1964 Op-ed | What Black People Are Trying to Say • The Yellow Springs News
The following article appears in the 2020–21 Guide Yellow Springs: Legacy of Village Activities.click here To read more articles from that year’s guide.
About a month after the Gegner incident, Yellow Springs News staffer and later columnist Pat Matthews wrote the editorial, which was published in newspapers across the country and received national attention. Reprinted from his April 23, 1964 edition of The News.
To Pat Matthews
With sit-ins, worships, stall-ins, walk-ins, lies, yells and pickets, the world is still asking, “What do black people really want?” Maybe we’re not expressing ourselves as clearly as we can, but we know the desires that motivate our actions, whatever they may be. Available in our attempt to get there.
what do we want
A black man said, “Home for sale, veterans no down payment – $65.50 a month. Nice neighborhood. Insurance included.” I’m a veteran, I want a home.
If he had $3 and was hungry, he would go to a restaurant and order a steak dinner and either be served without being refused, or be treated by management as if he wanted the waitress to sit on his lap. I want to let
If he wants a haircut, he will pay for it no matter what it costs, get the service, and don’t want to be treated as if the barber wants to participate in a friendly round of drinks and a game of cards. .
A man with an annual income of $6,000 wants to know that he can buy a car, a house, decent clothes, educate his children, and not starve to death with access to one loan with reasonable monthly payments. Instead of making a few small loans that are repaid at exorbitant amounts and high interest rates. This is happening across America as he watches his white friends achieve more and more.
When he reads an article about the murder of Medgar Evers, a revered black leader in Mississippi, he wants to be convicted rather than hailed as a great hero. If they commit low-level crimes, they are rarely brought to justice in Mississippi. He simply disappears — lynched? slave? Drowned? Do you know?
When the civil rights bill went to the Senate, he said that rather than watching a few men waste their precious time reading recipes for a new spring salad or 50 new dishes, elected men would We want to have the peace of mind that we are passing really good legislation. How to cook burgers in cookout.
Black people want the opportunity to be hired for a job based on their qualifications, they don’t always have to be “better than everyone else” to do the same job, and they need to be carefully monitored to see if they are deliberating. neither. interracial marriage.
He, too, wants the privilege of “choosing a neighbor” and telling others, “Don’t worry about making me your neighbor. I’m more worried about making you my neighbor.” I don’t want it to affect my children.”
He wants the opportunity to send his children to the best schools, well-recommended colleges, with the best facilities, without meeting “quotas” or representing token consolidation.
He also wants members of his race to truly represent him. Selected by a group, not controlled by the same group, to say, “We have black representatives.”
And finally, without being called ignorant, we even want the right to have some offensive to our race: Wallace, Eastlund, Long, William Miller, Representative Howard Smith.
In other words, we choose and choose, we make our own decisions, we laugh, we live, we love, we make mistakes as individuals, we have our “type” of people in every walk of life, and we are still “colored.” We want the right not to be labeled as ‘racial’.
Most people know they want these things. Most of them don’t know how to say them and there are few ways to achieve them, but they know what they want. ♦
https://ysnews.com/news/2022/09/1964-editorial-what-the-negro-is-trying-to-say 1964 Op-ed | What Black People Are Trying to Say • The Yellow Springs News