The Negro in the North

At an editors' convention in Washington a few weeks ago, Chief Editorial Writer Lauren Soth of the Des Moines Register was taken aback by a colleague's question: Why doesn't the Register run anything about anti-Negro discrimination in Iowa? The questioner: Editor in Chief Grover C. Hall Jr. of Alabama's Montgomery Advertiser (circ. 60,144), who has been campaigning editorially for Northern papers to cover the racial, problem in their areas (TIME, April 23). Des Moines's Soth* replied that the problem simply does not exist. But after he got home, Editor Soth did some digging into the subject, found that there was indeed discrimination in Iowa. In editorials he admitted Northerners have a "moral blind spot" because they have "clucked mildly about race discrimination in the South while quietly adopting certain of the most grievous of these unfair customs."

The Register was not the only paper that, prompted by the desegregation story, investigated discrimination in its own backyard. The New York Post devoted twelve articles to the subject; the New York Times ran four solid stories on Negroes in New York and other Northern cities; the Chicago Tribune presented a scholarly, ten-part series by Negro Reporter Roi Ottley; the Newark News ran a series which was the joint work of two staffers who play tennis together--Tennessee-born George Kentera, 33, and Luther Jackson, 31, a Virginia-bred Negro. The Los Angeles Mirror-News told its story of a heavy Negro influx (1,700 a month) and the attendant problems--and then added a Negro reporter to its staff. The Associated Press joined the parade by sending its 1,750 members an 1,800-word, Detroit-datelined feature, "The Negro in the North." Last week, under a headline, As OTHERS SEE Us, the Chicago Sun-Times began reprinting a Manchester Guardian series by Correspondent Alistair Cooke on U.S. racial problems, reporting on "Northern complacency" about discriminatory practices in states such as Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

Through the stories ran common themes; e.g., the Northern Negro is most heavily hit by private-housing barriers imposing geographical segregation that often makes a farce of the North's free dom from segregation in the schools. They also told a story of progress, pointed out that the weight of Northern opinion and law supports the Negro's fight for first-class citizenship--in contrast with the Deep South's defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court's integration decision. Wrote the Chicago Tribune's Reporter Ottley: "There are Negroes who complain that progress in the North is slow. Some even drape themselves in crepe and wail. Actually, the pace is breakneck, sometimes even too swift for the people."

*Who won the 1956 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished editorial writing for an editorial that led directly to last year's U.S. visit by a Russian farm delegation.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.