Efforts to thwart the political uniting of African Americans and poor whites
Simkins ruminates about why efforts to unite African Americans and poor whites politically over time had ultimately failed. According to Simkins, those in positions of power played on fears of racial violence, particularly of a sexual nature, in order to thwart a political uniting of the masses. Her comments are largely based on her work with organizations such as the NAACP and the Southern Negro Youth Conference during the 1940s and 1950s; however, she draws connections to similar political trends at the turn of the twentieth century and at the time of the interview during the mid-1970s, thus indicating important historical continuities.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Modjeska Simkins, July 28, 1976. Interview G-0056-2. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
How would you assess the role that interracial organizations like SCEF
and the Southern Regional Council have played in the movement in the
South?
- MODJESKA SIMKINS:
-
I can't fully assess it. I could just say that I don't think the South
would be the same without what they did, because they opened the eyes of
a number of people. The thing that the political power structure had
against the organizations of that kind was the fear that they would
bring the black and white mass together. And the power structure has
always feared the combining of the forces of black
and white masses. I can remember the first meeting of the Southern Negro
Youth Congress I went to in Knoxville where there were miners, people in
brogan shoes, overalls, just like they wear jeans around here now. The
average person didn't think of wearing them then unless they were going
to the field or going to the mines. And those fellows came out there
with brogans, and overalls, and sunhats, and all of them were working
and planning together. Well, the first thing they did when they got a
chance was to red smear and disrupt the movement. Now, I think if the
Southern Negro Youth Congress, for instance, could have gone on, there
would have been a very great change in the South because the younger
people would have worked together better. But the power structure
doesn't want that. They don't want poor whites and Negroes getting along
together. There's always been the effort, either obvious or subtle, on
the part of the reigning element to keep the forces of blacks and whites
apart. But they built it on the sex angle. They always say,
"They'll rape your women. They want to marry your
daughter." But they weren't thinking about that. They didn't
care any more about a poor white than they did about a Negro. And they
still don't. They just give them a little more deference because he's
white like they are, but they don't give a damn about a poor white.
They'll exploit him just like they will a Negro. I've seen it. I know
what I'm talking about.
So that was their affair. Why do they have to worry about Negro men and
their women? If they hadn't power enough to hold their women, if
somebody could take their women from 'em,, why, they ought to take 'em.
You see? Just like I hear people say sometimes if a woman can't hold her
husband why would she want to get mad with
somebody else for taking him? She ought to be able to hold him, treat
him right, give him good food, take care of him. You never find, for
instance, as I heard an old preacher say once, you'll never find a dog
leaving home and going to stay at somebody else's house if you're
treating that dog all right at your house. He's not going anywhere else.
Well, when you find the dog trotting over there every time you turn
around, somebody's throwing him a bone over there. He never gets a bone
over here, just gets some dry bread and maybe a kick in the fanny, you
know?
[laughter]
So, they use that sex thing. And they have used it as a social equality
angle. They wanted to keep those forces apart, and they wanted to see
that Negroes wouldn't take your job. When the unions come in, they try
to tell whites if you get a union, the Negroes will take your jobs.
They'll be making much as you make, or they'll bring your salary down to
theirs, and all that kind of stuff. It's to divide the forces. They have
always done that, and that's the reason a white Populist is not able to
get anywhere much in the South. You see, the old Populist movement was
killed, killed and almost died being born, because certain people who
were Populists, not long after Reconstruction, would have destroyed
their scheme.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
Did you hear or know anything about the Populist movement when you were
growing up?
- MODJESKA SIMKINS:
-
No. My father used to talk about some of those … I used to
hear him talk a lot about Tom Watson in Georgia and his, you know, the
effect that, you know … he always spoke pleasantly of Tom
Watson and what he felt that his philosophy would
do for the poor man. But they killed off Tom Watson. They kill off
anybody who looks like he's going to do something for the poor man or
for the masses, just like they're jumping on little old, that little old
Carter, now, from Georgia. They're not going to give him an easy time,
and they know that he can't do but so much with the Congress that, if he
doesn't do it in the first year or two he's in there, after that the
honeymoon will be over and he'll be burnt up.
But the fact is, they are not interested in the masses or the people
coming together. And they realize … I mean, history has
repeated itself that you can't pressure the mass but so much before it
revolts. I thought, I still think, I think things are a little easier
now. But I would say six months ago, I believed fervently that we were
moving toward a revolution in this country.