RECONCILIATION AND SOUTHERN JUSTICE

The Journey of Reconciliation began on 9th April, 1947. The team included Igal Roodenko, George Houser, Bayard Rustin, James Peck, Joseph Felmet, Nathan Wright, Conrad Lynn, Wallace Nelson, Andrew Johnson, Eugene Stanley, Dennis Banks, William Worthy, Louis Adams, Worth Randle and Homer Jack.

Members of the Journey of Reconciliation in 1947. Left to right: Worth 
Randle, Wallace Nelson, Ernest Bromley, James Peck, Igal Roodenko, Bayard Rustin, Joseph Felmet, George Houser and Andrew Johnson. 

In early 1947, the Congress on Racial Equality announced plans to send eight white and eight black men into the Deep South to test the Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in interstate travel unconstitutional. Organized by George Houser and Bayard Rustin, the Journey of Reconciliation was to be a two week pilgrimage through Virginia. North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky. 

Although Walter White of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) was against this kind of direct action, he volunteered the service of its southern attorneys during the campaign. Thurgood Marshall, head of the NAACP's legal department, was strongly against the Journey of Reconciliation and warned that a "disobedience movement on the part of Negroes and their white allies, if employed in the South, would result in wholesale slaughter with no good achieved."

In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, several of the riders were arrested, as well has being assaulted and threatened. They came to trial on the 20^th May at the Chapel Hill Recorder’s Court. Judge Henry Whitfield, a hardline segregationist, made no effort to hide his contempt for the defendants’ three NAACP attorneys: C. Jerry Gates, Herman Taylor and Edward Avant. After the local prosecuting attorney, T.J. Phipps, delivered a lengthy argument to show the “Negroes really want Jim Crow”, the judge approvingly issued a guilty verdict. Whitfield termed the black defendant Rustin “a poor misled nigra from the North” who bore less responsibility than white agitators who should know better. “I presume you’re Jewish Mr. Rodenky (he couldn’t even get the name right)” he drawled, “Well, its about time you Jews from New York learned that you can’t come down here bringing your nigras with you to upset the customs of the South.” Igal Roodenko was sentenced to thirty days on a road gang which is actually a chain gang. The defence attorneys immediately filed an appeal with the superior court, but a month later, two other defendants Joseph Felmet and Andrew Johnson received even harsher sentences from Whitfield. Johnson was fined fifty dollars and court costs, while Felmet, as a native Southerner and latter day scalawag, was sentenced to six months on the road gang, six times the maximum allowed by law. When the prosecutor pointed out the error. Whitfield reluctantly reduced Felmet’s sentence to thirty days, remarking “I can’t keep all these things in my little head”

Judge Whitfield clearly had trouble understanding the law. Despite the fact that the Supreme Court had ruled segregation of interstate travel unconstitutional, and therefore illegal, he didn’t give a damn. Bigotry ruled and most likely still does. Jews, nigras, any goddam Yankee foreigner deserves the lesson of the chain gang. That’s Southern hospitality.

Bayard Rustin deserves quite a lot of praise for his part in the journey.