"It Would Take a lot of Wisdom to Say ‘Go slow": Faulkner’s Public Sights on Race, the American Press and the Response of the Civil Rights Movement

In 1956, William Faulkner became involved in a series of public remarks concerning racial emancipation. As the civil rights movement was gaining momentum, many of these statements—revealed through American newspapers and magazines—sparked public reactions and controversy from civil rights activists such as James Baldwin and W.E.B. Du Bois. This essay proposes a rereading of these newspaper articles, magazine features, and interviews by juxtaposing Faulkner’s public declarations with the perspectives of civil rights activists to show how, when viewed in today’s context, these publications demonstrate the American press’s interest in pushing Faulkner to take a public stance on the issue of racial segregation. We aim to show here that these articles and interviews not only constituted the most public phase of Faulkner’s life, but also inevitably contributed to portraying the novelist as a representative of ordinary racism—warning against emancipation and advocating for desegregation rather than integration—even though certain statements suggest a more nuanced and complex point of view.