> involvement in these local activities
> gradually dissolved the opinion, which I remember expressing to another
> faculty member at a party a yer or two earlier -- something like "If
> the cibvil-rights actions in the South continue, we probably have to
> support* them, but really they are premature. Something stupid like
> that. But it was my most carefull formulated and c onscious "opinion" in
> the year or so before I suddenly found myself on the road to socialist
> revolution.
But if your pre-involvement opinion had been "I just don't think it's right to force the white people of the South to change their way of life," then you probably would not have gone to the meeting. And more importantly, if you *had* gone for some random reason, it's quite possible you would have become even more turned off by the movement once you saw how different their outlook was from yours. So, I'll draw the analogy back to what started this thread - Doug's posting of poll results. If we did a national poll in 1959 or 1963, and there were some question soliciting people's level of openness to the goals of the civil rights movement, a reading of 25% would indicate something very different from a reading of 45%. The higher reading would have indicated a much larger reservoir of people for whom it is conceivable that they might at some point decide to attend a meeting of a local civil rights group; and a much larger reservoir of people who, if they went to the meeting, might become more rather than less committed to civil rights.
SA