USC Newsfilm; Southern Politics: Terry Sanford

Perhaps. And I'd like to talk I hope out cut off talk in the appropriate time for you to ask questions about anything that you think I'll talk about that you would like to talk about for a long time I have felt that the South had to merge in automatically would lead out for the rest of the nation and a great many people certainly those in other parts of the country might not have agreed with me. Nineteen forty five and forty six when it looked to many as if we were at the BACK WHAT PART OF THE NATION. And they'd maybe in some respects a backward part of the world. I think now over this generation that the South has emerged is now in a position to provide leadership in many many ways and in the conduct of our educational systems than our own approach to

community development. The way society pulls itself together. Think the South has a better opportunity right now than any other part of the country to provide the leadership that the nation needs and I'm not obviously talking exclusively about politics I'm not even talking mostly about politics but in so many ways now the South is the place of great promise and great hope for the rest of the nation but also for that same period of time had a theme that I have liked to promote and that is that the future of the state the nation had to come from greatest sense of responsibility on the part of state government sought to put it another way that the citizens of the country had to rely on their state governments to accomplish things that needed to be accomplished more than they had been doing.

And to a far greater extent. Then they could possibly rely on one central last national government to get things done and so that brought my thinking back around that a great place of service a great place of opportunities to do things that ought to be done in the south. Fortunately because I was born here and in the governor's office because I felt that states were close enough to the people to sense the needs and to achieve the ambitions and at the same time large enough to take objective steps that sometimes can't be taken so close to home as local governments. It was at the same time not so remote as a centralized government so far along my ambition was to be governor of North Carolina. I thought it was a day out that things could be done that I thought ought to be done and

that if I were in that position I could do them. Now I didn't come here to talk about North Carolina government in North Carolina history but to talk and I sort of overlook the you of the governess in the south and then using that as a starting point we can talk about the South we can talk about politics we can talk about the federal system or anything else that you want to talk about. I was elected governor in nineteen sixty one thousand sixty was a tough time in many ways. We were seeing the beginning of the civil rights movement. Young South Carolinian had come to college in Greensboro or in T and it started literally it started in the nation. The sit ins that ultimately led to the voluntary desegregation of a great

many eating establishments and ultimately to the federal legislation that assured that it would be done. And then when he finished that he invented the street demonstration to give young black people an opportunity to demonstrate that they were dissatisfied with what society was doing to them. That was of course Jesse Jackson. And that was simply a symptom of that particular period of time because it was also the time of the demagogues. It was a time when George Wallaces came to the forefront. It was the time when the Ross Barnett and the awful fall buses had their brief moment in the spotlight of the nation's attention time when they began to project. Their images is the accepted image of the South and the rest of the nation. And it was with that in that kind of a

setting that when I came into politics in the south. And I'm glad that it was I think it was a great historic time. I think those that stood right on those broader issues that now time in history have demonstrated where the correct and honorable issues can take great satisfaction in having been in that exciting period of the emergence of the South because the great burden of the south for so long. It was not the discriminatory affright rights which were bad enough and retarded our. Industrial Development not even the credit restrictions placed on the form of federal states that held us back for so long but the great bondage was the race issue.

It was hardly possible to run without somehow bringing race into a political campaign and so especially the politicians and the people who would seek public office were in bondage to the race issue. And you can look at some of the great names and history of people who never quite rose above that bondage and consequently never achieved at the national scene what are the why US leaders of that caliber might have achieved. I think of Richard Russell of Georgia. Who was a governor in the Senate but always locked in by his stated attitudes. Back in Georgia William Fulbright. The great knife no expert that he became. Nevertheless when he was back in Arkansas campaigning in bondage to the race issue. Certainly Harry Byrd and Sam Ervin and Sam Ervin lucked out and lived long enough to

it to coincide with Watergate and ended a great figure but had it not been for that he too would have simply been among those who were not as effective as they might have been because they were in bondage to the race issue. And of course I don't need to point out your own sonnet to Strom Thurmond except in a peculiar way. We had the senior editors and principal staff people of Time magazine visit. Do you blast you. From all over this about the second time they had ever brought those people to get out and they wanted to be on a campus and we had a few people from our campus to and from the state leadership had gotten hot. We had one political one history professor who in speaking to him said the most significant thing to come out of the elections earlier this month in November. Was the re-election of

Strom Thurmond. Well that shocked the otherwise liberal people that I hear on a liberal university campus and a person of this note should be said because it demonstrated that the that the race issue is no longer an issue that anybody need to pay attention to the fact that Thurmond finally embraced the black vote actively sought it demonstrates that nobody any out anywhere else need to be in bondage to the black issue again. And that's some truth to that. Strom Thurmond didn't do it. He simply perceived it. But what did we see in the way of a break from the past during this generation and what did God knows have to do with it. In the 20s and 30s the forces that worked us toward a more civilized attitude that worked us

toward a land of being a land of opportunity and doing away at least with the obvious restraints on a sizable segment of the population had to come from outside of the political strain was not an issue that a politician could take a farm stand on and expect to win. Unfortunately then those same forces came from in the political stream outside of the South and outside of the state. The most forceful one being the New Deal which brought about a great many reforms and that helped the south to begin to understand itself and its future and its mission and its problem and its plight. And then World War 2 came along. And World War 2 took a great many young people from the south and spread them all over the world with all kinds of other people and they all came back to the south

and lightened a great many of them inspired a great many of them understanding better our problems and our bondage. And so out of the period right after the war you began to see people dared to speak up then in political campaigns suggesting that the South had to free itself of the burden that was holding it down that they had to go back and do what govern a cock set in North Carolina in one thousand one that that it's out duty to help the other strong to help the weak in that unless the strong help the weak. That will all be we and that unless the South gave full opportunity to the black citizen that they that that segment alone would drag down the south and drag down the white people that were on willing to give that. So

the history pretty much is that history of getting out of that bondage you had a man like Alice Arnold run in in Georgia and I couldn't get reelected and he couldn't get elected to anything else because I think he was one of the first people and he wrote a book about it called the the shore. Damn Lee. I see and I'm sure it's in the library and I'm sure that would be worth your reading if for nothing else. But here was a man of courage in a time when there wasn't much political courage and he attempted to say some of the things that needed to be said. And from of all places Georgia there you've had the history of over Gene Tau mention other people that had ridden the race a ship that they own personal advantage unlike anybody perhaps other than Bilbo of Mississippi. Then you had skipped by half a dozen years as a parson like Leroy Collins being elected

in Florida. And unfortunately for the people of Florida and for the people of the nation his Adventist humane views on the plight of the South served as a beacon as a as an exploration for other people coming on in politics in the south. But neither could he get re-elected nor could he get elected when he ran for the United States Senate and primarily because people would not forgive him for seeing that far into the future. When I went to my first governess conference having psyched myself up to think that being governor was really something. I was somewhat dismayed that I was Ross Barnett out of the old old

school that was all both all of us who had just been through his great exercise in Little Rock. There was a fellow that beat George Wallace owned by Hughes in the race a shit man named Patterson and that's when George Wallace made his famous statement that he never would be out segued again. George one day at that meeting. And I could have been I could have despaired of what the state of life was in the south or in the nation if I had just looked at those people. But I also was inspired by the fact that we had turned back a vicious racist campaign in North Carolina that John Kennedy had been elected president and had carried most of the South. And you had in South Carolina that that time I always considered it as

compared to North Carolina a little bit backward. Now some of you might not agree with me but my secretary said you know I have to admire those people from South Carolina. They're so proud of what they've got. She was implying that you didn't have much. And that reminded me of the saying that now as a century or more old of that North Carolina is a is a valley of humility between two mountains of conceit and certainly nobody denies the conceit of the Commonwealth of Virginia but South Carolina had fired the first shot in the civil war. South Carolina had run Strom Thurman as a candidate with a special appeal. Growing really out of a civil rights plank in the Democratic Party's platform and I was absolutely pleased to see that South Carolina had at that

conference they brightest the most forward look in best government at the conference and that was Fritz Hollings. He was well aware of the problems of the state well away of the problems of the South had supported. John Kennedy's election. Indeed it had privately supported his nomination I think to the extent that he absolutely to the limit of the political extent available to him. And I was greatly inspired to see South Carolina coming forward ready to move in by the time as you know when he went out of office he left the his last speech to the legislature here. He set the tone for how South Carolina would handle the question of higher education immigration and not to be like Alabama and Mississippi. But that South Carolina would do it and do it graciously and do it

properly and do it because it was the thing to do. Now he was one of the early god in those two. But again this break with the tradition of the past. I think you were fortunate in having Russell follow him. A very scholarly person the person with a great sense of history as well as the president and where we were and. I think that South Carolina then along with North Carolina along with call Sandoz of Georgia you were seeing in this southeast and pocket of the country the beginning of the break with the past now it took a while and it's been only within the last five or six years that now literally every state has broken with that bondage of the past. And I would have to think that it had been done more by a governess and

state efforts than it had been done purely and simply by the force of the federal government. Now I don't think it could have been done without that outside legislation and force I had hoped it could be done. But I think the presence of that kind of force things done in Congress certainly made it easier for the state leadership but nevertheless it was achieved to the extent it's been achieved at the state level. I'm not going to embarrass you or Professor Brian Dorn by making too much of a speech about him but they won't be a handful of people and Washington that were breaking with the past. Thank Owen Johnson was one of them at a time when he was running to say things and take positions that no other saw than silent to would

would dast say and I and I think ride on was one of the young congressman that understood that the South had to move out now. And so we were seeing this political break all around the break that obviously is not come to perfection but nevertheless it's leading out in my opinion for the for the rest of the nation. You had George Wallace and you had to explore those of human prejudices and. And for a long time it was a close battle I'm not sure that. That George was. Wallace didn't win all of the battles but he obviously didn't win the war and the war is being won by the people that took the opposite. The use you had here in South Carolina again in my opinion of this whole period of history from the end of World War 2

to the present day to right this moment. The most significant thing go saw the election was when John West the Congressman Watts and I sometimes have a mental block and can't think of his name but it's Watson. Albert what. Because that was the last great races to campaign mounted in the south. And John West and the people of South Carolina beat it down and beat it back. 10 years are Leo Watson would have defeated the John West and South Carolina probably in North Carolina certainly in Georgia and any other southern state. And then looking back at what's happened in this generation of breaking with the past I think that was the significant breakthrough that's the final signal that the South has put all of that behind it and is ready now to to go forward. People like Ruben

ask you taking a forthright position against that constitutional amendment that would have prohibited busing which was a very stupid piece of legislation quite aside from the base motives that prompted it and the people now running the state houses in the south may not. Be the wisest and may not be the best. But they'll stack up very well with governors from a part of the country and they'll stack up very well with political courage measured any way you want to measure it for all of them perfections and for all of the examples to the contrary that I could cite to you. I think this means that. The south now has a very bright future very bright future in education and jobs and more important.

Underlying all of that in the vats of the civilising forces that ought to mark a society such as ours count back to the to the God knows that I can look at in the state and what they did in that particular setting to upgrade educational opportunities to erase the disadvantage is that we had in the past placed on people and breaking the. The kind of bonds that held us as a region so long and prevented our progress for so long. So I think now you look to a very bright future. History is not measured just in the political story but the political story. By and large it seems to me reflects the path of history and so it's a convenient starting point is we talk about it. You can talk about the history of

industrial development and what that's done in the way of opportunities of people in the various other institutions. But the political path since they are radically everybody somehow but dissipates and it everybody sets the tone everybody has a boss sometimes and the monarchy sometimes and the majority. But the political history of the South since World War 2 has been a very good history and it's been a history of solid constant advancement. Not always as fast as I would have wanted to see it go but nevertheless moving in the right direction. And I think at the same time if you look at the state houses you'll see that that the people who have served as governor. Constantly there's been ups and downs but the general trend is upward and better and better people are seeking these offices and serving in these offices and serving in a more and more

enlightened manner. I can take I think along with you a great deal of pride in what we have done and I don't want you to think that I am just making a speech that is political and that that takes great pride in our accomplishments while totally Ottaway of our shortcomings. Obviously we still have a great many shortcomings and if we didn't have. It be a pretty dreary future that you would face. I remember a car Scott who ran for the U.S. side it served as God in a sort of dystonic and North Carolina's told me one time when he was a little boy listening to his father who was the North Carolina commissioner of agriculture. At the time people that would names wouldn't mean anything to you but Charles be a cock the great educational governor of the turn of the century and Clarence poll that was a great agricultural leader that they would set around the Scott farm and and young a car Scott was

always so discouraged because he thought all the problems would be solved before he was big enough to take part in a while all the problems aren't solved Wastdale have blighted and say it is but not quite as blight it is in some other parts of the country. We still oppress people and we still do not people their opportunities and their rights and we still do not do nearly enough for education. But we're moving in the right direction and we have moving in the right direction with a far better background a far better citing a far better platform than the South has ever had and maybe the nation is out ahead. I think that it's a great time to be moving is you know moving into a position of leadership now be glad to answer any questions you have. Yes.

OK. You're. Right. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yeah

yeah yeah. Yeah. Yeah.