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Bennett CerfBennett Cerf
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Session:         Page of 1029

cruelty and crooked dealings and just push down the aristocracy, who just can't compete with these tough nouveaux!

Q:

Did Faulkner ever talk to you about the conditions in the South?

Cerf:

Oh, sure. We had many arguments about the colored man in the South.

Q:

What did he feel?

Cerf:

Bill resented the northern people butting in. He was a Mississippian. He once said, “I wonder what would happen if we ever had another Civil War because I'm a Mississippian first and an American second.” He felt that Northerners were mostly hypocrites as far as the Negro problem was concerned. He said that he thought that Southerners really liked Negroes a lot better than Northerners did. And I'll completely support that. But he wanted people to be patient. He said, “You can't hurry a necessary social upheaval like this.”

I had him talk to several colored people up here who said, “We've been patient for one hundred years. How long do you want us to be patient?" Bill assured them, “Well, it's beginning to move faster. You just let things go along, and in the next ten or twenty years, if you fellows let it go at the'regular pace without trying to rush it, things are





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