The Pittsburgh Press (February 10, 1945)
Editorial: Race relations are no longer sectional
By the Religious News Service
Tomorrow is Race Relations Sunday. The observance is chiefly intended to focus the minds of church members on the Negro-White problem, no longer sectional, but national in scope. The war has helped to make clear that the welfare of the minority is also the welfare of the majority. This basic tenet of democracy is expressed in Lincoln’s famous phrase, “A nation cannot exist half slave and half free.”
The Negro is the chief victim of racial prejudice in America. An encouraging development on the home front has been the formation of scores of interracial state, county, and city groups to promote better understanding between Whites and Negroes and to help end anti-Negro discriminations. Nevertheless, fear persists that even as racial injustices continue, despite the sacrifices of America’s soldiers in the struggle for human rights, so may the post-war period witness a calamitous wave of racial bigotry.
This would be not merely a blow to American prestige abroad, but a threat to national security and well-being. There is a ferment of freedom throughout the world. Do intelligent Americans expect Negro fellow citizens who have shared the hardships and dangers of the battlefront to return, mutely and submissively, to the old, hated evils of segregation, calumny, and ostracism? Not if they remember the race disturbances at the close of World War I, when the Negro was being forced back “where he belonged.”
To meet the possible insurgence of race hatred, American churches have called on their memberships to undertake now a crusade for interracial justice, for a truer democracy, for a vital, all-inclusive brotherhood. The fear of evil consequences, however, should not be the primary incentive. To give the Negro the status to which his high achievements, his loyalty, his good faith and generous nature entitle him is an obligation that rests heavily upon the conscience of this nation.