
          Interchange: In This Issue
                  By Betty Norwood Chaney"Chaney, Betty Norwood"
          Vol. 1, No. 7, 1979, p. 2
          
          On February 16-18, the Southern Regional Council (SRC) held its
Annual Meeting in Atlanta at the Colony Square Hotel. This year the
Council renewed its charter after 25 years of incorporation, and to
commemorate the occasion presented a three-day conference on " A New
Charter for the South's Future."
           The conference brought together a variety of distinguished
participants from the fields of education, law, economics, civil
rights and health care to review developments and conditions in the
South. This issue of Southern Changes reports
on that conference and reproduces three of the addresses made
there.
           Leslie Dunbar, former executive director of SRC and presently
director of the Field Foundation, was one of a panel of three to speak
on "The Role of the Law in the South." The primary role of law in the
South, he says, has been to keep Blacks "in their place." In his
presentation carried here, he offers four concerns that ought to be
basic to the right role of law in the
South.
          In a discussion of "Human Rights: From the South to South Africa,"
Wallace Terry, former Newsweek correspondent,
now professor of journalism at Howard University, shares someof his
experiences with Black troops in Viet Nam. He calls for an enlightened
leadership which places human values above expediency and voiced his
hopes and aspiration for the nation.
           Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall, Saturday's luncheon speaker, also
talked of human rights. "The whole human rights movement is very
important throughout the world, and it's not dividible," he says. "You
cannot talk about human rights in other countries, and ignore them
here." His main concern, however, was about certain "universal
imperatives," inflation being one of them, that makes it difficult to
help those who most need help.
           In "Soapbox" this month, Steve Suits, publisher of Southern Changes and also executive director of
SRC, reminds us that differences which continue to separate
Southerners from one another on the basis of race and poverty remain
deep and unyielding barriers. In looking toward a "new charter for the
South's future," he cautions us that progress of the last 25 years
must not plund us from the fact that our task is not
complete. "Improvements," he says, "are not final
accomplishments."
          Our department pieces this month-- education, rural and ruban
development and Southern politics-- also report on sessions from the
conference and offer some perspectives on the future. 
          In addition, in this issue Bill Finger reports on recent
J.P. Stevens and Company stockholders meeting in Greenville, S.C., and
Alice Swift relays the activities of a small rural town in Georgia
where the Black community is "coming to focus, demanding its
rights."
        