Conciliation - A New Factor in the South's Progress - Page 1

Speech on the need for conciliationSpeech by Brooks Hays Blue Ridge, North Carolina July 27, 1963 Conciliation – A New Factor in the South’s Progress The south has advanced by almost every measurement. Once we were the stricken South – for war and poverty took their toll. Through nearly seventy-five years following the Civil War, both racial groups shared in the experience produced by poverty, illness, and poor schools; and when partial solutions were being discovered, grave inequalities made it impossible for all segments of Southern society to advance together. Rural whites along with both urban and rural Negroes failed to share equitably in the region’s progress. More recently, relative poverty has affected the white population of the cities almost to the same extent as in rural areas. Courageous men and women, moved by a vision of a better life for the region, have continued to attack upon adversity. The negative sin of indifference to social wrongs has also become a target. The antidote for these wrongs is our idealism, and it has an outcropping in the church, in the colleges and schools, and in business and politics. The concept of a Solid South has generally been confined to politics. This, too, is changing. We do not need a provincial consciousness with distorted political expressions such as we had in the third party movements of 1948. Ancient shibboleths cannot unite the South, but a quickened conscience will help us invoke a spirit of unity in th