In 1952, Prof. Gene Gressman authored an extremely insightful article on what we today call white supremacy. He pointed out the failure of civil rights laws. His Michigan Law Review article ended with these words (quoted from President Truman’s Commission on Civil Rights).
If I receive enough replies on FB or m-leroy@illinois.edu, I’ll post them (with or without names, up to you).
And in the present political climate [the early 1950s] it seems doubtful that any new congressional legislation will soon be forthcoming, especially along the effective lines recommended by the President's Committee on Civil Rights. But as that Committee pointed out:
"The adoption of specific legislation, the implementation of laws or the development of new administrative policies and procedures cannot alone bring us all the way to full civil rights. The strong arm of government can cope with individual acts of discrimination, injustice, and violence. But in one sense, the actual infringements of civil rights by public or private persons are only symptoms. They reflect the imperfections of our social order, and the ignorance and moral weaknesses of some of our people.
"There are social and psychological conditions which foster civil rights; there are others which imperil them. In a world forever tottering on the brink of war, civil rights will be precarious at best. In a nation wracked by depression and widespread economic insecurity, the inclination to consider civil rights a luxury will be more easily accepted. We need peace and prosperity for their own sake; we need them to secure our civil rights as well. We must make constructive efforts to create an appropriate national outlook— a climate of public opinion which will outlaw individual abridgments of personal freedom, a climate of opinion as free from prejudice as we can make it.”
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