Because I believe this book to be of exceptional importance, I urge it
upon your immediate attention. It is sent to you with the compliments
of the North-South Council, James E. Simpson, Chairman, P. O. Box 5554,
Friendship Station, Washington 16, D. C., out of funds contributed by
people in both the North and the South.
Harry F. Byrd,
United States Senator
Race and Reason
A YANKEE VIEW
By Carleton Putnam
+Public Affairs Press, Washington, D. C.+
Copyright, 1961, by Public Affairs Press
419 New Jersey Avenue, S.E., Washington 3, D. C.
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 61-8447
FOREWORD
This book is a signal contribution to an understanding of the race
controversy. No other writer, in my opinion, has yet combined so
forceful an analysis of the viewpoints of both North and South with so
clear a grasp of the reasons behind each.
Carleton Putnam strikes at the root of the matter. He thoroughly
explores the ideology which led to the Supreme Court’s decision in
the desegregation cases and traces it to its source. In the process
he puts race against the background of fundamental American ideals
with arresting results. He presents documented facts, and discloses a
situation, which I believe should be brought to the immediate attention
of the American people. _Race and Reason_ may well become a text for
the unorganized majority in their battle against the social concepts of
our minority groups.
If there be an argument in favor of integration which is not plainly
set out in this volume, and as plainly examined, I have not heard it.
The writing is incisive and can be read by the layman at one sitting
with pleasure as well as profit. The author has thought through many
issues, and has combined his thinking with careful research. He gives
his results in telling sentences, crisp and spare. In these pages, any
legislator, judge, lawyer, minister or college debater can have at his
finger tips, conveniently indexed, a succinct reply to every sophistry
advanced by the propagandist. To those who recognize that the salvation
of the South lies in the education of public opinion rather than in
rear-guard court actions, and that our national leaders must be told
the scientific as well as the political facts of race, this book will
be indispensable.
My personal enthusiasm has been increased by knowing Putnam himself.
He is a dyed-in-the-wool Northerner, a New Englander collaterally
descended from both Israel Putnam, George Washington’s first
major-general, and Rufus Putnam, founder of the Ohio Colony. Putnam is
a Yankee in the true sense of the word. He speaks with detachment and
from what I may term the native American outlook. Few men are better
qualified by inheritance and training to recall us to the principles on
which our republic rests.
In his own career Putnam has been singularly successful both as a
practical man of affairs and as a scholar. Graduating with a science
degree and with honors in history and politics from Princeton, and
with a law degree from Columbia, he was for fifteen years president
of Chicago and Southern Air Lines and later chairman of the board of
Delta Air Lines. He finally retired, in his early fifties, to write
biography, and has already distinguished himself in this field. My
fellow journalist, Virginius Dabney, aptly described the situation
when he said editorially that the first volume of Putnam’s _Theodore
Roosevelt_ “had the critics turning handsprings”.
Putnam writes from a knowledge of history, science and law. He writes
from nation-wide experience in business, and from long residence in
North and South. He knows America, its past and its present. I consider
his message imperative reading for its own sake, and doubly valuable
because of the man who speaks.
I would like finally to comment upon the panel of scientists who have
signed the Introduction which follows this Foreword. Their tribute is,
I believe, unique. I know of no other case where a social study of
this kind has had such combined support from the fields of genetics,
psychology, anthropology, zoology and anatomy.
The panel is headed by R. Ruggles Gates, generally acknowledged to be
one of the world’s leading human geneticists. Born a Canadian, Dr.
Gates received his M.A. from Mt. Allison, his B.Sc. from McGill, his
Ph.D. from Chicago and his D.Sc. from the University of London. He has
been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1931.
His active career began as a Lecturer in Biology at St. Thomas’s
Hospital in London, continued as Associate Professor of Zoology at
the University of California, then as Professor of Botany at King’s
College, University of London, and as Honorary Research Fellow in
Biology at Harvard. For the last eight years he has been engaged
in world travel for the study of Races and Race Crossings. His
publications include _The Mutation Factor in Human Evolution_ (1915),
_Human Genetics_, 2 Vols. (1946), _Human Ancestry_ (1948), and
_Pedigrees of Negro Families_ (1949).
From the field of psychology we find Henry E. Garrett, Professor
Emeritus, Columbia University. For fifteen years Dr. Garrett headed
the Department of Psychology at Columbia. He has been President of
the Eastern Psychological Association and the American Psychological
Association. In addition he has served as Vice Chairman of the
Division of Psychology and Anthropology of the National Research
Council. He is general editor of the American Psychological Series,
and is the author of _Statistics in Psychology and Education_; _Great
Experiments in Psychology_; _Psychological Tests, Methods and Results_;
_Psychology_; _General Psychology_; and _Testing_.
Robert Gayre is a Scot. Presently Editor of the _Mankind Quarterly_,
he was formerly Professor of Anthropology and head of the postgraduate
Department of Anthropo-Geography, University of Saugor, India. He is
the author of _Teuton and Slav_ (1944) and of _Ethnology_, 3 Vols.
(soon to be published). He was Director of Education in the Allied
Control Commission for Italy after World War II.
Wesley C. George began his career as Instructor in Zoology at the
University of North Carolina, served variously as Professor of Biology
at Guilford College, Adjunct Professor of Zoology at the University
of Georgia, and Associate Professor of Histology and Embryology at
the University of Tennessee Medical School. He has been Professor of
Anatomy at the University of North Carolina since 1924 and was for
ten years head of the department there. He is the author of numerous
articles on the development of man and other vertebrates, comparative
hematology and the philosophy of science.
There can be no doubt that the endorsement of these men, taken together
with the evidence of other scientists called as witnesses by the author
in his text, guarantee the scientific integrity of _Race and Reason_
and confirm the soundness of its premises.
+T. R. Waring+
Editor, Charleston _News and Courier_
INTRODUCTION
Biological scientists seldom find themselves writing an introduction to
what is essentially a study of a social problem. However, the problem
in this instance is of such great importance from both the scientific
and social standpoints, and the two are so closely interrelated, that
we cannot dissociate ourselves from the task.
Our professional interest lies in the scientific foundations on which
Mr. Putnam rests his thesis. We are in complete accord with what he
has to say concerning these foundations. We agree with his balanced
presentation of genetic and environmental factors in the area of
both racial and individual biology. We believe they deserve this
sharp reappraisal in the light of current problems in the world at
large. We can also confirm Putnam’s estimate of the extent to which
non-scientific, ideological pressures have harassed scientists in the
last thirty years, often resulting in the suppression or distortion of
truth.
The intrusion of political thought into the social and anthropological
sciences which has occurred on a massive scale during this period, has
been a very great disservice to scientific investigation and to the
guidance which scientific work and its conclusions ought to be able to
render to human society. Man must be guided by science, but scientific
thought must not be moulded to preconceived political ideas.
We, as signatories to this introduction, although we may differ over
some aspects of genetic, biological, anthropological and sociological
theory, believe that statesmen and judges today frequently take
positions based upon an inadequate knowledge of the facts so far as
they relate to the nature of man. Therefore, we have no hesitation in
placing on record our disapproval of what has been all too commonly a
trend since 1930. We do not believe that there is anything to be drawn
from the sciences in which we work which supports the view that all
races of men, all types of men, or all ethnic groups are equal and
alike, or likely to become equal or alike, in anything approaching the
foreseeable future. We believe on the contrary that there are vast
areas of difference within mankind not only in physical appearance, but
in such matters as adaptability to varying environments, and in deep
psychological and emotional qualities, as well as in mental ability and
capacity for development. We are of the opinion that in ignoring these
depths of difference modern man and his political representatives are
likely to find themselves in serious difficulties sooner or later.
Whatever may be said for or against minor or detailed points made by
the author of this book, we feel that it deserves the serious attention
of both scientists and public men wherever racial problems exist. The
facts in it cannot much longer be ignored. It probes to the core of an
abscess, yet does so with a healing touch. There is logic and common
sense in these pages; there is also inescapable scientific validity.
+R. Ruggles Gates+,
M.A., Ph.D., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S.
+Henry E. Garrett+,
Ph.D., D.Sc.
+R. Gayre of Gayre+,
M.A., D.Phil., D.Pol.Sc., D.Sc.
+Wesley C. George+,
M.A., Ph.D.
CONTENTS
I
+A Frame of Mind+ 1
II
+The Hidden Issue+ 15
III
+Point by Point+ 34
Anthropology and Intermarriage 35
American Democracy 60
Christian Ethics 67
Sociology and Communism 71
The Constitutional Issue 97
Summation and Outlook 101
IV
+Conclusion+ 114
+Index+ 119
+Chapter I+
A FRAME OF MIND
When the Supreme Court reached its desegregation decision in 1954, not
all of us stopped to think about its implications. There were many, of
course, who were joyful. The Negro population and those white minority
organizations which had played so large a part in pressing the case
were elated. So were those good people who dream in general terms of
pleasing everybody without counting the cost. But the majority of
Americans, at least in the North, were preoccupied with other matters.
They were surprised, perhaps a little startled, but quite willing to
leave such a subject to the courts.
I confess that I was in the latter category. In those days, I was
board chairman of a major airline, and such spare time as I had was
occupied in beginning a four volume biography of Theodore Roosevelt.
On the one hand, I was involved in a life of action; on the other, I
was committed to the life of the mind, steeped in the moods of the
nineteenth century, far removed from either action or the social trends
of the mid-twentieth century. I cannot blame myself for not realizing
immediately the meaning of the desegregation cases. Had I been resident
in the South, it might have struck me sooner. But I was living in the
national capital.
I speak of these things because the reaction, when it came, could not
be unrelated to the personal equation. I believe that in 1954 I could
lay claim to the viewpoint of an average American, a viewpoint in
my case essentially Northern but modified by long experience in the
South. In my early airline days I had spent seven years in Memphis,
Tennessee, and had travelled extensively throughout all the Southern
states, dealing with local governments, business groups and individuals
in the most practical of activities. Twenty years before I had begun my
airline career along the California coast by starting a service between
Los Angeles and San Francisco. At a still earlier period I had gone to
school for two years in Arizona, and I had spent many summer vacations
in the northern Rockies.
In fact, to the American West I owed a large part of my life’s
motivation. From pack-trips across the Painted Desert in my college
days, to camps in the Bad Lands of North Dakota where I began research
on my biography of Roosevelt, I had known and loved the stage on which
the pioneer played out the drama of the American Dream. It was not just
a question of the sun setting beyond the Pass, nor the sound at night
of wind rising in the forests of the Big Horn Mountains. These were
important as symbols to the senses, but there were other scenes in the
montage of memory--episodes involving people, from old prospectors and
cowpunchers to women who had come to Arizona in covered wagons over
the Santa Fe Trail--these were symbols of a different sort, figures of
pride and self-reliance, and primordially American.
In a spiritual sense, of course, the Santa Fe Trail and the Oregon
Trail had begun at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, and had left me what I
regarded as a personal heritage. My first American ancestors, on both
my father’s and my mother’s side, had arrived in Massachusetts from
England in the fourth decade of the seventeenth century. From Salem, to
northern Vermont, to Saratoga and the Mohawk Valley, my father’s people
migrated to the West of their day and bequeathed me a proprietary
interest in a sunset and a frame of mind. Call it individualism, say
it was rugged, nonetheless it was American in its time. There were
certain traditions that were taken for granted, yet which passed by
osmosis from father to son. A man expected the community to do for him
only what there was no way of his doing for himself. When he asked
the community to do what he ought to have done for himself, this was
begging; it was begging because it meant another’s effort was making up
his lack--and beggars were not popular on the frontier.
Nor was there a notion of equality in any sense except the equal
chance. The frontier had its aristocracy of character to which one
earned the right to belong. And the man with the bad reputation was
not easily or quickly forgiven. I realize that today the frontier is
history and that social conditions have changed. I do not see that the
principles have changed.
Of my two grandfathers, one was a justice of the New York Supreme
Court, another was a New York publisher who had the doubtful
distinction of rejecting Mark Twain’s first book. My father, who died
young, was more adventurous. Having been cited for gallantry in action
during the Philippine Insurrection, he remained in Manila to start the
first American newspaper published in the Islands. There was something
vitally American, in a turn-of-the-century sense, about my father--a
certain gallantry, a gay initiative, a confidence in the strength of
being right, and a willingness to take risks in its service. Once or
twice he spoke with a twinkle of the close call I had had in getting
into the world. Two years before I was born, he had come back to camp
one evening from a skirmish at Tabuan and had found his undershirt cut
across by a bullet.
Father was less fortunate in 1918. He died in the Argonne, and I went
on to Princeton in 1920. I took a science degree, but majored in
history and politics, because I wanted an education that would give
me a perspective on the river of time, and I hoped a combination of
science and history would provide it. So I began with astronomy, the
story of the universe; went on to geology, the story of the earth;
and finally to history, the story of man, elaborating the details
through physics, chemistry and biology and flavoring the whole with
some philosophy and considerable English literature. Perhaps it was a
jack-of-all-trades education, but I cannot say I have regretted it. If
I was vague about some of the trees, I believe I saw the outline of the
woods.
Then came three arduous years which ended in a law degree at Columbia.
From the law I acquired a wholesome regard for precedent. It is a
lesson that can be learned from history, or from science, or, over a
long life, from personal observation. But the law, I think, teaches it
best. For a thousand years our Anglo-American common law has been based
upon the evolution of man’s experience in particular cases. Experience
has produced the theory, rather than theory coloring the experience.
In leafing through a book I wrote some twelve years later, I find the
following record of my reaction to Columbia: “The American ardor for
the new is one of the great hopes of the human race, but a respect
for the experience of the past can, I think, contribute more to its
fulfillment than the average American appreciates. For me, three years
of saturation in the law did something to offset a very inadequate
education in the classics, for it made real to me the substance of the
soil out of which the present and the future grow.”
Another fifteen years have passed since I wrote the preceding
sentences, but I would now only re-emphasize, in an age obsessed with
novelty and change, the importance of our Anglo-American heritage,
particularly in the field of moral values and basic principle. There
are very few social experiments that have not been tried before, and
there are absolutely no principles that have not been thoroughly
tested. “Winds of change” do not alter these.
If I were asked to be specific, I would say that as time has gone on,
I have been impressed with two fallacies that have crept into the
thinking of Americans: the fallacy that men by weight of numbers can
defy the moral law and lean increasingly upon other men under the guise
of the State, and the fallacy that this dependence is justified by the
supposed right of all men to share equally in everything. I shall have
more to say on this subject later. My purpose here is to suggest the
roots from which my views have grown.
It may seem strange, in the light of such views, that in June of 1954,
when the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision burst upon the country,
I did not react at once. Surely, here was a sharp departure from the
past--a confusion of equality of opportunity and equality before the
law, with social and cultural equality--as well as a clear challenge to
other American principles. My only answer, as I have said, must be that
I was absorbed in other matters, an answer I believe I shared with many
“average” Northerners. It took four years, in my case, before a chance
incident brought the whole situation home.
I was thumbing through _Life_ magazine for September 22, 1958, when
I came upon an article by Virginius Dabney, editor of the Richmond
_Times-Dispatch_. The article appeared to be a part of a debate which
_Life_ had arranged between Northern and Southern writers on the
school integration controversy. It stated the Southern viewpoint most
ably, I thought, but what really aroused me was something else in the
same magazine. It was an editorial purporting to answer Dabney--an
editorial wholly lacking in perception and full of inept analogies and
abandoned principles. I was not by habit addicted to writing letters to
the press, but in this case I could think of no better way to relieve
my feelings. So I composed a letter of protest to _Life_ and sent a
copy to the newspaper editor I knew best. In my airline years I had
shared some press flights with Frank Ahlgren, manager of the Memphis
_Commercial Appeal_, and he might be sympathetic. A few days later,
_Life_ answered with a polite acknowledgment, Ahlgren with an envelope
enclosing a page of his latest edition. On it my letter appeared in
full. It was a contrast that would grow sharper.
Then other things began to happen. Notes started to come in from old
Memphis friends and from strangers. It was a comfort, they said, that
at least one Northerner understood. Next, Dabney himself telephoned
from Richmond. He had seen my letter in the _Commercial Appeal_ and he
asked if he might reprint it in his _Times-Dispatch_.
I hesitated for a moment because by that time I had had a chance to
think further about the subject. There were several additional points
I wanted to make. Moreover, there was one man who could do more to
correct the situation than any other, if he would, and that man was
the President of the United States. Perhaps, in the maelstrom of other
problems and activities, he had overlooked the real significance of
the desegregation cases. Perhaps, if others as well as I wrote him, he
might be led to see the reasonableness behind the Southern position.
Then from the pulpit of the Presidency he might enlighten the nation.
I began to wonder whether the best contribution I could make might not
be to try to reach him with a new letter, more complete than the one to
_Life_. Meanwhile, as far as Dabney was concerned, it might be wiser
for him to wait and see whether he preferred to publish the letter to
the President.
Dabney agreed and I set to work, helped by an opinion of Justice
Frankfurter in a case growing out of the Little Rock episode.
Frankfurter’s views, printed in the Washington _Post_, had spoiled my
breakfast a morning or two before, but now they gave me a starting
point. On October 13, 1958--I remember the occasion well because it was
the climax of weeks of deliberation--I wrote as follows to President
Eisenhower:
A few days ago I was reading over Justice Frankfurter’s opinion in
the recent Little Rock case. Three sentences in it tempt me to write
you this letter. I am a Northerner, but I have spent a large part of
my life as a business executive in the South. I have a law degree,
but I am now engaged in historical writing. From this observation
post I risk the presumption of a comment.
The sentences I wish to examine are these: “Local customs, however
hardened by time, are not decreed in heaven. Habits and feelings they
engender may be counteracted and moderated. Experience attests that
such local habits and feelings will yield, gradually though this be,
to law and education.”
It is my personal conviction that the local customs in this case
were “hardened by time” for a very good reason, and that while they
may not, as Frankfurter says, have been decreed in heaven, they
come closer to it than the current view of the Supreme Court. I was
particularly puzzled by Frankfurter’s remark that “the Constitution
is not the formulation of the merely personal views of the members of
this court.” Five minutes before the court’s desegregation decision,
the Constitution meant one thing; five minutes later, it meant
something else. Only one thing intervened, namely, an expression of
the personal views of the members of the court.
It is not my purpose to dispute the point with which the greater part
of Frankfurter’s opinion is concerned. The law must be obeyed. But I
think the original desegregation decision was wrong, that it ought to
be reversed, and that meanwhile every legal means should be found,
not to disobey it, but to avoid it. Failing this, the situation
should be corrected by constitutional amendment.
I cannot agree that this is a matter involving “a few states” as
Frankfurter suggests. The picture in reality is of a court, by
one sudden edict, forcing upon the entire South a view, and a way
of life, with which the great majority of the population are in
complete disagreement. Although not from the legal, in fact from the
practical, standpoint the North, which does not have the problem, is
presuming to tell the South, which does have the problem, what to do.
To me there is a frightening arrogance in this performance. Neither
the North, nor the court, has any holy mandate inherent in the
trend of the times or the progress of liberalism to reform society
in the South. In the matter of schools, rights to equal education
are inseparably bound up with rights to freedom of association
and, in the South at least, may require that both be considered
simultaneously. (In using the word “association” here, I mean the
right to associate with whom you please, and the right not to
associate with whom you please.) Moreover, am I not correct in my
recollection that it was the social stigma of segregation and its
effect upon the Negro’s “mind and heart” to which the court objected
as much as to any other, and thus that the court, in forcing the
black man’s right to equal education was actually determined to
violate the white man’s right to freedom of association?
In any case the crux of this issue would seem obvious: social
status has to be earned. Or, to put it another way, equality of
association has to be mutually agreed to and mutually desired. It
cannot be achieved by legal fiat. Personally, I feel only affection
for the Negro. But there are facts that have to be faced. Any man
with two eyes in his head can observe a Negro settlement in the
Congo, can study the pure-blooded African in his native habitat
as he exists when left on his own resources, can compare this
settlement with London or Paris, and can draw his own conclusions
regarding relative levels of character and intelligence--or that
combination of character and intelligence which is civilization.
Finally, he can inquire as to the number of pure-blooded blacks
who have made contributions to great literature or engineering or
medicine or philosophy or abstract science. (I do not include singing
or athletics as these are not primarily matters of character and
intelligence.) Nor is there any validity to the argument that the
Negro “hasn’t been given a chance.” We were all in caves or trees
originally. The progress which the pure-blooded black has made
when left to himself, with a minimum of white help or hindrance,
genetically or otherwise, can be measured today in the Congo.
Lord Bryce, a distinguished and impartial foreign observer, presented
the situation accurately in his _American Commonwealth_ when he wrote
in 1880:
“History is a record of the progress towards civilization of races
originally barbarous. But that progress has in all cases been slow
and gradual.... Utterly dissimilar is the case of the African Negro,
caught up in and whirled along with the swift movement of the
American democracy. In it we have a singular juxtaposition of the
most primitive and the most recent, the most rudimentary and the most
highly developed types of culture.... A body of savages is violently
carried across the ocean and set to work as slaves on the plantations
of masters who are three or four thousand years in advance of them in
mental capacity and moral force.... Suddenly, even more suddenly than
they were torn from Africa, they find themselves, not only freed, but
made full citizens and active members of the most popular government
the world has seen, treated as fit to bear an equal part in ruling,
not only themselves, but also their recent masters.”
One does not telescope three or four thousand years into the 70 years
since Bryce wrote. One may change the terms of the problem by mixed
breeding, but if ever there was a matter that ought to be left to
local option it would seem to be the decision as to when the mixture
has produced an acceptable amalgam in the schools. And I see no
reason for penalizing a locality that does not choose to mix.
I would emphatically support improvement of education in Negro
schools, if and where it is inferior. Equality of opportunity and
equality before the law, when not strained to cover other situations,
are acceptable ideals because they provide the chance to earn and to
progress--and consequently should be enforced by legal fiat as far as
is humanly possible. But equality of association, which desegregation
in Southern schools involves, pre-supposes a status which in the
South the average Negro has not earned. To force it upon the Southern
white will, I think, meet with as much opposition as the prohibition
amendment encountered in the wet states.
Throughout this controversy there has been frequent mention of the
equality of man as a broad social objective. No proposition in recent
years has been clouded by more loose thinking. Not many of us would
care to enter a poetry contest with Keats, nor play chess with the
national champion, nor set our character beside Albert Schweitzer’s.
When we see the doctrine of equality contradicted everywhere around
us in fact, it remains a mystery why so many of us continue to give
it lip service in theory, and why we tolerate the vicious notion that
status in any field need not be earned.
Pin down the man who uses the word “equality,” and at once the
evasions and qualifications begin. As I recall, you, yourself, in a
recent statement used some phrase to the effect that men were “equal
in the sight of God.” I would be interested to know where in the
Bible you get your authority for this conception. There is doubtless
authority in Scripture for the concept of _potential_ equality in the
sight of God--after earning that status, and with various further
qualifications--but where is the authority for the sort of _ipso
facto_ equality suggested by your context? The whole idea contradicts
the basic tenet of the Christian and Jewish religions that status is
earned through righteousness and is not an automatic matter. What is
true of religion and righteousness is just as true of achievement in
other fields. And what is true among individuals is just as true of
averages among races.
The confusion here is not unlike the confusion created by some
left-wing writers between the doctrine of equality and the doctrine
of Christian love. The command to love your neighbor is not a command
either to consider your neighbor your equal, or yourself his equal;
perhaps the purest example of great love without equality is the
love between parent and child. In fact the equality doctrine as a
whole, except when surrounded by a plethora of qualifications, is
so untenable that it falls to pieces at the slightest thoughtful
examination.
Frankfurter closes his opinion with a quotation from Abraham Lincoln,
to whom the Negro owes more than to any other man. I, too, would like
to quote from Lincoln. At Charleston, Illinois, in September 1858 in
a debate with Douglas, Lincoln said:
“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any
way the social and political equality of the white and black races;
I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors
of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office.... I will say in
addition to this that there is a physical difference between the
white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races
living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as
much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there
must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any
other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the
white race.”
The extent to which Lincoln would have modified these views today,
or may have modified them before his death, is a moot question, but
it is clear on its face that he would not have been in sympathy
with the Supreme Court’s position on desegregation. Many historians
have felt that when Lincoln died the South lost the best friend it
had. This also may be moot, but again it seems clear that for 94
years--from the horrors of Reconstruction through the Supreme Court’s
desegregation decision--the North has been trying to force the black
man down the white Southerner’s throat, and it is a miracle that
relations between the races in the South have progressed as well as
they have.
Perhaps the most discouraging spectacle is the spectacle of Northern
newspapers dwelling with pleasure upon the predicament of the
Southern parent who is forced to choose between desegregation and
no school at all for his child. It does not seem to occur to these
papers that this is the cruelest sort of blackmail; that the North is
virtually putting a pistol at the head of the Southern parent in a
gesture which every Northerner must contemplate with shame.
Indeed, there now seems little doubt that the court’s recent decision
has set back the cause of the Negro in the South by a generation. He
may force his way into white schools, but he will not force his way
into white hearts nor earn the respect he seeks. What evolution was
slowly and wisely achieving, revolution has now arrested, and the
trail of bitterness will lead far.
After dispatching this letter to the White House, I sent a copy to
Dabney. Dabney allowed three days to pass out of courtesy to the
President. Then he printed it on the editorial page of the Richmond
_Times-Dispatch_ and devoted his leading editorial to it. On the same
page he included a cartoon showing the North being awakened from sleep
by an alarm clock tagged “The Putnam Letter”. Like the cartoon, the
editorial was unduly complimentary. It referred to my effort as “one of
the most incisive and convincing discussions we have seen”. It dwelt
on my training in history and law as well as my years of residence
in the South and my New England origins. Finally it concluded: “The
fact that Mr. Putnam has written this letter ... is eloquent testimony
to the fact that the South’s case is getting across, at last, to
intelligent Northerners. We still have a long way to go but we are
making progress.”
I took the personal references in this editorial with a grain of salt.
I knew well enough that it was not Putnam but the predicament of the
South that produced what appeal my letter may have had, together with
the fact that I was a Northerner. But the response from Memphis, and
now Dabney’s remarks, made me wonder about something else. Here,
in effect, was a call to the North for help, over the heads of the
court, over the head of the President. Here was a great section of
the country, more indigenously American than many of the areas most
loudly denouncing the South, asking for understanding and aid. What
sort of responsibility did this place upon me, and upon all impartial
Northerners?
Day by day my concern increased. The effect of Dabney’s publication
was a new flood of letters, even of telegrams. If Memphis had produced
a rain, Richmond produced a torrent. Dabney, too, was inundated. On
November 4 he wrote me: “The response from individuals has been truly
colossal. Nothing of the sort we have published in years has caused
such a sensation.” Neighboring newspapers started to copy, and mail
began arriving from Norfolk and other Virginia towns. “The open letter
to the President,” said the Norfolk _Ledger-Star_ on October 18, “has
occasioned so much comment and brought so many requests for copies that
the regular supply of back issues for that day has been exhausted.
However, a supply of reprints of the page containing the letter is now
available and copies may be had by writing or calling in person.”
Referring to this announcement, a letter from Virginia Beach remarked,
“During the ten years that I have been a resident of Tidewater Virginia
this is the first time such an offering has ever appeared in either
Norfolk newspaper. I thought nothing of a forty mile trip to and from
Norfolk in order to purchase twelve copies.... Like yourself, I am a
Northerner, a Chicagoan, educated at Williams College....”
Actually, many of the letters were from native Northerners moved
South, and I hope I will not be accused of egotism if I say that most
seemed to come from sane and earnest men and women. Few were from the
group the Attorney General had said he thought was the source of all
Southern opposition--“Crackpots running printing presses in cellars.”
Several of my correspondents overwhelmed me with their courtesy and the
courtly expression of their gratitude, although I knew that the praise
was for a viewpoint, not for a man. As the letter began to be published
more widely throughout the South, the cross-section of comments from
all parts of the area had a common intensity. _Charlottesville_:
“Permit me to say that, as a member of the School Board of this city,
and therefore one more deeply and grievously concerned than even my
fellow Southerners, your letter is the most thought-provoking and
complete statement of the case that I have ever seen.” _Birmingham_:
“May I offer a toast to a scholar and an honorable gentleman and
shatter the glass!” _Jacksonville_: “Your words so expressed my own
views and opinion that I seemed to be reading my thoughts.” _Columbia_:
“I must tell you that that letter is the finest piece of logic and
truth I’ve ever read; many I have talked with are thrilled with it.”
_Savannah_: “You have expressed so very well the feeling of Georgians,
who love our country and also love our children.” _Shreveport_: “The
entire South is deeply grateful.... It is highly possible your efforts
will be as fruitful for the North. You may be receiving the thanks of
their thinking citizenship in the near future.” _Meridian_: “Thank God
for people like you. It does my heart good to know that someone other
than a native Southerner understands.”
These letters did not arrive by tens or hundreds; they arrived by
thousands. College students wrote me they had framed the letter
and hung it on the walls of their rooms. Schools assigned it for
class discussion. Editors of law journals asked to print it. Judges
wrote me from chambers. Senators and Congressmen simultaneously
requested permission to insert it in the Congressional Record, and I
was embarrassed as to the proper protocol in reply. The Birmingham
_Post-Herald_ alone supplied 22,000 demands for reprints. Whether
or not I had the point of view of an average American on things in
general, it looked as if many Southerners felt I had presented their
viewpoint on integration.
Again I realized that my own efforts had had little to do with the
matter. It was clear this time that the pent-up frustrations of the
South had snatched at this straw because of its almost universal
publication by the Southern press with favorable editorial comment.
There were a few, but only a few, islands of silence where papers were
in the control of so-called “moderates”. For the most part, comment ran
in the vein of Dabney’s editorial.
Among columnists, the most active was John Temple Graves of Birmingham.
Day after day he urged my letter upon his readers, upon the President,
upon the North. In one of his syndicated articles he remarked: “What
Carleton Putnam has written the President is newer than the New Deal,
fairer than the Fair Deal, and as old as the Constitution of the United
States. Let Southern young people be told. Let some of our Southern
religious leaders be told, too.”
Finally one morning my telephone rang and I found Graves on the
wire from Birmingham. He wanted to know what reception my letter
had received in Northern newspapers. I was compelled to answer that
although Dabney had sent reprints to every editor in the United States
only one Northern paper--a small one in Plattsburg--had printed it and
with unfavorable comment. The sectional cleavage had been extraordinary.
Graves appeared shocked by this, and then an antidote occurred to him.
He would call in his column for the starting of a fund to print the
letter in the North by advertisement. He asked me if I would sanction
such a move, and I replied that I had no objection, but that I could
not personally be associated with it. He said he was in the same
position, but that he would try to form a committee in Birmingham to
receive the money and plan the campaign.
The upshot was the creation of what later became known as the Putnam
Letter Committee, consisting of James E. Simpson, son of a former
president _pro tem_ of the Alabama Senate, Chairman; former Governor
Frank Dixon; Lieutenant Governor Albert Boutwell and former Lieutenant
Governor W. G. Hardwick. These distinguished public figures offered
their services without compensation, not only to solicit and receive
funds, but to perform the arduous task of handling what proved to be a
voluminous and instructive correspondence--this time from the North. My
own mail surpassed the flood from the South. The Committee’s mail was
many times mine.
The Southern press again lent their aid. An editorial in the Roanoke
_World-News_ was typical:
“We believe this plan to be a worthy one. Mr. Putnam’s statement of the
South’s case deserves a nationwide audience. While it is true that he
offers Virginia no quick way out of its present dilemma, it would be
erroneous to say the letter is not constructive.
“In fact, we would say that the only hope of Virginia and the rest of
the South lies not in ‘massive resistance’ but in persuasion, in logic
and in salesmanship. The fact that Mr. Putnam wrote the letter is
evidence that among some intelligent Northerners there is understanding
and sympathy for the prevailing opinion in the South.
“More Americans need to know and understand this opinion for only by a
change in national feeling can there be a real solution to the problem
which faces us.”
With the last paragraph in this editorial I heartily agreed. My
observation of the manner in which “the paper curtain”, as Southerners
have come to call it, had fallen on my letter in the North and West
was only a minor part of the pattern I was beginning to recognize. It
was a small episode which provided a personal introduction to a wider
panorama. I had said to the President: “From the practical standpoint
the North, which does not have the problem, is presuming to tell the
South, which does have the problem, what to do.” I would soon discover
that controlling forces in the North were not only telling the South
what to do, they were refusing to let the Northern public even listen
to the South’s case. I would begin to harbor a suspicion, entirely
apart from my letter, that in no other area of human affairs, at home
or abroad, were so many people with no personal knowledge of a subject,
and no practical concern in it, spending so much time dictating to
other people, who had great experience with the subject and vital
concern in it.
I would begin also, in due course, to understand the reason for this.
Meanwhile, the Birmingham Committee set to work. Within six weeks they
had raised enough money, mostly from hundreds of small contributions,
to place their first advertisement. It appeared in the New York _Times_
on January 5, 1959, in a format six columns wide and a full page deep.
To it was attached a coupon asking that readers who sympathized with
the message and wished to see further advertising contribute to the
fund. This procedure proved informative in itself. Each advertisement,
as it appeared, brought in enough money _from the North_ to pay for
the next. Within five months the fund had passed $37,000 and the
letter had been published in eighteen Northern and Western papers
with a circulation of nearly seven million. Adding the initial free
publication in the South, the total circulation had amounted to over
ten million. I had no figures on foreign printings, but I was informed
by the United States Information Agency that a paper in Salisbury,
Rhodesia, carried the letter in full, and I had received comments from
India and other remote areas.
Eight newspapers had refused to print the letter, even as an
advertisement. These were: the Washington _Post_, the Los Angeles
_Examiner_, the Los Angeles _Times_, the Pittsburgh _Press_, the
Indianapolis _Star-News_, the Newark _News_, the Newark _Star-Ledger_,
and the Buffalo _News_. None of the publishers of these papers felt
able to give their reasons, but again, as my knowledge of the situation
developed, they became clear.
The interesting thing to me was less the quality and extent of the
paper curtain than the money the man and woman in the street were
willing to pay to keep the advertisement going, and the nature of the
correspondence it produced. Northern replies were ninety-five percent
in sympathy. Public relations experts tell me that out of ten people
who will write favorably on a subject only one will write when he finds
himself in opposition, but even with this allowance, the man and woman
in the street in the North seemed to be on the side of the South.
As to the unfriendly letters, they were the most significant of all.
After a short time, I gave instructions to the Birmingham Committee
to forward me no more favorable replies. All I wanted to see were
the hostile five percent. Out of these I sought to distill some
understanding of what was going on in the minds of the opposition
behind the paper curtain. And the more I learned the more startled I
became.
+Chapter II+
THE HIDDEN ISSUE
There were, of course, some violent letters from both Negroes and
whites. There were a few from obvious crackpots. But by and large the
disagreement seemed to be both sincere and emotional. It was impossible
not to smile at letters from teachers and ministers who protested with
incoherent emotion at the thought of my emotion, and who urged me to
face the facts--which they had never faced themselves.
A scattering of superficial argument on a variety of subjects arrived
daily: Did I not realize how unchristian my position was? Did not
American democracy clearly require desegregation? Must we not set an
example to other nations in the fight against Communism? Was not my
position simply a revival of Hitlerism? These, and similar subjects,
could be handled one by one without too long a letter in reply.
What I found of larger significance, because it seemed to be the
common denominator in a universal misunderstanding, lay in what my
correspondents called “modern” anthropology. Through almost all the
letters that attempted really to reason, one consistent theme could be
found: How could I be so dated in my thinking! Why was I still living
in the nineteenth century! What was the point in quoting Lincoln and
Bryce when everyone now-a-days knew they were obsolete! I could not
help but remember a remark John Temple Graves had made to me concerning
a debate on segregation he had had a few years before on the Town Hall
of the Air. In it the opposition had continually harassed him with the
comment, “Oh, Mr. Graves, if only you knew modern anthropology!” Mr.
Graves, not being a professional scientist, had not attempted to meet
this challenge in a Town Hall debate. But I was quite prepared to meet
it in my correspondence. My only surprise was that it should need to be
taken seriously.
And here I discovered an actual advantage in having separated myself
for twenty years from the academic world and then returned to feel the
fresh impact of what had happened in the interval. The process had
its handicap only in a momentary disorientation. It had its value in a
detachment of judgment and above all in a freedom from exposure to the
creeping distortion of view, the slow but pervasive hypnosis, that two
decades of ideological pressure can force even upon the sciences.
I had realized that there had been a broad movement to change man’s
concept of the nature of man. I had known that there had been
pressure to widen the American doctrine of equality of opportunity
into a doctrine of social, cultural, economic and genetic equality.
By 1954 I had witnessed its invasion of the minds of Supreme Court
justices. But I had not even then quite grasped how cleverly it had
proceeded--infiltrating first the sciences that surround anthropology,
moving next into the more strictly social sciences, enthroning itself
at last in the Supreme Court’s desegregation order.