The Sentiment of White Supremacy an Ecological Study

The will to preserve segregation among white southerners is held to be a direct function of the social and economic gains resulting therefrom and an inverse function of the guilt engendered by contact with the value system outside the South. The socioeconomic gain is held to vary directly with Negro density, and the degree of guilt inversely with the proportion of the white population living on farms. Confirmation of these hypotheses is provided by analyzing, through multiple and partial correlation, the percent-age of the vote received in South Carolina counties by the states rights Democratic candidate in the 1948 presidential election.