Ideas that died young: Biracial coalition for segregation

“Unwilling to let even one black child attend school with their sons and daughters, diehard Tar Heel segregationists [in the late 1950s] resorted to desperate measures, even attempting to muster a biracial coalition….

“The charter for the North Carolina Defenders of State’s Rights… called for all men ‘who have pride in their race, whether they be white or Negro…. to show it. Let honorable men take their stand for their inalienable rights, their race and their country.’

“Evidently, no black men answered the call.”

— From “I Am a Man!” by Steve Estes (2005)

 

Smile when you say ‘Great White Father’?

“The Corps only reluctantly began accepting African Americans early in World War II…. The commanding officer of the black training facilities at Camp Lejeune was Colonel Samuel A. Woods Jr., a native of South Carolina and an alumnus of that state’s all-white military college, The Citadel.

“According to an official history of black Marines, Colonel Woods ‘cultivated a paternalistic relationship with his men,’ who dubbed him the ‘Great White Father.’ One imagines that this was said with different inflection around the colonel and in the barracks.”

— From “I Am a Man!” by Steve Estes (2005)