His go-slow instincts were driven also by certain cultural assumptions that he shared with his southern white friends. For example, the president was not above invoking the specter of race-mixing between black men and white women—an apparition many white people then considered truly horrific—to explain why the South must be allowed time to evolve in its opinions. In a vulgar exchange with Warren at a stag dinner, the president is alleged to have said that white southerners were “not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in
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