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For Every American. Faulkner did not know everything about the South—at least about the new South. He knew few Negroes well, and no civil rights leaders at all, except in briefest acquaintance. He never understood (or anyway portrayed) the urban and educated Negroes that have been the spearhead of the civil rights fight. He saw federal action on civil rights through a haze of fact and legend about the Reconstruction imposed from the North. He never appreciated the imperative need for legal sanction of a Negro's right to sit at a bar, get a haircut, swim in a pool. He only vaguely realized that civil rights legislation provides many a Southerner of good will the excuse to accept—quietly, if not graciously—what cannot be avoided.
Faulkner understood not the legal but the human facts. He understood that the crisis between white and black is not only a crisis for the South but for every American, however many miles may separate him from Mississippi. He understood that legal sanction was one thing, but emotional acceptance was another.
And in the long range of two races' memories or one nation's vision, Faulker's difficult proposal is the only one that works. He desperately urged on his fellow Southerners—and himself—a change of heart. He never, on the evidence, quite managed that change himself. But if he left a message and a legacy, it was to urge upon his fellow Southerners and the nation the imperative necessity for that change.