The Race Issue Explodes

As the U.S. Supreme Court's segregation decision of May 17, 1954 flared to life in rioting, threats and clamor through the South (see EDUCATION), the whole civil rights issue was ticking like a time bomb in the center of the Democratic Party. Last week it exploded.

Campaigning through California, Adlai Stevenson found himself bombarded by hard-hitting questions from Negro leaders. His answers left behind a trail of disillusionment and downright anger. Urging moderation,, he said the Federal Government must go slowly in enforcing desegregation, using education and persuasion rather than force. He came out flatly (as President Eisenhower had) against the proposal by Harlem's Democratic Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. to deny federal aid to segregated school districts. Would he use the Army and Navy, if necessary, to enforce the Supreme Court decision? "I think that would be a great mistake," said Stevenson. "That is exactly what brought on the Civil War. It can't be done by troops or bayonets. We must proceed gradually, not upsetting habits or traditions that are older than the Republic."

Friendly Hedge. Also swinging through California, Campaigner Estes Kefauver faced the same kind of questions and left behind an entirely different impression. Calling the Emmett Till case in Mississippi "a horrible murder," he said he favored a federal anti-mob statute. In a friendly but carefully hedged statement he indicated that he would support Powell's proposal if it became necessary, and if it could be worded to protect the purposes of the school-aid bill. If elected President, he said, he would 1) appoint a commission of white and Negro educational leaders in the South to confer and make recommendations, and 2) do all he could, if it became necessary, to deny federal aid to states that defied the authority of the Constitution and the courts.

Before the week's exchange of views was finished, California Negroes were shifting from Stevenson to Kefauver in noticeable numbers. Said Franklin H. Williams, West Coast counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: "Stevenson uses high-sounding phrases, but they lack content." In Manhattan the New York Post, long a devout supporter of Stevenson, cried in a full-page editorial that his utterances on the discrimination issue had been "inadequate . . . fragmentary and uninspired." At Miami Beach, where the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Executive Council was holding its first meeting, other Stevenson followers expressed shocked horror. Obviously shaken, A.F.L.-C.I.O. Vice President Walter Reuther said Stevenson was "dead wrong this time." Moaned James Carey, chairman of the civil rights committee: "He wants the nomination, but he's setting up the election for Nixon."

Rough Time. Basically the positions of Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver on the discrimination issue were not far apart. The fact that Kefauver's direct and politically conscious way of stating his case was more effective only proved a larger point. The basic division on segregation between the Democratic Deep South and the liberal Democratic North (critically dependent on the Negro vote in key states) is now out in the open; there are rough times ahead for the man who would be moderate with both sides.

No one knew this better than "inactive" Candidate Averell Harriman and his politically wise advisers, including Tammany Hall Sachem Carmine De Sapio, and this week they made the most of it. Appearing on a radio panel show, Harriman jumped in with both feet. He 1) defended the Powell amendment, and 2) demanded "immediate federal enforcement" of the Supreme Court's desegregation ruling.

The strategy was obvious: as Harriman & Co. see it, holding the Negro vote in the North promises to be a greater political problem for a Democrat than carrying the South.

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