In response to my “What End?” Bruce writes a response that really made me think.

Bruce says,

“I think when people want to know whether we will win or not, what most of them really mean is that they want to know if things will get on the right track in their own lifetimes.”

Boy, is that ever true!

When I was young I was obsessed with stopping integration, even though I knew exactly what would happen. In my security files, I discovered that the University of South Carolina was integrated as soon as me and my group left the school.

They had announced plans to bring in the first black student into a white public university in South Carolina in January of 1963 to the University of South Carolina. It had already been announced.

Then they switched it to Clemson and held off the University of South Carolina until September when we would be gone.

Why January of 1963? Because Fritz Hollings ran for governor in 1958 on one sentence, “There will no integration in South Carolina while I am governor.” His term ended in January of 1963.

Holings was the only Southern politician who backed John Kennedy against Lyndon Johnason of Texas for the 1960 presidential nomination from the word go. He made a deal with Kennedy that there would be integration in South Carolina until January of 1963.

Integration normally satrted at the beginning of a school year in September, and South Carolina was the only place where it began in January.

Nobody ever asked about that.

So I devoted a lot of time to a hopeless fight to keep integration from coming to ME in my home state.

That was pure selfishness.

So my article “What End?” as Bruce points out, reflects what any point of view does: some of the outlook of hte person doing the writing.

It is easy for me to be comfortable with the fact that we are now n a winnable battle for thelong-term survival of our race, but that still leaves Bruce and other young people in a hellish situation.

I am sitting here in fomfortable retirement in a nice condo giving very practical advice abut the long-term struggle. Since all of us want desperately for our race to survive, that is important advice for you.

But for Ole Bob, it is also a ticket to lala land. And the Bruces of our team have to keep reminding me not to lose track of the world THEY live in.