This is the first entry in this diary even though my father gave it to me on my last birthday (July 17). At the time, he said something about its being time, son, you started to keep a daily record of things you have seen and learned, especially since you will be going up to Massachusetts in September. I did not think too much of that. I reasoned a person would remember the really important things anyway and would forget the rest. But I have been thinking about it and perhaps he is right. It is possible something will happen to you and you will think it unimportant when it happens, and a year later it could go off like a time bomb and be very important after all.

So it might be a good thing to keep a diary.

I decided to start writing here today (this particular day) because tomorrow I will be leaving for Massachusetts to begin four (if I do not flunk out) years at college. This is the time to start things. I’m not quite sure why, that is to say, I cannot quite put it into words and perhaps putting it here will help me, but going to Cambridge is very important to me. Not for the name or the prestige but because from everything my father has told me about it (he went too) and from everything I have heard or read about it, this seems to be the place where I can start some of the things I want to start.

I look around at the South and all I can see is poverty, misery, inequality, and unhappiness. I love the South so dearly and even though it sounds sentimental as all hell, I feel like crying whenever I see what it is and compare it to my concept of what it could be. Even in times as hard as these, what with the Wall Street Crash and the Depression, the South, which was in a worse condition than the rest of the country already, is even worse off now. But that could be can only come about if the people here find and try some new concept to live by. We must get away from the old patterns, must stop worshiping the past and turn to the future. (God, this sounds like a bad speech!) And I hope to discover in Cambridge some ideas, some principles that, in four years, I can bring back here to help pull the South up off its behind and into the twentieth century. I don’t even know what I’m looking for; I can only hope I recognize it WHEN I see it.

Well, that’s all. I have to do some more packing.

Friday, October 23, 1931: