DATE: 20 February 1958
OCCASION: The Raven, Jefferson and Omicron Delta Kappa Societies
This clip was created by splicing the end of T-140begins and the beginning of T-140ends together.
Play the full recording:
William Faulkner: Yes, sir.
Unidentified participant: Mr. Faulkner, it seems that the need by the early first colonies, the need for an agrarian society to have labor, gave birth to this great problem, and it also seems that the continual effort and attempt to maintain the society even after 1865 has prolonged and added to the problem. Do you think, and this is my question, that the advent of industry in the South, the industrialization of the South, and the possible eventual destruction of the remaining—of the agrarian—agrarian society will have any effect upon this problem?
William Faulkner: It will in that, I think, the agrarian culture was the only culture the white man went to much trouble to—to train the Negro in. As that vanishes, the Negro becomes more and more of a problem. When that's completely gone, he will be still more and more of a problem, and for that reason the white man will have to do something to—to substitute that agrarian economy, which took care of the Negro. I—I mean by—by "took care," which assimilated the Negro. The Negro had a—a definite place in that economy. Now the only contact the Negro has with the white man's culture is the time-payment icebox and—and the automobile that he'll own some day, if he don't tear it up before he finishes paying for it, [audience laughter] but there's no other contact with the white man's culture that the Negro has since he was—since he left the agrarian economy of slavery.
[end of recording]
