Governor James F. Byrnes's threat to abandon the public school system in South Carolina rather than give up segregation (TIME, March 26) got a sharp answer last week from the only Negro Nobel Prizewinner. Said Dr. Ralph J. Bunche, professor of government at Harvard (on leave) and onetime U.N. mediator in Palestine:
"Southern anti-Negro bitter-enders . . . persist, of course, but ... it is shocking surely now, to find James F. Byrnes joining in the forefront of them along with Herman Talmadge. I say shocking, not because it is Byrnes, Governor of South Carolina, but Byrnes, former Supreme Court Justice and...