Harry Golden: Vertical Negro Plan
Those who love North Carolina will jump at the chance to share in the great responsibility confronting our governor and the state legislature. A special session of the legislature (July 24-28, 1956) passed a series of amendments to the state constitution. These proposals submitted by the governor and his Advisory Education Committee included the following:
(A) The elimination of the compulsory attendance law, %u201Cto prevent any child from being forced to attend school with a child of another race.%u201D
(B) The establishment of %u201CEducation Expense Grants%u201D for education in a private school %u201Cin the case of a child assigned to a public school attended by a child of another race.%u201D
(C) A %u201Cuniform system of local option%u201D whereby a majority of the folks in a school district may suspend or close a school if the situation becomes %u201Cintolerable.%u201D
Court Decisions
But suppose a Negro child applies for this %u201CEducation Expense Grant%u201D and says he wants to go to the private school too? There are 14 Supreme Court decisions involving the use of public funds; there are only two %u201Cdecisions%u201D involving the elimination of racial discrimination in the public schools.
The governor has said that critics of these proposals have not offered any constructive advice or alternatives. Permit me, therefore, to offer an idea for consideration of the members of the regular session. A careful study of my plan, I believe, will show that it will save millions of dollars in tax funds and eliminate forever the danger to our public education system. Before I outline my plan, I would like to give you a little background.
One of the factors involved in our tremendous industrial growth and economic prosperity is the fact that the South, voluntarily, has all but eliminated VERTICAL SEGREGATION. The tremendous buying bower of the 12 million Negroes in the South has been based wholly on the absence of racial segregation. The White and Negro stand at the same grocery and supermarket counters; deposit money at the same bank teller%u2019s windows; pay phone and light bills to the same clerk; walk through the same dine and department stores and stand at the same drugstore counters.
It is only when the Negro %u201Csets%u201D that the fur begins to fly.
NO SEATS
Now, since we are not even thinking about restoring VERTICAL SEGREGATION, I think my plan would not only comply with the Supreme Court decisions, but would maintain %u201Csitting down%u201D segregation. Now here is the GOLDEN VERTICAL NEGRO PLAN. Instead of all those complicated proposals, all the next session needs to do is pass one small amendment which would provide only desks in all the public schools of our state %u2013 no seats.
The desks should be those standing-up jobs, like the old fashioned bookkeeping desk. Since no one in the South pays the slightest attention to a VERTICAL NEGRO, this will completely solve our problem. And it is not such a terrible inconvenience for young people to stand up during their classroom studies. In fact, this may be a blessing in disguise. They are not learning to read sitting down, anyway; maybe standing up will help. This will save more millions of dollars in the cost of our remedial English course when the kids enter college. In whatever direction you look with the GOLDEN VERTICAL NEGRO PLAN, you save millions of dollars, to say nothing of eliminating forever any danger to our public education system upon which rests the destiny, hopes and happiness of this society.
ANOTHER IDEA
My WHITE BABY PLAN offers another possible solution to the segregation problem %u2013 this time in a field other than education.
Here is an actual case history of the %u201CWhite Baby Plan to End Racial Segregation%u201D:
Some months ago there was a revival of the Laurence Olivier movie Hamlet, and several Negro schoolteachers were eager to see it. One Saturday afternoon they asked some white friends to lend them two of their little children, a three year old girl and a six year old boy, and holding these white children by the hands, they obtained tickets from the movie house cashier without a moment%u2019s hesitation. They were in like Flynn.
This would also solve the babysitting problem for thousands and thousands of white working mothers. There can be a mutual exchange of references, then the people can sort of pool their children at a central point in each neighborhood, and every time a Negro wants to go to the movies all she need to do is pick up a white child %u2013 and go.
Eventually the Negro community can set up a factory and manufacture White babies made of plastic, and when they want to go to the opera or to a concert, all they need to do is carry that plastic doll in their arms. The dolls, of course, should all have blond curls and blue eyes, which would go even further; it would give the Negro woman and her husband priority over the Whites for the very best seats in the house.
