302. Memorandum From the Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (Wilson) to the Assistant Secretary (Cleveland)1
SUBJECT
- Civil Disobedience and the UN
I suspect we should be pretty cautious for the time being on human rights issues in the UN and particularly about drawing analogies between peaceful change and orderly procedures at home and within the UN context.
As I read it, the Southern whites know what they’re doing: the resistance in Alabama, the rising toughness of the cops, the failure to carry out the agreement in Birmingham, and the general delaying tactics on the Hill are designed to force the Negroes to move into more militant action. There now appears to be a good chance it will work.
I am told that Martin Luther King is on the verge of endorsing civil disobedience. If this happens, it could split the Negro movement wide open. Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, and the other good moderates could be swept aside by the Farmers, Baldwins, Rustins and worse. In the process, the white liberals could be driven out of the movement.
Then all the Eastlands and Thurmonds would have to do is discover that the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee has been penetrated by communists (which already could be the case).
If, in fact, the militants get control, and if the government is forced to turn against the major Negro organizations over the issue of civil disobedience—meaning cops carrying Negroes off airport runways and so on-our [Page 664] job of selling orderly procedures and democratic institutions to bring about peaceful change will hardly be facilitated in the UN.
This is only to suggest that perhaps we’d better play by ear. It may also be that we should keep in closer touch with Justice.
- Source: Kennedy Library, Cleveland Papers, Racial Discrimination File, Box 19. Confidential.↩