Carter Describes South As 'Symbol of Horror'

The North needs the South as a "horror symbol" to stimulate racial progress, Hodding Carter III, associate editor of the Delta Democrat Times, told students in the Cabot Hall living room last night.

While the North needs the moral outrage at Southern atrocities to stimulate local reform, Southern progress depends largely on Northern pressures.

Speaking on "The South: What Now?", Carter also sug-tested that lagging interest in voter registeration drives will make progress in civil liberties difficult. Now that it is possible to register, he said, the tedious block by block of recruiting voters will be unexciting and less satisfying than earlier civil rights work.

But voter registration is no less important than it was. With roughly half of the Mississippi population disenfranchised, he said, Southern leaders will not be forced to alter their racially conservative stance.

This political climate was responsible, Carter explained, for the tone of J. P. Coleman's campaign for the governorship in 1964. Coleman, recently appointed justice for the U. S. Fifth Circuit Court, had "stuck his neck out for Kennedy in 1960," Carter said, and "got it chopped off."

In 1963, while campaigning for governor, Coleman made an ideological about face, trying "to retrieve part of his neck," but was defeated the following year.

The same political situation, Carter predicted, will lead to Ross Barnett's election as governor next year.

Carter also criticized third party movements on both ends of the political spectrum. In 1968, as the national parties move toward the center, a third Southern party may emerge, "unless the Republicans want to commit suicide again."

Today, the Freedom Democratic Party has split the liberals in the South. The only chance for a "rationalized politics," Carter feels, lies in seeking coalitions between dissident factions.

The FDP itself has little electoral support, he said. Until more voters are registered, the FDP cannot hope to win a majority, and can safely be ignored by the established Southern leadership.

A system of three party politics, Carter said, creates a situation "in which the only losers are Negroes, liberals of any color, and progress."