ABSTRACT
The term integration sometimes refers to the openness of society, to a condition in which every individual can make the maximum number of voluntary contacts with others without regard to qualifications of ancestry. In estimating the meanings of integration it is entirely appropriate to examine the analogous if not identical experience of other ethnic groups. Their process of acculturation will throw light on the need for defining the goals and the strategy of the civil rights movement. For some elements in the civil rights movement, integration in the form of racial balance has become an end in itself more important than the quality of the schools. The inability to define the ultimate goals of the civil rights struggle is an unacknowledged threat that complicates immediate tactics and that may deprive this momentous upheaval of its meaning. Attention has been so narrowly focused on tactical issues that there has been no time to consider ultimate goals.
