Respectable segregationists framed exclusion of blacks as a symmetry of individual choice

Evidence

Regardless of the court ruling, many whites still considered freedom of association a fundamental right. They had embraced the concept long before the Melkild dispute, and a judge’s opinion would do little to change that. “Is it not every father’s and mother’s inalienable right and duty to choose, for their children, associates and companions for life?” asked one father in 1956. “If you do away with segregation in schools, churches, and public places, for our children and young people, you tie the hands of our fathers and mothers to make the kind of homes they would like to have for their off-spring, and which is the very foundation of our schools and churches and the very spirit of the Constitution.” Others agreed. “We can’t choose who we send our Children to School with, and it won’t be long before we will have to ask who we can visit and who can visit us,” complained another man in 1957. “How far are we from a Russian form of Government?” As “freedom of association” became a common theme at the grass roots, segregationist leaders learned to follow suit. MASE president Thomas Wesley, for one, repeatedly hammered the theme. “My views on the ‘school crisis,’ the ‘sit-ins,’ ‘kneel-ins,’ etc., remain summarized in the phrase ‘freedom of association,’ ” Wesley wrote in a 1960 column for the Atlanta Journal. “It is perfectly alright if people who want integration have all the integration they want, provided those who feel otherwise (including me, of course) are granted the same ‘freedom of choice’ ” to do otherwise. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 372

Categorization

• XREF: Shows the rhetorical move: ‘we just want the same choice in reverse’ — a symmetry argument that recurs in modern color-blind opposition to affirmative action. — connects to: Freedom of association was defined negatively as the right to exclude, not positively — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 373; Businessmen reframed racial discrimination as a universal individual right to choose customers. — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 493; Segregationists understood resistance as defending their own rights and freedoms — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 31 (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• American racism shifted from constitutionalized segregation to privatized preference-driven apartness #expands (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 365