South African Native Convention Quotes

The power structure of England and the English administrators of South Africa were strong advocates of racial equality at the beginning of the 19th century. They insisted on equal administration of law. However the Boer white population could think of nothing more absurd. In a sense the Boers were much like the Southern Whites at the same time. The South African government however could not enforce its equality policies in the rural area – the majority of South Africa at the time. When democracy and self rule came to South Africa, the racially moderating force of the English was minimized and the majority of South Africans wanted a racially segregated society. Apartheid resulted.

At the time, the Southern segregationists were all Democrats and they blocked any Democratic attempt to pass any Civil Rights legislation. When he could not get a Civil Rights commitment from his own party, Powell turned to the Republicans and the President wrote this letter. In return, in November, Powell endorsed and supported Eisenhower instead of Stevenson, his own party’s nominee. Eisenhower could not get any legislation on Civil Rights as the Southern Democrats would always block it. When President Lyndon Johnson finally forced the 1963 Civil Rights Act through the Congress, the racist Southern Democrats cut a deal with Goldwater and the conservative Republicans, and switched parties. Since then the Civil Rights stance of the two parties reversed. The Democrats were thereafter pro Civil Rights and the Republicans, the party of Lincoln and Reconstruction, thereafter reversed their Civil Rights position and opposed progress in this area.

The Nixon "Southern Strategy" was that if the Republican Party made extensive efforts to appeal to minorities, given the previous decades of support of white supremacy, they would only be successful with a few, whereas if the Party went in the other direction and supported the Whites fighting against the Democratic initiated, racist hated, Civil Rights Act, they would get almost all the racist Southern Democrats, which were most white males and many white females. This racist policy enabled the Republicans to gain control of the Federal Government more often than not whereas before, it was very unusual.

Essentially this quotation led to a major war and yhrn a later war of independence for Blacks in South Africa. Porter was the Attorney General of the English Cape Colony in South Africa. In an early legal ruling he observed that South Aftica was a colony under English law which did not permit discrimination on the basis of skin color. However, there was a large proportion of Afrikaners—whites of Dutch Ancestry who were culturally strong racists and saw the Blacks as a combination of potential rivals for land and a potential subjegated labor force. They tended to leave the Capetown area and English law. The Afrikaners ended up in a major war—the Boer War—against the English and although the English won the war, the Afrikaners won the political peace and ended up dominating South Africa and imposing apartheid. The Blacks of the mid 20th century had if nothing else, the 100 year old legal and moral precendent from Porter’s opinion which justified the ANC leading the attack on apartheid which finally succeeded. It took 100 years and millions of suffering and dying people but finally, the law of South Africa was as Porter had stated it, and since the Blacks were in the great majority, the Whites became the minority, but due to the ANC leadership of men like Nelson Mandella, the Blacks did not seek revenge on the Afrikaner whites although there was resentlent for generations.

Arkansas Governor Faubus ordered the national guard to prevent Black students from integrating Central High School in Little Rock. President Eisenhower was a man of action and not rhetoric and his lack of firm public statements overlooked an opportunity to use the Presidential “bully pulpit” and exercise his moral leadership and authority. Armstrong was irate at Eisenhower for appearing to do nothing and say nothing. See {615852}. When Eisenhower did enforce the court order and used Federal troops, Armstrong sent him this congratulatory telegram. His reference to walking into the schools was in support of many who suggested that the best thing the President could have done was to personally take one of the Black students by the hand and walk into the school with him or her. With the mood of the Southern racists, such an act was potentially very risky for the President and it is not known whether of not the President and his staff ever considered such an act.

This was the infamous opinion whereby the Supreme Court upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine thereby preserving racial discrimination until the reversal over 50 years later. See the sole dissent of Justice John Marshall Harlan whose views were those that eventually prevailed although at the time all the other justices voted with the majority. See {583706} and {583703}.

The Boers were lower class, uneducated, farmers from Holland who came to South Africa before the English did. They were at the bottom of the Dutch socioeconomic ladder. Unlike the English who were interest in establishing a trading colony, the Boers just wanted to own and farm the land and use blacks as slave or cheap labor. The Dutch Government and Trading companies lost interest in South Africa as there were much more profitable parts of the world, and they felt no obligation to the Boers whom they were glad to be rid of. So the Boers found themselves having to follow the British laws and rules of the British Colonial Office. Slavery was outlawed, and Blacks could be educated and become citizens under British law. They could own land, and contest the right of the Boers who had settled in some uninhabited land and some that was owned by Black tribes. The Blacks outnumbered the whites in general and the Boers, and there were educated Blacks who “outclassed” the still relatively uneducated Boers. So the Boers, fighting for their “way of life” set up their own area in Southern Africa and claimed independence. But Blacks claimed that it was their land and looked to the British to exercise English law. The Boer war ensued. Although the Boers lost the war, the bred at a much faster rate than the English, many of whom did not even have their families in South Africa. By the end of WWII, the Boer white majority controlled the government and kept the majority Blacks from voting and having full citizenship rights. They dominated Apartheid South Africa until the Black Revolutionists obtained control and although Black and white relations are better in South Africa than most countries, the extemeist Boers and most militant Blacks are in political, but not violent, conflict. Churchill and the British have always perceived themselves as being caught in the middle between the Boers and the Blacks.

He was the first FHA administrator to make statements saying that non-discriminatory housing services should be available to the American people. He was not able to change the agency’s equal opportunity performance because the Southern states had laws allowing and protecting legal segregation especially in housing. The Southern staff interpreted his position to be sure that both blacks and whites had access to FHA services, but they used the “separate but equal” doctrine: Provide services to both races but always in segregated housing projects. This was typical of the kinds of problems that motivated the Civil Rights Acts offered by President Kennedy in 1963 and passed by President Johnson in 1964 See {637271} for a similar Mason statement.

The great contralto singer, Marian Anderson, an African American, had been refused by the Daughters of the American Revolution the use of Constitution Hall as a venue for her concert based on their White Performers Only policy. First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, resigned in protest from the DAR and she and the President asked Secretary Ickes to arrange a public concert at the Lincoln Memorial and he did. There was no Civil Rights Act at the time.