Word: integrationist
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...emotions say "never" to integration, his civil instincts say "perhaps some day," but his cash registers say "now." The dominant sentiment is expressed by Real Estate Executive Sidney Smyer, chairman of the businessmen's committee that negotiated a truce of sorts in Birmingham: "I'm not an integrationist, but I'm not a damn fool either...
Medgar W. Evers, a Negro integrationist leader in Mississippi, was assassinated near his Jackson home yesterday morning. "The fight is here," Evers had said when offered a job at the NAACP headquarters in New York City. "I expect to be shot. I might die. But that's the risk." His slaying is the most barbaric act in the ugly story of race relations this decade...
This presents a great problem for integrationists. There is no Negro in this town who considers work toward desegregation to be the primary part of his life. The Negro world, and its skilled professions, demand too much time from the best people, and guarantee them safety. It is this guarantee of safety, together with the chance to be considered an "exceptional Negro" by the white man, that makes Uncle Toms out of men like the high school principal here. But even a local minister, who speaks often of the need for integration and the sacrifices its attainment requires acts...
...have had to distribute explanatory literature each week through all the local churches. These people have never been exposed to the idea that community activity can mean social progress. It is this simple notion--that progress is possible but can only be achieved through cooperation--that an integrationist group must get across to combat the attitude, constantly reiterated by the local Negroes themselves, that "we people can never stick together, or get anywhere in the white man's world...
...inflexibility of this attitude makes the integrationist feel that he has scored a major triumph if a member of the white community concedes the most minor point. For instance, Chestertown has a large, new hospital which can comfortably house around 50 patients. In it there are eight beds for Negroes, four to a room. Infectious and non-infectious patients sometimes must breathe the same air; slightly ill babies must lie next to old women; all Negro men and women must share the same bathroom...