After only eighteen years of non-interference, there were already indications of melioration, though ``in a slight degree,'' to be sure.

There were more indications by the mid twentieth century. I leave it to the statisticians to say what they were, but I noticed several a few years ago, during an automobile ride from Memphis to Hattiesburg. In town after town my companion pointed out the Negro school and the White school, and in every instance the former made a better appearance (it was newer, for one thing). It really looked as if a change of the sort predicted by Booker T. Washington had been going on. But with the renewal of interference in 1954 (as with its beginning in 1835), the improvement was impaired.

For over a hundred years Southerners have felt that the North was picking on them. It's infuriating, this feeling that one is being picked on, continually, constantly. By what right of superior virtue, Southerners ask, do the people of the North do this? The traditional strategy of the South has been to expose the vices of the North, to demonstrate that the North possessed no superior virtue, to ``show the world that'' (as James's Christopher Newman said to his adversaries) ``however bad I may be, you're not quite the people to say it.''

In the pre Civil War years, the South argued that the slave was not less humanely treated than the factory worker of the North. At the present time, the counter-attack takes the line that there's no more of the true spirit of ``integration'' in the North than in the South. The line is a pretty good one.