The Desegregated Heart

Book excerpt: Sarah Patton Boyle’s personal crusade for civil rights began in the fall of 1950, when the University of Virginia refused to admit Gregory Swanson, the Negro student who challenged its policy of segregation. Confident that this wrong could be righted quickly, Mrs. Boyle, the wife of a professor at the University, went forth to do her share—to meet not only with the burning crosses of white hatred but with decided wariness on the part of Negroes. Here is the story of Mrs. Boyle’s lonely struggle—the more courageous for her aristocratic Virginia background and traditional Southern upbringing. It is also the story of her painful re-education—of a Southerner’s discovery of “the real Negro, the real white man, and herself.” A fascinating, reaffirming read. “It should be read by everyone with the brotherhood of man.”—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “A most interesting and revealing book, honest, compassionate. The South needs it; Negroes need it; northerners need it. It is beautiful in its candor and deeply moving....”—Lillian Smith