The Petal paper. [volume], November 07, 1963, Image 1

About The Petal paper. [volume] (Petal, Miss.) 1953-19??

Image provided by: Mississippi Department of Archives and History

                
L. j»t Side
-By P. D.
/ t
As bad as some things have been, as bad as some things
are now, and as bad as some things are going to be in my
state I have occasion every century or two to take hope. The
following editorial, from the Daily Journal of Tupelo, gives
me a passing moment of that infrequent hope. The editorial
is entitled SOUND COMMENTS THAT CRACK CLOSED
MINDS, and, as you will note, concerns itself with an address
given by Dr. James Silver on November 7th. Herewith:
Dr James Silver, who served as head of the Ole Miss history
department for a decade or more, has become such a contro
versial figure in this state that some persons are inclined auto
matically to reject — or ignore — any comment he may make
on Mississippi affairs.
Congressman John Bell Williams, for example, wants to
kick him out of Ole Miss altogether. And Gov. Ross Barnett
dismissed him with the explanation: “You can’t pay any attention
to anything old Silver says.”
But the fact remains that Dr. Silver, however contro
versial on his home grounds, is sufficiently well r^rded
among other Dixie historians to have been elected head of the
G«..ii,arn KScinriral Association.
And it was his blunt presidential address to that organization
a few days ago that stirred the most recent furore over his con
demnation of Mississippi politics and the pressures for confoi mity
that emerge therefrom.
Having heard a number of Dr. Silver s former students
comment most favorably on his knowledge of southern and
Mississippi history, we made is a point to obtain a copy of is
full address—the speech that made newspaper headlines and
stirred violent reaction not only among our politicians but among
many citizens who felt Dr. Silver should have confined his
criticisms to the limits of his own state.
When, however, we read his full forty-three page address,
we found that as is often true of controversial individuals, Dr.
Silver had much to say that most thoughtful people, we believe,
would accept as being soundly based.
And it is these paragraphs, we feel, rather than the spec
tacular headline copy, which Mississippians should ponder as
our state moves into one of its most trying periods of history,
complete with a struggle for emergence of a two-party politi
cal system and a more broadly based industrialized economy.
From our own lifetime observance of Mississippi trends,
emphasized only a few days ago by a call from a State College
, i_■ +us. ..-Co, rtf hie rr»nvf»rsat.ion admitted he
UlUlC^Ul wuv; ill - - - ....
could no longer say what he thought on a Mississippi campus, we
feel that many comments by Dr. Silver deserve careful consider
ation by the people of our state even though some of his com
ments, they may feel, are needlessly blunt or even incorrect or
in poor taste. , _ , ,.
Much of Dr. Silver’s 43-page address to the South s leading
historians regarding Mississippi’s “Closed Society” was along the
lines indicated by the following quotations; .
“There are many thousands of ‘men of good will’ in Missis
sippi, mild-mannered people for the most part, who in their day
to-day affairs do what they can to ameliorate the difficult con
ditions imposed upon their fellow men by the closed society.
“But because of a strong desire to live in peace or because
•f one kind or another of fear, these men will not openly pro
test what they know in their hearts are gross evils all about
them. .
“These are the individuals who when one of their own num
ber speaks out or in some little way defies the orthodox and is
• pilloried as a result, shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Well, he
asked for it.’ ”
Dr. Silver comments with deep understanding of our state s
problems:,
“The Mississippi white man cannot allow himself the
luxury of thinking about a problem on its merits, ...
„ (Continued On Page 2) .
A BOOK
REVIEW
THE UNFROCKING OF
HENRY JAMES
By Joseph Whitehill
—Henry James and the Jacobites,
by Maxwell Geismar, Houghton
Mifflin, Boston, 1963, $7.00—
If you have been to college
within the past twenty years, you
have been assigned Henry James
as required reading. And if you
knew what was good for you, you
said you thought he was a mag
nificent writer, and deep, too.
Maxwell Geismar evidently does
not know what is good for him,
for he thinks and says that James
was full of wind and bees, and
that his altar boys, the Jacobite
critics, have invented and traf
ficked in useful fraud for years.
(Before going on, let me ex
plain the historical pun at work
here: the Jacobites were a seven
; teenth century band of English
political die-hards who yearned
j to restore the exiled king, James
II, to the throne. The congruence
>ot the e x i 1 e d Jameses beloved
across the water by ingrown cults
made a pun too delicious to turn
Henry James and the Jacobites
is a long journey of exploration
through the undiscovered country
* of James’s prose. The country is
! undiscovered because Geismar
reads and criticizes James as if
he were the first to do so. Often
using Freudian and post-Freudian
insights, Geismar discovers a very
different Henry James from him
of the reverent Jacobite ritualists
who chant in the oracular mode of
finalities. We see, not a literary
giant of holy subtlety, painting
complex landscapes of the human
condition from his vantage point
halfway up the slope of Mount
Olympus; rather, we see a bril
liant, arrested child, paranoid and
a voyeur, sunk in romantic and
erroneous play-visions of life
abroad ,and hence, life beautiful.
Really, Geismar’s James is close
to a fool. None of his characters
earn money; they have it. But,
having it, are they freed thereby
to enlarge themselves by experi
ence? No, they pass their time
speculating about other people’s
money. Under Geismar’s bright
light, James’s characters and, by
pardonable extension, James him
self emerge as grubby little ma
terialists wandering in the gardens
of solipsism.
In laborious, headaching series,
Geismar examines nearly every
thing James wrote, pulling it to
pieces at the weak places, holding
much-praised passages up for
close, imloving scrutiny. Geismar
writes in an urgent conversational
style, most of the time with his
hand on your shoulder, guiding
you, sometimes holding you by
both lapels, telling you. Geismar
feels stronger about Henry James
than anyone else I know. Your
natural question is, “Why did a
man of his critical stature waste
five years writing a book to de
bunk a trivial, minor writer who
(Continued on Page 4)
From Ramparts—
DIALOGUE WITH FR. AUGUST THOMPSON
by
John Howard Griffin
Griffin: Father Thompson, since
you are a priest who happens also
to be a Negro, we might begin
talking of the effects of racism on
religion in the U. S. The Church
has, of course, been strongly out
spoken on this subject.
Thompson: Yes, I have in my
hand Pacem in Terris, which
means so much to me because here
is the Pope speaking, and we
I can’t evade the fact that once the
Holy Father speaks, we must
listen. Pope John XXIII’s death
was a grievous loss to us, but I
am happy to see that Pope Paul
! VI is moving ahead in the same
spirit.
There is one part here in Pecem
in Terris where His Holiness
speaks specifically about racism.
“But truth requires the elimina
tion of every trace of racism,”
i Pope John says in paragraph 86.
Racism is our major problem in
the world today. If we face this
truth, we must get rid of racism.
I’d like to concentrate on this — to
air some of these truths even
where they hurt, even where they
are likely to cause strong disa
greement.
Griffin: We needn’t beat around
the bush, Father. We are going
to discuss one of the greatest
incongruities in our times the
racism that exists quite openly in
some areas of the south and other
areas of the country as practiced
by Catholics. Didn’t your own
sister have to leave the South in
order to become a registered
_
Thompson: Yes, my sister Mar
garette. She had to leave the
South for her studies becausee no
Catholic hospital in the South
would take her for training. This
was about 1951, I believe, but
I even today in the so-called Deep
South I do not think that any
Negro girl could get into a Catho
lic Hospital for her training. This
story can be found in the Septem
ber 1955 issue of JUBILEE Maga
ine. Now, with Archbishop Halli
nan’s courageous stand, it might
be possible in Atlanta.
Griffin: Father, to clear the air,
j let’s talk about racists’ claims that
Negroes are morally inferior by
nature; that there are more
Negro crimes, a looser sexual
morality . . .
Thompson: I’d like to make two
points here. Much of this kind of
talk comes from the need to justify
i injustices. Only by believing that
I Negroes are intrinsically inferior
can non-Negroes tolerate in con
science the system that defrauds
us of our civil and human rights.
We hear talk about “Negro
crime,” but do Negroes commit
any crimes that men of other
complexions do not commit? No,
I these are not Negro crimes, but
| the crimes of men. If statistically
| Negroes commit more crimes in
America than Non - Negroes, the
cause lies not in our “Negro-ness”
but in the very ghetto life that we
are forced to lead under a system
of rigid segregation, in the for
mation we receive. This system,
with all its injustices,, deprives
men of any sense of dignity or
personal value—and no man can
live without that. If you kept a
significant number of white men
in such a degrading environment,
systematically deprived them of
dignity and hope, closed most
doors to self-fulfilment and left
open only the door to despair, the
white crime rate would soar. Also,
since Negroes see that law
enforcement generally means
abuse for us, we grow up with
less respect for the law than we
should have. In the South, where
many of the police belong to the
Klans or other racist groups, no
example is set that might give
Negroes any true respect for the
law.
Here again, I would like to re
I fer to the Holy Father’s Pacem in
Terris. He says: “It is not true
that some human beings are by
nature superior and others in
ferior. All men are equal in their
natural dignity.”
Another thing—statistics can be
most misleading. Every time a
Negro youth snatches a purse, this
goes on the books—as it should.
But a white group of racists can
burn down a Negro’s home be
cause he attempts to register to
vote—they can bomb, beat, in
timidate and otherwise disabuse
Negroes of rights which we guar
antee to every citizen, but these
criminal acts, committed under
the cloak of anonymity, do not get
into the statistics.
The second point I would like to
make is that “morality” has come
to mean only one thing in our
society—sex. Yet morality has to
do with the right and wrong in
human behaviour. The deliberate
distortion of statistics, as used by
racist propagandists, to prove that
we are morally ‘inferiro” in it
self immoral: “Thou shalt not bear
j false witness . . .” Negroes see
clearly the contradiction involved
i where men know all the nuances
of the Sixth and Ninth Command
ments, but are seemingly unaware
of the others, particularly the
Eighth. We know that we, as
American citizens, are born with
certain inalienable rights and that
to be denied those rights without
just cause constitutes a gigantic
fraud. This kind of crime does not
get into the statistics either.
Griffin: And yet, Father, we
hear constantly the cant that
Negroes must change, must earn
the rights we unhesitatingly ac
cord even the most degraded non
Negro. We hear it also among
Catholics, don’t we?
Thompson: Yes, and there the
truth is going to be painful. I
realize that white Catholic south
erners are the products of their
environment—the prisoners of
their southern segregated culture
just as we Negroes are. From
their point of view, changes in
their attitudes are difficult—and
in fact they are not even aware
that such changes might be indi
cated. I sympathize deeply with
the agony that comes when the
need,-for such changes of attitude
(Continued On Page 2)