A Time To Build

The time to be born, and the time to die. The time to play, and the time to fuck up that little flame. The time to kill, and the time to feel. The time to break down, and the time to build.

The National Broadcasting Company presents, The Time to Build. In cooperation with the Alfred C. Sloan Foundation, The public affairs department of NBC has been passed six months to applaud what we believe to be one of the most significant developments of our generation, the rebirth of the South.

There is a long 100th road that twists from the gladness of the capital here, the New Orleans to tiny crossroads too small to be registered on any map. We began in the belief that we were recording simply an economic shift, an evolutionary It would be measured in destiny.

But we were on. What we witnessed, what we called on our recording machine, was a revolution in industry, in farming, in economics, and in the whole pattern of life as it lives in the South.

We are ready now to report on what we saw and heard. The voices and the sounds you're about to hear are real. We have no actors. The script was written by a hundred hands, and underlined by the sound of machines.

A witness to all of this, and our guide in the week to come is Mr. Henry Cassidy, distinguished fallen correspondent and NBC observer after United Nations. Mr. Cassidy. At the outset, I must admit that I was chosen for this assignment not because of what I knew, but because of what I did not know.

In talking to the gentleman who arranged this tour of the South, apparently my most appealing asset was my complete ignorance, ignorance by hasten to add of the South. You see, I'm a New Englander. I was born there and there I lived until I joined that group of correspondence who worked at the crossroads of the world.