The Petal paper. [volume] (Petal, Miss.) 1953-19??, 1959-04-16


Alabama, and other parts of the
South. These new radicals" are
not going to be content to be
dominated by Southern minds
which they put in a class with
that extinct bird which was re-
puted to fly backward.
1t is perfectly obvious that SEN
ator Johnson is going to have to
bend with the wind of the last
election if he is going to continue
to exercise the magic control Of
Democratic senators - and in
direct control Of Democratic
members of the House - in the
next Congress. He could not do
otherwise In the last Congress.
the Democratic majority on COM
mittees was frequently one vote.
A Southern conservative could
vote with the Republicans and
defeat a report on almost anv
measure he chose. In the next
Congress, the Democratic mem
bership of committees may be as
much as two to one, with the new
members drawn from the ranks
of the radical new senators.
The South's veto over legis1a-
tic it does not like is gone if the
new members of the House and
Senate choose to end it. And there
are already evidences that they
do so choose. They are making de-
mands for representation in the
House and Senate leadership, and
some of them are agitating for
change in present rules under
which committee chairmen auto
cratically bottle up legislation
they do not want = chairnen
such as Barden of North Carolina
(the education bilD, Smith of Vir-
ginia, and Eastland of MISSISSIPPI
pi
Thus the South is witnessing
the first phase in the passing Of
its inordinate political power.
It is pertinent to ask what has
brought us to the pass where we
have so far missed the dream Of
Grady and defaulted on the real
ism of Webb.
Slavery introduced and the
Civil War fastened the cotton
system, with all its implications,
firmly upon our section. At the
close of the Civil War, the South
ern white man and the Southern
Negro evolved out of their power
ty the barter system that came to
be the share-cropper and tenancy
of the South. It was a scheme that
served its purpose in its day, but
it has been an unmitigated curse
for decades. It dragged our peo-
pie, white and black, further and
further into poverty and. brought
with poverty all the ugly hand
maidens; human degeneracy, dis
ease, illiteracy and prejudice.
It produced the denagogues
who beat their breasts on the
Fourth of July and proclaimed
THANK God we have no peasan-
try" I spent six. months in Cen
trail Europe and seven months in
Southeastern Europe and I never
saw peasants live under eondi-
tons that I have seen in the
South. The tensions inherent in
the cotton system = tensions of
people of different races living to-
gether produced the dema-
.gogues who have more often than
not constituted the political lead
ership of the South: the dema-
gogues who have so often led the
people of the South up blind al
leys.
One of my early recollections
was sitting under the oratorical
spell of one of Mississippi's most
blatent denagogues = SO years
ago, it was - and hearing him
promise that if he was elected to
the Senate, he would bring about
the repeal of tn Fourteenth a.
mendment and revision of the
Fifteenth amendment. But Var
daman didn't, Nor did Cole
Blease, nor Pitchford Ben Till