In VQR's Autumn 1961 issue, writing about what he called "the annealing of the South," Leslie W. Dunbar, then executive director of the Southern Regional Council—the first biracial organization in the region—observed: "Now the land of fitful somnolence and passion nears the trap of reason.... An air of anticipation courses pleasurably through the South at the prospect of the end of the long chase. The South is about to go down again in defeat, and can hardly wait."