Oral history interview with Marion Wright, March 8, 1978

Marion Wright describes his beliefs about racial justice and his membership in the Southern Regional Council (SRC). Wright was one of a group of white southerners who sought to tackle the entrenched racism of the 20th-century South. As a member of the SRC, Wright sought to end legal segregation, although he and other members were sensitive to pushing for too much change too quickly. The group also stayed off the streets as protest mounted, seeking to maintain its authority as well as its tax exempt status. As the civil rights movement reached new beginnings in the 1950s and 1960s, the SRC faded. This interview is a portrait of a civil rights leader in the era before the movement was defined by direct action.