Word: southernism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...disparate elements that make up this New South. His penetrating, almost colorless eyes and bristle gray hair suggest the Mountain South; the mellow courtesy and the slow, hypnotic cadence of the careful storyteller recall the Cotton South; his easy humor and fascination with historical minutiae bespeak the Southern Culture which has always been more a potential than a reality...
...late fifties, when the South was preparing to close down its schools in protest against the 1954 Supreme Court school desegregation decision, McGill's daily front-page columns were avidly read and misread by both Southern racists and Northern liberals. To the grasseaters of rural Georgia he was a "race-mixer" and worse; former governor Eugene Talmadge referred to him as "Rastus McGill." To the liberals he was the South's single beacon of rationality; they were apt to overlook his claim that "this was never a question of being for integration or against...
...past skirted a definite position on the race issue, McGill has consistently scored all forms of Southern extremism. Some of his most notable editorial writing, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1958, has been in angry pursuit of the Ku Klux Klan and other advocates of violence. "To the Kluxer mentality," he wrote in one anthologized column, "the Christian communion cup must be a Dixie...
...same time. McGill is keenly antagonistic to Southern "liberals" who have continued to compromise their integrity on the race issue. A favorite target is Senator William Fulbright, whom McGill calls "a pathetic sort of character with a great liberal reputation...
...there is one interesting question here: How would a Negro in Jefferson County feel about having his county sheriff in charge of gun licenses? The case is pure theory, since Southern states filled with gun owners are the least likely to adopt any gun laws, but it points out the need for clear criteria for issuing the licenses...