Go South to Sorrow

By Carl T. Rowan

Reviewed by John J. O'Connor

Carl Rowan is a prize-winning journalist on the staff of the Minneapolis Tribune. He returned to his native South to find out what had happened since the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on racial integration in the nation's public schools.

He discovered that the NAACP was trying to advance the emancipation of Negroes by law suits whereas the KKK and the White Citizens Councils were equally determined to preserve white supremacy. Communication had largely broken down between representatives of the two races.

The South was caught in a web of fear, lawlessness, confusion and insecurity. Demagogues worked overtime to convince worried people that those who spoke out for an end to racial segregation in America were engaged in a Communist scheme to destroy "the Anglo-Saxon race."

Mr. Rowan reviews the Till case, the Montgomery bus boycott, and the Autherine Lucy incident on the campus of the University of Alabama. He fires several solid broadsides at Senator Eastland. But the men who really disturb him are the so-called "moderates," those who favor what Mr. Rowan regards as a gutless do-nothingness. Defiant men today have the initiative and Mr. Rowan believes that they will continue in defiance until the authorities responsible for law and order take back the initiative.

Mr. Rowan is in error if he believes that moderation necessarily means do-nothingness. He fails either to recognize or to give credit to the persevering efforts of many religiously motivated people and institutions. In many quiet but effective ways they are preparing the way for a new era in race relations.

Any delay, of course, has tragic consequences for the present generation of Negroes who are being shamefully deprived of their human rights. But any all-out frontal attack on segregation today would have even worse consequences.

Source: Books on Trial (June-July, 1957)

Carl Rowan

(August 11, 1925 -- September 23, 2001)

Chronology

1925 (11 August) -- Born in Ravencroft, Tennessee, a dying coal mining town.

1942 -- Graduated from Bernard High as valedictorian and president of a class of 13 students. enrolled at Tennessee A&I, now Tennessee State University.

1943 -- Navy sends Rowan to Northwestern University for summer training as a naval reserve officer. When the university refused him residence because of his color, the navy transferred him to Oberlin.

1944 -- Passed a competitive exam to become one of the first Blacks in Naval officer training.

1947 -- Graduated from Oberlin, a mathematics major

1948 -- Earned a master's degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota and joined the Minneapolis Tribune as a copywriter (until 1950).

1950-1961 -- Staff writer for Minneapolis Tribune, ), reporting extensively on civil rights movement.

1953 -- South of Freedom published.

1956 -- The Pitiful and the Proud published.

1957 -- Go South to Sorrow published.

1960 -- Wait Till Next Year: The Life Story of Jackie Robinson published.

1961 -- Joined Kennedy administration. working as deputy assistant secretary of state for public affairs.

1963-1964 -- Served as U.S. ambassador to Finland.

1964-1965 -- Director of the United States Information Agency.

1967-1996 -- Appeared as panelist on public affairs television show Inside Washington.

1974 -- Just Between Us Blacks published.

1987 --  Founded Project Excellence, which has awarded over $39.5 million in scholarships to college-bound black students from the Washington, D.C., area, many of whom have gone on to graduate from Oberlin College.

1991 -- Breaking Barriers: A Memoir published.

1993 -- Dream Makers, Dream Breakers: The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall

1997 -- Awarded Alumni Medal  by Oberlin College Alumni Association commencement weekend.

2000 (23 September) -- Died this morning of natural causes in the Intensive Care Unit of Washington Hospital Center.