On May 17, 1954—25 years ago this spring—an era ended for the American South, the era of "separate but equal," as the United States Supreme Court recognized reality and declared unconstitutional a doctrine that in effect kept black children separate and highly unequal. Jim Crow did not disappear overnight, of course. Indeed, during the racial turbulence of the late 1950's and early 1960's, there was more than a grain of truth in a Northern journalist's observation that the South was "a land of two-lane highways and one-track minds." Today most of the two-lane highways have been replaced by asphalt ribbons of Interstate, and most of the one-track minds are at one with segregated schools and separated lunch counters. Although Southern racism has not completely gone with the wind, there does now appear to be a truly New South in which past prejudices and deep-rooted poverty are being put to rest. As a native Southerner who lived through what could be called the South's triumphant era, Louis D. Rubin, Jr. has devoted considerable thought to the changes occurring in the past quarter-century, and the result is the lead article of this issue. A native of Charleston, South Carolina, Mr. Rubin is University Distinguished Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His VQR essay was originally written as the conclusion of a book which he has edited for the U. S. Information Agency on the contemporary South and its writers. Probably the most prolific critic of modern Southern writing, Mr. Rubin is the editor or author of some 28 books and is now working on yet another.

Like Louis Rubin, Irby B. Cauthen, Jr. is a native South Carolinian who has devoted much of his career to the study and teaching of literature. As an educator— and as a Milton scholar and Jefferson devotee—Mr. Cauthen has long been interested in the respective ideas of the English poet and the American patriot-philosopher concerning education. Thus, when asked to deliver the annual Phi Beta Kappa address at the University of Virginia last year, Mr. Cauthen discussed Milton's and Jefferson's ideas of education. His VQR essay is adapted from that address. Mr. Cauthen served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia for 16 years before returning to full-time teaching in the Department of English this past fall.