The South’s “Granitic Opposition”

The Supreme Court of the United States scarcely had delivered its opinion in the school segregation cases before Northern newspapermen set out for Dixie. They came like swallows, or like locusts, in great migratory waves: from Richmond to Farmville, from Farmville to Charleston, wherever the airlines flew, these agreeable carpetbaggers hopped from one superficial interview to another. In two weeks, or at most three, they did Atlanta, Birmingham, Montgomery and Jackson; then bacK to Chicago or Manhattan, experts, experts all. They have been a trial, Lord bless us, they have.

But some months ago, one journalist came, much better than the rest. He stayed a long time; he brought with him a keen ear and a perceptive eye. Plainly, his personal sympathies lay with integration, not with segregation; he opposes the Southern point of view. Yet to a remarkable degree, John Bartlow Martin managed to suspend his own feelings. He wrote for the Saturday Evening Post a series of five articles dealing chiefly with the Deep South’s resistance to the Court’s decree. These articles, somewhat expanded and now bound in book form, The Deep South Says Never (Ballantine, 35 cents paper, $2.50 cloth), offer perhaps the most objective look yet taken at the Southern school problem. Here is some first-rate reporting.

JJ

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James Jackson Kilpatrick

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The Supreme Court of the United States scarcely had delivered its opinion in the school segregation cases before Northern newspapermen set out for Dixie. They came like swallows, or like locusts, in great migratory waves: from Richmond to Farmville, from Farmville to Charleston, wherever the airlines flew, these agreeable carpetbaggers hopped from one superficial interview to another. In two weeks, or at most three, they did Atlanta, Birmingham, Montgomery and Jackson; then bacK to Chicago or Manhattan, experts, experts all. They have been a trial, Lord bless us, they have.

But some months ago, one journalist came, much better than the rest. He stayed a long time; he brought with him a keen ear and a perceptive eye. Plainly, his personal sympathies lay with integration, not with segregation; he opposes the Southern point of view. Yet to a remarkable degree, John Bartlow Martin managed to suspend his own feelings. He wrote for the Saturday Evening Post a series of five articles dealing chiefly with the Deep South’s resistance to the Court’s decree. These articles, somewhat expanded and now bound in book form, The Deep South Says Never (Ballantine, 35 cents paper, $2.50 cloth), offer perhaps the most objective look yet taken at the Southern school problem. Here is some first-rate reporting.