Brandt Ayers to "Progressives": We Failed

In a recent column, the Anniston "Red" Star's H. Brandt Ayers says that he and his fellow southern progressives failed in their efforts to create an ideal South.

OXFORD, Miss. — A large group of aging Southerners, the New South generation of the 1970s, came here to Ole Miss to tell our stories again, and to ponder why Southern progressives have become extinct volcanoes.

Across three generations the progressive instinct in the South has boiled to the surface in bright eruptions of promising reform only to cool, almost at the moment of epiphany, and die out.

Our generation’s progressive movement lit up the sky for a moment, and then it went away, just as its predecessors had — an example and a warning to yet another broad-minded effort now being formed.

We called ourselves the L.Q.C. Lamar Society, after the Mississippi statesman celebrated in John Kennedy’s “Profiles In Courage,” a firebrand secessionist who became a voice of reconciliation after the Civil War...

The Lamar Society wanted to focus the new wealth and leadership emerging after 1970 on avoiding Northern mistakes in our growing cities, and finding answers to the economic anemia of rural areas. With the end of segregation and a rising economy, we dreamed of creating an ideal South.

We failed. I failed as president of the Society. A liberal voice fell silent, and few now care about the ghettoization of our cities or rural decline. We are focused instead on “family values,” whatever that is.

Mr. Ayers shouldn't be quite so hard on himself. The South has come a long way since the days of segregation, both morally and economically. Race has diminished as an issue as new generations of Southerners who have never known segregation have reached voting age. The South is more prosperous now than it has ever been, and continues to outperform the rest of the nation economically.

So, why all this doom and gloom? My guess is that folks like Mr. Ayers are simply jealous that the advances in the South since the 70's have either occurred outside the realm of politics or have coincided with the rise of the Republican Party. The enlightened leadership and extravagant plans of the "progressives" were largely rejected, yet the progress still happened. Now, their efforts seem like a lot of wasted energy, and they are reduced to sitting on the sidelines only to say, "Things would have been so much better if we would have been in charge."