Twenty years ago, the late Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-Miss), powered by two ideas, stepped into Congress. He had decided to resettle Negroes and save cotton. His first plan, to ship American Negroes to Africa, grabbed headlines all over the nation and made Bilbo the symbol of white supremacy in the South. The symbol grew so large it overshadowed the soundness of his second idea. But out of the plan to save cotton grew four regional research laboratories. These scientific centers now save American farmers, especially those of the South, millions of dollars each year...

Mary Smith, a new student nurse, dreamed of the day she would minister tenderly among clean, white beds. In her excited young mind, she could see herself bending over a coughing little boy, her gentle hand pushing back the dampened hair from his forehead. Three years later, in the crisp uniform of a registered nurse, she entered a big city hospital. Now she had her clean white beds and the coughing boy. But when the boy coughed, it was an aide who bent over him. Mary had to scribble on charts, mix medications, prepare hypodermic needles, supervise student nurses. She had no time for nursing in the old sense. What's more, a group of Tulane University researchers have concluded, that's the way Mary wants things to be, even though she may neither realize nor admit this fact...