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Article: Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South.
- Article from:
- The Mississippi Quarterly
- Article date:
- December 22, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Mississippi State University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Sometime between Tuesday, November 8, 1932, and Monday, May 17, 1954, the author of this splendid book believes, "the South left Yesterday and entered Tomorrow." It did so reluctantly, its shameless political demagogues ranting "nigger" and "never"; its reactionary planter-banker-business elite dragging its feet; its "pillar institutions," its churches, press, its universities, too insular, too blinded by tradition to sense a stake in impending change; its tiny liberal minority too deeply divided against itself and too easily neutralized by red-baiting to provide effective leadership. When change did come, John Egerton observes, it came not through "voluntary acts of ...