University of Arkansas Commencement Address, 1969

1/25/69 Fayetteville Address -9- the hands of those white or black who have not yet learned that power has its duties as well as its rights. But that's where we are, Arkansas and the world, in the midst of a revolution of rising expectations. And we who call ourselves conservatives have done much to foment it. Who sold these people TV sets, and made a profit at it? We did. Graduates and friends of this and similar institutions. And who is advertising on those TV sets, creating a desire for goods and services most of these people can't yet afford? We are. We are doing that. Owing to the very ease of communication our "conservative" economic system brought about, we can't wait 100 years to take the next step. Or fifty. Or twenty. Or ten. For a yearning of this kind, once induced, can never be suppressed. That's why economic necessity, political reality, and moral force require that the ability to earn the means of satisfying those wants be imparted now. I would not know how to do this in Milwaukee, or Los Angeles, where there is a large minority of Negro citizens living entirely apart (segregated, if you will) from any communication with white citizens. Or in Nigeria, a whole new nation experiencing all of the desires of the space age while still emerging from the Stone Age. That's why the lead must come from here, our region, where there is daily, easy intercourse among all of us. Because the same loyal obedience to unenforceable obligation does exist in all humans in the relationships with which they are familiar. If we bring forward the day whe