74
PARTISAN ReVIEW '
I was, in short, but one generation removed from t113 South, which
Wa!
now undergoing a new convulsion over whether black children
had the same rights, or capacities, for education as did the children of
white people. This is a criminally frivolous dispute, absolutely unworthy
of this nation; and it is being carried on, in complete bad faith, by
completely uneducated people. (We do not trust educated people and
rarely, alas, produce them, for we do not trust the independence of
mind which alone makes a genuine education possible.) Educated
people, of any color, are so extremely rare that it is unquestionably
one of the first tasks of a nation to open all of its schools to all of its
citizens. But the dispute has actually nothing to do with education, as
some among the eminently uneducated know. It has to do with political
power and it has to do with sex. And this is a nation which, most un–
luckily, knows very little about either.
The city of Atlanta, according to my notes, is "big, wholly segre–
gated, sprawling; population variously given as six hundred thousand or
one million, depending on whether one goes beyond or remains within
the city limits. Negroes
25
to 30% of the population. Racial relations,
on the record, can be described as fair, considering that this
is
the
5tate of Georgia. Growing industrial town. Racial relations manipulated
by the Mayor and a fairly strong Negro middle class. This works mainly
in the areas of compromise and concession and has very little effect on
the bulk of the Negro population and none whatever on the rest of
the state. No integration, pending or actual." Also, it seemed to me
that the Negroes in Atlanta were "very vividly
city
Negroes"-they
seemed less patient than their rural brethren, more dangerous, or at
least more unpredictable. And: "Have seen one wealthy Negro section,
very pretty, but with an unpaved road.... The section in which I am
living is composed of frame houses in various stages of disrepair and
neglect, in which two and three families live, often sharing a single
toilet. This is the other side of the tracks, literally, I mean. It is
located, as I am told is the case in many Southern cities, just be–
yond the underpass." Atlanta contains a high proportion of Negroes
who own their own homes and exist, visibly anyway, independently
of the white world. Southern towns distrust
this
class and do everything
in their power to prevent its appearance. But it is a class which has
a certain usefulness in Southern cities. There is an incipient war, in
fact, between Southern cities and Southern towns- between the city,
that
is,
and the state-which we will discuss later. Little Rock is an
ominow example of this and it is likely-indeed, it is certain-that we
will
see many more such examples before the present crisis is over.
