Prospect for Liberalism in Dixie Discussed by Panel of Southerners

A Southern conservative last night admitted that the South, while ostensibly holding to its conservative viewpoint, will eventually "buy a part of today's liberal program."

Speaking at the Law School Forum. James J. Kilparick, editor of the Richmond News Leader and ally of the Byrd forces in Virginia, said that, while Southerners declare themselves to be conservatives, "when he money is being passed our we are right there at the through asking for our share."

Sharing the platform with Kilpatrick were two Southern liberals who did not view this process with such evident alarm. Hodding Carter, editor of a small-town Mississippi paper, agreed that liberalism is, and probably will remain, a "dirty word" in the South.

He maintained that the best way to develop a healthy liberalism in the South would be to divorce liberal philosophy from the racial policies connected with it.

Although Carter said he did not welcome the desegregation of public schools, he disagreed with the conservative response to school integration. Southern leaders should have admitted to their constituents that segregation could be preserved neither by violence, continued litigation, the formation of private schools, or the closing of public schools.

The other liberal on the program, Armistead Boothe, Virginia state senator who is considered the leader of the anti-Byrd forces, agreed with Carter. He called the massive resistance laws "the greatest tragedy through which Virginia has passed in the twentieth century."

"If our people had been told the truth from the beginning, if they had been told they they couldn't close their schools, we would have come out of this situation a much greater people," he declared.

Boothe maintained that in this situation, what the South lacked was "some good solid, common-sense, liberal leadership."

Kilpatrick, when asked whether the Southern conservative leaders had misled their constituents in the crisis, answered, "The first thing a political leader must do is look over his shoulder to see if anyone is following." In this situation, Southerners may not have followed a liberal leadership, he said.