Letter from Albert Winston Henderson, Jr. to President Harry S. Truman

Albert Winston, Henderson, Jr. 1055 West Boone St. Piqua, Ohio P.P.F. February 11, 1948 The President The White House Washington 25, D. C. 200 My dear Mr. President: 2/3/48 I am only nineteen years old. During those nineteen years I have seen, heard of, and experienced many injus- tices. I have had many reasons to believe that America is not really the land to which I used to -- and still do -- pledge allegiance. There have been many instances when I concluded that the Constitution is a sorry example of hypocrisy in a democracy, that Christian America is not much better than Nazi Germany, that many of Capitol x 93 Hill's 531 servants of the people are really slaves of hatred and perpetuators of intolerance and injustice. You see, I am a Negro. I go to church and hear that all men are brethren and that we are our brother's keepers; then I go home and read or hear about a Talmadge screaming about Aryan suprem- acy to a mob of enraptured American-style storm troopers, or about the bed-sheet-boys having lynched, blinded, or beaten a man who fought for his country, for his home, and for his rights. I look at the record of men like George Washington Carver, who was as great a biochemist as Thomas Edison was an inventor. In spite of the most shameful injusti- ces ever perpetuated, Negroes are succeeding in many fields of endeavor. How can supposedly intelligent people, knowing that, believe in white supremacy? I read the Constitution's Article Fifteen, with its guarantee of enfranchisement; yet I know that less than one per cent of Mississippi's more than one million Negroes voted in 1946. I know, also, that it was not disinterest, but rather fear and a poll tax that kept so many American citizens from voting. There was fear caused by the race- baiting rampages of Bilbo and his kind. There was fear for one's life, for one's home, for one's job, for one's family, for one's friends, and, in some cases and with obvious justification, fear for America. What place has such fear in the hearts and minds of law-abiding citizens, whatever their race, their color, or their creed. Does such fear hinder or help America? You know the answers.