
          INTERCHANGE
A New Magazine: Our Creed and Hopes
          By Suitts, SteveSteve Suitts
          Vol. 1, No. 1, 1978, pp. 2-3
          
          This first issue of Southern_Changes is nothing new.
          On four prior occasions during the last 34 years, the Southern
Regional Council has announced the premiere of a new publication. Each
has differed: one endured for 27 years and another did not live to
celebrate an anniversary. All attempted to mark a new and distinct
emphasis within the organization and a revived hope in the South's
future.
          The publications' names show, perhaps, the changing perception of
the region by an organization born in the days when segregation of the
races was fact enforced by law. The Southern
Frontier was the Council's first publication and lasted for two
years. Then, in 1946, it was revised in title and format as the New South.
          "The change lies in this," the first edition of New South, stated,
"that SRC will from now on strive to study and solve the problems
implicit in (our) goals as parts - symptoms, if you like - of the
overall problem of the South, which is the region's need to develop a
fuller use of its resources, both natural and human, to achieve a
healthy balance between the agriculture and industry within the
region. The democratic corollary to this, of course, lies in the duty
of every Southerner to see to it that such development, as it is
achieved, is used wisely and shared fairly by all, for all. It is to
this development and the democratic shaping of the South's growth that
SRC will give most of its effort." The magazine urged its readers to
join in the task of making the "New South" a reality.
          From 1946 until 1974, the magazine's contributors wrote about the
South with sympathy and outrage. They illuminated the obvious and
obscure problems, pled with and cajoled Southerners to do better - to
help bring social change.
          Harold Fleming, a former director of the Council and one of the old
hands at New South, reflected in its final issue that "to be honest,
 New South helped create the image of Southern readiness for change
that somewhat exceeded the realities of the day." Nonetheless, the New
South found hope when it was scarce and marshaled an intellectual
force which often plain facts could only bring.
          It was just four springtimes ago when New South and its companion tabloid, since 1970,South Today, were merged into a new, colorful, and glossy magazine, Southern Voices. Although its editor observed that "there is even a Southern feel to the universe, suggesting that perhaps the stars are ironically right for this unprecedented venture," it was not to be. After ten months, financial problems silenced Southern Voices.
          During its short life, the magazine marked a change in perception. It was a time, the Council decided, when Southerners of all persuasions could speak to one another about problems and solutions - a time when the entire collected expressions of the South reporting, poetry, fiction, art, photography -could be reproduced in one medium for all to see.
          With the echoes of Southern Voices still an influence today, we commence another publication. It too, has a new name and is the product of that mysterious process of "vision and revision," influenced by the traditions, virtues, and the failures of those who came before. Compared to Southern Voices, this magazine is a modest undertaking. It has no color, no departments for art, fiction, or poetry.
          The magazine will not attempt to attract every Southerner with the general, diverse expressions of Southern life and culture. Its appearance is different and the texture of its paper and its content feel different.
          Hopefully, Southern_Changes will have the
riches of analysis, investigation, reporting, interviews,
story-telling, and commentary. The magazine will mainly be a forum for
reliable, concise reporting and interpretation on the issues and
events of the South, with emphasis on the plight of the poor and the
Black Southerners who, along with others, still seek a just
settlement. It will attempt to review the moods, events, developments,
and inactivities of the region. It will have little of the virtues and
the sins of doctrinaire propaganda. It will attempt to show what is
good and decent and hopeful about Southerners and their place. It will
highlight the accomplishments of Southerners and the events of today
and measure how far we have come in our march with the aspirations and
ghosts of yesterday.
          It will be called Southern_Changes.
          With only slight exaggeration, no single word has infiltrated the
conversations of Southerners on the porches, in streets, or at
statehouses more than the word "change." For more than a century, it
has been the inspiration of Black Southerners; for most of the
Council's existence, the hope of all liberal White and Black
Southerners. It stirred the dreams and thoughts of some leaders and
for others threatened the institutions and traditions they lived
by. The prospects of change mothered racial tensions since folks, whom
academicians called "change agents," would not let it come in the by
and by. The time for change was now.
          Until the past few years, it was mostly the Southern liberals who wanted change to come rapidly. All others wanted none, thank you m'aam. Not so anymore, it seems.
          Nowadays, many folk who once promoted race-mixing want to slow down
some of the changes going on in our region. Poets wryly speak of
losing our "distinctive Southern character." Some writers yearn for
the days before air conditioning when Southerners would sit and talk
to one another. Others think we have gone far enough. Activists, who
once marched to the hymns of "We Shall Overcome" and hummed the
popular tune about "the times they are 'a changin'," now petition to
stop the construction of super highways or nuclear plants.
          However, not a few of those Southerners who never quite mastered
the pronunciation of the word Negro now proudly boast that the South
is changing. Industry, growth, money, skyscraper- they all dance in
the minds of these and many others who have taken up the
uncharacteristically Southern habit of judging success by a balance
sheet. Perhaps, even the region's identity is under change.
          The South as a marked region is losing currency. The geography of
the South has been enmeshed with a territory larger and more
amorphous-the Sunbelt. It goes from the East Coast to Southern
California. Some say it is a state of mind as well as place. When
journalists, planners, and businessmen speak of our future, it is the
Sunbelt, not the South which usually holds their attention.

While some of us will not quickly cotton to the self-identity of a
"sunbelter," the changes which are spreading across the South must be
reckoned with. The prospects of a better income which sometimes comes
with economic_development can't be shooed away by the

 poet's turn of a
phrase nor should it be dismissed necessarily as an attack upon our
Southern way of life. In a region where 40% of the nation's poor live,
the promise of a decent income ought not be shunned. And it ought not
be a hoax.
          Amid the growth and changing nature of the South, there also
remains too much unchanged. Life in the South for too many Blacks and
poor is still as it was. Low pay, no pay, poor housing, no jobs, try
again next week, they don't work because of welfare (a grand total of
$2,800 each year for a family of four in Mississippi), high infant
death rates, dirt roads, impure water- the chant of conditions and
attitudes continues to stir the cycle of poverty and
discrimination. Also, other minorities and many women are denied
opportunities which national goals should guarantee to all.
          With and without the changes, clarity of purpose and unity of
vision are rare commodities in our times. Events and developments seem
duplicitous with promise on one side and failure on the other; the
complexity of social issues and the failures of government to live up
to its goals confuse us all. We live in a South where we must now
select carefully the changes which we invite and the ones which we
oppose. Hence, the subtitle, "a chronicle of the ongoing struggle for
equality."
          This publication will attempt to help us all understand the region
we know as the South and ourselves, our neighbors, and the forces
which influence our lives. In doing so, Southern
Changes claims a new creed which borrows heavily from those
original thoughts of the 1940's. If all else seems questionable, the
major concern for Southerners at home and abroad today is how will our
region change. We hope that this magazine and the Council, jointly and
separately, will help us know the question and the answers a little
better.
          As a publication which will go mostly to individuals who are
associate members of the Council, Southern
Changes will be read by a community of people in and outside the
region who know that the futures of the South and the country have
always, and will always, be tied mysteriously into one fate. It
possesses the adversarial and cooperative; the patriotic, loyal, and
heretical - the opposing qualities which make living in the South
exciting and worrisome.
          If nothing else, Southern_Changes will try to
keep us all from masking our uncertainty with nostalgia or blind faith
in the future's holdings. We will try to understand ourselves and our
region and our country. We will try to muster a sense of purpose and
recognize accomplishments and failures in ourselves and our region's
work. It is a task which for all Southerners is as old as our history
and for the Council as dated as its first publication.
           Let us journey together.
        
