Stop Badgering

Does the North pick unmercifully on the South? Can the South solve its racial and economic problems by itself? Both these questions got a partially affirmative answer last week from Hodding Carter, youthful publisher of the Greenville, Miss. Delta Democrat-Times. No bourbon-&-magnolia reactionary, Carter won a Pulitzer Prize this year for his forthright editorial stand against racial intolerance (TIME, May 20). In a Saturday Evening Post article, Southerner Carter admitted that the South has a chip on its shoulder, then let go some resentment toward carping Northern critics. Wrote he:

"The centers of publication of all major organs of fact, opinion and fiction are located outside of the South. . . . Many literate Southerners believe the South a victim of a literary and journalistic conspiracy. . . . Some of the resentment is reasonable. . . .

"The most frequently heard comment from supporters as well as opponents of Bilbo was that if the Yankees had kept out of the election he could have been beaten. . . . Our Bilbos and Rankins are proper targets for magazines of national circulation. But honestly disturbed outsiders should re-examine the techniques of such 'meddling' with emphasis upon understanding and possibly, results. . . .

"Organized liberals and writers who are concerned about the South need to change their approach. . . . They should approach the South with compassion, not with a savage badgering.... We Southerners just don't take to that. ... The racial concepts and prejudices which the Southerner holds . . . cannot be changed by law, by ridicule or by threat. Only reason and education, and an old concept of brotherhood . . . can change them. . . .

"Most Northerners who are preoccupied with the South's perversities are putting up-to-date words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. .. . Most Southerners today are again chanting, 'To hell with the Yankees.' . . . Unless the South rids itself of the belief that outside pressure is mounting unendurably, an old terror may walk again at noon" (see below).

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