The Green caldron - University Library

6 The Green Caldron
were also in the position of a conquered people in 1868; and even if they had
been forced to approve the Amendment, it would have been the result of
the victor, the United States, recjuiring the loser, the South, to pay up a debt
— signing the law.
The last argument that segregationists use to give legal support to segregation
is that the states receive certain powers from the Tenth Amendment.
This Amendment gives states powers not given to the federal government;
pro-segregation groups have construed the Amendment to mean that states
may practice segregation. This may be refuted by pointing out that, because
of the 1954 Supreme Court decision, the Fourteenth Amendment has implied
powers forbidding segregation ; moreover, the Supreme Court also stated that
federal district courts should implement integration. Therefore, if the federal
government has the power to carry out integration, the states lose the power
to enforce segregation.
The moral argument for segregation may be refuted through careful study
of the Bible. Although the Bible did allow slavery, it placed severe restrictions
on the slaveowner. (Slavery declined considerably during the later Biblical
period.) Also, it may be said that slavery was practiced in such a way that
individuals were the victims, and not a whole people or race. Morally, it
may also be said that since both Negroes and whites are human beings, they
should both be treated as such. Christ's teachings in the New Testament set
the tone for an over-all morality which more nearly approaches the true
message of the Bible than any citation of isolated passages can.
The pro-segregation case also cited several studies by a Villanova pro-
fessor who claimed that whites were mentally superior to Negroes. Besides
this professor, few other psychologists or sociologists hold that viewpoint. In
the October 26, 1956, issue of U. S. Nczvs and World Report, eighteen soci-
ologists, most of them members of the American Psychological Association,
wrote an article which concluded that any differences in the mental abilities
of the two races, which are shown by various tests, are "scientifically unjusti-
fied." This article also contained a statement, signed by thirty social scientists
in 1953, which was presented to the Supreme Court. The statement read,
be adequately
"that much, perhaps all, of the observable differences . . . may
explained in terms of environmental differences" and "... innate racial
differences in intelligences are not well founded."
A refutation of the segregationists' final argument must present examples
that show integration can work. A St. Louis principal reported that in the
second year of integration at his high school, with 50% Negroes, classes ran
more smoothly than the year before when there had been two whites for
every Negro. In Louisville. Kentucky, school superintendent Carmichael has
devised a plan for giving parents a choice about where to send their children.
In 1956, 80% of the high schools were mixed, with the same percentage in
grammar schools as well.