Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Finding a way forward
Editor’s note: Paul Greenberg, former editorial page editor of the Pine Bluff Commercial and retired editorial page editor and columnist for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and columnist for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for a series of editorials he wrote in 1968 on civil rights. Greenberg described the editorials during an interview once as being about the “need for understanding and the respect for the rights of others.” We believe those sensibilities are worthy of review again, considering the racial protests and other turmoil in the country today. For that reason, we are republishing each of Mr. Greenberg’s award-winning editorials over the next several days. He died April 6 at age 84.
In all, Greenberg submitted seven “exhibits” to be considered for the Pulitzer. This segment, which was submitted as “EXHIBIT 7,” said: “The Commercial devoted a number of editorials in 1968 to examining the case and appeal of Freedom, Inc., which launched a campaign to oppose the local school board. Three members of Freedom, Inc., have filed for the school board election coming up soon, and the controversy shows no sign of cooling. Neither, we hope, will the Commercial’s vigilance.”
EXHIBIT 7 (PART 3) THE CATCH IN FREEDOM, INC., DEC. 2, 1968
The catch, or anyway one of the catches, in Freedom, Inc., is that Freedom-of-Choice is fast disappearing as a practical or legal method of integrating Pine Bluff’s public schools. The executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the national government now have made it clear that Freedom-of-Choice can be considered only as a means to establish a unitary school system, which has come to mean one without all-Negro schools. And when Freedom-of-Choice fails to bring full integration, another means must be tried.
Freedom, Inc., has every right of course to oppose this policy by peaceful means. As it did when it tried, unsuccessfully, to amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act at this last session of Congress. This is the act that gives the Department of Health, Education and Welfare the responsibility to set up standards of desegregation for receiving federal aid to education.
TO URGE that the Pine Bluff School Board ignore these standards by again submitting a Freedom-of-Choice plan that was just turned down a few months ago—which is what Freedom Inc., urges—is to chart a collision course with the federal government. Ignoring these requirements would jeopardize the school district’s considerable federal aid and open the way to a long, expensive, divisive and no doubt unsuccessful battle in the courts.
Nor are spokesmen for Freedom, Inc., being very responsible when they spread rumors about widespread busing of students being planned for Pine Bluff. Surely a school board that has steered this community past so many hazards so successfully deserves an opportunity to complete and present its plan before its course is attacked on no basis other than a rumor.
ONLY A radical change in all three branches of the federal government, and perhaps in the Constitution of the United States, can preserve Freedom-of-Choice where it does not bring full integration. One spokesman from Freedom, Inc., has mentioned amending the federal Constitution and certainly he has every right to try. But the community and its school board must consider the federal requirements, laws and court rulings now on the books.
Strangely enough, the same representative of Freedom, Inc., who spoke of amending the Constitution of the United States, which is a long and arduous process, dismissed a unitary school system for Pine Bluff as impractical. Yet unitary school systems have been used and are being used all over the country. Are the people of Pine Bluff so inferior in good will and cooperation to those of, say, Evanston, Illinois? Evanston has a sizable population of both Negroes and whites, a unitary school system, and a reputation for high academic standards.
MOST PEOPLE in Pine Bluff must realize by now the disadvantages of disregarding the existence of laws, court decisions, and requirements for federal aid. The people of Little Rock, despite the best of advice from their school board, turned down a unitary school system proposed by their local school administrators. Now Little Rock is under a federal court order to establish a unitary school system. Surely Pine Bluff can learn from Little Rock’s experience rather than have to go through the same futile dissension here.
Most people in Pine Bluff surely realize the disadvantages of adopting a strict neighborhood school policy, too. It might set neighborhood against neighborhood, threaten property values, and dissect the city along racial lines. A system in which each school has a white-black ratio similar to the whole district’s (60 to 40) seems the wiser course. Even the president of Freedom, Inc., says he is against the neighborhood school plan “if you mean that children have to go to the school in their neighborhood.” Which is, of course, what a neighborhood school policy means.
MOST PEOPLE in Pine Bluff, we think, will support the local school board’s course. Even if some would like the board to go faster and others slower. Because most people want to give the school board a decent chance to work out a fair, effective plan. And because most people realize that the school board must take into account federal requirements, laws and court decisions.
We think that even members of Freedom, Inc.,—though perhaps misled for the moment by their own wants and fears—will come back to reality.
THE VOICE OF FREEDOM, INC., NOV. 6, 1968
It’s not easy to sell Freedom, Inc., as a moderate organization when its national president talks the way Mitchell Young does. At Little Rock the other day, he was introduced as the head of an organization for “good, moderate, Christian, freedom-loving people.” What’s more, said the introducer, Freedom, Inc., “doesn’t want the radicals.”
Wereupon Dr. Young proceeded to say some not very moderate, or even clear, things about the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. First he said HEW’s goal was “not education but integration.” Then he amended that to say HEW’s goal “is not integration but the control of the minds of our children.” And finally came the unimaginative kicker usual in such talk: He said it was “infiltrated by Communists…” As is conventional in such cases, he didn’t name a single Communist.
Surely Dr. Young couldn’t have been referring to the head of HEW’s Civil Rights Office, who is a native of Arkansas from down around Lake Village. Dr. Young himself is a Texan. Though, it should be said in all fairness, just barely one since he lives in Texarkana.
This kind of wild talk was just a starter for Dr. Young. He also called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People—which has become positively [sic] square in the context of Negro movements these days—“a Communist front organization.” Dr. Young added that “a vote for Humphrey is a vote for Brezhnev.” How’s that for moderation? Despicable would be a more accurate description for such talk.
“IF THESE Negro militants and revolutionaries don’t like the way we do things in this county,” Dr. Young continued, “we can provide them busing service back to Russia or to Africa or to Israel.” Of late, however, it’s Mitchell Young who’s been organizing, speechifying and in general carrying on against the way we do things in this country, which is his perfect right. Mitchell Young has as much right to suggest shipping ‘em back to Africa as black militants have to suggest shipping ‘em back to Europe, if they “don’t like the way we do things in this country.” Though neither attitude strikes us as being very moderate.
One thing about America: Here we are all immigrants or the children of immigrants, with the possible exception of the American Indian, who may have been treated shabbiest of all by the newcomers. Negroes, are, of course, exceptional: They were not only among the first to arrive but they didn’t ask to be brought here.
As for shipping Negroes “back” to Russia, that would be a neat trick since not many of ‘em came from Russia in the first place. (Even if Black Power types do keep telling us that Alexander Pushkin was an octoroon.) The same goes for Israel; the last universal revolutionary doctrine to come out of that land was Christianity. It is a doctrine that Freedom, Inc., theoretically embraces, as in the phrase: “Good, moderate, Christian, freedom-loving people.”
All these wild statement come from a man who is a national president of an organization billed as moderate. “We don’t want the radicals,” the fellow who introduced him at Little Rock said. If Dr. Young’s statements are moderate, we wonder what in the world Freedom, Inc., would consider radical.
People in Pine Bluff who are now being asked to apply for membership in Freedom, Inc., ought to ask themselves whether they want to associate their names with the views of an outside agitator like the national president of Freedom, Inc.