Memphis State University - DeSoto Yearbook (Memphis, TN)

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They ' ll never make it . . . never 16 Some choose the intellectual approach . . .

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introduction There is a tradition that the Old South was a land of mystery and legend. A land in which every white man owned slaves and in which every Southern girl was a paragon of beauty. Colonial homes were supposed to have been the abiding place of all people in the Old South. This legend still lives in the minds of many people today. The 1960 DeSoto will at- tempt to perpetuate that part of the legend which is good and true. This issue of a south- ern university student yearbook labors under no illusions concerning the traditional south. It would like to create an awareness among its readers of the present south. We still have with us many of the same political and economic problems of yesteryear. However, we have done much to balance industry with agriculture, we have shorn the shackles of a one-crop system, we have improved the conditions under which people work and live, and we have lost that degree of provincialism which kept us for so many years an isolated section of the nation. The DeSoto believes that our people are ready to resume their once proud position at the council table of the nation. We are clothing ourselves in raiment of our own manu- facture, we are again sending our young people into the practice of the professions in the east and north, to work in the industrial plants of Detroit and Chicago, and to teach in the large institutions of higher learning in the nation. These changes, however, do not make us unaware of our proud heritage. We still sing DIXIE at football games and we yet hold sacred the traditions of the past. Possibly, W. J. Cash is right in his assumption that the south is a state of mind. If such is the case it is a proud and glorious state of mind, worth cherishing to the extent that it does not interfere with our progress. The 1960 DeSoto is glad to believe in the south of mystery and legend and to pay to the traditions of the past the proper degree of respect. We face the present and future with confidence in the ability of our graduates to solve the not insurmountable problems which face us in the present. Enoch L. Mitchell Chairman, Department of History 15

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administration