The South, the State University and the Regional Promise

4 that, except for an elite, education was not only unattainable - it was also unnecessary. And among the few who graduated from state universities the brightest and best too often joined the “brain drain,” settling and making their contributions outside the South, while those who remained frequently pointed up the degree to which these institutions had become the indentured servants, rather than the tutors, of Southern society. Not until the decades following World War I did the state universities in the region begin to grow out of what Howard Odum called their “immaturity,” a condition which he defined in terms of the “small number of people in each [Southern] state, in active control of state policies, who know or care what a first class university is or should be.” The quest for maturity began in earnest with the emergence of a new generation of educational leaders, typified by Odum, by Futrall and others in Arkansas, and by faculties of talent and imagination, “reaching out directly into the life of the people” and daring even to organize such agencies as the University Commission on the Race Question. Conceiving of themselves as regenerative forces within the region, they accepted the challenge of Charles H. Brough, the scholar who became Arkansas’ governor, to embark upon a crusade for “a New Chivalry ... in dealing with every problem of civic and social welfare.” Their approach created a new sense of pride and confidence in state universities. Testimony to the strength and adaptability of the institutions rebuilt by this new generation was their ability to survive a great depression, a world war, and a second Reconstruction - and to move confidently into an age of unparalleled growth and progress. Yet, despite the giant strides of the past two decades, the regional lag persists. But is is significant that references to this lag are now less likely to prompt outbursts of defensive rhetoric than they are a willingness to confront the disparities realistically with a view toward ascertaining why they exist and how they can be overcome. Today, in 1977, the South and its state universities stand at a peculiar historical juncture, one in which they are buffeted by various crosswinds. The region is again in style, but not so much, I think, because a Southerner occupies the White House. Indeed, his presence there may be the result, rather than the cause, of the recent change in the national perception of the South, a change prompted largely by alterations in the nation’s perception of itself. The region continues to serve as a counterpoint to the national experience, but in a wholly novel way; rather than being a foil for national claims o