this notion of inevitable moral progress upward toward liberalism was and is a figment of the liberal imagination, as the South has proved again and again over the course of two and a half centuries. In fact, in 1954 the great majority of white Southerners hadn’t changed their views at all since the Civil War. Preserving white supremacy was as important to white Southerners then as it had been in 1865. Public opinion polls showed that 80 percent of white Southerners opposed school desegregation.
