New York, Nov. 10—It is the supreme irony of the Court’s decision that some white families will now emigrate from the South in order to place their children in segregated schools. I have in mind a specific example, a Southerner from Greenville, Mississippi, whose salary is $11,000 and who believes that integration of the schools will diminish the quality of public education for his children. At $11,000, he cannot afford private schools: so he will go north, where the movement to integrate the schools started, and he will find no difficulty in establishing himself where de facto segregation survives, unruffled by Supreme Court decisions.
On the other hand, the mood of the South is not by any means mutinous. They saw it coming, with that inexorability which a people come to experience who know deceit and adversity. As a political matter, it is not likely that the Supreme Court’s decision will drive the bitter-enders into the arms of Wallace. The reason is that they know that President Nixon, and Mr. Finch, and the Attorney General, all of them counseled and sought out a little more time. The Supreme Court said no brusquely, quite ambiguously. So, what would President Wallace have done? Impeach Warren Burger?
Comments