The Turning Point

In the classic pattern, revolution leads to hope, hope to frustration, frustration to fury. Thus it is that so many revolutions end by devouring their own children and destroying the goals for which they were fought. This, it was increasingly apparent last week, may prove to be the fate of the civil rights revolution in America. During a summer of insensate riots and black-power demagoguery, the Negro's legitimate struggle for full citizenship sadly lost momentum, while white reaction against Negro excesses continued to mount.

The commonly accepted--if ill-defined--name for this reversal of sentiment is, of course, "white backlash," a catchall term that accommodates every shade of reaction from out-and-out bigotry through unexpected fear to sorrowful inaction. In whatever guise, backlash now threatens not only to overshadow most other issues in many parts of the nation at the polls next month but also to negate some of the signal achievements for which the U.S. Negro has striven so hard.

The warning signals had been flashing for weeks. After the 1966 civil rights bill's ignominious demise last month, it was plain that the overriding cause was white resentment over Negro rioting in the cities. In Maryland, Perennial Also-Ran George Mahoney beat out seven rivals for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination by keying his campaign to prejudiced--or frightened --whites. In Louisiana, twelve-term Congressman James Morrison paid for his moderate racial record by losing the Democratic primary election to Segregationist John Rarick, who attacked Morrison as an ally of "the black-power voting bloc."

Then last week Negro slum dwellers went on the rampage in two U.S. cities that had been relatively free of racial violence for decades.

No Guff. The upheavals in San Francisco and St. Louis were both kindled by the same spark: the shooting of a Negro by white police. In St. Louis, youthful Negroes on the western edges of the downtown district demonstrated for six nights after an armed-robbery suspect was shot to death, breaking the windows of autos and buildings, pitching stones and bottles at policemen, stoning firemen who replied to false alarms--and all the while shouting "Black power!"

In San Francisco, the explosion was touched off when a policeman killed a 16-year-old boy who was fleeing from a stolen car. Adult Negro leaders tried courageously to calm youthful rioters, but quickly learned that, as one of them said, "The kids wouldn't buy it." With admirable alacrity, Mayor John

Shelley telephoned Governor Edmund Brown, campaigning in San Diego, to ask for 2,000 National Guardsmen. Patrolling both the Hunter's Point and Fillmore ghettos with fixed bayonets and orders to "shoot to kill--take no guff from anyone," the Guard ended the melee in two nights. All told, 51 people were injured, 267 arrested.

Pickrick Drumsticks. Democratic strategists made no secret of their fear that the outbursts could help trim their majorities in November. "If the rioting doesn't fade away--indeed, if there's renewed violence in the streets--it will hurt us," declared Vice President Hubert Humphrey as he stumped California and three other Western states. Just how much it might hurt Democratic prospects was demonstrated on the other side of the continent the same day. In Georgia, moderate former Governor Ellis Arnall entered a runoff for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination as a heavy favorite against Lester Maddox, a strident racist who first made headlines by refusing to integrate his Pickrick restaurant in Atlanta after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Maddox became a hero to the racists at that time by giving white customers at his fried-chicken restaurant ax handles--he called them "Pickrick drumsticks"--to keep Negroes out. Georgia Republicans, figuring that he would be an easier target than Arnall for G.O.P. Candidate Howard ("Bo") Callaway in November, drove up to polling booths by the thousands to vote for Mad dox--many in cars bearing Callaway bumper stickers. By one estimate, they cast 100,000 votes for the balding bigot, enough to give Maddox a startling 430,000-to-360,000 victory. As a result, liberals and Negroes next month are expected to either support a write-in candidate or vote for Callaway, himself a segregationist but of a subtler hue than Maddox. Thus the G.O.P. has every chance of electing its first Georgia Governor since 1868.

Too Fast. An even more serious long-range threat to Negro gains was raised in the U.S. Senate. A Senate Appropriations Committee report sharply criticized the Department of Health, Education and Welfare for the tough desegregation guidelines it has sought to enforce in Southern hospitals and schools. Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, a longtime supporter of civil rights measures, seconded the criticism, said he thought that the department was going "too fast" and was violating the intent of Congress by trying to enforce racial balance rather than merely to end segregation.

The Senate went beyond mere criticism; it took a number of steps that may actually roll back Negro gains. For one thing, it attached a rider to a HEW appropriations bill giving Southern hospitals the right--or alibi--to segregate patients if they judge that integrated rooms might prove "injurious" to their health. For another, it approved a $ 1,000,000 cut in HEW's civil rights enforcement budget. In addition, the Senate-approved Demonstration Cities bill was running into resistance from Congressmen who said they were getting complaints from constituents that "we don't need a Demonstration Cities bill-we already have city demonstrations."

HEW Secretary John Gardner took the setbacks with equanimity, described them as "an outburst of resentment, but not a decisive one." Other Administration officials were more disturbed. Said Office of Education Official David Seeley: "This may be the turning point similar to that after the Civil War, when the nation turned its back on the Negro."

Underriding. Increasingly, the pollsters are finding evidence that the nation once again is at least beginning to turn its back. Last week's Gallup poll reported massive "resistance of whites to measures for improving the lot of Negroes," noted that 52% of them think the Administration is pushing integration "too fast"--as against only 32% when the first survey was conducted in 1962. Pollster Lou Harris warned that "the white backlash could be the decisive issue on Nov. 8" and could "tear the Democratic Party apart at the seams in the North."

No other single national issue has yet begun to dominate the races for 435 House seats, 35 Senate seats and 35 governorships. Viet Nam has become a major debating point in Oregon, where Republican Governor Mark Hatfield is in deep trouble in his bid for the Senate because of his soft stand. It may also decide the outcome of several House races, where independent peace candidates might take votes from hard-pressed Democratic freshmen such as Michigan's Weston Vivian and New York's Lester Wolff. So far, however, no candidate of either party who ran on an antiwar platform has won. Last week, in a bitter rerun of a contested Democratic primary in a predominantly Jewish and Italian-American district in Manhattan, five-term Congressman Leonard Farbstein, who supports the Administration's Viet Nam policy, won renomination by a bigger margin than in June. In most races, candidates prefer not to raise the Viet Nam issue. "I call it," says Iowa's G.O.P. Chairman Robert Ray, "an underriding issue."

Unpredictable. The economy also is in the bottom drawer. "If any national issue works against the Democrats--and I'm not sure any will--it will be high prices in supermarkets," says Wisconsin's Lieutenant Governor Patrick Lucey, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. But unparalleled prosperity should help Democrats at least as much as inflation hurts them. Outside the South, where Democrats are scrambling to avoid identification with him, Lyndon Johnson also is the subject of considerable conversation without real ly being an issue. The fact is that a President's popularity--or lack of it--is not easily transferable in an off-year election; in 1958, Dwight Eisenhower's immense prestige did not prevent the Democrats from picking up 17 seats in the Senate, 49 in the House.

As for the backlash issue, its impact is baffiingly uneven and unpredictable. In Illinois, Democratic Senator Paul Douglas is losing votes to G.O.P. Challenger Charles Percy not only among Chicago whites but also among hitherto loyal Negroes, who resent Democratic Mayor Richard Daley's resistance to their demands. In Ohio, Republican Congressman William M. McCulloch, a key man in getting the 1964 Civil Rights Act through the House, is now under sharp attack by a Democratic opponent who accuses him of "appeasing the violence of the rioters." And in Massachusetts' U.S. Senate race, backlash voters face a bewildering choice between G.O.P. Attorney General Edward Brooke, a Negro, and Democrat Endicott Peabody, who has a liberal civil rights record and whose mother was arrested at the age of 72 for taking part in a St. Augustine, Fla., demonstration in 1964.

Reverse Racism. Despite widespread concern with the problem, many civil rights leaders argue that the term "white backlash" is a misnomer. "It's white frontlash," insists Chicago Urban League Director Edwin Berry. "It's a prejudice that's always been there."

That attitude was challenged last week by a man with impeccable credentials in the field of civil liberties.

"Many have said that the 'white backlash' was just a surfacing of latent feelings of hostility toward the Negro," New York's Senator Jacob Javits told an audience in Harlem. "I disagree. It was the sudden violence, the call to reverse racism, and the inconoclastic demagoguery of a few that have threatened and frightened the white community almost to the point where right and reason become secondary to visions about self-preservation."

To Javits' surprise, he received a tremendous ovation from his Negro listeners. The fact is that many Negroes feel every bit as afraid as whites that the violence may sear their communities and set back their cause. "Those damned people are ruining everything!" exclaimed a Harlem hospital worker during the San Francisco riot.

Ugly Sound. President Johnson last week sounded a similar warning. "We have entered a new phase," he told visiting bishops from the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which has an all-Negro membership of 1,300,000. "What if the cry for freedom becomes a sound of a brick cracking through a store window, turning over an automobile in the street or the sound of the mob? If that sound should drown out the voices of reason, frustration will replace progress and all of our best work will be undone."

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