I was an integrationist when the Communists camped almost nightly on my trail in the early 1930’s and lighted beckoning bright fires in the frightening dark of that time. I did not believe then (any more than now) that the moment the bars of segregation are lifted all the white women of the South will fall into the arms of Negro mates. Many of my acquaintances gleefully professed to believe this and would just as gleefully declare that Negroes lynched for rape had been only unlucky in being caught with their always-willing white paramours. They found substance for this opinion in both fact and fiction, which too loudly proclaimed the revulsive feeling of the white female for the Negro and the inviolable purity of white womanhood. My acquaintances believed that Southern whites protested too much. And so, it seems, did the Communists. Or perhaps they did not. It could have been just a line and the carrying out of explicit directives on “How to Recruit Negroes in the Eastern States.” It could have been that they played expertly on what they thought were the secret dreams of a young, green, mixed-up and lonely man. I suppose all people suffer from these maladies, and especially from youth, in early adulthood; but I had more besides. I had a severe case of “Negrophophilia” which alternately wrenched my heart with hate and love. I was confused about the direction of my life and extremely doubtful (as I sometimes am today) of life’s purpose. Whether naturally or through learning, I shrank from all but a handful of people, and some of these were a disappointment to me, and I have no doubt that I was a sore trial to them. I lacked social accommodation. I have never thought tolerance admirable as a principle either of adjustment or feeling, and I rejected it entirely for my friends. Dogs were to be tolerated, and crying babies, and strangers with whom one did not have to become acquainted. My friends were constantly not living up to my foolish expectations; my judgments were severe. I was continually breaking with and rejoining them, but with no increase in understanding. I do not think I would have become a Communist even had these deficiencies not been in me. But, certainly, except for them, the Communists would have had an easier time assailing my weak position on the extreme left flank of democracy. The wrong scouts came to reconnoiter, and they took the wrong approach.