Hays, Brooks

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Speech reflecting on recent Congressional election defeat -12- of the South so that the Negro minority voice is never heard. On these issues I would like to find middle ground that meets the test of the moderation. I have long maintained that the Supreme Court’s original decision ordering school desegregation upset orderly race progress, regardless of the righteousness of its plea for equal justice. It has been my hope that the implementation might be made more flexible than was originally assumed possible, and the recent Court decision in the Alabama Pupil Placement case has made me more optimistic about the future. While the Court has not weakened its devotion to constitutional rights, it is giving evidence of scrutinizing more closely the complexities of achieving desegregation. It is this spirit of justice tempered with understanding of the South’s problem that can reverse the present trend toward abolition of public schools. While it might be said that there is some lack of reality in the Southern viewpoint which prefers inferior private education or still hopes that public education can continue without adherence to the principle of desegregation, men of good will can provide more effective leadership when they do not have to defend themselves from the charge of being mass integrationists. There has not yet been enough leadership exerted in the South to lead the people out of the present impasse. Some of the responsibility for this must be laid elsewhere, since gratuitous attacks of the South only exacerbate the

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Brooks Hays Materials

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University of Arkansas