We have no choice. All of us, white and Negro, must read the whole book through. The American Agony has had as its authors the slave-traders and the abolitionists, the cotton-planters and the slave, the Armies of the Blue and the Grey, too many Southern and Northern politicians, the Supreme Court Justices who legalized segregation as well as those who ended its legality, the early Negro leaders and their white supporters, the sit-ins and freedom-riders, the Ku Klux Klan and all their silent allies, the whites who keep silent, the demonstrators and the police.

The preface was so long that Chapter 1 seemed short. In 1954, the Supreme Court ended legal segregation, and this summer has seen the fruit of the Civil Rights Act and the new Voting Rights Act. Thousands of Negroes are registering. And thank God, the break thru only of “acceptance” continues. TIME noted this in three departments last week (Press, Music and Sport).

Carl Rowan leaves high government service to become a top-ranking columnist. He will not write of racial affairs as such but his knowledge of the workings of government like Reston and Lippman.

George Shirley of the Metropolitan Opera can now sing his tenor role in Henze’s The Stag King with this comment: “Fifteen years ago, I probably wouldn’t have been accepted by the Met. Ten years ago, I couldn’t sing my favorite roles. Times are changing.” Arthur Ashe was key-man in the U.S. defeat of the Mexican team in the Davis Cup zone finals. His teammates couldn’t care less about Ashe’s color. They wanted, --and got,--a winner.

A Break, Or A Break-Thru? Certainly, in Rowan’s words, there is an indication that “we’ve reached a new day.” But the trouble with so many conscientious whites is that they want scattered items like these to reassure them that all is going well. That’s why Chapter 1,--THE FRONTIERS, is leading to Chapter II,--THE RIOTING. Because all is not well.

Los Angeles is only a symbol. It shocked us, and it should. It means that the agony has now shifted, for both white and Negro leaders. Dr. Martin Luther King said shortly after rioting in L.A., the violence is, “absolutely wrong, socially detestable and self-defeating. I favor the use of the police power to quell the situation in Los Angeles.”

Then he added: “I equally deplore the continuation of ghetto life that millions of Negroes have to live in. They are in hopeless despair, and they feel that they have no stake in society. Due to joblessness and housing conditions, every Northern community is a potential power keg. We must get rid of the ghetto and bring Negroes into the economic mainstream of American life.” White readers approved and quoted King’s words of denunciation. But how many accept, or even understand, the second paragraph?

Despite the increasing Negro voter registration in Georgia and other Southern states, is it not appalling that in the past two years Negro and white civil right workers, and other Negroes have been murdered? The cases remain either “unsolved” or the suspects acquitted. Is this an American climate? Is this Christian reverence for just law? The Good Society

The Church must be involved, although the nature and extent of involvement is surely debatable. The Church must preach and practice justice. Catholics must join other Christians and Jews in their personal and social lives toward a true equality, respect and opportunity.

The Church can meditate, and it can begin by reminding the white and Negro leaders of a community of the application of principles to Chapter II. Every person should condemn rioting, violence, plunder and killing, and our government must seek out and punish those who are guilty. And every person must look for and plan to cope with the grim soil from which the rioters spring.

Specifically, I offer these ground-rules for the leaders: Let the whites STOP--

1. Blaming the past. Admit our own sins against the Negro’s human dignity.

2. Being satisfied with little gains for the Negro. It’s what happens to ten million American Negroes that counts, not just to those who are successful.

3. Tolerating the Negro. Respect him as a child of God as much as the white is.

4. Generalizing about the Negro, good or bad. They are subject to the temperaments, prejudices, yearnings and attitudes just as we are.

5. Putting the issue on property rights (my neighborhood, my job, my school). Human rights morally come first. Besides the exclusion of the Negro does not even protect the beloved property rights. Segregation was a main force in the thread-bare Southern economy for seven decades.

Special note to a number of white civil right workers:

Shave those beards! Girls, comb your hair! Revolutions are sometimes started by the kooky types, but something more is necessary to get solid gains.

Let the Negroes STOP--

1. Labeling other Negroes who disagree as to method as “Uncle Toms.” We need every mature Negro now.

2. Ridiculing whites who love and work for equal justice for all as much as the Negro does.

3. Defending every demonstration as “non-violence.” This is besmirching a noble and fruitful method.

4. The reticence about what every responsible Negro leader is doing (or should be) about self-help programs, and the curbing of lawlessness by Negroes.

5. Generalizing. (See #4 under whites).

These points could be a theme into which the agony of the rioting in Los Angeles and the killing of whites and Negroes could gradually be resolved.

A century ago, during that curious decade following the war and “Reconstruction,” Jim-Crow was just getting under way. It was repulsive, as it has always been, to many decent but silent white Southerners. South Carolina was debating a Jim-Crow law for public transportation vehicles. A Charleston paper observed:

“We do not need (I quote from memory) separate compartments for whites and for Negroes. What we need is separate compartments for well-behaved whites and Negroes, and others for rowdy whites and Negroes...”

This proposal, defeated by the politicians who had discovered a bonanza in white supremacy, could have been the safety-valve. If it had been adopted, Selma and Crawfordsville and Los Angeles would be different today.

We Need: Justice. But we need more if we are to have a state of compassion and love for each other. We need a steady thrust, beyond justice, to a harmony in each community. Then we can live together for God, reflecting the image of the His Son. It will be a community of, by and for the people. And Americans can again look the world in the face.

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop of Atlanta