“After Desegregation—What”

Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Date: April 27, 1961?

Location: Atlanta, Ga.?

Genre: Article

Topic: Nonviolence

Student movements

Voter registration

Details

On 2 December 1960, Coronet magazine offered King $600 to write an article about the challenges facing the next generation of African Americans “after the civil rights battles have been won.”¹ In the following draft sent to Coronet, King explores adjustments that students active in the movement will make in a society that is both “unsegregated and yet not really integrated.”² He asks: “Will the same forthrightness be shown in admitting whites to Negro clubs, fraternities and other voluntary associations that is now being shown in pressing for admittance to restaurants and theatres?”³ Concluding the article, King observes: “There will come from this cauldron a mature man, experienced in life’s lessons, socially aware, unafraid of experimentation, and most of all imbued with the spirit of service and dedication to a great ideal.” The magazine folded in October 1961, before the article was published.⁴

To the Negro college student of today—especially in the south—desegregation is the vidid moment of life. To grapple with Jim Crow directly and personally is real excitement. Most likely it would involve facing police, court-trial and jail. It might also include winking at the disapproval of a cautious Dean or an ultra-conservative college president. For once, it could be possible to instruct one’s own parents, instead of the other way around.

There are no evenings quite like those spent in the student council office hammering out strategy or putting together the slogans for tomorrow’s picket line. Sacrifice and daring, action and the common cause—these make a heady mixture for idealistic youth.

The dynamism of the student movement can be understood only if we realize that it is part of a revolt of all youth—Negro and White—against the world they never made; a revolt not alone to achieve desegregation but a social order consistent with the high principles on which the nation was founded. Youth has moved out to take over leadership from what it perceives to be faltering hands. Negro youth has surged into a vanguard position because it has the most desperate need and has been gripped by a sense of destiny.

The Negro student knows he is not alone but is fortified by support of tens of mil­lions of white and Negro citizens of all ages, of all classes, of all political persuasions. He is deadly serious and fiercely determined. He is not engaged in a lark nor superfi­cially thrilled by the excitement and “kicks” of a moment. He is a part of a world-wide thrust into the future to abolish colonialism and racism; to replace institutionalized handicaps with free opportunity.

These are the moods and thoughts of Negro students—and many white ones—as I meet and talk with them from Washington to Houston, and in many Northern cit­ies, too.

Many students and their elders temporarily away from the pounding struggle, pause in reflective moments to ask what will be the shape of things after desegre­gation is accomplished. These youthful partisans of today, know that the battle of desegregation will not last forever. Actually, one of its greatest attractions is the bright promise of triumph.

For example, lunch counter victories have been astounding and though school desegregation has been slow, federal judges, such as the Honorable Skelly Wright of Louisiana, and Honorable W. A. Bootle of Georgia, are becoming less patient with recalcitrant school boards and politicians.⁵ Negro voter registration is on [strikeout illegible] the upswing. At least in the urban South, public opinion, on the whole, is beginning to accept the inevitability of compliance with “the law of the land” as determined by the United States Supreme Court. Throughout the nation the trend toward equality is increasingly favorable. And almost everywhere in the world the tides roll forward against colonialism and racism.

Accordingly, students who now mass their sit-ins, kneel-ins (churches), stand-ins (theatres) and wade-ins (beaches and swimming pools) are confident that at least the main campaigns [strikeout illegible] in the desegregation  war  {struggle} will be won before the end of the current decade.

And so, many bright young men and women, in their quiet moments, are asking themselves about life after college—especially after the big exciting hand-to-hand struggle with Jim Crow is done.

Almost all of them realize that the new frontier will be “integration” rather than “desegregation” and {that} this makes quite a difference. The latter means the removal of legal and customary barriers that have separated individuals and groups. These are mostly tangible and external such as laws and “For White Only” signs. In a word, desegregation is the opening up of public facilities and services to everyone.

On the other hand, integration is much more subtle and internal, for it involves attitudes: the mutual acceptance of individuals and groups. Desegregation usually preceeds integration, the former making the latter possible. But this is not automatic. Once the laws between them have been struck down, both Negroes and Whites will still need to win friends across the invisible, though nonetheless real, psychological color line. Such a challenge will be more difficult and less glorious.

Many Negro students are aware, at least in a preliminary fashion of the shifts that they themselves will have to make in a society that will be unsegregated and yet not really integrated. However, the question remains: Will Negroes generally find it as easy to give up their own prejudices as it now is to demand their rights of others? Will the same forthrightness be shown in admitting whites to Negro clubs, fraternities and other voluntary associations that is now being shown in pressing for admittance to restaurants and theatres.

Moreover, after the fight has succeeded in unlocking the doors to rights and opportunities, there will be the very real obligation to “deliver the goods,” that is, to behave well and perform excellently.

As the color differential fades, so will the racial point of view. Less and less will it be possible to speak with accuracy of Negro newspapers, Negro churches or the Negro vote. More and more, economic, social, and professional status will be more decisive in determining a man’s orientation than the color of his skin.

Some may well ask whether students are gaining from the present movement the necessary resources and insights to make the psychological shift from a desegregated to an integrated society. Are studies being neglected? Will half-trained graduates typify this generation? Are deeper lessons of race relations being absorbed or is a simple “race against race” conception dominating immature minds?

There is undeniably a risk that some students will stumble into error. No move­ment of essentially revolutionary quality can be neat and tidy. Yet I am confident that the Negro college student, who is today in the thick of the desegregation fight will successfully make the transition to the campaign for integration and its consequent responsibilities. I have special reasons for my faith.

The public may have noticed that the student movement is based on broad principles. It has never advocated justice for Negroes as such; rather justice for all men, Negroes included, of course. The students realize that the festering sore of segrega­tion debilitates the white man as well as the Negro. Therefore, the removal of this unjust system will create a moral balance in society which will allow all men, Negro and white, to rise to higher levels of self-completion. In workshop after workshop they have been inbued with the principle that the problem is not a purely racial one, with Negroes set against white; rather, it is a tension between justice and injustice. Therefore, their resistance is not aimed against oppressors but against oppression. The students have opposed “Black Supremacy” as vigorously as they have stood against “White Supremacy.” They are not in any sense seeking to rise from a posi­tion of disadvantage to one of advantage, thereby subverting justice; rather, they are seeking to achieve democracy for everybody. They have gone out of their way to enlist whites in their ranks so that the movement itself would symbolize the society that they hope to bring about.

Then there is a factor that may have escaped public notice. So much attention has been given to the movement’s emphasis on non-cooperation with evil, that is, with Jim Crow laws and customs, that not much light has been shed on its cooperation with good, that is, its constructive program.⁶ This constructive program is a basic part of any genuine non-violent movement, for non-violence is essentially a positive concept. Its corollary must always be growth. Without this broad range of positive goals, non-cooperation ends where it begins. The students have revealed an amaz­ing degree of understanding concerning the need for such a constructive program. So, on the one hand, they apply non-violent resistance to all forms of racial injustice, including state and local laws and practices, even when this means going to jail. On the other hand, they see the need for imaginative, bold, constructive action to end the demoralization caused by the legacy of slavery and segregation, inferior schools, slums, and second class citizenship. Certainly the creative thrust of the student’s non­-violent struggle will in itself help end the demoralization; but they realize that a new frontal assault on the poverty, disease, and ignorance of a people too long ignored by America’s conscience will make the victory more certain.

In admitting that there are lagging standards in the Negro community which must be improved through a constructive program, the students are not in the least giving aid to the reactionaries who argue that the Negro is not ready for integra­tion. The only answer that one can give to those who would question the readiness of the Negro for integration is that the standards of the Negro lag behind at times not because of an inherent inferiority, but because of the fact that segregation and discrimination do exist. There is no more torturous logic than to use the tragic effects of segregation as an argument for its continuation. The fact that so many Negroes have made lasting and significant contributions to the ongoing life of America in spite of such crippling restrictions is sufficient to refute any argument of his unreadiness.

Yet, the students have not allowed the fact that they are the victims of injustice, economic deprivation and social isolation lull them into abrogating responsibility for their own lives. They seek to make the lagging standards the basis for creative reconstruction. Their contest with segregation is merely the preliminary task of clearing away the obstacles to self-fulfillment to the release of human energy and talent for the goal of all. They seek to tear down what is restrictive, corrupting and inhibiting in order to build a society in which men may work and live in harmony with nature and each other. They believe in man’s creative potential and the whole movement is dedicated to the proposition that if the Negro could but free himself of the frustrations of an unjust social order, the achievements of the human mind and heart would be limitless.

But more than anything else, the type of education that the students are gaining as a result of this movement will assure a meaningful transition. The overwhelming truth penetrating through the whole fabric of this extraordinary youth movement is the fact that the Negro student is gaining a double education. Indeed, the answer to the quest for a more mature, more educated American to compete successfully with the young people of other lands may be present in this spontaneous, new movement.

The Negro youth is learning social responsibility; he [is?] learning to earn through his own direct sacrifice and effort the result he seeks. There is no one to coddle him—to make him soft, pliable and conformist. He cannot be an uncreative organization man nor a mechanical status seeker. His experience is as harsh and demanding as that of the pioneer on the untamed frontier.

For those who falter and weaken, the penalty is immediate failure in wide public view. On the other hand, serious, planned action produces equally immediate vic­tory and acclaim. Because this struggle is complex, especially pursued in a spirit of resistance and non-violence, there is no place for the frivolous or the rowdy. Knowledge and discipline are as indispensable as courage and self-sacrifice.

Hence, the forging of priceless qualities of character is taking place daily and monthly as the struggle for a goal of a high moral end is pursued. What will this mean to the future? There will come from this cauldron a mature man, experienced in life’s lessons, socially aware, unafraid of experimentation, and most of all imbued with the spirit of service and dedication to a great ideal. Does America need such men and women? Asking the question answers it.

Often in the past educators have pondered the paradox that the academically brilliant student with superior grades failed frequently to realize the bright promise of his student days. More scholarships, more degrees, more training turned to dross as life’s demands found them wanting in ability to relate to associates, motivate and to lead. The answer is in the one dimensional quality of learning. To learn for one’s own advancement alone is inevitably self-defeating. To learn in order to become an instrument of social advancement has always been a keystone of achievement. It is this quality at the heart of the student movement today which guarantees the addi­tional dimension of wisdom accompanying knowledge.

A new generation of Negro graduates schooled in life’s tensions and changes will emerge on tomorrow’s stage. Not a hot-house product, not a privileged elite, but an outgoing, though serious, person who will confront a world he not only understands but has helped to shape.

This is the double education most students will acquire and, in turn, contribute to his fellow-man who has already been his comrade-in-arms—white and Negro, rich and poor.

To face the awesome challenges of automation, space conquest, economic secu­rity and world peace, nothing less than the doubly educated man is indispensably necessary. I am both proud and confident that the Negro student of today is on his way to becoming that person. He will give to the nation a leadership ability and dedi­cated performance which will make the old myth of the inferior individual an ugly memory which will be difficult to recall in the luminous presence of his effective and creative performance.

^1. King’s literary agent, Marie F. Rodell, had forwarded the offer (Rodell to King, 2 December 1960). Coronet magazine had initially proposed that King collaborate on the article with writer Louis E. Lomax. Instead, King suggested writing the article himself to avoid angering the NAACP, which had objected to an article Lomax published, arguing that the NAACP was “no longer the prime mover of the Negro’s social revolt” because of the organization’s reluctance to initiate direct action protest (King to Rodell, 30 November 1960, in Papers 5:565–566; Lomax, “The Negro Revolt against ‘The Negro Leaders,’” Harper’s Magazine, p. 41).

^2. King had three other drafts of this article, one of which was handwritten (King, Drafts, “After Desegregation—What,” April 1961).

^3. Coronet executive editor James A. Skardon called the article “well-written and thoughtful,” but asked King to revise it and add “more facts and examples” illustrating his points (Skardon to King, 12 May 1961).

^4. King was still revising the article in June 1961 when Rodell notified him that Coronet was ceasing publication in October: “If the rewrite on your article isn’t done by now, we might just as well forget it” (Rodell to King, 21 June 1961).

^5. In May 1960, Wright ordered the New Orleans school board to begin desegregation efforts by September 1960 and, thereafter, continue to desegregate one additional grade each year. Wright’s deci­sion came four years after his initial ruling that the school board must abide by the Supreme Court’s Brown decision and desegregate “with all deliberate speed” (Claude Sitton, “U.S. Court Orders New Orleans to Start Pupil Integration in Fall,” New York Times, 17 May 1960; Brown et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka et al., 349 U.S. 294 [1955]). The University of Georgia admitted its first black students on 10 January 1961, after Judge Bootle enjoined Georgia governor S. Ernest Vandiver from cutting funding and closing public schools (Sitton, “2 Negro Students Enter Georgia U.,” New York Times, 11 January 1961).

^6. King’s handwritten draft included the following sentences: “The [contact?] with segregation in this sense is merely the preliminary task of clearing away the obstacles to self-fulfillment, to the release of human energy and talent for the good of all. So the students seek to tear down what is restrictive, corrupting and inhibiting in order to build a society in which men may work and live in harmony with nature and each other. They believe in man’s creative potential and the whole movement is dedicated to the proposition that if the Negro could but free himself of the frustrations of an unjust social order, the achievements of the human mind and heart would be limitless” (King, Draft, “After Desegregation—What”).

Source: MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954–1968, Boston University, Boston, Mass.