Mixed Race Studies

Letter documenting the struggle of two children’s attempt to attend school

Special Collections
University of Southern Mississippi Libraries
Item of the Month
March 2010

Jennifer Brannock, Special Collections Librarian

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History: Sovereignty Commission Online

[Note from Steven F. Riley: For more on Newton Knight, Rachel Knight, and the “Free State of Jones,” please read Victoria E. Bynum’s excellent monograph, The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War.]

In 1964, 9-year-old Edgar and 8-year-old Randy Williamson had never attended a day of school. The debate over their admittance stems from the fact that they are 1/16 or 1/32 African American. They are the great, great grandchildren of Newt Knight and a slave woman, Rachel. Newt Knight is a well-known historical figure who was the man behind the “Free State of Jones.” Rachel was a slave owned by Knight’s uncle. Even though Knight was married, it is believed that he left his wife and lived with Rachel until her death.

Edgar and Randy Williamson’s great, great grandmother was African American which meant that they were 1/16 African American. According to Mississippi law at the time, a person had to be less than 1/8 African American to be considered white. In the case of the Edgar and Randy, their mother, a direct descendant of Newt and Rachel, was listed as black on her birth certificate (she was 1/8 African American) with Edgar and Randy as white (their father was white). The people in Stringer, a community in Jasper County, considered the children to be African American since their mother was. Due to these beliefs, school officials at the white school in Stringer anticipated strong objections and possible violence if the children were admitted…

Read the entire article here.

Race Mixing a Religious Fraud

circa 1930-1960s
8 pages
Source: Digital Collections of the University of Southern Mississippi Libraries
USM Identifier: mus-mcc033

D. B. Red, (Author of the pamphlet, A Corrupt Tree Bringeth Forth Evil Fruit)

From the McCain (William D.) Pamphlet Collection; D. B. Red states that God implemented segregation after the flood and enforced it all through the Old Testament. He quotes the Bible to support his belief that segregation of races was ordained by God and that race-mixing is an instrument of the Devil. He also quotes Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln to support his view that racial integration is undesirable. Red also contends that religious leaders who support integration have been duped by an influx of Communist rhetoric that seeks to undermine the social structure of the United States.

Race Mixing A Religious Fraud

Race mixing not only disregards the age-long experience of man and constitutional guarantees, but as it is now taught, is a religious fraud. Many religious leaders have asked the Federal Government to reach over the heads of the states into homes to usurp the God-given right and duty of parents to give their children the benefit of the most wholesome surroundings in public schools. Approval is given to Block Busting integration which divides the value of residential property by two or three, and exposes people to all of the annoyance and dangers of slum and crime areas.

The indifference of church leaders to the fate of the victims of race mixing reminds this scribe of the hit and run drivers who never change their ways or look back at their victims. Some are worse than others but all of the larger denominations are pushing us down the Devil’s highway of racial integration and on toward national perdition.

Christ says: “YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN… BEHOLD I STAND AT THE DOOR AND KNOCK”, Church and State say: “YOU MUST BE INTEGRATED NOW; BEHOLD A BAYONET IS AT YOUR BACK.”

IS THIS SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, OR IS SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND CHRIST ?

God Introduces Multiple Races and Segregation

While the virgin earth spread her beauty and bounty in all directions, great evils arose among men, who reveled in sin and so vexed the Creator that He almost destroyed mankind. As He again sent man forth with the hope of producing much more righteous conditions, He introduced the multiple race plan. Have age-long results justified the wisdom of God as displayed in this crisis? Or has time justified the wisdom of those who have long ignored this plan and spread a blanket of perpetual blight and mixed races over much of the earth?

Every faculty of man as he was originally created is capable of both good and evil. Frightful evils are entagled with the desire for a happy future existence. Evil also arises from a loyalty to your own kind and an aversion to other kinds. Should we denounce these things and reject the wisdom of the Creator? Or should we seek to better understand His wisdom?

The efforts of religious leaders to lead and force men to accept racial integration are surprising, and become even more so when the communist attitude is known. In 1913, a communist living in England suggested the agitation of the race problem in the United States of America as a trouble-maker. Comrade Lenin said, “We will find our most fertile field for the infiltration of Marxism within the field of religion, because religious people are the most gullible and will accept almost anything if it is couched in religious terminology.” Soon the viper of racial integration was brought forth in robes of righteousness, and religious leaders have abundantly justified this statement of Lenin as to their gullibility. They freely misuse or ignore scripture in efforts to fit scriptural robes on this ancient abomination. It seems safe to assume that if God did err by the introduction of the multiple race plan, He would surely have been able to see it and would have at least relaxed in His demands for the adherence to this plan. The division of the land and the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel both tended to maintain racial divisions. The call of Abraham produced a racial subdivision and rigid segregation was used to preserve it. We find that God has always had to depend on minorities to carry His message. Perhaps He was wisely preparing in advance for this.

God Deals With Mixed People

There were natural and special penalties for integration. The commandments of Moses and Joshua clearly forbade mixing with the descendants of Ham. In strong, figurative language Joshua foretold the frightful price of disobedience- Quote Joshua 23:13: “They shall be snares and traps unto you and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this good land which the Lord your God hath given you.” In Ezra, chapters 9 and 10, and Nehemiah, chapters 9 through 13, we find that on discovery of mixed marriages a systematic check was made and a considerable number were required to give up their strange wives with any children that they may have had. “Also they separated from Israel all of the mixed multitude.” This was a clear-cut case of a special penalty. Others seem to have suffered a combination of penalties. In Genesis 26: 34-35 we find that Esau first took two Hittite wives “which were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebecca.” In Obadiah 18 we find, “There shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau.” This came to pass centuries ago. Concerning Israel, Hosea said in 7:8-9, “Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people . . . Strangers hath devoured his strength and he knoweth it not.”…

…Who Plays the Sucker

In the time of Christ gambling was hoary with age. National bondage and individual slavery were great evils. Neither of these are condemned in the Bible. They are generally conceded to be evil. Race-mixing is not only often and severely condemned in the Bible, but is an age-long and incurable curse of the first magnitude. Of all the millions and billions of people who have borne the curse of blended blood and jumbled humanity, the mixers will only speak of the situation in Hawaii where they are said to have an easy fluid mixture of the races. They fail to note that communist influence has long been strong in the islands and that this fluid situation is a much sought goal of communism, since it facilitates the easy formation of communist cells, and leaves no coherent group to oppose them. Are these mixers as ignorant as they seem, or are they only presuming on the ignorance of others?…

Read the entire pamphlet here.

Rebuilding the Tower of Babel

Pelican Publishing Company, New Orleans
1957
24 pages
Source: Digital Collections of the University of Southern Mississippi Libraries
USM Identifier: mus-mcc030

Stuart O. Landry

From the McCain (William D.) Pamphlet Collection; In this pamphlet, Landry asserts that integrationists are trying to reunite the races that God separated in the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel. He asserts that new anthropological and psychological theories of racial equality are pseudoscientific and backed by Communist interests. Landry cites some Old Testament quotations that he interprets as implying that segregation is ordered by God, and he asserts that race amalgamation will be lead to the downfall of Christianity. He also compares African Americans’ social condition to that of Jews, Italians, Germans, and Irish in order to support his argument that African Americans’ place at the bottom of the United States’ social structure is a result of their lack of effort.

FOREWORD

This is not an attack upon the Church nor a criticism of Christianity. It is not a message of hate or of intolerance. On the contrary, it is a plea for broad-mindness on the part of many Christian groups who are becoming narrow-minded with respect to the ideas and customs of brother Christians.

It is with reluctance that I emphasize the difference—physical, mental and cultural—between white people and colored people. It looks like I am acting the Pharisee, wearing his phylacteries with an air of “better than thou.” But such is not the case.

My enumeration of racial differences is no more invidious than making a comparison between men and women between whom there are many physical and mental differences. I am simply trying to show the disadvantage of race-mixing.

Above all, I am not trying to close the door of opportunity to anyone, or condemn any individual to failure by making him feel inferior. This he can easily disprove. My generalizations apply to large groups. If any man can rise above his environment, more power to him!

S. O. L.

And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech… And they said Let us build a city and a tower whose top may reach into heaven… And the Lord said Let us go down there and confound their language that they may not understand one another’s speech… Therefore is the name called Babel because the Lord did there confound the language of all the the earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

—Genesis XI: 1-9.

The good church people of the United States want to rebuild the Tower of Babel. They wish to do away with races and the confusion of tongues. Can they climb to heaven on such a structure?

The building of a new tower reaching to high heaven, even if only figurative, transgresses the will of God, who thousands of years ago destroyed the actual attempt and scattered peoples all over the world, and contravenes the laws that govern human nature.

But most church members seem to have forgotten the story of Babel, and today are much concerned over the alleged discrimination against Negroes and other races.

The thought of the times is, let’s desegregate and integrate. Let’s bring together men of all colors, races and countries—we are all brothers under the skin. Let’s go back to Babel.

The movement to do away with all racial segregation in school, church and social life (which eventually means amalgamation of the races and the mongrelization of the white race) has now found favor with all the leading church groups of America…

…The Presbyterian Church is now taking the lead in the “desegregation revolution.” The 168th General Assembly (Presbyterian Church in the U. S.) in May 1956 called for all-out efforts to end segregation in the fields of education, housing and industry. On June 14th, 1956 the Presbyterian Session of New York unanimously approved a resolution commending the work of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Only recently a Presbyterain minister told the General Assembly of the Church of Ireland that inter-marriage between black and white “on an immense scale” would solve the color problem.

In Connecticut last year a Presbyterian church with a predominantly white congregation called a Negro pastor. What has this great church come to, once the strict interpreter of the Bible, when it now thinks that the Ethiopian can change his skin!…

The “Scum” Origin Of Integration

The idea of racial equality and integration has come up from the lower orders of the social scale. The underworld knows no class. Prize fighting, not exactly the underworld, but not a very cultural institution, was the first sport to “integrate.” Now we find kindly old ladies all over the land watching Negro brutes fighting white brutes on television and glorying in knockouts.

Night clubs, “hot-spots,” and taverns went for racial equality rapidly. Negroes have preempted this form of enlightened entertainment. With sex, obscenity, jazz, rock-and-roll music, the night life of the country is far from being elevating, yet much of it slops over into radio and television to familiarize us all with the idea of non-segregation…

…There is no Commandment against segregation, no prohibition of it in the Bible nor in any of the great canons of moral law. Segregation was not a sin ten years ago, it was not a sin a hundred years ago, it was not a sin a thousand years ago and it is not a sin now. If right and wrong change with the years then the materialistic philosophy of William Graham Sumner is correct—that is, morals vary with the times and in accordance with the culture of peoples. This is the view of Karl Marx and modern communists. Such a view is against the principles of the Christian religion which believes in the Eternal God and absoluteness of truth. Right does not change with the years. It does not become wrong because of the preaching of false prophets, who, from mistaken or ulterior motives, make the welkin ring with their declamations against what they call injustice and immorality.

A Practical Solution

Segregation is a practical working method whereby large numbers of two race?, differing in customs, culture and intelligence, living in the same area, are in constant contact with each other without trouble or dissension. Under the systems employed in countries and states where the population is bi-racial, segregation has worked successfully. In the Southern states of the United States, in spite of the belief to the contrary, Negroes have had all the opportunity the land afforded…

…The Harm Of Racial Mixing

The question is asked that if the Bible is vague on the question of segregation, wouldn’t we resolve the problem more in keeping with Christian brotherhood if we declared it against the policy of the Church? What is the harm of mixing the races together in churches, schools and social affairs?

Well, the harm in the fraternizing and mixing of white and colored people comes in the breaking down of the social inhibition against the intermarriage between whites and Negroes. Race mixing that leads to racial intermarriage is a crime against the future of the white race. To mix the black and white races is bad science, bad eugenics and bad genetics. It is not a matter of Christianity, it is a matter of common sense, a practical matter that affects the future of all our people.

The Church, in advocating integration or the mixing of the races in schools and social affairs, knows that this will lead to eventual amalgamation and the absorption of the Negro race all to the disadvantage of the race that absorbs them.

On the same theory that all men are brothers we will then begin to mix in with the Chinese, East Indians and more Africans. Soon we will have one race of people. I do not understand why the good Christians of this country cannot see that in the event we absorb all the races of the world, or rather that we are absorbed by them since there are twice as many colored people as there are whites, religion as we know it today will disappear. We will have no more Christianity. We will have some kind of blended belief such as advocated by Arnold Toynbee. Back to Babel again.

Not White Supremacy But White Superiority

No plea is made here for the denial of any of the rights to which the citizens of this country are entitled. The right to liberty, life and the pursuit of happiness belongs to everyone. There is no suggestion of a limit on the exercise of political rights, the advocating of economical and educational restrictions, or belittling the dignity of the members of any minority group.

My plea is simply that we recognize in a common sense way that there is a difference between the white race and the Negro race, that sensible white people do not want to become too intimate socially with colored people as that only leads to intermarriage and a mongrelization of the Caucasian race…

…How To Have A Superior People

Up until recently eugenists—now graduated into geneticists and now soft-pedalling the theory of superior peoples or races—were pointing out to Americans as well as the world the necessity for more careful mating on the part of individuals, and the desirability of superior persons choosing their wives or husbands from outstanding families. Taking their cue from stock breeders and dog fanciers they believed that the way to bring about the evolution of a highly intelligent and moral people was to mate together people who possessed these qualities. But modern ethnologists, sociologists and even geneticists wish us to disregard the principles employed by practical breeders of cattle, dogs, birds, flowers and plants when it comes to race mixing.

Influenced by propaganda the doctors of these “sciences,” which are still vague and far from exact, are saying in effect that black is white and there are no racial differences that are consequential. They want us to develop into a hybrid or mongrel race…

Read the entire pamphlet here.

Christian view on segregation

Association of Citizens Councils
Winona, Mississippi
1954-11-04
16 pages
Source: Digital Collections of the University of Southern Mississippi Libraries
USM Identifier: mus-mcc032

Rev. G. T. Gillepsie, D.D., President Emeritus
Belhaven College, Jackson Mississippi

From the McCain (William D.) Pamphlet Collection; In this pamphlet published by the White Citizens’ Council of Winona, Mississippi, Gillespie states that racial separation is the way to support racial harmony. He says that Soviet Communists are behind the Civil Rights movement, because they want to break down the barriers between races so that racial amalgamation will occur. He contends that school integration will lead to intermarriage, and he cites Biblical and pseudoscientific reasons that segregation must continue. He also quotes Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Booker T. Washington.

A reprint of an address made before the Synod of Mississippi of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. on November 4, 1954.

The problem of race relations is not new. It is as old as civilization. Whenever in the history of the race two peoples of significantly different characteristics have come in contact with each other, or have sought to occupy the same area, a problem of race relations has inevitably developed. The closer the contact, and the more nearly the numerical strength of the two groups has approached equality, the more difficult and acute the problem has become.

The problem of racial relations throughout the world today has been greatly accentuated by the rapid development of modern means of communication and transportation, which have brought all the peoples of the world into much closer contact than ever before.

The problem has also been complicated by the worldwide spread of Karl Marx’s doctrine of Internationalism and the Classless society, combined with the vigorous propaganda of Soviet Communism to bring about a world revolution and the breakdown of all national and racial distinctions and to effect the complete amalgamation of all races.

The Anglo-Saxon and English-speaking people have steadfastly opposed and resisted the mixture of their racial stock with that of other peoples, especially where the physical and cultural characteristics were widely dissimilar, and wherever they have gone, around the world, they have consistently instituted and maintained a pattern of segregation which uniformly provided an effective check against the process of amalgamation, and which has preserved the racial integrity of the English-speaking peoples of the world.

The race problem in America arises inherently out of the concentration of large masses of the negro race in areas predominantly Anglo-Saxon in racial type and in culture, and where the principle of racial segregation has been generally upheld by legal, social and moral sanctions.

Comparatively little of the opposition to the principle of segregation has come spontaneously from the pure-blood negroes, or from the masses of the negro population; more strenuous opposition has come from the negroes of mixed blood, who have migrated from the South to Northern cities, and who bitterly resent the tensions and discrimination to which they find themselves and their families subjected in their efforts to secure recognition in Northern communities. It is not without significance, however, that a very considerable part of the violent agitation against segregation stems from sources outside the negro race, and outside of America, and coincides with the worldwide movement for racial amalgamation which has its fountainhead in Moscow.

…In Northern or Western communities, where negroes number usually less than five per cent of the total population, the admission of a few negro children to the public schools does not present any serious problem, and even if an occasional interracial marriage should occur, it would have little appreciable effect upon the cultural pattern or the blood-stream of community life, but in the South, where negroes constitute a large proportion, and in some areas a majority, of the population, the integrated school with its blurring of all racial distinctions presents a serious threat to the whole cultural pattern of community life, and points unmistakably to the gradual but eventual merging of the two distinct racial types into a mulatto race. This is not a baseless and fantastic phobia, but a well grounded and reasoned conviction which determines the attitude of Southern parents, and gives assurance that they cannot and will not acquiesce in a program which means the surrender of the birthright of their children and of generations yet unborn…

…4.  Segregation Does Not Necessarily Involve Discrimination.

Whenever two individuals or groups of widely different physical characteristics are brought into close contact, it is likely or even inevitable that some discrimination should occur, especially where the situations are competitive; but such discrimination is a spontaneous human reaction and cannot be charged against the principle of segregation.

As a matter of fact, segregation, by reducing the number of points of contact, tends to lessen friction and tension, and especially if there is clear recognition on the part of both races that the chief reason for segregation is the desirability of preventing such intimacies as might lead to intermarriage and the amalgamation of the races, then the chief occasion for misunderstanding and discrimination is removed…

Read the entire pamphlet here.