Other Voices

WALKER PERCY, 60, poet and novelist: I can see the South easily becoming simply a part of the Sunbelt--maybe the heart of a Southern belt running all the way from Virginia around to Los Angeles. I can see it just emerging into another Texas, with wheeler-dealer politics, Lyndon Johnson and John Connally, with Billy James Hargis and Billy Graham.

But there is another possibility. Given the thesis that Southerners possess a certain talent for law, for government and politics --you remember the early Virginians--then maybe those talents will now be free to manifest themselves. Perhaps the South owes the country the debt. The North saved the Union the first time. I'm slightly optimistic that the South will save it a second time.

RAY JENKINS, 46, editorial-page editor of the Alabama Journal: In the next 20 years, I think the South is going to become scarcely distinguishable from any other part of the country. We're surrendering a lot of traditions, but I'm not sure that they're worth a lot. Who wants hookworm and pellagra?

I'm sort of pessimistic about racial problems. We're headed in the direction of Northern race relations where the blacks are going to be ghettoized and where you have this enormous difference in the schools between the whites from the suburbs and the blacks from the ghetto.

ALBERT MURRAY, 60, novelist and essayist: Certain regional characteristics will be maintained. Southern belles won't give up those accents because they're smart and know it often helps to sound dumb. But young liberal Southerners are rejecting the views--especially about race--of their Confederate ancestors. For the first time since the failure of the old Populist movement, we've got a workable coalition of poor whites, liberal whites and minorities. Jimmy Carter's manhood is entwined with Andrew Young's, just like Huck Finn's was with Jim.

I hope the changes are permanent, but there could be a counterthrust. These things always go up and down. As a Southerner, my main response is through the blues. The nature of the blues is improvisation ... you must be ready for all eventualities.

REUBIN ASKEW, 48, Governor of Florida: The South is going to be very much assimilated in the national mainstream, and the issues that concern the country generally are going to concern the South. People from the South will be accepted politically with much less suspicion and reluctance.

Most of the economic growth of this country over the next 25 years is going to occur in the Sunbelt. As the South grows, we have an opportunity to avoid the mistakes in urban growth that the North has made. I realize that you will have people of different economic levels living apart--the urban trend in the North has resulted in white suburbs and black ghettoes. That isn't easy to avoid; it is a matter of making housing opportunities available without discrimination.

DEAN RUSK, 67, former Secretary of State: I'm very optimistic. With a little luck the South can show the way for the rest of the country in race relations. Blacks and whites are working together in the South. There are personal relationships here upon which we can build in ways that are not true in Watts and in Chicago. I think we can expect blacks to take a greater role in public service and in community affairs.

ALEXANDER HEARD, 59, chancellor of Vanderbilt University: The combination of resources now available in the South, including human resources and climate and water, promise the South a level of material prosperity that it has not enjoyed in relation to the rest of the nation for 150 years.

I believe that the evolution of black persons to full and equal status will be more rapid and harmonious in the South than elsewhere. The third century of American independence will be distinguished by a massive emergence of the South from the shackles of its inheritance into a major locus of the nation's economic, social and cultural strength.

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