When and Where I Enter by Paula J. Giddings

Author:Paula J. Giddings
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

The year 1935 marked a critical juncture in the direction Black activists would take in the racial struggle. Should their energies be channeled toward interracialism or toward the strengthening of their own institutions? The opposing views among Blacks were dramatically illustrated within the ranks of the NAACP when, in 1935, W.E.B. Du Bois resigned from the organization and from the editorship of The Crisis. His repeated confrontations with Walter White, the executive secretary, reflected the debate within the larger Black leadership community. In his Crisis editorials Du Bois had counseled that racial segregation and racial discrimination were two different issues. Integration for its own sake was both meaningless and demeaning. “Never in the world should we fight against association with ourselves,” he exhorted. Undoubtedly referring to the patronizing nature of interracial cooperation, Du Bois requested that Blacks not “submit to discrimination simply because it does not involve actual and open segregation.”27 He felt that Blacks should be devoting their efforts to building their own institutions instead of integrating White ones. “It must be remembered,” Du Bois said, “that in the last quarter of a century, the advance of the colored people has been mainly in the lines where they themselves, working by and for themselves, have accomplished the greater advance.”28

The implications of Du Bois’s position flew in the face of the policies of the NAACP, which throughout the twenties and thirties had fought for integration. Much effort had been directed toward school integration and eliminating restrictive housing covenants, yet here was Du Bois saying there was nothing wrong with living in Black neighborhoods or going to Black schools under the right conditions. Walter White and his high-ranking cohort Roy Wilkins bitterly disagreed with Du Bois. The debate reached its climax when White decided to throw the NAACP’s resources behind the interracial effort to lobby for passage of the Costigan-Wagner Act. White had decided to cast his lot with “the rising tide of liberalism in the South and in national politics” in the belief that it “offered an unprecedented opportunity for striking a final blow at terrorism.”29

Bethune’s outlook seemed to fall somewhere between the two camps. Though she publicly supported interracial efforts, many of her actions corresponded to the Du Bois position. For example, Bethune had supported the withdrawal of the NACW from the predominantly White National Council of Women, although a Black clubwoman had recently been named a council vice-president. In July 1935 the NACW president, Mary Waring, criticized Bethune’s action before an NACW meeting. She told the membership:

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