A GITATORS BLAMED FOR RACIAL STRIFE

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30855, 14 September 1965, Page 2

A GITATORS BLAMED FOR RACIAL STRIFE

Uneducated and ill-informed white people, who had grown up with prejudice against the Negroes, and outside agitators were blamed for much of the racial strife in the southern United States by Mrs Alice Carpenter, of Tempe, Arizona, in an interview yesterday.

Intelligent southerners realised that the Negroes had not had a fair deal and were

willing to do what they could to help promote civil rights, she said.

“I feel integration will proceed peacefully in the south from now on, but more trouble is likely to come in the north, where the white people do not have the same fellow-feeling for Negroes as do most of the people in the south,” she added. Mrs Carpenter is visiting Christchurch with her husband, Dr. A. E. Carpenter, during the trans-Pacific Baptist crusade. They lived in Alabama for 17 years before moving to Arizona about two years ago.

Distorted

“The American press has given a distorted image of our racial problems,” she said. “The situation is bad in a sense, but the blame has been put on the wrong people. It is the outside agitators, many of whom belong to communist-run organisations, who are causing most of the trouble.” The Negro in his local community was just as resentful of this interference as the white people. “Personal friends of mine among the. Negroes in Alabama have said to me: 'lf only these agitators would just leave us alone we would be able to work out our problems with the white people,’ ” she said.

Students were very liberal in their attitude to the Negroes.

They were both from Alabama and became firm friends, and our son often brought him home to stay. That was some years ago, at the beginning of the trouble in Alabama, and it is an indication of how the younger generation feels,” she said. In Tempe, Arizona, there was no Negro problem. “Our church is fully integrated. Indians and Negroes are welcome, but we don’t have many actual members from either race as they don’t live near enough," she said. Mrs Carpenter is programme chairman of the Women’s Missionary Union of her husband’s church—the First Southern Baptist Church of Tempe—and teaches Sunday school.

“Our son roomed with a Negro in pilot-training school.