Carleton Putnam Race and Reason Day Speech 10/26/61

Transcript

NoOneYouKnowIPromise

After about seven minutes of introductions and congratulatory resolutions (starting with one by John Bell Williams, who would later become Governor) Putnam gave this speech: I am grateful for this chance to refresh my point of view among people of your outlook. We obviously share certain ideals that we have inherited from the early days and which we intend to preserve. Those ideals are timeless. They’re not affected by winds of change. They’re as steadfast as our self respect, our independence of mind and our love for our homes and our families. Mississippi is the heartland of the struggle for racial integrity. You’re not an unkindly people, but you are and experienced people. You know your own conditions. Unlike some cities of the south, the news papers of Jackson are not controlled by northerners. [Applause] You have not fallen victim to this ceaseless barrage of false science, false sentimentality and false political theory, with which, so many sections of the north, all of the north, and so many sections of the south, are being inundated. Your leaders are not selling your heritage or your children for a block of votes. [Applause] Nor are you persuaded by the fantasy that in order to please everybody all over the world you must give away everything that your forefathers earned for you over a thousand years of effort and self discipline. You may be willing to give money within reason, to please the Congo, but you’re not willing to give your children. The capital of Mississippi is still in Jackson – it’s not in ‘Leopoldville’. [Applause] For all this, as I say, I’m really grateful but at the same time, I can’t close my eyes anymore than you can close yours to the realities of the situation. In spite of the unassailable logic of your position you’re under harassment and attack from all sides. The dean of the Harvard law school fumes with fury at the mention of Mississippi. The kindly housewife in Wisconsin turns away at the name Jackson. I’m sure you often wonder why. And since there is an old adage, that to get anything done, you must first find the problem, I’m going to inquire ‘What is the problem, in this case?’ Some of you may answer ‘well, it’s or course, the Supreme Court decision of 1954.’ Others are wont to say that its power hungry centralists trying to destroy the rights of the states. Still others will say that its minority group pressure and infiltration of communism. Now, in my judgment, to some extent, all those things are true. All of them are problems, but they all exist because of something else. If you could correct the fundamental difficulty, these others will disappear. And I speak from an embroilment in this matter as you know, about three years now, from Seattle to Miami and from Maine to California. To understand this basic problem, I must clarify one issue. For a long time, a running battle has been going on among scientists, concerning the race question. It can be put in a nutshell by saying that a cult has developed along the left wing school of political thought which tries to prove that environment is completely responsible for all differences between races. That nothing is due to inborn or inherent qualities. Now obviously, if this could be proved, it would lend support to a variety of social programs. It still would not, in my opinion, eliminate a man’s responsibility for himself, nor would it mean that social and cultural similarities are desirable ideals. But as far as races and sub-stocks are concerned, it would remove many obstacles. And it certainly is the sort of thing which our minority groups of every color and race would welcome. The difficulty is that is has no foundation in fact. Almost everyone is ready to admit that heredity makes a difference in individuals within a single race; and to maintain that this process stops when we compare averages and qualities between races is a strange and forced bit of wishful thinking. Science of course, does not dismiss anything because it seems strange and forced. But the burden of proof is clearly upon those who would deny the obvious, and this burden of proof, no equalitarian scientist has been able to sustain. I can’t, tonight, go into full detail on this question. I can only summarize and refer you to the books and documentation. But in sum, the idea that all races are equal in their adaptability to our Western culture, took root in America in the classrooms of Franz Boas at Columbia University in the late 1920’s. With Boas, as students or assistants, we find the names of: Otto Klineberg, Melville Herskovits, Gene Weltfish and Ashley Montagu. Gene Weltfish later became a member of certain organizations cited by the attorney general as subversive and publicly announced that she had evidence to prove that the United States used germ warfare in Korea. Some of the others were doubtless sincere or perhaps biased by their personal backgrounds. I’m not sure about all of them. After Boas died, Columbia brought in Ralph Lyndon who dismissed all the Boas employees who had no tenure. And the University finally dropped Weltfish on the grounds of too long tenure. But the Boas group, in America at least, was the beginning of the environmental ideology as far science was concerned. Russia made its contribution in Lysenko, who claimed that wheat could be turned into rye and these men drew to them other scientists with leftist inclinations in Europe and throughout the United States. They built up quite a team, at Harvard, Columbia and other universities here and abroad. As the New Deal came along and we went further left, in the United States, they fitted in with a client. In fact they became a dominant academic power. It wasn’t long before they were able to dictate policy. And eventually a whole generation of American young people were delivered into their hands. Now persecution scientists who disagreed with them became one of their techniques. In Russia of course, this was easy: Scientists who contradicted Lysenko were simply arrested. In the so-called free world, the matter had to be handled a bit more subtly. It will be apparent to you that I can’t here tonight name names - I’ve proved my point by being unable, in this case, to prove it. It’s because there is a risk of persecution that I can’t call specific witnesses. But I can cite cases; and I can ask that you accept my word for their genuine. So I’ll mention the southern anthropologist who wrote me using such terms as ‘avoidance’ and ‘suppression’ and ‘discouragement of research’. I will cite from the northern sociologist who, having made a statement on the non-equalitarian side, went back to his university and was told: ‘We won’t fire you; that would be too obvious. But as long as you stay here, you will never get a promotion and you’ll never get a raise in pay.’ I’ll mention the Middle Western psychologist who wrote me not where in the United States could a psychologist, sociologist or anthropologist find work if he openly espoused the theory of racial inequality. I’ll mention my experience with one the world’s most distinguished anthropologists who asked me, after I had seated myself in his living room, in a northern city, ‘Are you sure you haven’t been followed?’ And I’ll add still another scientist who’s said ‘I can’t commit academic suicide. I still have work to do. But, when I retire…’ Now, at his point, I’d like to turn to the northern press. To the northern radio and broadcasting networks and ask them now ‘What do you think, of this business?’ I’d like to ask Luce and Jackson and Time and Life and Dreyfus and Salzburg and The New York Times ‘How much longer are you going to vilify the South on the basis of evidence spawned under these conditions? You call this academic freedom? And if we don’t have academic freedom, what kind of freedom do we have?’ And what about some of you so-called “Southern” newspapers? Now I salute the Jackson press; but what of Alabama, what about Dallas, what about Memphis? How much effort have you given to studying the situation? I’d like to say to you who are the servants of northern masters, that I’d rather quit my job than to betray my people in my hometown.