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"Segregation Forum Hits at Gradualism"
Harvard
Law Record - March 6, 1952 - Pages 1, 3
reprinted by permission
"'Gradualism' has run itself out," Thurgood Marshall, chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, declared in last Friday's Law School Forum presentation of "Can We Afford Segregation Now?" He spoke on the platform with Marion A. Wright, president of the Southern Regional Council, and Alfred G. Ivey, former associate editor of the Winston-Salem Sentinel and Journal.
Having flown in from an investigatory visit to Cairo, Ill., scene of a recent race riot, Mr. Marshall said, "We cannot afford segregation now. We cannot afford it financially and morally; and with it we are losing our leadership in the fight for world peace."
Referring to a 1935 case in the State of Maryland in which the court adopted a "temporazing attitude" towards the effort of a Negro student to gain admission to a law school, Mr. Marshall said, "Donald Murray wanted a legal education for himself, now; not for his grandchild."
Continuing in his criticism of "gradualism" and the "separate by equal" philosophy in education in the Southern states, he asserted, "we ought to break down segregation yesterday." He gave as his view that a fight against segregation must be carried on with lawsuits and legislation, believing racial discrimination will not be abandoned voluntarily.
During his talk, Mr. Marshall mentioned several examples of the extremes to which segregation and "separate but equal" had been carried. Among these was a rule in one state forbidding whites and Negros to stand in the same line to vote in a primary because it might encourage intermarriage, and that during the summer months in one state the books used by Negro children in their segregated schools could not be stored in the same warehouse with books used by white children. "Even books," he said bitterly, "cannot associate with each other."
On the other hand, Alfred G. Ivey, now a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, and an advocate of "separate but equal," defended the "gradual" approach to the elimination of segregation, saying, "It is not like daylight savings time; it can't be overturned overnight."
He maintained that in his editorials for the Winston-Salem Sentinel and Journal he supported a slow working out toward an equality of opportunity for all, but had cautioned "we must not go too far too fast." Immediate abandonment of the tradition of segregation, he warned, would lose supporters of this objective in the moderate and gradualist sympathy in the South, and might stir up the forces of reaction.
But the president of the Southern Regional Council, Marion A. Wright, was in favor of abolishing segregation now. As an example of waste, he noted that the cost of maintaining the "separate but equal" doctrine will be close to one billion dollars, and said, "The states which have saddled themselves with the burden of a dual school system are least able to afford such luxuries."
Mr. Wright also pointed out that continuing a policy of segregation was playing directly into the hands of those seeking to undermine American leadership in international affairs.