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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Virginius Dabney, July 31, 1975. Interview A-0311-2. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Few people publicly opposed massive resistance, though some did privately

Dabney views the immediate post-<cite>Brown</cite> era as a time when people should have spoken out publicly against massive resistance, but rarely did. Again, Dabney refers to the tenuous relationship between newspaper management and newspaper editors.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Virginius Dabney, July 31, 1975. Interview A-0311-2. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

DANIEL JORDAN:
Were there any letters to the editor of the Times-Dispatch from people of substance in the legal community to the effect that interposition was a pretty weak stance?
VIRGINIUS DABNEY:
Maybe, I don't remember any.
DANIEL JORDAN:
It is sort of interesting that should be in a position of determining things like interposition, the fact that there wasn't an outcry as to, although apparently Powell and others did privately, recognizing that Do you think that a pattern is sort of setting in as we talk about this of people sort of forfeiting their public responsibilities?
VIRGINIUS DABNEY:
Well, I think that some of them did. Maybe I did. I think that it was an era in which people should have spoken out when they knew that things were going in a way that might prove disastrous.
WILLIAM H. TURPIN:
Would you do anything differently if you were in that position again? Is there anything in retrospect that you think you could have done, or should have done?
VIRGINIUS DABNEY:
I don't know what I could have done short of resigning.