Hays, Brooks

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Article in the George Washington University Magazine legislators and school directors are being elected, often with help from white voters, all across the South. Achieving racial justice remains the task of first priority for the South. Its religious, political and educational resources must be fully committed, or needless suffering will continue to create tensions and ill will. The slowing down of the movement toward equality in some places is doubtless due to reaction against the excesses of militants on the campuses and, to a lesser extent, in the streets, but the white majority cannot afford to change the priorities - granted that the ending of violence and maintenance of order are also matters of great urgency. The suppression of crime must not be confused with repression of the valid aspirations of our fellow men. An increasing number of white Southerners are aware of this. Two specific activities illustrate the point - one by an important religious body, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the other by a self-constituted bipartisan and biracial group of Southerners, the Southern Committee on Political Ethics (SCOPE), interested in, among other things, securing full political rights of minorities. The writer is currently serving as chairman of this Committee and has the support of such influential Southerners as former Congressman Frank Smith of Mississippi, and Carl Elliott of Alabama; newspaper publishers Hodding Carter, Jr., of Greenville, Mississippi; H. B. Patterson of Little Rock, Arkansas; and others, including educators, labor leaders and businessmen. The Baptist exertions in the race...

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Brooks Hays Materials

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University of Arkansas