'SOUTH OF FREEDOM'

Carl T. Rowan, an African-American, wrote this book in 1952, well before the freedom marches, Affirmative Action and a legislated end to segregation. Once he was south of the mason-Dixon line, this respected author and columnist, who later became Ambassador to Finland and head of the USIS, was just another "nigger". Segregation, at the time he originally wrote this book, was not a moral issue, but a government-approved one. And yet, as one reads the reissued version, one can also sense that Mr. Rowan is against reverse discrimination, a sort of "spoils system" that favors minorities, regardless of their background or professional experience. In other words, he resents the idea of a quota system, as if having more dark-colored faces in high places would solve the racial problem and the bigotry that continues well into the 21st century.

Thomas Wolfe once wrote that you could not go home again. Rowan did, to McMinnville, Tennessee where he grew up. While some things appeared better, not much had really changed. Blacks were still being taken advantage of, and it was all legal to appropriate

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