“A New Day for the South”

Background: This editorial from The Chicago Defender (an African American newspaper published in Chicago and distributed across the country) commented on the hearings undertaken in December 1946 by a U.S. Senate committee investigating charges against Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi. Bilbo stood accused of intimidating Black voters and suppressing their voting rights, in addition to improper use of campaign funds, during the 1946 Democratic primary in that state. Even without knowing the outcome of the charges against Bilbo, the authors of this editorial saw the hearings as a turning point in the struggle for Black voting rights in the South.

In the sepulchural silence broken only by the occasional swash of some tobacco spewing spectators, hundreds of black citizens of Mississippi quietly but fearlessly early last week trooped into the federal building at Jackson, to give damaging testimony against America’s diminutive Hitler—foul-mouthed Senator Theodore Bilbo. . . .

Those who testified ranged from common laborers and bright young veterans, attending college under the GI Bill of Rights, to college professors and elderly men who were determined to register their protest against flagrant invasion of their rights. They were by the same token giving solemn warnings to the unscrupulous politicians of whatever political shade that they intend to make it possible for democracy to survive even in Mississippi.

There has not been, since the reconstruction days, so challenging a manifestation of racial solidarity as was shown in Jackson, Miss. Mississippi Negroes gave positive and convincing proof of their resentment when they braved the consequences of their defiance of the long precedent that a Negro does not talk back to a white man in the South, especially in Mississippi. They volunteered their testimony without fear of present or future reaction. . . .

Whether Bilbo is removed or not, one fact will not be removed from the pages of history and that is Negroes of the South are now rising and rising in mass against all infringements of their citizenship rights and are willing to stand solidly with the rest of the people. This is the most gratifying demonstration of political mindedness. This should destroy the old argument often successfully advanced by white southerners that Northern agitators are the cause of trouble in peaceful Dixie land and that left to itself the South would solve its problems without outside interference. . . .

The Senatorial Committee went into a vital issue in which emotions were high for a whole week. But nothing happens. This was in contradistinction to the prediction ventured by the chairman of the investigating committee, Senator Allen Ellender (D., La.), that the hearings would result in violent clashes and killings. Though there was tenseness, and lips curled in anger, there was no disorder. Even the irrepressible Mr. Bilbo behaved under circumstances that must have been trying and irksome to him. This suggests that the South has as much respect for federal laws as does the rest of the nation. Federal laws may be the answer to Dixie’s social and political ills.

We hail this as a new day ushered in by the New Negro of the South.

Source: “A New Day for the South,” The Chicago Defender, December 14, 1946, p. 14.