University of Virginia Library

Liberties Defender Speaks

Morgan Says Audience
'Privileged By Race'

By Flora Johnson

Charles Morgan, Jr. is "not
too worried about controversy."

The nationally known attorney
and director of the Southern
Regional Office of the American
Civil Liberties Union addressed an
audience which, by his statement,
was "primarily present through
draft exemptions run by Southern
whites and discriminating against
Negroes."

His topics were the problems
of race and the military.

According to Mr. Morgan, the
majority of American Negroes
either face now or grew up under
a system of Southern justice which
left them without recourse to the
courts.

'Instrument Of Justice'

He the instance of a Negro
whom he defended in Birmingham.
"A white police force; white
judge, white district attorney, white
attorney, white jury, segregated
rest rooms and segregated paddy
wagon faced the man," he said.
"Convicted and given the death
penalty, he went to a yellow,
integrated electric chair, the only
instrument of justice from which
Negroes were not systematically
excluded."

"When you're born and reared
in the South you don't go to the
court house." Mr. Morgan then
asked why the "white liberal asks
the Negro to take his problems
from the street to the courts."

"The white liberal must understand
the Negro revolution. The
Southern Negro can see progress;
the Negro ghetto dweller can't.
White people have got to start
talking to white people."

'We Don't Do Much'

The need is important, Mr.
Morgan stated, because liberals
have blundered through guilt, and
because the poor Negro is explainable
while the poor white is
not-into allowing poverty programs
to be associated with the
Negroes. "And we don't do much
for Negroes."

There must be, Mr. Morgan
said, a change in the dominant
white community. If not, he asked,
"what will become of the Negro
who finally becomes useless?"

"All sorts of strange things,"
was the answer.

Mr. Morgan stressed the
conclusions he reached as a result
of the recent Levy case, in
which he represented a doctor
court martialed for refusing to
train "special forces aid personnel."

He argued that the military,
which he claimed, is becoming
vital to American life through its
economic importance and through
the influence of the numbers of
persons associated with it, represents
a threat to its ideals, 25
million Americans are veterans,
Mr. Morgan stated. He quoted
army training sessions:

"What's the lesson of hand-to-hand?"

"Kill."

"What does that make you?"

"Killers."