^Greensboro Daily News, Sun., Feb. 10,19801
By WTLUAM D. SNIDER
I Editor, Daily News & Record
For a newspaper editor privileged
1 observe first-hand Greensboro's ev-
~~i)lving civil rights struggle over three
decades, the last few weeks have
been a fitting time to read Prof. William H. Chafe's splendidly researched
history of this period, Civilities and
Civil Rights
(Oxford University Press, $13.95).
j Professor
J Chafe finished
| his book before
the latest and
I most explosive
j outbreak of violence in Greens-
ro — the
irningside
Homes shoot-out
last November. But it offers an illuminating backdrop for that bizarre
episode. It also provides an incisive
racial-ideological profile of a Southern city in transition, home of the
first lunch-counter sit-ins and first token desegregation of the public
schools.
Professor Chafe's thesis — and I do
not always agree with his emphasis —
is that a "progressive mystique" envelopes Greensboro and North Carolina. While it encourages "openness to
Sjew ideas" and a "sense of enlightenment and tolerance" — that is, dis-
—»courages blatant demagoguery — it
also "obstructs efforts to mobilize
[sustained protests" against injustice
and accepts change (especially racial
change) most begrudgingly. Thus, as
the author sees it. civility and consensus become 'masterful weapons" of
social control.
Starting with the Greensboro
school board's resolution for compliance with the Supreme Court's
Brown decision in 1954, Chafe notes
that such brilliant political instruments as Governor Hodges' Pearsall
Plan only succeeded in slowing the
struggle for racial justice.
Chafe sees Greensboro's initial willingness to endorse a "start" on desegregation as a tool for forestalling
integration. Although the first Tar
Heel black students attended white
schools in Greensboro, Charlotte and
j Winston-Salem in 1957, Greensboro's
full-scale desegregation occurred only
17 years later. "The central argument
advanced by proponents of the Pearsall Plan," Chafe writes, "was that
unless it were approved, poor whites
would rise in rebellion and force the
General Asseubly to enact a far more
devastating program of massive resis-
— itance."
Jjfuch to the contrary, he insists,
^^/tW strongest opposition to Brown
came from elite and middle class
whites. They used the Pearsall Plan's
j local option and tuition grants as expedient dcvieei to muiniain the status-
quo.
1 Having been around during those
jyears, I know what Professor Chafe
|was talking about. But if he believes
history oj
Woolworth sit-ins; Did city's>rogressive_nnag;
Luther Hodges could have prevailed
easily over Dr. I. Beverly Lake's respectable segregationists (combined
with the rednecks), he should take a
second look.
Of course, 20-20 hindsight is convenient. But my best judgment tells me
that without the Pearsall Plan, North
Carolina would have suffered far
more racial turmoil and outdistanced
neighboring Virginia in wrecking public schools and raising hell. I believed
so then, and I believe so now.
It may annoy liberals that Terry
Sanford supported the Pearsall Plan
for the very reasons I have mentioned: It served more as a "fire extinguisher" than a 'legal subterfuge."
It allowed certain communities to
move more quickly than others and
its flexibility was a much-needed
"safety valve".
But I cannot fault Professor Chafe
for carping at Greensboro for taking
so long to sense the significance of
the sit-ins at Woolworth's. The fact
that ours was a "college community"
made it an obvious starting point for
an assault on the South's obsession
with Jim Crow. Because Greensboro
had a reputation for openness and tolerance — as well as the fact that campus sanctuaries shielded young people
from economic reprisals — it made
sense that the sit-ins began when and
where they did.
' This tolerance — and lack of a
tightly controlled leadership hierarchy — caused the community to
balk for three years over fully opening its public accommodations to all
races. Chafe's recounting of this story, especially his marshalling of research on the black community, is
superbly accomplished.
Before the late Mayor David
Schenck, Sr., sternly predicted the
dire consequences if the city's leaders
failed to respond, Greensboro experienced "the largest civil rights demonstrations ever to occur in North
Carolina."
Once these barriers fell, however,
Greensboro assumed it could forget
civil rights. But racial assassinations
and campus turmoil of the late sixties
would not go away. The city was jolted again in 1969 by bloody riots and
upheavals at Dudley High School and
A&T State University before its best
leadership rallied.
Then, with unparalleled grace, in
1971, it set about full desegregation of
public schools. This led the NAACP's
Legal Defense Fund and four other
organizations to conclude that
Greensboro's desegregation process
was "probably superior to that of almost any other city in the South..."
The Boston Globe noted that
"desegregation in Greensboro was
not an accident. It was a case of community leaders setting a goal and capitalizing on community pride, respect
for law and a recognition that children should have the same educational opportunity."
Chafe's book, then, is a saga of
challenge and response. Greensboro's
"progressive mystique", he thinks,
"parallels in many ways the style of
moderate liberalism prevalent in the
country's national politics.. .While
free expression of ideas has usually
been tolerated nationally, action on
those ideas, particularly in the area ox
race, has taken place only under
forceful pressure — almost never voluntarily. In the nation, as well as in
Greensboro, civility and the manners
of reasonable discourse have been
used as a primary means of channeling dissent, not through forbidding
the articulation of radical ideas, but
through controlling the framework in
which they can be considered and discussed."
But what's so objectionable about
that?
Professor Chafe wonders, in coi
elusion, whether civility and civi
rights are compatible — and seems
answer "no "
My rebuttal is: Why not? Take a
look around Greensboro today. Even
with the paradoxical celebrations and
controversives occurring here last
weekend, one would be hard pressed
not to recognize this community's attractive stability and diversity. It provides the best mixture of idealism
and common sense that American
democratic institutions have to offer
anywhere.
The struggle for social justice does,
indeed, go on "in ambiguity and uncertainty" — as it always will. But
Greensboro gained strength from the
experience — from civil rights and
civilities.
