570
fact that it is the Southern Negro
himself who, year upon year, and
generation upon generation, has
kept the Southern waters troubled.
As far as the Negro's life in the
South is concerned, the NAACP
is the only organization which has
struggled, with admirable single–
mindedness and skill, to raise him
to the level of a citizen. For this
reason alone, and quite apart from
the individual heroism of many of
its Southern members, it cannot
be equated, as Faulkner equates
it, with the pathological Citizen's
Council. One organization is work–
ing within the law and the other
is working against, and outside it.
Faulkner's threat to leave the
"middle of the road" where he has,
presumably, all these years, been
working for the benefit of Negroes,
reduces itself to a more or less up–
to-date version of the Southern
threat to secede from the Union.
Faulkner-among so
many
others!-is so plaintive concerning
this "middle of the road" from
which "extremist" elements of both
races are driving him that it does
not seem unfair to ask just what
he has been doing there until now.
Where is the evidence of the strug–
gle he has been carrying on there
on behalf of the Negro? Why, if
he and his enlightened confreres
in the South have been boring from
within to destroy segregation, do
they react with such panic when
the walls show any signs of falling?
Why-and how- does one move
from the middle of the road where
one was aiding N egroes into the
streets-to shoot them?
Now it is easy enough to state
flatly that Faulkner's middle of the
road does not-cannot-exist and
that he is guilty of great emotional
and intellectual dishonesty in pre–
tending that it does. I think this
is why he clings to his fantasy. It
is easy enough to accuse him of
hypocrisy when he speaks of man
being "indestructible because of
his simple will to freedom." But he
is not being hypocritical; he means
it.
It
is only that Man is one thing
-a rather unlucky abstraction in
this case-and the Negroes he has
always known, so fatally tied up
in his mind with his grandfather's
slaves, are quite another. He is at
his best, and is perfectly sincere
when he declares, in
Harpers)
"To
live anywhere in the world today
and be against equality because of
race or color is like living in Al–
aska and being against snow. We
have a lready got snow. And as with
the Alaskan, merely to live in arm–
istice with it is not enough. Like
the Alaskan) we had better use
it." And though this seems to be
flatly opposed to his statement (in
an interview printed in
The R e–
porter)
that, if it came to a con–
test between the Federal govern–
ment and Mississippi, he would
fight for Mississippi, "even if it
meant going out into the streets
and shooting Negroes," he means
that, too. Faulkner means every–
thing he says, means them all at
once) and with very nearly the
