While much of the national debate over desegregation was dominated in the mid-1950s by the langauge and actions of strident and often hateful zealots, “Voices” was a measured, rigorously fair take on the entire issue. Far from emphasizing its own pro-integrationist sensibility, LIFE allowed several Southerners to discuss their own pro-segregationist views — in their own words, at length — and created a picture of the South far more nuanced than the depiction usually found in the liberal “Yankee” press. The article was not, in the end, an anti-segregationist screed, but was instead an honest glimpse into the heart of a culture at once proud of its heritage, and terrified of what the future might hold.