Intimidation

What are we going to tell you did. You know it was an object counter and

see peers not go out here and you are not going to hope. You know of Chicago so

you would just as well go and get your name oh no. You don't you're not

going you're going to be put out a bid for.

The story of the intimidation of the Negro is a long and varied one. Harassment by mobs

anonymous telephone calls beatings killings and bombings threats of economic and

other reprisals have all played a part in this story. Listeners we tell part

of the story today as we continue to explore the world of the Negro in America the last

citizen.

Last August in the new year when America a series of programs devoted to the extension of our knowledge of the

largest minority group in the United States its problems and the problems it poses to all

Americans. The last edition is produced by Radio Station a Purdue University

under a grant from the Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National

Association of educational broadcasters. The discussions are the producer of the series W.

Rector and Dr. Louis Schneider a professor of sociology at Purdue University. Today's

program intimidation. Here now is Mr. Richter.

Today we begin the first of a series of three programs devoted to what we are terming

intimidation protest and defense. We understand by intimidation

roughly any activity involving violence or a threat of violence that will tend to

prevent the negro from asserting rights or exercising privileges to which he

is in some sense entitled for instance by law the intimidation may

be consciously undertaken by whites who deliberately act to prevent the negro from

obtaining something that something may be segregated

education equal status in a court of law the voting rights. So on. On the

other hand intimidation may be directed to no special purpose that those doing the intimidation

have in mind when you go along with this Will.

I think so.

When you say that intimidation need not be directed to any special purpose I'm reminded of a

verse a certain pattern of relations between Negroes and whites in various

communities has been noted by a number of investigators. I think for instance of the

study of deep stuff done by Allison Davis and others we find according to this

work that negro white relations can take on a certain sort of cyclical

form specifically in a southern community lots of Negroes over

time become gradually less deferential to whites. They begin to

mumble. So far in addressing white men perhaps they even experiment now and

done with leaving out the sore altogether. They refused to give way on sidewalks they are

insufficiently self-effacing. One day a white service in stores along with white

customers. But one day some white person decides in a boiling up of

temper that things have gone far enough and administers a public beating to an

opportunity to go out. Then there may well develop a renewed tendency for Negroes to

become deferential. Perhaps the Saar comes back plain and I'm Feyerick

and there are corresponding changes on the sidewalks in the stores and so on. A

certain equilibrium has been restored. Nor I suppose one could

think of this kind of thing as involving intimidation for its own sake. And yet there

could well be in it elements of conscious thought on the line that a

general subordination of the Negro community must be restored. I

suppose too that even when there are conscious elements like this you might still want to call this

general purpose intimidation.

I think too we should note that in immigration as in the way of the few first.

By this I mean simply that there are many anti negro activities in which

intimidation is a more or less incidental ordinary instrumental

flame. It's one kind of activity undertaken among others to achieve certain

results. You may for example want to prevent negroes from going to white

schools and let's say this is your primary purpose. Then

virtually any usable tactic that comes to home may be valued and you may

turn to intimidation when promises persuasion ridicule and the like

have failed. So also intimidation may be part of the

armamentarium of those who wish to prevent the negro from voting or doing any of

a number of other things.

Well I would like for us to go out in this vein but our primary object today is to achieve a

very concrete understanding of how intimidation works. Most of us are aware

that the negro in the south is frequently intimidated when it comes to exercising his voting

rights.

But how many of us really know what intimidation means in the concrete if I may so put it

in the flesh. What exactly does it involve. It is I think illuminating for us at

least at times to get involved in detail. And this is again what we want to

look for today the impact of these abstractions upon individuals. What

intimidation means to this and that particular negro. And also how intimidation

works in various particular areas in which the Negro seeks to assert the rights or

exercise the privileges mentioned in our initial definition. Let's turn to

a statement therefore pertinent to the very important area of the Negro vote. The

statement perhaps brings out more than the sheer matter of intimidation in connection with voting in the south.

But intimidation is a centrally important part of it. Here then is

Dr Herman law director of the race relations department of the American Missionary

Association at Fisk University.

I suspect that I rather strongly believe that the major

factor which reduces the number of negroes who are registered and who

can vote is the fact that operate directly upon him

in the act of seeking to get registered. Let me try to

describe what I mean.

Registration in the average southern community takes place in the court house.

If this quote house is in a small town it

has about had an average number of

hangers on of small politicians police

of sheriffs. A dead beat is AV

people who in some measure are associated with the policy

structure of that community. And of course many whites

in the South who believe that they are then selves of

all by the very fact that they happen to be white persons. When a

negro goes into this unwelcome atmosphere of the county courthouse to

register. He has not only met with this situation which is a

is which is all inspiring to him but he has met at the desk of the

registrar with a person who whose attitude is against He is

his actual registering and who proceeds in the

conversation which would ensue to place all

sorts of hurdles. In the way of the negro seeking to

get blanks to fill out or even in the way

that he would interpret the questions on a blank and so on. And then

in many cases he's met with an outon out attitude of refusal.

Boards of registrars have expressed themselves on individual registrars as saying that I will

not register a single negro in this county.

Negroes don't vote in this county and many cases they will tell

negroes that you know Negroes don't vote in this county. Well this is this is a threat this

is. A veiled threat in some cases it's a direct threat

and so they the process is just blocked by this kind of informal

but nevertheless awfully powerful effort on the part of the white

public to put every stumbling block in the way of the negro. I have an ego that

still persists in his effort in the small town and frequently in the large community

to vote and makes a demand to do so. Then he is

frequently if he seeks to rally other negroes in the process and some type of

mass effort to register you he may have direct forms of

intimidation placed in his way.

The shooting of Negro leader in Mississippi about two years ago I think is an example of

this kind of direct act of violence out of my own

experience I remember when I went to the courthouse in my hometown in

Birmingham Alabama to de-register. This time I was teaching in college.

It took me about an hour and a half to go through the process of filling out a single blank

simply because a clerk at the counter did not agree with the

interpretation that I made of the items on the blank that I had filled out.

Now I understand that no directions were given me as to whether or

not the items I had filled out were correct that not the blank was simply given back to me and

saying that's not right. So I would scratch my head

and I would try to give another interpretation and give the blank back. It would be

returned to me just as curtly. That's not right yet. And yet beside

me here was a clerk not only interpret ing the items to whites who was

seeking to write but in many cases actually filling out the blanks for them.

Why this act for me may have took a good pot of a day a half a day.

It was a it was an act insofar as a white public was concerned who were in process of

registering it took on a pot of 15 or 20 minutes with all kinds of assistance.

Now if you multiply if this was difficult for me. At that

level with it with a degree of education which I had at that time

can you can conceive of how difficult it would be for the man who has only a fifth grade education.

And who is not knowledge about knowledgeable about what his rights are

in the in there in this kind of kind of situation. This

explains more than anything else I think why you have only

about say a million and a half probably of maybe 2 million negroes voting.

Actually you get to devolve into each day at the present time.

Perhaps we might extend this statement by Dr. Long. As you look over

our wealth of materials on this entire matter of intimidation what seems to be

appropriate to you as something to add in order to piece out again in detail

and vividly and concretely the story of intimidation in regard to the negro

voting in the south.

I think perhaps the story of Gus courts as vividly a lost art of intimidation in

connection with voting is anything we have. Let me explain this much. In the spring of

1956 the National Leadership Council on civil rights was told

about what had been happening to one negro citizen in the state of Mississippi. A man named Gus

Cortes in connection with his efforts to vote Cortes lives in a county in Mississippi in which

there are about 17000 negroes and less than half that number of whites.

Courts assume the role of leadership in the effort to have negroes vote in his county when he

himself first attempted to vote no negroes were registered to vote and courts tried to

register in 1953. I think at this point we might let him and his

questioner at the council in 1956 take up the tale.

Well A. We we started nineteen

hundred in 53. We went to the sheriff's

office.

And try to pay our pool tags which we were a few. Out of

we would if you. Few of us got together. And

got up about three reels about three hundred dollars. And

had to navigate is brought against the ship and head and behold the level of grandeur.

To make him caused him to open the book.

Another way to live as pay poll tax.

And upholds myself. And revel in the joy

double E was one of the leaders and several others. Was

some inch. Hole that grand too.

And the shed goes up and makes his apology. That he would if they

didn't indict him he would go back and open the book. And let us pay poll

tax. And also let. See that the

negroes that would reduce how many of you paid the poll.

Well when they open up the gun when we got the books opened up about

400 we've succeeded in getting about 400 negroes and up

to now to pay that poll tax.

For a hundred who paid their poll tax.