THE COLORED MAN'S CROSS

Alabama Editor Says South Can Solve Its Own Problem

By the Associate Press

The Charlotte Observer

(December 16, 1956)

            There is a widely held opinion in the South and it is a fundamental of the States' Rights belief--that the region if left alone can solve its race problem and that people in other sections, especially the North, should get their own glass houses in order before casting stones.

            This opinion long has been meat for an editorial campaign by Grover Hall, editor of the Montgomery, (Ala.) Advertiser.

            Hall, a dapper, 41-year-old bachelor with a deep sense of tradition, was asked about the general thinking of southerners.

            You have to start with two essential points', he said. 'You have to start with the disagreeable fact that to have been born a colored man is a misfortune.

            "It is," said Hall, "the colored man's cross to bear. It is an uneven struggle for him."

            "The second thing is that the white people of the South--in their morality, ethics and character--are not different from the westerner or easterner.

            "To debate that the southerner is so different in character and ethics as to allow him to brutalize the Negro is preposterous."

            "Hall was asked whether he thought the southerners' feeling about the Negro amounted to just plain prejudice.

            "Of course it is prejudice," he said, and added he thought failure to recognize it would be highly irresponsible.

            Hall contends that "if you stand the present generation Negro alongside his grandfather, the present generation has made a dramatic change. A person certainly is a fool to argue that their progress is stopped by segregation."

            Asked if social segregation wouldn't work as well as legal segregation, Hall replied frankly, "To the white southerner the idea of surrendering legal segregation is a great point. He has it and is reluctant to give it up.