights, his skin gleamed like burnished ebony. He greeted Marshall warmly but respectfully. Then, with grave courtesy, he shook hands with me. Within a few minutes, other newly arrived N.A.A.C.P. representatives had gathered around us—Robert L. Carter, a slender, youngish attorney with a mustache, who is Marshall’s chief assistant in the New York office and who argued some aspects of the school-segregation cases before the United States Supreme Court; a slight, jaunty, tea-colored man named James Stewart, an N.A.A.C.P. official from Oklahoma; and two or three others, whose names I did not catch. The delegates started talking about where they would be staying. The matter was complicated. There are only three hotels for Negroes in the city, and they are not considered very satisfactory, even by those in no position to be choosy. At that, I was told, Atlanta is better off in this respect than many Southern cities, several of which have no public accommodations whatever for transient Negroes. Some of the delegates were going to stay at a Negro motel, some would put up at the Negro Y.M.C.A., and some were to be quartered in private houses scattered through Atlanta’s colored districts. Marshall and I were to stay in a dormitory at Atlanta University, a university for Negroes, which is the only place in town where, on an occasion such as this, white and Negro visitors can be sheltered under the same roof without public scandal.

  Marshall and I got our luggage and then Calhoun ushered us
, along with Carter and Stewart, into his car. After we got under way, Stewart congratulated Marshall on his marriage and chaffed him about it. As we drove along, there was a lot of banter and laughter and high-spirited talk among my companions of going out on the town and having themselves a ball tonight. They sounded like Elks Clubbers or American Legionnaires or any other group of conventioneers who have just got together. Calhoun let Marshall and me out at Atlanta University and then the others drove off down the street. I asked Marshall whether he thought they really were going to make a gay night of it. “They might,” he said. “But more likely they’ll sit around some place and talk back and forth all night about the problems of the N.A.A.C.P.”

  The University, a privately endowed institution, has a good academic reputation, I understand, and offers quite a varied curriculum. Its red brick buildings looked solid, clean, and comfortable. As we went into the one where we were to stay, we passed a couple of students sitting on the steps—a young man in shirtsleeves and a girl wearing a white cotton dress. Another couple was sauntering up the front walk. In a lounge off the entrance hall, I glimpsed a group of young men sitting about, engaged in a bull session. It all looked, except for the matter of color, very much like any other American college on a balmy Friday night. An attractive co-ed in a loose striped shirt and a dark skirt signed us in and showed us to our rooms. They were spacious and pleasant. I unpacked and showered, then went down the hall to Marshall’s room, where we spent the rest of the evening talking and sipping Cokes before windows wide-open to let in the night air. He talked about how, if he and his wife should have children, they would like to move out of their Harlem apartment to some place in the suburbs, because they felt that New York City was not a good place to raise youngsters.

  · · ·

  It was ten-fifteen when we entered the church’s assembly room—a quarter of an hour past the scheduled starting time for the meeting. “What’s the matter, Thurgood?” a tall, elegant man, paler than most of the people one sees tanning themselves at Miami Beach, asked with mock severity. “Is there a fifteen-minute time differential between here and New York?” Marshall laughed and said, with a wave of his hand, “Hi, Oliver! How are ya?” One of the staff members began passing out copies of the agenda as Marshall took his place at a table in the front of the room, below a small stage on which stood an American flag. On his left was an empty chair, and beyond it sat Roy Wilkins, a slim man with a handsome, sensitive face, successor to the late Walter White as the N.A.A.C.P.’s executive secretary. On Marshall’s right was Carter, his chief assistant.

  Addressing the meeting in a conversational voice, Marshall said he wasn’t going to waste time making a speech—everybody, he observed, had the agenda and had previously received an outline telling what the meeting was about and stressing that it was facts, not rumors, that were wanted, and so now he would suggest that they elect themselves a chairman and then the delegates from the various states could start giving their reports. By acclamation, the delegates chose the Reverend James M. Hinton, of Columbia, South Carolina, for the job. A short, round-faced man with close-cropped white hair, he took the empty chair between Marshall and Wilkins, named a timekeeper, who was to see that none of the states exceeded the fifteen minutes allotted them for their reports, and said they ought to start out by finding what states were represented. One after another, from here and there in the room, people sounded off: “Alabama!” “Maryland!” “Georgia!” “Mississippi!” Mississippi’s name brought a murmur from the delegates. Since this group had last convened, less than a year before, two of that state’s Negro leaders who had been urging Negroes to register as voters had been shot and killed and a third had been seriously wounded. One of the killings took place in as public a setting as one could well find in the South—in front of a county courthouse on a Saturday afternoon. No one has yet been indicted for any of these crimes.

  “Let’s call first for a report from the very fine state of Maryland,” the Reverend Mr. Hinton said. From the N.A.A.C.P. viewpoint, the news from Maryland was indeed quite encouraging. The Baltimore School Board had voted to end segregation shortly after the Supreme Court, on May 17, 1954, issued its basic constitutional decision that “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place” and that “separate education facilities are inherently unequal.” Baltimore did not wait, as did most other Southern localities, for the Court’s implementation order, announced a year later, which stated that desegregation would be a matter for local school authorities to work out but that they would be required to show “good faith,” to “make a prompt and reasonable start toward full compliance,” and to move “with all deliberate speed.” By the time this order was issued, Baltimore had already accomplished the change. Although the state’s county boards are moving more slowly, all of them have announced that they will comply with the Supreme Court’s decision, and as far as the N.A.A.C.P. is concerned it is mainly a question of making sure they don’t take too long about it. In Baltimore, Negro teachers have been assimilated into the revised school system. Several Baltimore schools, in districts that contain no Negro children, now have Negro teachers in charge of all-white classes.

  The man presenting the Maryland report was a rather prosperous-looking attorney named Robert B. Watts. Wearing a gray suit with a vest and a red plaid bow tie, he spoke in an easy, matter-of-fact manner. The only incident of any sort in Baltimore, he went on to say, had occurred at Southern High School, in an industrial section of the city, where the students staged a walkout one day in October, 1954. “It was a very warm day, and I think the kids mainly wanted an excuse to get out of school and into the open air,” Watts said. “The police commissioner immediately went on TV and warned parents that it was against the law for the youngsters to stay out of school. He said there’d be some arrests made if they didn’t go back. They went back right away.” Watts announced that he now had a suit pending in Harford County, seeking a court order to require that county’s school board to end school segregation. “Edgewood Arsenal and Aberdeen Proving Ground are both in this county, and there are several non-segregated government housing projects,” he told the meeting. “We felt that there was certainly no excuse for continuing segregated schools near these places where the races are housed together and the men work and train together.” He added that another suit may have to be filed in St. Marys County, and that it is being prepared now. “There the people are more Southern in attitude,” he said, rather apologetically.

  When Watts had finished, a delegate from one of the Deep South states asked him in a concerned voice whether it was indeed true that Negro students were not doing as well in their achievement tests as their white classmates. From the table, Carter broke in to say, “It’s a fact. Let’s face it.”

  At the other end of the table, Wilkins, who had spoken little so far, said thoughtfully, “It might be well to clarify our position on this. We don’t need to argue the point or be defensive. Some Negroes have flunked out in Baltimore, but some haven’t. That’s what we care about—the right of each individual to a fair chance.” Marshall, who had been quietly making notes during the Maryland report, nodded emphatic agreement. “And some Negro students have been making excellent records, including Robert B. Watts, Jr.,” Wilkins added. This, everybody realized, was a reference to the Maryland attorney’s son. Smiling with fatherly pride, Watts returned to his seat.

  The Reverend Mr. Hinton permitted no one to overrun his allotted fifteen minutes, and no one got the floor without his recognition. I had certainly expected more oratorical flourishes, but the slightest hint of anything of this sort was apt to draw from Marshall the warning “Watch out, man, you’re using up your own time!” Marshall himself was put firmly in his place when he tried to discuss a point after the Reverend Mr. Hinton had ruled that there would be no further discussion of it. No one in the group seemed to question the chairman’s authority, and I, too, in the course of the meeting, came to be powerfully impressed by t
he strength and firmness of his character, although I would have been hard put to it to say how he communicated these traits, for he never raised his voice and most of the time a mild, kindly smile lingered on his moon-shaped face. This was the Reverend Mr. Hinton mentioned in Levi Byrd’s letter from Cheraw. Shotgun blasts had been fired into the minister’s house only last January. One night a few years before, he had been kidnapped by an outraged mob and threatened with lynching for leading a protest against segregation in the schools in South Carolina. When asked about that night, he diverts attention from its terrors by smiling gently and recalling that among those Negroes who set out angrily to try to save him were two cars filled with fellow-members of the cloth— a “whole posse of preachers”—and saying that it was a good thing for their immortal souls that they didn’t come upon the mob before he was set free. The Reverend Mr. Hinton is one of the people Marshall presumably had in mind when, on the plane down, he had wondered at the courage of the Negro leaders to be found in the South.