THE NEED FOR VIOLENCE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Re your editorial of March 23 (Integration and Violence) may I say that I agree with the statement that the tactic of self-defense on the part of Negroes will become more widespread on the part of Negroes will become more widespread in areas of racial tension. But I disagree with the somewhat naive notion that the federal government's intervention to prevent violence will actually do anything in this country. What most people are unaware of or are unwilling to admit is that the system of oppression under which the black man in this country exists was established by and is maintained through the threat and actuality of physical violence. The means of keeping the black man in "his place" are varied: lynching, shotgun blasts, quiet murders, police brutality, and capital punishment. Every Negro in the South, as John Dollard once wrote, is under a kid of sentence of death. In Monroe, N.C. Robert F. Williams advocated meeting this white system of terror with Negro self-defense. What was the result? Federal intervention in the person of the FBI. What happened? The Negro community was completely disarmed and its leader charged with kidnapping.

A Negro cab driver in Monroe told me last spring that things were so bad in Monroe that he was just waiting for the federal government to step in and clean things up. Well, he's still waiting. Federal intervention in the Mississippi "black belt" will come only when the Negroes begin to shoot back. The intervention will be in the form of disarming the Negroes. What else can we expect? The FBI could not even get a conviction of the known lynchers of Mack Parker or the murderer of Rev. Lee. Even though we are told we have a "liberal tradition." how can we be so naive as to think that a few federal officers are going to crumble a social system and avoid civil violence? How can they? A system which is based on violence, from the night-riders to the country court house, may be unwilling to capitulate to non-violent, legalistic means. The whole question may finally be reduced to the words of Byron quoted by W.E.B. DuBois: "Know ye not/Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?" John J. Hartman '64