The Land is Bright

Progress is measured in tiny ways. To those who partake of a revolution the speeding years seem to crawl. Builders of roads that cross a continent measure each day's work in feet or inches. So too, our story unfolded in little ways.

And it was greatest when we thought it least. The night that had fallen over this land was reluctant to depart. and the shadows seem to fight back the dawn. But not by eastern windows only when daylight comes, comes in the light.

In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly, but westward. Look, the land is bright. The National Broadcasting Company, In cooperation with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation presents, The Land is Bright, the twelfth in a series of programs describing the tremendous changes that have come lately to the American South.

To report this Latter-day Revolution, NBC assigned Henry Cassidy, distinguished reporter and UN correspondent, who traveled throughout the South and to bring back on his tape recorder, the voices and the sounds that have, like some off-stage music, accompanied one of the most dramatic developments of our time, the changes that have come to the South.

The journey starts this week in a city heavy with history, but alive to the new forces that are struggling for expression, Spartanburg, South Carolina. It's Saturday night, the brightly lit movie marquee, the unusually heavy crowds on the streets, the shops still open all proclaim the fact.

And in the lobby of the big old-fashioned hotel, Mr. Cassidy set up his microphone to record part of the story, the story of a land that is moving from the old to the new. This is Spottenberg on Saturday night, the Spottenberg South Carolina that calls itself with pride the city of friendly people and also the textual center of the nation.