There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975 0307263568, 9780307263568

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THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING WHITE SOUTHERNERS

IN

THE AGE OF CIVIL RIGHTS, 1945-1975

JASON SOKOL

U.S.A. $27.95

Canada $36.95

While the landmarks of the lective

move-

civil rights

ment have become indelible parts of our colmemory, few have written about what life was

like for

white southerners

historic time.

Now,

who

lived through that

in his brilliant

debut book,

his-

torian Jason Sokol explores the untold stories of ordi-

nary people experiencing the tumultuous decades that forever altered the

American landscape. So often

historical accounts of the era have focused

on the

movement's most dramatic moments and

figures,

and paid greatest attention to the brave steps taken by blacks

to

long-awaited change. In this

effect

riveting book, Sokol goes

beyond the 1955 Montsit-ins, and

gomery bus boycott, the i960 student

the soul-stirring speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.,

and into the

lives

of middle- and working-class

whites whose world was becoming unrecognizable to them.

He

takes us to

New

Orleans's

Ninth Ward,

where, in i960, a painful episode of school integration brought out the fiercest prejudices

and made accidental

in

some

radicals of others; to Ollie's Bar-

becue in Birmingham and Pickrick Fried Chicken in Atlanta,

and thousands of lunch counters

in be-

tween, where "some white employees greeted black

customers others

them

as

though they had been patrons

slammed doors

in their faces; still

for years;

more served

hesitantly and reluctantly."

There Goes

My

Everything traces the origins of

the civil rights struggle from

World War

some black and white American

II,

when

soldiers lived

and

fought side by side overseas (leading them to question Jim in the

Crow

at

home), to the beginnings of change

1950s and the

into the 1970s,

flared tensions of the 1960s,

when strongholds

of white rule sud-

denly found themselves overtaken by rising black political power.

Through

it all,

Sokol

resists the easy

categorization of whites caught in the torrent of

change; rather, he gives us nuanced portraits of people resisting, embracing, and questioning the social

There Goes

My Everything

There Goes

My Everything

WHITE SOUTHERNERS IN THE AGE OF CIVIL RIGHTS, 1945-1975

JASON SOKOL

Alfred A.

Knopf New York 2006

——

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

©

Copyright

2006 by Jason Sokol

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A.

Knopf, a division of Random House,

Inc.,

New York,

and

in

Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of

Owing

Random House,

Inc.

acknowledgments

to limitations of space, all

for

permission to reprint previously published material

may

be found at the end of the volume.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sokol, Jason.

my

There goes

everything

rights,

1

:

white Southerners in the age of civil

945-1975 /Jason p.

Sokol.

—

1st ed.

cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-307-26356-8

—Race —History—20th Whites —Southern —Attitudes—History— 20th — 20th Whites —Southern — movements — Southern Americans — History — 20th Southern —History— 20th Southern — 1945— 1.

Southern States

century.

century.

relations

States

2.

States

3.

Social conditions

States

century. 4. Civil rights century.

5.

African

century.

States

States

Civil rights

Social conditions

I.

6.

Title.

F220.AIS65 2006 305.8'oo975'o904

—dc22

2005044488

Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition

To

my parents, Fred and Betsy

Sokol

Contents

Introduction:

Change Seeps In

3

ONE Prelude: In the

Wake

of the War, 194 5- 1955

TWO "Our Negroes" No More

19

56

THREE Daughters of Dixie, Sons of the South

114

FOUR Barbecue, Fried Chicken, and Civil Rights:

The 1964

Civil Rights

Act

182

FIVE 'Softly,

The Contours of Political and Economic Change 238

the Unthinkable":

Six

The

Price of Liberation

Notes

359

Selected Bibliography

Acknowledgments Index

309

407

393

405

There Goes

My Everything

Introduction:

life fact.

Change

Seeps In

embraced myth in the Jim Crow South, Hugh Wilson came up in that world, where

much

as facade blurred

icy stereotypes

a part of everyday life as hot soul food. "Since I

years old I'd

go down

my

to

were

as

was three or four

grandmother's, black-eyed peas and turnip

hog gravy, Lord have mercy.

greens,

with

I

mean

.

.

.

just

good old southern

many cruel myths as colossal meals. "I was just like everybody else. Too many of us thought that, we knew individual blacks to be awful fine folks but we thought of blacks as a race as being sort of an Amos and Andy situation." Wilson started farming near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in the 1930s. Jim Crow had defined the minds and lives of southerners, and Wilson bought Wilson absorbed

country." In his childhood,

in to the

common image

"These people have their place.

day

.

.

.

.

.

.

felt

You had

as

of African- Americans as inferior and content.

undisturbed by the Negro

race,

they were in

the black fellow as a happy fellow, he sings

and he don't worry about where

his food

is

all

coming from tomor-

Many white southerners, like Wilson, persisted in those views. was how they were raised, and many believed, how they would die. row."

It

1

When the civil

rights

in the

1950s and 1960s,

mined

their customs,

the

it

through the southern landscape

tore

challenged the attitudes of millions, under-

and upended

minds of old farmers

began to

movement

like

their

Wilson.

ways of life.

It

began to get a

"I

even penetrated

lot older before I

He attributed fundamental changes in his racial rights movement. "Honest to God when I was a

realize."

to the civil

beliefs

kid,

I

believed that junk," Wilson recalled in 1974. "I changed ... an awful lot of

my attitude

.

.

.

toward matters of race." Wilson did not count his

experience as unique; he glimpsed similar changes in bors.

"These

.

.

.

farmers around here

.

.

.

but by and large, they have come a long

movement reshaped

the South,

it

many

of his neighof them

and their wives, not

all

damn

civil rights

way."

As the

snapped the thin thread that had con-

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

4

White southerners began to sift through what they had always taken for granted, and made their way in a world nected stereotypes to truths.

divorced from the myths of old. 2

the it

movement

civil rights

touched. In

possessed a rare ability to transform

Hugh Wilson

equality, old white farmers like

unquestioned

all

hands, oppressed African- Americans gained legal

its

eventually rethought

black power challenged white rule, and in the case

beliefs,

of the Albany Herald, sarcasm turned into prophecy. "Albany calmly

down by Martin Luther King

today awaited to be turned upside

Jr.,"

read the Southwest Georgia newspaper's front page on July 17, 1962.

While the Herald mocked King's claim Albany "upside down," soon

visit

it

that the

movement would

gave unwitting expression to a

thousands of communities across the South.

Americans struggled tions of southern

fate that

When

The

civil rights

movement

would

African-

for civil rights, they also struck at the very

life.

turn

founda-

altered race relations,

overturned ingrained practices, subverted traditions, ushered in political change, transformed institutions, undermined a way of

turned gia,

cities

down

upside

—from Black

and Eutaw, Alabama,

and even

life,

Belt towns like Albany, Geor-

to metropolises such as Atlanta

and

New

Orleans, and college communities like Athens, Georgia, and Chapel Hill,

North Carolina. Many whites

much differently movement

felt

these changes just as deeply as, if

than, African-Americans.

The impact of the

civil rights

from person to person, family to family, town to

differed

town. In the end, few escaped

its

long reach.

Some white

southerners

attested to liberating experiences that forever altered their racial atti-

new ways

tudes and behavior. Others found

Many more

clung to any sense of normalcy they could salvage,

willfully ignorant of the life

—

in

tumult around them.

ment nor with

its

identified neither

violent resisters.

The age of civil

times

change seeped into

sit-ins, the

with the

They were

civil rights

fearful, silent,

and often

rights looked different through their eyes.

—

move-

The pro-

Montgomery bus boycott, the i960 Birmingham church bombing in 1963, the Selma-

minent events of the student

Still,

at

ways whites had barely conceived and scarcely contemplated. 3

Most white southerners inert.

to resist racial equality.

era

the 1955

to-Montgomery march of 1965,

for

example

than the changes in the texture of day-to-day ever forgot the day they

first

—

often had less

life.

Few white

meaning

southerners

addressed a black person as "Mr." or "Mrs.";

IntroJiatnm: Cbangi Seeps In

5

time their maid showed up for work, suddenly shorn of her old def-

the-

erence; the day they dined in the

same establishments

the process by which their workplaces

man

a black

as black people;

became integrated; the autumn

appeared on the ballot; or the morning white children

attended school with black pupils. Taken together, these changes

amounted

way of life.

to a revolution in a

To probe the experiences of white southerners in the age of civil rights

ambiguous contours of change.

to capture the

is

It is to

explore beyond

the pronouncements of politicians and newspaper editors, beneath the rhetoric of leaders

voices

and into the

lives

of their constituents. To seek such

often to grapple with antagonisms.

is

As Newsweek reporter Wil-

liam Emerson cabled from the magazines southern bureau in

"The individual Southerner was

left to shift for

May

1955,

himself mid the deafen-

ing roar of the press, the declarations of politicians and propaganda

how he felt was a mystery and subject to change." For many, rights movement induced uncomfortable admissions, unwanted

groups. Just the civil

and unwelcome

realizations,

man

ent that the white desire of the Negro. try cousin.

odds with

.

.

in the

The

become gradually appar-

South woefully misunderstood the true

city

man was amazed at the fury of his coun-

And, the farmer, himself, frequently found that he was at least

one of his half-grown children." As the

movement marched up

.

surprises. "It has

on,

in the torrents of a

changing down here,

many white

to keep

up with

it,

civil rights

southerners found themselves swept

change they were only beginning to fathom.

even

if

"It's

happening," said an Atlanta store-

that's what's

keeper whose business integrated in 1965. "The

man in the street,

he doesn't always go along with

segregationists, the white people of Georgia; or

all

at

it.

.

.

most of us

.

he has

We're

are.

But

we've got caught up in something that's bigger than us, and we've got to live

with

In

it."

many

4

cases,

that occurred

the

all

Deep South

white southerners' beliefs could not catch up to events

around them. Psychologist Robert Coles, in the 1960s,

went

watched certain white people

in.

—and

and

I

truly

I

have

wonder

In fact, their beliefs are often less

important to them than the continuity of their

under a shadow, they respond

surveyed

a step further: "In Mississippi

for nearly a decade,

even today what they do believe

who

so

do

lives.

When

their beliefs."

African-Americans drove the motors of change.

If

that

Through

comes it all,

they did not force

all

southerners to rethink their racial attitudes and habitual patterns of dis-

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

6

many

crimination,

life"

whites had to confront, at the very

way of life seemed gone

their cherished

connoted magnolias and gentility, but

it

cations about the region's racial order

—one

the power, and blacks ever acquiesced.

Some

who had been up

deferential

were no better prepared

which whites exercised

in

expressed shock that blacks

had seen

for the civil rights

we have

it

seems." 3

When

saddle of civil rights, a few whites

coming

for years,

but

movement's power to rupture

to think about.

the bottom? He's calling the tune, and place, everywhere,

long finally rose

for so it

their lives. "They're leading us around," said an

"Everything they do,

the fact that

also carried specific impli-

and accommodating

to challenge their position. Others

least,

good. The "Southern way of

for

Alabama

Who says

we run

to hear

police officer.

the nigger

it;

is

on

this place, that

African-Americans mounted the

jumped aboard with them. Many

more found themselves dragged along

in the dust

—some

kicking,

some

screaming, some fighting back, others just attempting to hold on.

White history

southerners often lived under the spell of their

—

or a certain interpretation of

it.

lessons in school, the white South nurtured

happy and

own

Through family its

collective

lore or history

youth on the myth of the

faithful slave, told stories of heroic Confederate soldiers in the

"War of Northern Aggression," and spun nightmares out "You would read

era" of Reconstruction.

of the "tragic

in your history

books about

how gallant the South was," recalled Selma, Alabama, mayor Joe Smitherman of

his lessons in school,

War Between

"and the

and that we were used and misused." Margaret Jones

the States

Bolsterli

remem-

bered the stories of her childhood on a cotton plantation in Desha

County, Arkansas, during the 1930s. "Racism permeated every aspect of our

lives,

from

little

black

warning that drinking black. It

Sambo

... in the

was part of the

air

everyone breathed."

divorce themselves from the past, for

century

—on

interaction. their lot in

first stories

every cotton

field,

its

would turn us

Few could completely

vestiges lived

on every sidewalk,

Some whites convinced themselves life;

read to us, to the

coffee before the age of sixteen

on

at

mid-

in every interracial

that blacks deserved

others never quite embraced that logic. They were

all

deeply influenced by the blacks they had grown up with, befriended,

employed, or exploited

—whether they

liked

it

or not. Reporter Marshall

Frady wrote, "In myriad and unwitting ways, the white southerner

became, and remains, the creature of the black violence and abasement

man he hauled through may not have gained

into his midst." Blacks

Introduction

1

.

Change

their lair share of

Seeps In

7

economic and

political

power through the

movement, but they became the primary

They pulled the

"We

are here

.

fear in

white communities.

frightened in the depths because our past does not

.

.

actors in the region's drama.

and fostered

levers of history,

civil rights

sweep us forward or backward," James McBride Dabbs wrote "In the person of the Negro,

much

as

sweeps us where we are afraid to go." As

it

George Wallace or Lester Maddox touted themselves

of Dixie, leaders like

in 1964.

as the faces

King and throngs of marchers molded events

in the

South, and increasingly, across America. They forced the hands of mil-

the back door, an insistent voice in 1969.

Negro stood at speaking out of the night," Dabbs wrote

"During most of the South's

lions of whites.

"Now

the white

man

stands at the back door, but this time the

back door of history, wondering what to

meet the power of the blacks,

lies."

history, the

going on

is

in

inside,

wondering how

whose hands history increasingly

6

Observers in the South during the 1960s believed they had witnessed the death of one world and the birth of another. Reporter Jimmy Breslin

watched from the lobby of Montgomery's Jefferson Davis Hotel

as blacks

paraded through town on the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march. At first,

many

ing

.

.

.

whites cursed or even smiled. "Then the people kept com-

with their heads high up in the

air.

.

.

.

And

the faces at the win-

The owner of the Ready Shoe Repair Shop stood with his lips apart and he watched the life he knew disappear on the street in front of him." While blacks in the Deep South asserted themselves, whites often watched in amazement. As the drama unfolded, some aspects of the Jim Crow South died forever. Breslin wrote: dows changed.

.

.

.

You have not you

until

on the

see

time when everything

lived, in this

an old black

street of a

woman

with

mud

Southern city and sing "...

and then turn and look

at the face of a

is

changing,

on her shoes stand

we are

not afraid ..."

cop near her and see the

puzzlement, and the terrible fear in his eyes. Because he knows,

and everybody who has ever seen South

as it stood since

muddy Shall

1865

is

it

knows, that

it is

over.

The

gone. Shattered by these people in

shoes standing in the street and swaying and singing

"We

Overcome."

To some, change came

in

Robert Coles recounted

sudden

flashes

and momentary

after witnessing a sit-in

realizations.

As

on Mississippi's Gulf

— THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

8

Coast, "I think

most people of the South

—Negroes and whites

have experienced some of that same surprise

I

alike

when

did, a jolting flash

one kind of world begins to collapse, another begins to appear, and

becomes

had a different word

apparent." Everyone

place. "This thing here

gomery businessman

is

it all

what was taking

And some of us know it," a Mont-

a revolution.

told Breslin.

for

"The world's

.

.

.

passed

all

of us by,

we start to live with it." Yet some whites could no easier live with new experiences and the ensuing changes than they could understand

unless

the

or articulate them.

When

Ed Hudgins about

lawyer

historian

—

movement, Hudg-

the effects of the civil rights

ins responded, "Desegregation

average southerner

William Chafe asked Greensboro

was absolutely incomprehensible

absolutely unbelievable."

The prospect of

to the

integra-

"would be traumatic to the average southerner and his way of life way of life that was fixed without possibility of mutation." While few may have comprehended it, none could deny that if the civil rights movement brought one thing to the South it was change. 7 Some watched worlds collapse overnight; others saw revolutions occur tion

a

before their eyes. In the 1960s,

was shattered

for

certain fleeting spective, the life

it

was not yet

good, or whether

moments and

it

clear

whether the old order

merely looked and

felt like

From one

in certain specific places.

South had changed

forever;

that at

per-

from another, parts of southern

looked remarkably similar two and three decades hence. Segregation

had mandated two different tinued to drift into their back,

it's

unbelievable to

societies

own

me

by law, and white southerners con-

worlds, defined largely by race. "As

that

we

lived in

two

I

think

we

still

do." There were always

southerners experienced those phenomenal years;

look

different worlds," Clay

Lee, a Philadelphia, Mississippi, minister, said in 1980.

extent,

I

two

"And

stories:

moments

to a large

one of

how

of the civil rights

and the other of how, over a period of time, they absorbed the

transformation, encouraged tales, refracted

it,

rejected

it,

or lived with

it.

Those two

8 through thousands of lives, held millions of truths.

historians have yet TO CAPTURE

those narratives of white south-

erners during the age of civil rights in

all

their complexity.

The

civil

rights movement has found many authors more than worthy of

its

import, from biographers of King like Taylor Branch and David Garrow to chroniclers of specific locales like

William Chafe on Greensboro,

Robert Norrell on Tuskegee, John Dittmer and Charles Payne on Missis-

Change Saps In

Introduction'.

Adam

sippi,

9

Fairclough on Louisiana, Charles Eagles and J. Mills Thorn-

ton on Alabama, Stephen Tuck and Melissa Fay Greene on Georgia,

David Colburn on

Eskew on Birmingham. With good

reason,

phasize the struggles of black southerners. also study

white southerners, the focus frequently remains on the

movement

rights

McWhorter and Glenn these books collectively emWhile many of the authors

Augustine, and Diane

St.

overshadowed,

The

itself.

does

as

its

meaning often becomes

struggle's lasting

interracial

civil

impact on southern

Many

life.

books probe white southerners' experiences through studies of promi-

We know the stories of George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, who led a political stampede into the Republican Party. We

nent figures.

and others

know the writings of leading newspaper editors like Ralph McGill, Hodding Carter, and Harry Ashmore. Two newly published studies by Kevin Kruse and Matthew the suburban South. zens

—such

But

Lassiter

—

offer

groundbreaking narratives of

an insistent focus on powerful

overall,

as political leaders

—

and newspaper editors

—

citi-

renders barely

buys the papers, and casts the votes. Moreover,

visible the populace that

the literature on the South during this era privileges the dramatic

demonstrations and famous battles of the

movement, often

civil rights

at

the expense of analyzing the very realm that those struggles sought to

change

—southern

life,

black as well as white.

I

take these works as

models, and building alongside them, approach the age of

my

civil rights

from a perspective many of them have not broached. 9

Of

the

many books

written during the 1960s, none explores

how

whites accommodated the upheaval better than Robert Coles's Children of Crisis. Coles interviewed students, parents,

grated

New

and teachers who

inte-

Orleans and Atlanta schools in i960 and 1961. As a

psychologist, he studied

desegregation. Historians

how now

southerners coped with the tumult of

have the benefit of four decades.

We

can

begin to understand in a wider context stories like those that Coles told

—and form coherent

narratives out of murky experience.

We can sift

the continuity from the change to understand where, when, and

transformations occurred sive roles in

—and did

not.

White southerners played

movement

movement, mass of

deci-

determining the depths, and limits, of change. Better under-

standing of their actions and beliefs can more fully explain rights

why

failed, or

triumphed, where

in turn, transformed

oral histories,

many

it

did.

And

whites forever.

why

the civil

the civil rights

With

a critical

magazine bureau dispatches, newspaper

articles

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

IO

and

and other firsthand accounts, we

editorials, students' examinations,

can probe beyond the stories of black versus white, good versus

beyond the unforgettable speeches, into

life's

protean ambiguities

—

protests, marches,

evil,

and boycotts, and

alternately forgettable

and

indelible.

Several scholars have urged further exploration in this direction.

Charles Eagles pointed out that historians "have tended to emphasize

one side of the struggle, the movement

side,

and to neglect

their profes-

sional obligation to understand the other side, the segregationist opposition."

He

urged scholars to take more detached views and seek broader

perspectives.

When

diversity, that

historians analyzed white southerners, in all their

would "make

for a

much more

additional conflicts and ambiguities.

.

.

.

complicated

story, full

of

Told without condescension,

the often tragic stories of white southerners' hates, fears, and pride be-

long in the wider accounts of the plea.

Kevin Mattson asserted that

"Harder to celebrate Jacquelyn tale.

Dowd

as

we

civil rights

Others echoed Eagles's

ought

made

"harder."

American

values,"

to be

a natural progression of

Hall agreed. "Harder to cast as a satisfying morality

Most of all, harder

lar vein,

that

civil rights era."

to simplify, appropriate,

and contain." In a simi-

Peter Ling counseled scholars to "delve deeper into the struggles believe

we

already understand. In doing so,

heroes and fresh villains, but most of all

who wish

it

rights, that

would

just all

group proved

we

will confront

southerners

felt

World War

to

.

.

.

new

the people

compose the majority. 10

the ground shift beneath their

II set in

will find

go away." In the South during the days of civil

In times of relative quiescence, as well as in

out of nowhere, but had

we

its

moments feet.

of drama, white

Change did not come

roots in a long process that the

motion.

A

booming

national

New Deal and

economy blazed

into

Dixie in the 1940s, while the region welcomed veterans, white and black, back from a

war waged

in the

name

of democracy and freedom

against tyrannical racism. Against the global backdrop of the Cold War,

pressure for civil rights intensified. ers

Some

it;

oth-

used anti-communist hysteria to attack any political activity they

found unpalatable, particularly support the

southerners gave in to

first

decade after World

War

II,

for black

advancement. During

some white southerners began

open their arms to a more egalitarian ethos any pushes, however small, toward black

as others civil

continued

rights.

to

to resist

The Supreme

1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education further polarized these two tendencies. Citizens' Councils rose in massive resistance, and cowed into silence the small segment of white southerners that might

Court's

/

M l rodii

i

11

//

(

:

.

II

hi

hi i Hg I Strps

when

have tolerated integration. Even

faced with the 1955

Montgomery

boycott, the rising star of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the desegregation

of Central

High School

Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, many whites

in Little

refused to believe that southern blacks desired civil rights, or that

still

The

they possessed the capacity to organize themselves into movements.

i960 student nessee,

sit-ins in

Greensboro, North Carolina, and Nashville, Ten-

opened thousands of eyes,

protests provoked

few minds and hearts. Direct action

if

gruesome white violence, and some southern commu-

nities fractured in the face of

such extreme bigotry.

As President Lyndon Johnson ushered the

Civil Rights

Act and Vot-

ing Rights Act through Congress in 1964 and 1965, respectively, some

white southerners began to believe that rights for blacks necessarily

meant

White

a loss of freedoms for whites.

Americans clenched their ders flared.

fists

fears intensified as African-

in cries of "Black Power" and urban disor-

For thousands of white southerners, the

movement only

Communities

that had resisted

started to take effect in the late 1960s.

school integration for the better part of

two decades began

to buckle

under the Supreme Court's 1969 integration mandate, Alexander Holmes.

When

all

the battles ended and the struggles subsided, blacks

and whites across the South were life

—and

terrain

v.

to negotiate the terrain of everyday

left

in the face of unprecedented events after

World War

that

II,

had shifted profoundly. White southerners experienced the

changes in a multitude of ways.

To

illustrate the arc of change in

wake of World War shots were fired in

processes

II

southern

life,

this

book begins

in the

and continues into the 1970s. After the war's

last

1945, southerners began to grapple with larger

—economic,

demographic,

gripped their land and their

lives. It

and

industrial,

was not a

political

linear path

—

that

from wartime

changes to the black freedom struggles of the 1960s. Industrialization

and urbanization changed the outlines of the South began to challenge the substance of its after the sions.

rights

as individual blacks

society. In this sense, the

war provides an important context

decade

for the later social convul-

This work focuses most intensely on the 1960s, for the black

movement pulsed with

rights confrontations raged

and

full force

during those

federal laws

made

their

years.

way

As

civil civil

into various

towns, deep changes became apparent in southerners' lives and minds.

The book continues feel

into the 1970s because

the effects of integration

in the

mind

—

—whether

until the late 1960s

and

many

areas did not begin to

in schools, at the ballot box, or

early 1970s. After King's

1968

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

12 assassination,

commentators began to write the

epitaph. If conventional

wisdom maintained

civil rights

that King's death killed the

movement, the perspective of white southerners southern

life

timeline.

in general, black as well as white

While the bulk of the

1970s told the story of the can

life,

and revealed

its

movement's

—and

of everyday

—demanded

a different

action took place in the 1960s, the

movement's influence on Ameri-

civil rights

lasting legacy.

This book focuses on a handful of episodes in different southern towns. Shifting attention from

town

to town,

and from time to time, allows and

a comparison of various parts of the South, rate

avenues through which the

civil rights

also reveals the dispa-

movement

forced change.

Despite the Albany Herald^ claims, few whites in Albany, Georgia, lived

with any sense of "calm" when

local blacks

welcomed King and the

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an organization of

African-American preachers that became active in the gle.

Whites

felt

majority of residents could barely believe their eyes

Negroes" of

civil rights strug-

themselves besieged by "outside agitators," and the

— Albany

"their

Negroes"

when

—demonstrated

the "good

that they were

anything but content. In the face of black protest, the white myth of

"good race relations" blew away with the wind. Similar tremors pulsed through

Georgia, in 1961,

New

Orleans in i960 and Athens,

when African-Americans

sands of whites in

New

entered white schools. Thou-

Orleans boycotted the public schools, but a few

did continue to send their children to Frantz Elementary and

Children became pawns

white communities alternately uni-

No.

19.

fied

and fractured under the pressure of

as

division. In Athens,

Deep South

black rights hastened white

city,

some students joined

The New Orleans some and made accidental

civil rights.

school crisis brought out hateful prejudices in radicals of others. In that

McDonogh

a

mob when Charlayne Hunter

and Hamilton Holmes integrated the University of Georgia; many more resigned themselves to the inevitability of desegregation and its

capacity to disrupt their lives.

By 1970,

bemoaned

school integration began to

take hold almost everywhere, even as private "segregation academies" sprouted. School desegregation threw generational differences into sharp relief.

Some white

students took integration in stride as their parents

continued to shout "Never!" Others could not shake off the stigma of their upbringing; black students

they tried in vain to ignore.

were to them the agents of a trauma

Introduction!

It

ers,

Change Saps In

13

any pieces of federal legislation touched the

lives of white

southern-

they were the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The former made desegregation a reality in private businesses and public facilities everywhere. From Ollie's Barbecue in Birmingham to Pickrick Fried Chicken in Atlanta, and thousands of lunch counters in between,

businessmen and their clientele expressed the entire gamut of reactions.

Some white employees

greeted black customers as though they had been

patrons for years; others

them

slammed doors

in their faces; still

hesitantly and reluctantly. In the

locales

more served

wake of black voting

rights,

with large African-American populations traveled the previously

unthinkable path from white power to black political control. Greene County, Alabama, was one such

area.

As

in other facets of

life,

white

reaction to black voting gains varied immensely from person to person.

One's pragmatic transition to a mare.

What visited

cities

new

political

world was another's night-

sometimes bypassed

oping suburbs, and wrenching

realities in

another. For every pattern that

seemed

rural areas or

newly devel-

one state were foreign to

to emerge, however, another

crumpled under the sheer diversity and complexity of experience.

Roy Blount,

Jr.'s,

who

anecdote resonates with anyone

probes the

South during the 1960s. As Blount was watching a recent television

drama about the were you in replied.

The

—

civil rights era, a nine-year-old

boy asked him, "Which

the Klan or the FBI?" "I was just in Georgia," Blount

vast majority of white southerners were neither

nor government informants, members of neither the

Klansmen

Citizens' Councils

nor the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Certainly, bigots

and murderers

existed.

captured headlines and solidified

fears,

While

these intransigents often

they do not substantially further

one's understanding of the majority's plight. Labels help even less.

To

identify whites as "extremists," "segregationists," or even "moderates"

inadequately explains their beliefs or actions "racist."

—much

less so

the tag

Charles Payne analyzed writing about southern whites

when he

praised Fred Powledge's Free at Last?:

I

am

particularly thankful that [Powledge] doesn't hold southern

racists

up

to ridicule; he gives

makes some attempt

at

them

credit for being

understanding the cross-pressures under

which they were operating. The opposite ists are

complex and

tradition, in

which

pictured as stupid, vulgar, and one-dimensional,

is

rac-

one of

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

14

the hoariest conventions of writing about civil rights and one of the most destructive. tify their

own

I

take

it

to be a device

by which authors

cer-

enlightened status by distancing themselves from

the grosser expressions of racism, thus giving racism the face of

the ignorant, the pot-bellied, and the tobacco-chewing, an image

with which almost no one can identify and which

more complex and

realistic

images of racism.

To think of most white southerners simply too far

or too

little credit

it fails

Adam

much. In

too generous: "The term

easily supplants

'racist'

has

as "racist" gives

them

either

Fairclough's view, the label

become devalued through

to prepare one for the depths of disgust, contempt,

scension with which whites, to varying degrees

.

.

.

is

overuse:

and conde-

regarded their black

fellow citizens." These writers attest that a sensitivity for complexities

remains paramount in any story of America and bedeviling issue

—

race relations.

Present-day observers can

its

most

persistently

11

victim to simple explanations, and so

fall

did those on the front lines of the

civil rights struggles.

Some

civil rights

supporters misunderstood the white communities that served as battle-

grounds, the very places they sought to transform. rights

movement's

clear that

lessons, J. Mills

Among

Thornton has argued,

the civil

"it

became

white southerners' doubts about segregation were both more

extreme and complex than either zealous segregationists or advocates initially appreciated."

White

civil rights

southerners' racial attitudes and

behavior frequently revealed a confused and conflicted people, at times

divided within and against themselves. Harold Fleming of the Southern

Regional Council (SRC) wrote in a 1956 quarterly report, "There

.

.

.

needs to be more recognition of the complexity of opinion and attitude

on

race.

Most people hold no simple, single-minded, coherent opinion

on the subject; rather they have

a

number

of vague, shifting, often con-

tradictory notions of what their position should be."

aspects of a mind-set to

which white southerners

Fleming unraveled

typically clung: they

possessed a conviction that segregation was "best for both races" and that blacks desired

it;

respected "law and order"; believed in blacks' rights to

"an equal chance"; supported public education; took pride in the South

and hoped that "outsiders" would not think that, if integration list

it

"benighted"; and feared

came, blacks would "take advantage" of whites. The

could go on, Fleming maintained. Those lines of thinking that

Changs

Introduction:

15

Seeps hi

together formed public opinion "at any given time" reflected "the depth, intensity,

and balance of the various notions

and

of the South were even

lives

fixed,

more complex because they were not

but precarious and mutable.

as the struggles of the civil rights

Few

forces

movement.

white southerners watched

as

shook them so thoroughly 12

African-Americans demanded

Hugh

freedom and, in Chapel Hill farmer

their

moment." The minds

at the

Wilson's words,

ascended "out of their place." Even in those cases where the

movement succeeded

civil rights

changing whites' attitudes and altering their

in

lives,

nothing was simple or straightforward about those transforma-

tions.

Old

had a powerful

beliefs

ability to endure. "In the

back of your

head from what came when you were a child, you had this idea," Wilson

"You

said.

still

got that thing in there, that black boy, he's trouble." For

some, the law forced changes in practices, but recesses of hearts

could not touch the

it

and minds. Others began to question deeply held

views even though their lives looked

much

the same as before.

At

the old stereotypes and everyday practices died hard together. still

others,

change in any form

something to

fear

and

"Some rednecks

white person rather than

as a person,

Change would eventually visit them,

come one

day, but

rotten too."

When

God knows

I

And

in law, mind-set, or lifestyle

with denial and bitterness,

resist,

the grave. Wilson asserted, as a

—

times,

too,

.

.

.

it

—was

way

to

think about themselves

who happens

but

the

all

for

to be white."

could take decades.

"It'll

probably will be dead a long time and

13

change came,

as the story

of a self-described "liberal"

from Fayetteville, North Carolina, further

attests, it

messy process. Few southerners achieved, much

was a

woman

partial

and

less desired, a clean

break from the past. The intensity and form of discrimination often

H.S.

—belonged

to the

—

The woman identified only as generation that came of age during the black

changed, not the fact of

its

existence.

freedom struggle. H.S. attributed her

own

liberal

views to her Jewish

background, which predisposed her to empathize with other persecuted minorities, as well as to generational differences. "I

times eral."

.

.

.

those glorious 60s.

When

it

was hip

am

a product of

to be liberal,

Her parents were given to no such liberalism, and they when she became pregnant. "In reaction to my

black maid

cried ... for black political

and economic

rights."

I

was

my lib-

fired their

parents,

But her experiences

I

in

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

l6

junior high and high school during the late 1960s and early 1970s began to

push H.S. toward her own type of conservatism on

Racially charged rights in school

made

racial issues.

her wary of blacks, and "I became

a little suspect of the black man's savagery. For the first time,

I

was black against white." At the University of North Carolina Hill in the mid-1970s, H.S.

felt herself

on one

chasm. "Carolina nowadays exhibits a great society etc.,"

—

The

nostalgic for the lost days of the

but a more complex

I

am

and economic rights

And

feel will

side of an unbridgeable

I

have had

still

therefore

now."

is

A new

of

my

my

But

my cry

has sub-

belief in social equality,

I

desire to give blacks that." Like

believed that "social equality" was

still

Little else in her

and prejudices of the older Jim Crow gen-

fears

the case in

—kind

the equal rights advocate, crying for

the emotional strains altering

"As

race relations,"

more troubling

something whites could choose to bestow upon blacks.

eration.

a

was not the old mind-set that waxed

always stand in the way of

views resonated with the

contact with

endowed her with

for blacks in all areas.

the generation before her, H.S.

little

happy Sambo and "good

—and perhaps

attitude. "Intellectually

dued.

Chapel

at

between black and white

tensions of the late 1960s and 1970s

certain type of racial attitude. It

political

it

in living arrangements, student organizations, social affairs,

she wrote in 1975. "For that reason,

blacks."

rift

realized

much

of the country,

my

racism

day dawned in the South; even the racism

it

is

very subtle

spawned was

something novel. 14

Ben Smith,

who admitted

southerner

would overcome

its

Sam

no such prejudices. Smith wished

am

explained

still

how

Ervin a futile plea to support

proud of he, like

"I

my

many

was born

civil rights. "It is

up the

not

traditions

Edward County, its politics."

Vir-

Smith

southerners, cherished his heritage and

He

Andersonville and Fredericksburg. fell at

in Prince

birthplace but not of

took pride in his region's history.

where Jackson

that the

As southern senators filibustered against December of 1963, Smith penned North Car-

of his early years," he wrote. I

his region

new world

easy for a native white citizen of a southern state to give

ginia.

was one

offered.

the Civil Rights Act in olina senator

to

State University,

past at once, and step into the

movement

civil rights

North Carolina

a professor at

had visited Shiloh and Vicksburg,

"I

Chancellorsville."

have stood in pride and sorrow

While many

politicians

warned

of a "Second Reconstruction," a handful of white southerners, like Smith,

welcomed

it.

"It is

long past time to bury the ghost of the Old South,

— Introduction

that has

Cbangi Saps In

17

been dead and gone so long. The ghost has served the purposes

many murderers and

of too

who

1

,

thieves;

it

has

duped countless simple

men and Americans. The world own house in order." 15

forget that they are free

hoping that we will

set

our

is

folk

waiting,

Increasingly, the struggles of southerners during the age of civil rights

became contests over competing visions of what made people "free men and Americans." Authors as disparate as Toni Morrison, David Roediger,

Nathan

Irvin

Huggins, and

American visions of freedom stance and survival

—upon

dom became more bound and

historically

less

—

for their very sub-

The

idea of free-

Huggins argued

that slavery and

polar opposites than interdependent pieces of

Amer-

"Slavery and freedom, white and black, are joined

concretely, white

North and South, from

in the

depended

powerful "in a cheek-by- jowl existence with the

ica's historical fabric:

More

have argued that white

black slavery or oppression.

unfree," Morrison wrote.

freedom were

at the hip."

Edmund Morgan

Americans

—

aristocrats

and workers,

colonial through antebellum times

rooted their economic and political power in African-Americans' lack of it.

Whiteness paid wages, psychologically and

also economically. South-

ern whites reinforced their freedom and economic livelihood after the abolition of slavery

crop

lien,

when

they established the sharecropping system, the

and countless other instruments to keep African- Americans in

marked the emergence of the Jim defined by lynching, intimidation, and disenfran-

a "slavery of debt." Legal segregation

Crow

South, an era

chisement that kept blacks powerless and enslaved by rights

legacy rights

And

if it is

true that white

upon black oppression, what happened its

practices

In this vein,

ment

The

civil

movement was death to much of that. While the extent of its may be well debated, the post- World War II era and the civil movement won for black Americans undeniable political and

legal freedom.

and

fear.

—when

American freedom depended

to that

some white southerners perceived the

rights struggles for

what they were

—attempts all

for all

at

move-

here,"

changing a

civil

American

Where some saw

long

Americans to turn their

"You take these country people out offered. "[They're]

16

civil rights

to translate

into reality.

world turned "upside down," others glimpsed,

Wilson

in its visions

notion of freedom. Others saw the

promises of democracy and liberty for

and

—

the touchstone of bondage disappeared?

as a threat to their very

for southerners

freedom

last,

a

the chance

lives right side up.

North Carolina farmer Hugh

lot of their attitudes. [They're]

I

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

8

The South in the 1970s was a society remarkably similar to of Jim Crow times in some respects, yet fundamentally transformed

learning." that

in others.

At

Even

for those

times its arrival

and came

in

civil rights

finally

long

process."*

resisted,

change continued to seep into

starts.

it

life.

was halting and gradual,

When tranquillity settled over the sites of the

movement, the work of adjusting

began.

it's

and

fits

who

was sudden; more often

White southerners had miles

to life in a

to go. "I don't

going to take," Wilson said in 1974.

"[It] is

new world know how

one

hell of a

17

*I have chosen to render quotations exactly as they appeared in historical documents, with

punctuation and grammar unchanged.

When

brackets, apostrophes, plus signs, parentheses,

ampersands, misspellings, or the like occur in quotations, nal

documents

—

in newspapers, letters,

tion: if some people

with

italics in

I

it is

because they existed in the origi-

and other manuscript sources.

Italics are a

notable excep-

have quoted chose to underline words, those underlines have been replaced

the text.

ONE

Prelude: In the

ON battlefields

in

Wake of the War,

EUROPE and

1 945-1955

World War

the Pacific,

II

blew

gusts of change toward Joe Gilmer and Lewis Barton. For these white

who fought

soldiers

"Before the war Southerner. races,

I

I

God

alongside blacks, the war

left

indelible imprints.

had the same feeling towards the Negro didn't intend

them

to have equal rights with other

thought," Petty Officer Barton wrote in a letter to his

newspaper, the Lumberton, North Carolina, Robesonian. belief

as the typical

became one of the war's millions of casualties.

race prejudice

is

Gilmer wrote

gone from the boys who

"I

hometown

By 1945,

am afraid

his

that

all

have fought this war," Sergeant

"White boys who have

to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

seen Negroes die to save their 'buddies,' and to help keep America free, are not in favor of the

Jim Crow'

law." In several regiments,

by war's

The

end, whites and blacks ate, worked, lived, and fought together.

Souths segregation laws seemed petty and absurd by comparison. "Forcing them to ride in the rear of busses and stand for whitefs] to I

realize

now

is

narrow-minded childishness practiced by our

Negro is son some white southerners would soon ton wrote.

"I

discovered that the

a

human

learn.

humanity of blacks remained a threat of the

first

being."

For

many

sit

state," It

man

les-

others, the

order, a fear too

imme-

going to

... to try to abuse the colored people any more," Joe

Gilmer warned. "The veterans of

means more than

Bar-

was a

diate to peacefully allow, a reality to indefinitely deny. "It isn't

be wise for any

down,

just

freedom

this

for the

war have learned that freedom

white man."

ans carried this truth back to their communities.

Many

southern veter-

The question of

the

— THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

20

ensuing decade

—between

World War

the end of

beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 southerners would welcome or challenge

1945 and the was whether white

II in

—

1

it.

Joe Gilmer's and Lewis Barton's transformative experiences placed

them

in a minority.

Many

soldiers

who

fought alongside blacks

felt their

attitudes change, but they constituted only a small fraction of white

southern servicemen. About two-thirds of

should have the same rights after the war tified their beliefs

Negro,

with assertions

why change?"

like,

and

as

they had before.

"We

outfits.

And

Many

jus-

get along fine with the

and, "They're satisfied with the

More than 90 percent of white southern itary facilities

white soldiers said blacks

all

way they

are now."

soldiers supported separate mil-

white southerners

who

stayed at

home

defended segregation even more vehemently. The sight of blacks in uni-

form had the peculiar

ability to spark violence. "It

uniform has stimulated some white

civilians

and

seems that a Negro in soldiers to protect the

customary caste etiquette of the South," read a 1943 report on the

American

soldier.

That "protection" often manifested

form

itself in the

of racial violence. During the war, the South was the site of six civilian riots,

twenty military

seventy-five lynchings. in the

riots

army promoted

inforced their

and mutinies, and between

While some

pre-Army

forty-five

and

soldiers felt that interracial contact

tolerance, "a larger

group seemed

attitudes while in the service.

.

.

.

to have re-

The

job done,

they wanted to get out, get home, and by and large resume where they

had

left off."

That often meant supporting Jim Crow as staunchly as

Gilmer and Barton both believed

their

ever.

2

profound wartime experiences

were not unique; they thought many white southern soldiers had similar changes in attitudes. Although the testimonies of most whites challenge that generalization, there

vicemen have not reacted

is

some evidence

in the

to support

it.

"All of our ser-

same way," Guy Johnson

said in 1945.

Johnson headed the Southern Regional Council, a progressive group

—

made up of mostly white southerners that came to support integration. "Some of them have come out with worse attitudes toward the other race than they had when they went in. I believe, however, that the majority of our fighting men have had experiences which have taught them a new appreciation of their fellow Americans of another race." In fact, those

with "a new appreciation" their experiences

years to come.

3

for blacks

comprised but a small segment. Yet

were significant, and augured larger changes in the

Prtludr, hi tbi

21

Wake of the War, 1945-1955

Before Frank Smith gained notoriety as the rare progressive congress-

man from the Mississippi Delta, he fought in the army during World War II. What Smith learned at Artillery Officers Training School in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1942 stayed with him for the rest of his life. "OCS at Fort

Sill

was

from the South,

a revolutionary experience to those of us

and probably to a good many others from outside the South. Negro cer candidates were scattered

among

offi-

us wherever they happened to

fall

in the alphabetical list."

Smith detected

among southern

"The Southerners who expressed themselves to

me

soldiers.

policy

little resistance to this

had no objections, and some even voiced approval

said they

nobody was bucking the

tide." Southerners

regation, like Smith, often looked back

While Smith grew up dle class, Claude

as a

member of the

Ramsay was

who would

on the war

later

as a

.

.

.

oppose seg-

turning point.

Mississippi Delta's small mid-

Ocean

raised in poverty across the state in

Ramsay carried traditional southern beliefs about race into the Yet when he returned to civilian life, he began to believe that blacks

Springs. war.

He

should have their rights.

pany shortly

after the war,

in 1959. For the rest of his

ing experience.

ComAFL-CIO

landed a job at International Paper

and won the presidency of the

Ramsay would

life,

state

consider the war a defin-

4

Georgia native Harold Fleming had similar memories of his service a

commander

in the Pacific. "It did

more

to

other experience I've ever had," he confessed. "I'm a heart."

.

.

.

as

than any

life

good old boy

at

Fleming neither sought nor expected any transformation of racial

views, but his war experiences thrust such changes in

my

change

Okinawa, Fleming was placed

in charge of

"The nearest thing you could be be a company

officer

in the

African-American troops.

army

with black troops," he

upon him. Stationed

to being black

was

later told journalist

to

Fred

Powledge, "because you lived and operated under the same circumstances they did,

and they got crapped

all over."

This experience did not

instantly convert the "good old boy" to political radicalism, but

opened

his eyes

and changed

a word. It wasn't that

I

his

came

life. "

'Radicalized'

to love Negroes;

it

it

would be too strong was that

I

came

to

despise the system that did this." Fleming completed the transition

when he went

to

would eventually

work

for the

SRC

after

graduating from Harvard.

lead the organization during the 1950s.

He

Fleming kept

few friends from his prewar days; he associated mostly with like-minded progressives and friends from the

American Veterans Committee. The

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

22

committee consisted of "usually young veterans, white and black, race stuff.

who thought

just

back from the war,

there was or ought to be a

new day on

this

And I exchanged my old friends for a new set of friends and co-

workers and collaborators." After the war, nothing in Harold Fleming's life

remained the same. "The army experience activated me," he

recalled;

and the

it

set

him along an

stuff of his everyday

Most southern

arc that reshaped his career, his friendships, life.

5

soldiers followed life trajectories unlike those of

Smith, Claude Ramsay, or Harold Fleming.

who

southern soldiers

along well together." bered,

"When

I

us."

I

A

Many

"We was

my

it, I

line,

blacks," African-American veteran

that

first

mind. They're

trapped behind the

"And

just like

any of the other boys to

combat the

color line vanished.

and white was

afraid of

dying

as

Wilson Evans remembered of the

there was no color, no nothing. ...

Americans could become Americans

While

damned if I'd wear the same day when we saw how they

said I'd be

soldiers confirmed that in

Battle of the Bulge.

Frank

the majority of white

platoon sergeant from South Carolina remem-

heard about

changed

Still,

fought alongside blacks found that they "got

shoulder patch they did. After that fought,

later

I

did see

about eight or nine days."

for

these soldiers asserted that race was inconsequential in combat, an

overwhelming majority of white southern army's integrated living quarters. the garrison introduced

it

again.

soldiers still resented the

Combat suspended

the color line, but

6

Seth Lurie, an air force major from

New

Orleans, was stationed after

He

the war at Craig Field in rural Dallas County, Alabama.

described

himself as "a reconstructed southerner," and attributed that conversion to his military career.

tion on this

came

"The greatest teacher

solely

housed alphabetically

experience

is

.

.

.

My

educa-

from the military." Like Frank Smith, Lurie was

at Officer

Training School. In that interracial

contact, prejudices centuries in the

making

dissolved during everyday

interaction:

That was

my

Negro was tion

on

a

first real

human

his brow,

contact with Negroes. ...

white

man

learned that a

being, with blood in his brain, and perspira-

with aches the same

thought of home the same. a

I

dies, for the

I

.

.

.

ambitions the same,

learned later that he died the same as

same

cause. Also in

he has the same courage and daring

as a

combat

I

learned that

white man. ... To the

Pftlud*'. In the

best of

white

Wake of the War, 1945-195 5

my

knowledge, there

is

23

no resentment on the part of any

officer.

Lurie's revelations

were powerful. They showed that weeks of experience

could undo the received

upbringing.

wisdom and ingrained customs of an

entire

7

Seth Lurie was quick to realize that his experiences did not suggest a

He

region-wide transformation.

could see

it

firsthand in his interactions

with the residents of nearby Selma. "Old timers in this town are against progress.

.

.

.

Until this segregation-preaching generation dies off and a

new generation

Monumental wartime

takes hold, there will be trouble."

changes failed to grip

all

southerners.

More than

half of the war's veter-

20 percent foresaw

ans predicted "trouble" with blacks, and almost

A

"trouble" with Jews.

1946

social psychological survey

found

"little

reason for doubting the re-absorption of the vast majority of American soldiers into the

became reabsorbed

diers

White southern solSouths traditional way of life. Many

normal patterns of American in the

life."

believed they had fought to defend, not overturn, racial customs.

8

While African-American veterans remembered that some white soldiers lost their prejudices in the war, those memories were far outweighed by accounts of whites who violently defended Jim Crow.

Dempsey the only

Travis was stationed in

PX

excluded blacks.

for a beer, whites

Camp

When

Shenango, Pennsylvania, where

a black soldier

went into the

kicked his eye out. Travis joined an expanding crowd

of African- American soldiers

who

discussed what action to take.

avan of six trucks arrived, and white soldiers jumped off tle fatigues

and carrying arms. They

in several places.

ting in front.

own

Where

He

recalled the

The one

fired into the

ambulance

says to the driver,

'Who

Driver says,

soldiers?'

PX

ride:

A

car-

—wearing bat-

crowd, hitting Travis

"Two guys were

'Why we be

sit-

doin' this to our

ever told you niggers were our sol-

—

—

come from' I detected a southern accent 'we shoot niggers like we shoot rabbits.' " By 1943, Travis had been put in charge of a troop movement on its way to Camp Lee, in Richmond,

diers?

Virginia. It

the

life

POWs

I

was the

first

of the South.

time Travis, a Chicago native, had witnessed

Some

sights singed his northern eyes.

rode in the front of the

city's streetcars,

German

blacks in the back.

After Travis received a transfer to Aberdeen, Maryland, in 1945, he

came

across the rare white southerner

who seemed

to have been liber-

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

24 ated by the war.

A

major from Texas made Travis manager of an

inte-

grated PX. In the end, Travis "found the most sympathetic white in the

army were

men

White southerners were nothsome welcomed blacks; others brimmed with hostil-

actually southerners."

ing

if

not diverse:

ity.

In the memories of most black soldiers, however, the hostility far

surpassed the acceptance. 9

Alfred Duckett found few sympathetic whites.

who published

articles in

many

Duckett was drafted and sent night

we

to

know

over to terror

down

Camp Lucky

here,

Claiborne, Louisiana. "The

what the

rules were.

we hang

'em.'

"

down

When

.

.

.

first

'We

here, because

Duckett shipped

Strike in France, he found "an almost psychotic

on the part of white commanders that there would be a great deal

of association with the white in

Camp

we're not takin' any foolishness

don't shoot 'em

freelance journalist

of America's major black newspapers,

arrived, a white officer told us

want you

we

to

A

women." The company's chaplain

traveled

advance to each town, and informed the locals that blacks had

The commander with French

civilians.

When

conversed with a French a white

MP

shot

tails.

issued an edict that black troops could not associate

him

Allen Leftridge disobeyed this order and

woman who was

in the back.

serving coffee and doughnuts,

The white

officers

were so paranoid

about black soldiers that they locked up the regiment's guns. Blacks received arms only in combat.

myth

of the "happy Negro,"

black

men

When

with guns

As some white southerners clung

many

recoiled in terror at the prospect of

—

women. 10

or even worse, with white

the last battles were over and soldiers became veterans, whites

and blacks alike gazed back toward home. Many black ered that

if

soldiers discov-

their native Southland had begun to grapple with economic

and demographic change, racial

to the

attitudes.

Ben

little

Fielder,

metamorphosis had occurred

an African-American from Mississippi,

served in both Europe and the Far East, and staff sergeant. After returning to the

made

United

his

way up

States, Fielder

veteran embarked on a train ride from California back Mississippi.

As the

train

rumbled

and "became

tight."

When

felt

the ranks to

and

a white

to their native

across the country, the

together and passed the time telling stories. Fielder "this race nonsense"

in white

two dined

they transcended

the train passed into

Texas and Louisiana, Fielder realized his mistake.

The white

soldier

assumed a posture of superiority, and informed Fielder that the war was over, that they

was

still just

were back in the South, and

a nigger.

Not an American

that, as Fielder recalled, "I

soldier anymore. Just a nigger."

Prtlkdil In the

Wake of the War,

Black veteran

on the

German Levy

level of

white

hadn't turned over

you

left."

In

.

many

.

25

945-1955

1

of Brookhaven, Mississippi, concurred that

had changed. "The pancake

racial behavior, little .

you come back home right into the same world

ways, the South at war's end closely resembled the

prewar land. Reconstructed or not, white soldiers made their way back to factories, farms,

soldiers

and

moved into growing cities. While these wide world, some returned to communities that

families, or

had seen the

seemed much the same

as before

they

left.

Many

most whites contained potential

for

preferred

it

that way.

11

both acceptance of and

world

resistance to racial change. It often took powerful events, like a

war, and broad social processes, such as urbanization and industrializa-

Passos, "Looks like

and bad, in

As one Alabama man

John Dos the war has speeded up every kind of process, good

tion, to bring out those tendencies.

this country." In

told

southern states that had relied upon staple

crops for centuries, wartime industry and labor shortages accelerated the processes that diversified and mechanized the economy.

of things," Mississippi Delta planter

W.

"Our economics have been disrupted.

...

to ten years this country,

you

I

believe that in the next five

it,

As

areas.

"The South

revolutions, an industrial revolution

is

a dispatch

areas.

into

and explosive urbanization."

two

Num-

more than 15 mil-

(more than half of the region's people) lived in rural

Lured by job opportunities

ter lives

in

from News-

in the midst [of]

bers help to capture part of that story. In the 1930s, lion southerners

moved

sharecropping and tenancy

newly expanding urban and industrial bureau put

happened

Poor whites and blacks

in this Mississippi Delta."

who had known nothing but

a lot

reflected in 1946.

will see the greatest revolution that ever

happen

week's southern

Wynn

T.

"War does

—both whites and

—and more

blacks, during

southern as well as northern

cities.

vaguely, by hopes for bet-

and

after the war,

Four million of them

left

moved

to

the rural

South in the 1940s. In 1950, Mississippi was the only southern

state

worked on farms. By i960, the Souths

rural

where the majority

still

population had dropped to 7 million. tive effects of these

Many

whites

felt

the transforma-

demographic and economic changes. The Lemann

family ran a sugar plantation in Palo Alto, Louisiana, for centuries.

Arthur Lemann, who represented the fourth generation of that dynasty,

deemed the wartime changes

revolutionary. "I recall so vividly back in

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

26

the early '40s that there were no trucks on the farm. ...

I

rode a horse

The expanding

like every other overseer,

from can to

economy brought with

the mechanical cane-harvester, introduced the

tractor,

it

can't."

industrial

and displaced one hundred of Lemann's workers. "World War

II

brought about the drastic changes that we're enjoying, or not enjoying,

Lemann recalled in a 1991 interview. The days of mule, and human cane-cutter became the stuff of memory. 12 today,"

As farmers darity and

its

left rural areas, their

tendency toward

the horse,

absence often undermined white

mob

rule

and lynch

began to populate the burgeoning urban

areas.

law.

Small-town

soli-

sorts

Large factories like the

Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, attracted thousands of

Ingalls

workers, and

moved

many more

millions of dollars in industry. Corporations

plants southward, often with implicit promises that southern

localities

would stamp out the grosser manifestations of racism. Indus-

trialization

and urbanization brought economic changes and new hopes

"New

South," and they helped lay the structural groundwork for a

for a

loosening in southern race relations after the war. 13

The war

era altered the mind-set of

southerners into

new

jected

cities,

some white

soldiers,

nudged

rural

further industrialized the South, and also in-

streaks of progressivism into the politics of various states.

National and international forces thus pierced local fortresses of white supremacy. The Supreme Court destroyed a pillar of Jim

Crow when

it

outlawed the white primary in 1944. Before that time, the Democratic Party's all-white

primary had proved the most effective tool

for exclud-

ing blacks from politics. Yet while an influx of black voters helped

change

politics in

some

cities, rural areas

remained citadels of disenfran-

chisement. In rural Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, for instance,

whites used violence, intimidation, and legal ploys to keep blacks away

from the polls long

where

fear

was

less

after the

white primary had been banned. In areas

pervasive,

some southerners voted

politicians rather than race-baiters.

The

states that trod this political

path contained smaller percentages of whites majorities. Often

white

fears,

it

for reformist

who

lived

was not the presence of blacks per

—

but their potential for power

a potential

heavily black areas. In Texas, Tennessee, Florida,

among

black

se that fueled

most evident

in

North Carolina, and

Virginia, less than 5 percent of whites lived in black-majority counties in

1940. Between 8 and 12 percent of white Arkansans, Louisianans,

Alabamians, and Georgians lived in such figure

was 20 percent;

areas. In

in Mississippi, 37 percent.

South Carolina, the

These figures help to

Pnlndt: In

Wake

tin

of tb% War,

1^4^-ic)^^

27

explain which states elected reformist politicians in the 1940s: Estes

won victories in Tennessee, Claude Pepper in Graham in North Carolina (though he was Sid McMath in Arkansas, and "Big" Jim Folsom

Kefauver and Albert Gore

Frank Porter

Morula,

appointed, not elected), in

Alabama. More to the point, the figures help to explain which

states

did not vote for progressives: notably, Mississippi and South Carolina.

On

14

the level of national politics, both reform and reaction touched

Dixie in 1948. Henry Wallace, Franklin D. Roosevelt's former vice president,

mounted

Progressive Party. Wallace

Upper South

campaign under the banner of the

a presidential

states like

made

substantial

—

North Carolina and

if

ephemeral

Virginia.

—

inroads in

He was

the

first

national candidate to publicly attack segregation in the South. Wallace

was

also fhe first politician to address

deliberate

way

crowds and a

though gation

his if

in

mixed audiences

mob

atmosphere. Wallace's efforts failed in the end,

al-

campaign showed that some southerners might oppose segre-

given a viable forum in which to do

similarly fleeting

—

yet equally significant

Rights Party nominated Strom

so.

While 1948 brought

to the South,

—

it

witnessed the

revolt of the Dixiecrats.

Thurmond

Wright of Mississippi

president and Fielding crats

for the

which he broke the taboo, he encountered angry

Henry Wallace and the Progressive Party States'

—and

of South Carolina for

for vice president.

unhappy with President Harry Truman's

The

Demo-

steps in the direction of

black civil rights bolted from the party, and fueled the fledgling Dixiecrats.

Both Wallace and the Dixiecrats scored breakthroughs

in south-

ern politics, yet neither shattered the one-party Democratic stronghold.

That would have to wait until the 1960s. 15

THE war provided some

southerners with novel experiences, brought

demographic and economic transformations, and portended wider changes in

life,

yet

it

also left

teemed with optimism later.

mixed

in 1945, he grappled

Whereas Guy Johnson

with new

realities a year

"The year 1946 has brought many things. Perhaps we can best

characterize

it

as a year of reaction,"

the Southern Regional Council in

down'

legacies.

after its great

tionary trend has

war

made

effort,

he said before the annual meeting of

November 1946. "The Nation

has

and the inevitable conservative and

itself felt in

'let

reac-

unmistakable ways." Johnson did not

have a difficult argument to make.

He

cited the revival of the

Ku Klux

Klan, the reelection of race-baiting politicians like Theodore Bilbo in Mississippi and

Eugene Talmadge

in Georgia,

and beatings of union

— THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

28 organizers, black veterans,

and others who threatened to disrupt the

sta-

1946 letter to Dwight Eisenhower, Alvin Owsley, chairman of the American Legion National Americanism Endowment Fund, pretus quo. In a

dicted racial violence

would mount. Reflecting on the new confidence

African-American soldiers had displayed overseas, Owsley wrote, not

know

.

.

.

where these Negroes come from, but

it is

do

"I

certain that if

they expect to be returned to the South, they very likely are on the

way

to be hanged or to be burned

men

of the South."

As

several

public lynchings by the white

alive at

grim

cases

showed, Owsley was not

far off

the

mark. In a four-week stretch during July and August of that year alone,

men were murdered

a dozen black

lynched Leon McTatie

Maceo

Mississippi. gia, after

when he supposedly

Snipes, a veteran,

he became the

ister to vote.

in the

Deep South.

A

white

mob

stole a saddle near Lexington,

met

a similar fate in Butler,

Geor-

African-American in Taylor County to reg-

first

16

Walton County, Georgia, and Columbia, Tennessee,

Incidents in

marked the "year of reaction." The executions of two young black men Roger Malcolm and George Dorsey law

—and

their wives,

(a veteran),

who were

brothers-in-

Dorothy Malcolm and Mae Murray Dorsey,

occurred outside the town of Monroe, Georgia, on July 25, 1946. Roger

Malcolm was

a laborer

on Bob Hester's farm.

allegedly stabbed Hester's son during a dispute.

eleven days in

jail,

until he

largest cotton grower,

On

July 14, Malcolm

Malcolm spent the next

was bailed out by Loy Harrison

and George Dorsey 's

colms piled into Harrison's

and headed

car,

—

the area's

boss. The Dorseys and Malfor his

farm near the

Apalachee River. Harrison sped past the Dorseys' house, across a bridge

toward a waiting white mob. Rumors of a lynching had swirled about

town

Malcolm's

after

arrest,

the rabble to a fever pitch.

and a

visit

from Eugene Talmadge roused

The gubernatorial candidate

told a

Monroe

crowd, "If I'm your governor, they won't vote in our white primary the

The Dorseys and Malcolms would never get that On July 18, Talmadge carried Walton County by seventy-eight

next four years." chance.

votes in the Democratic primary

—and with

it

the state of Georgia.

On

July 25, the Malcolms and Dorseys were lynched near Loy Harrison's plantation.

The

reaction

was

at its height.

The lynchings and Talmadge's restive

one

race issue,

for

victory

17

made

that

summer

of 1946 a

white Georgians. Talmadge ran his campaign around the

and made many pledges

enfranchise black Georgians.

He

like the

one in which he vowed to dis-

targeted rural white voters, in full

Wake

Prtludi: In thi

of the War,

29

1945-1955

knowledge that they could carry him

made

county-unit system of elections

number of

sessed a given

to victory. Georgia's

that possible. Each county pos-

unit votes, ranging from

counties to six for the largest.

Of

infamous

two

for the smallest

Georgia's 159 counties, 8 of

them

received six unit votes; 30 possessed four unit votes; and the remaining

The candidate that won a certain county received all of its unit votes. Talmadge captured the Democratic primary with 242 unit votes (twice the number of two-unit counties), to 148 for James Carmichael. More Georgians voted for Carmichael than for Talmadge a full 16,144 more but the county-unit system gave voters in rural areas disproportionate power. Urban Georgians expressed out121 had two unit votes apiece.

—

—

Owsley of Atlanta

rage. Cliff less."

felt

"completely disfranchised and power-

Frances Barnes of Marietta was "disillusioned and sick at heart over

the inability of the rural sections to understand what state."

The

happening in our

is

perspective tilted 180 degrees in the rural areas. Ira Butt,

editor of the North Georgia News, celebrated the fact that "We've got a

WHITE MAN's Governor coming forward now." Rural white Georgians Hardy of

reveled; those in the cities sought cover. Editor J. B.

the

Thomaston Times blamed Carmichael's defeat on rural prejudice. "In the

country counties where ignorance and prejudice rule his big votes,

ment

.

.

Ole Gene got

but in the city counties where education and enlighten-

reign Carmichael piled

breathed segregationist stitution attested to

fire,

up

a

huge

vote."

Not

every rural Georgian

and hundreds of letters to the Atlanta Con-

the fact that not every Atlantan took an "enlight-

ened" stance on race relations. ring of truth.

.

Still,

Hardy's generalization possessed the

18

Some white

German

southerners could not reconcile a battle against

racism with the mandates of

Jim Crow. One Georgian admitted

that

while he believed in black inferiority, he could not countenance Eugene

Talmadge's

racist

many and

don't see

I

demagoguery.

how we

baiter in Georgia." In the

"We

Ger-

are fighting a Jew-baiter in

can be consistent

if

we support

a

Negro-

wake of the war, Captain James Clark, an

air

corps veteran, expressed disbelief at Talmadge's victory. "Georgia has elected to follow the leadership of a

man, who by

same category

we

self in the

difficult to

understand

as the dictators

how

his actions, placed

so recently

him-

condemned.

It is

a freedom-loving people failed to grasp the

opportunity to banish the influence of Eugene Talmadge from state gov-

ernment." Some white southerners took seriously America's international posture

toward freedom

—and

realized

it

clashed with

Jim Crow.

— THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

30

Clark concluded,

my

"It is

preservation of the rights of

firm conviction that the struggle for the

men

has suffered

its

greatest defeat in the

back yard of its protector." 19

Thomas

Lovett and Henry Steadman, veterans from the college town

of Athens, believed that the war's lessons had escaped Georgians. They

their racial prejudice

We

what had happened

that if others understood

felt certain

would

would have withered away:

like to

put in a word of sympathy

Our sympathy comes from

Georgia.

for the

the fact that

defeat, as

we

Had

did.

they,

we

people of

more of the peo-

ple of the State did not have the opportunity to see its

Germany,

in

Germany

after

quite sure that the election

feel

of Eugene Talmadge would have been impossible. Those people thrived on racial hatred and intolerance, the very issues that elected Mr. Talmadge.

on the same

to be

believe Georgia

is

By

level

this election, the State has

with that of Mississippi

Talmadge showed

election of

Mississippi) disagreed.

by

this election

so

many

we

that

II left

many

are in

that white

in all their forms.

But the

whites (and not only natives of realize that

danger of having a form of government which

of our native sons died fighting against." Talmadge's victory

white southerners; neither could state

it

little to

remove

many

destroy prejudice in

racial politics or

corruption

governments.* The election results spoke for white Georgians

ways that

Two

we

an unquestioned legacy

"We wonder if the people of this State

demonstrated that the war had done

in

in fact,

humans would enjoy democracy and freedom, and

all

supremacy and totalitarianism would perish

from

—

itself

worse!

To Lovett and Steadman, World War that

proven

editorials

and

letters to the editor

could not. 20

days after the Atlanta Constitution published the letter from

Lovett and Steadman, the Malcolms and Dorseys lost their

lives.

The

lynchings in Monroe further shattered any notions that white southerners

*

were moving toward acceptance of democracy and freedom

When Eugene Talmadge died

Powered by

himself onto the legislature,

of cirrhosis before he could take

a suspect write-in effort list

for all. "It

office, a political fiasco

ensued.

and ballot box corruption, Talmadge's son Herman finagled

of candidates from which the legislature could select the next governor.

The

dominated by old-line Talmadge supporters, voted Herman Talmadge into the

governor's office.

He

succession illegal.

had served

for sixty-seven days

The previous governor,

Thompson. Thompson kept the statehouse

when

Ellis Arnall,

until 1948,

the Georgia

Supreme Court ruled

his

then installed his lieutenant, Melvin E.

when Herman Talmadge won

it

back.

Prthdt: In the Wake of the War, 1945-195 5 is

very regrettable that

was

try" in

54s

mob

with wartime

say, as

he equated the Monroe lynchoccurred in Detroit and

racial confrontations that

Few American

Chicago.

violence occurs in any section of the coun-

Eugene Talmadge could

all

31

were so

politicians

Senator William

glib.

Knowland of California called the lynchings "a blot on the whole United States," reflecting the new international atmosphere in which the killings occurred.

21

Some white Georgians expressed shame at the heinous crime. "Hitler and Germany were indicted at Nuremberg and our fair State was indicted at Monroe," wrote J. L. Thomas of Decatur. "I have reached the point where

I

do not think

my

boundless pride in youth."

many

The

it

heresy to say

am

I

rapidly losing that

Southern heritage that was instilled in

which Thomas

feelings to

me

in

my

would resonate with

testified

other white southerners in the age of civil rights, through the

1950s and

Rampant

1960s.

bigotry and violence against African-

much more than black them. Those who began to change

Americans often upset white southerners

demands and movements appealed their racial views

by

were often repelled by white supremacy, not compelled

That

rights.

civil

to

spirit

animated many Georgians when they

attended church on Sunday, July 28, after the lynchings.

and Athens to the issued resolutions

Church

in

Monroe

is

at

Monroe

First

condemning the lynchings. At

St.

Monroe, Dr. Lester Rumble declared, "The a guilt of us all." First

itself,

churches

Luke's Episcopal terrible

crime of

As Reverend H. C. Holland opened

services

Methodist, he read a statement that deplored the mur-

ders and asked all those rights

Methodist Church of Monroe

From Atlanta

and complete

said, as the entire

who

agreed to stand up.

justice for all

men

congregation rose to

stand for equal

in all stations of life,"

its feet.

Holland

22

White southerners might rise for racial justice few made that sentiment a genuine part of their pathy for the plight of blacks were isolated, and plays of violence like the

"We

Monroe lynchings

after the lynchings, lives.

it

but

Instances of sym-

often took horrific dis-

to instill even fleeting

compassion. Such sympathy rarely translated into changes in the home, school, church, or workplace,

box, or in the mind. election season

On July

on the bus,

in the cotton field, at the ballot

18, the Atlanta Constitution

on a note of hope. "Negroes swarmed orderly and with

dignity to the polls yesterday to vote for the

Democratic primary." Yet in the a

had rung in the

last

first

time in a Georgia

weeks of July, Georgia elected

demagogic governor and hosted the execution of four African-

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

32

Americans.

Nobody

knew

yet

whether the planter Loy Harrison

for sure

had intentionally driven the Malcolms and the Dorseys to their deaths.

It

would be 1992 before an eyewitness implicated Harrison in the murders, and named others. The criminals remained at large in 1946. "We have just sent millions of the flower of

our young manhood to Europe and to

Asia to stamp out Nazism, whose habit has been to take the law into

own hands and murder

helpless people," stated the Atlanta Methodist

"Now,

Ministers' Association on July 30.

something closely

in Georgia,

akin to Nazism in Europe and Asia has arisen, and in every sense as brutal." If white

supremacy was

reached Atlanta ministers rural places like

its

much more

just

it is

shaken by the war, those tremors

at all

than they touched any whites in

Monroe. Black leaders of the Walton County Civic

League pointed out in 1950 that the dissolution of the white primary was meaningless, because the white

man

"is

going to run things anyway." 23

White residents of Columbia, Tennessee, certainly hoped that they would continue to dominate. The trouble there began in February 1946, when Gladys Stephenson brought her radio to the Caster-Knott store to be repaired. Weeks later, the manager, LaVal LaPointe, told Stephenson's younger son, John, that the radio had been

sold.

When

the store reac-

quired the radio, LaPointe demanded an exorbitant fee for

it.

James

Stephenson, a nineteen-year-old just back from the navy, accompanied his

mother

to the store

ment ensued. tice Billy

injuries.

A

on February

fight broke out

25

.

Tensions mounted and an argu-

between Stephenson and

Fleming, a white army veteran. Neither

man

store appren-

sustained critical

Gladys and James Stephenson were both taken to

Fleming's father secured a warrant for attempted murder.

noon, a crowd of whites had formed on the

downtown

By

jail,

while

early after-

square.

When

the

Stephensons were released, they returned to the safety of Columbia's black neighborhood, the Bottom.

Stephenson

left

town

for

Amid rumors

of a lynching, James

Chicago and blacks in the Bottom armed them-

The white crowd downtown quickly lost its desire to invade the neighborhood of armed blacks, and African- Americans rebuffed Columbia police. Tennessee highway patrolmen hurtled toward Columbia in selves.

time for a predawn raid on the Bottom. State borhood, decimated blacks at random,

were killed in the

its

businesses,

ravaged the neigh-

and arrested more than a hundred

who were marched sheriff's office.

officers

An

to the

Maury County

investigator for the

Jail.

SRC

Two

asserted,

"Any estimate of property damage would not be too high." Columbia

— Wake of the War, 1945-1955

Pnittdt: In the

33

blacks were not lynched, but neither were they protected. In the years

World War

after

The events grand jury whites

—

in

in

II,

this passed for

Columbia

change in the South. 24

offered contradictory lessons. In August, a

Lawrenceburg, Tennessee

—comprised

and acquitted

tried twenty-five of the arrested blacks,

two of them.

If

entirely of poor all

but

two general stories about the white South unraveled in

the years after the war

—one

of racial reform and the other of reaction

the jury's decision added to the saga of reform. erners were no longer

wedded quite

as

suggested white south-

It

deeply to racial discrimination.

Yet seen from another vantage point, white southerners continued to

deny the humanity of African- Americans attempted to

LaVal LaPointe

Stephensons; Billy Fleming's father obtained a

fleece the

trumped-up warrant

at every turn:

for

attempted murder; a

town square; the highway

mob

patrol destroyed the

formed on the down-

Bottom, arresting more

than a hundred blacks, two of whom died in the

sheriff's office. Through Underwood could testify in court, "The relations it all, James better than any other between the races [in Maury County] has been classes on earth." It seemed like the same old myths still buttressed the same old oppression. Still, this was different: Underwood initially

Sheriff

.

released the Stephensons

with confidence, armed

from

jail;

itself and

.

.

the black community, newly fortified

fought back; whites

may have gathered

on the square, but they did not lynch anybody; and perhaps most amazingly, the

blacks.

Lawrenceburg jury of poor whites acquitted twenty-three

25

Perhaps white southerners had begun to

any understanding of the large.

War

Many

II felt

whites

jury's acquittal,

who

feel

the winds of change. In

southern class dynamics loom

ascended into the middle class after World

threatened by blacks. Will Campbell, a white reverend

became caught up

in the

movement

for racial justice,

who

argued that poorer

whites could better empathize with the unfairly accused: they, too, had

been dragged into court before, condescended

to, exploited,

and unjustly

indicted. "There continues to be less real racism in redneckism because

the redneck participates in our society from a base of considerably less

power than the

rest of us."

This line of thinking contends that the poor

whites in Lawrenceburg, having the least to lose, were most apt to acquit

World War II soldiers also supwisdom long had it that better edu-

the black defendants. Surveys of white

port this argument. Conventional cated southerners possessed

more "enlightened"

or "progressive" views

— THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

34

on

race,

for their

but that was not always

Of white

true.

southern soldiers asked

opinion about integrated work crews, 76 percent of those with a

high school or college degree said they would object, while only 57 percent of the less educated did. Status anxiety did not seem to afflict poor whites as

did the middle

it

many

Yet there were

who glimpsed Underwood at the

in

class;

the poor had

poor whites the most vicious aspects of racism. Sheriff

described

know

26

southerners, on both sides of the racial divide,

members of the white mob

phosphate plants and hosiery mills.

does not

little status to lose.

the

Negro

as

a reading of southern class

we do and

.

.

as

who work of white man

"people

This type

.

is less

friendly to him."

Such

dynamics could be buttressed by more than

One Columbia AfricanAmerican stated, "The white factory worker, who fears our competition, is the dangerous element in the South." He cited the "Fleming boy who just

white myths about "knowing the Negro."

prime example. Fleming was but one of

started the trouble here" as a

many poor

whites

who

despised blacks

— "Because they

are, if

anything,

more insecure than the Negro." Such notions about poor whites made the acquittals in Lawrenceburg that

For

all

the change the acquittals

tion of the

much more surprising. 27 may have highlighted, an examina-

crowd that gathered on the Columbia square challenges any

easy claims to progress. In that crowd, and during the

Columbia

distur-

bance in general, white war veterans displayed particularly deep hostility

toward blacks. Veterans who changed their

racial

those like Seth Lurie, Joe Gilmer, and Claude

views after the war

Ramsay

—

stuck out like

sore

thumbs. Most whites

who

exhibited newfound dignity and confidence. For the vast majority,

felt

immediately threatened by black veterans

the war's inclusive ideals of democracy, freedom, and antiracism rang

hollow. Even those

who

absorbed such egalitarian wartime ideals often

separated the war itself from what

of

World War

II

had

little to

came

As more southerners moved and

as veterans

Whites thought the legacy

do with the rights of black Americans. Of

course, African-Americans disagreed.

ized,

after.

28

to the cities, as the

economy

industrial-

returned home, the old paternalism started to die

out on both sides of the white boss-black worker dynamic. Black veteran

Wilson Evans returned

to Mississippi

with new

resolve.

But when Evans

attempted to lead voter registration drives in 1947, he ran smack into southern whites, as determined as ever to

resist

black gains. "You came

back with Northern ideas of niggers voting," the Gulfport sheriff told Evans. "But us Southern white folks hadn't swallowed

it

yet." After the

Pnlttdt: hi tin

Wake

oj the

War,

1945-1955

35

war, facades did not coat reality quite so heavily,

and

interracial interac-

assumed rougher edges. "The old expectations and

tions

John Egerton wrote. "A meaner game

applied,"

.

.

.

was

no longer

fears

in the offing."

Murders that swept the South in the year of reaction were "fueled by white

fears that

black veterans might become a revolutionary force, and

that blacks in general

son said as

"Up

would no longer

much when

George went

until

stay 'in their place.'

"

Loy Harri-

he spoke of the Monroe lynchings decades in the army, he

later.

was a good nigger," Harrison told

Clinton Adams, a boy in Walton County at the time of the lynching.

"But when he came out, they thought they were people."

as

good

as

when

Black veterans brought a double-edged sword with them returned

tfi

stereotypes

the

any white

29

—and many whites responded

Alabama

they

the South. Without deference, they challenged old white in kind. In a stinging irony,

1945 resolution argupeace and harmony to work

state legislature uttered a truth in a

ing that whites and blacks should be

"left in

out their mutual problems." African-Americans returned from the war

with the desire to shake the white South out of this unjust peace. Yet "no

good can come from changing the normal course of evolution and devel-

opment of race by

arbitrary legal means," the legislature maintained, for

"such attempts lead only to violence, misunderstanding, and destruction

now

of the normal and happy relationship in this state." If the state legislature

that a "normal and

prevailing between the races

was gravely mistaken in

accurately foretold the kind of violence that

challenged white myths. For

proved to be only that sure,

—

all its terror,

belief

however, the year of reaction

and international pres-

and under the weight of larger demographic and

social shifts, the

drastically decreased. Strange fruit still trees in the 1950s,

became horrible anomalies instead of standard

While lynching began

it

would erupt when blacks

a year. In light of federal

number of southern lynchings hung from the Souths poplar

late

its

happy relationship" prevailed under Jim Crow,

to disappear

but these episodes

practice.

30

from the southern landscape

in the

1940s, racial tension and white prejudice did not. "The tension in

the South today

makes

me

sick at heart," wrote A.

H. Sterne,

dent of the Atlanta branch of the United Council of Church

vice presi-

Women,

in

1948. Fellow Atlantan Helene Alford painted a similarly grim portrait of Georgia that year. political

"

'Civil rights' is

upheaval around

us.

.

.

.

The

dynamite

in this state

with the

picture looks pretty dark." Well

before direct action protests hit southern towns, fears of black equality

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

$6

gripped

many white

southerners.

problem facing the South was

When

asked what the most important

in July 1949,

30 percent

replied, "civil

Eighty percent believed blacks should be required to occupy

rights."

White southern support for segregation remained entrenched after the war. The student sit-ins were eleven years away, and few whites would change their minds in the separate parts of interstate buses or trains.

interim.

31

Many

continued to contest the legacy of World

War

When

II.

black

protest intensified and the pace of change quickened in the 1950s and

1960s, white southerners referred back to the war as a touchstone. After the Brown

Board of Education decision in 1954, a young Mississippi farmer who had served in the war cast his lot against civil rights. "Fight v.

integration?

Why I've just begun to fight," he wrote Congressman Frank

"When I was on a beach in the South know why. Now we know what we are

Smith. didn't

going to hold us back." white southerners

—and

Many began

rights.

Pacific

I

fighting

was fighting and for,

and nothing

A

certain notion of freedom crystallized

it

had

little to

to picture the

and the white southerner

I is

among

do with fascism overseas or equal

American government

as the victim.

When

as the fascist,

President Eisenhower

mobilized federal troops to integrate Little Rock's Central High School in 1957,

was

many

in the

"My

whites found the war analogy particularly apt.

Marine corps during World war two and spent 14 months in

the South Pacific fighting, and for what?" one Broxton, Georgia,

wrote Atlanta Constitution editor Ralph McGill. to see Soldiers

with

rifles

America and choosing

DICTATOR

their friends

tion of individual freedom animated to segregate oneself

many, World

ments

War

II

"I

woman

can answer that one,

and Bayonets pointed to the backs of his

dren being forced to obey a

dom

son

by

became

and

instead of enjoying a

associates."

many white

race, regardless of

A

FREE

peculiar concep-

southerners

what others

—

the free-

desired. For

a battle for that specific liberty.

for black civil rights that

chil-

The move-

unfolded over the following two decades

looked like villainous attempts to challenge whites' freedom. 32

One

Charlotte

man

believed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and

its

deseg-

regation of public facilities undermined his war efforts. "Six brothers in

my

family including myself fought in

World War

II for

our rights and

freedom," this veteran wrote to his congressman in 1965. "Then

am

I

why

.

.

.

being forced to use the same wash-room and restrooms with

negro[e]s.

I

highly resent

rights, but can't say this

this. ... I'd

anymore

be willing to fight and die for

for this country."

my

When the black free-

Pnludti In

dom

tin

Wake

War, i^^^-icf^j,

37

many white veterans World War II changed the

Struggle chipped away at southern customs,

began

to believe that they

racial attitudes it

oj the

had fought

in vain.

and behavior of some soldiers and some southerners, but

failed to transform the majority. As Seth Lurie remarked about the

izens of Dallas County,

Alabama,

"I

learn before they have to learn as civil rights

I

only hope the white people of Dallas

did

movement did not bring

1950s and 1960s,

it

The freedom struggle

came with

—through

war

military

a similar

a war."

Although the

to the

South in the

power and depth of

feeling.

forced sudden cataclysms and gradual transforma-

tions in southern race relations

only one other time in the

life

—

the kinds of changes that had been felt

of the South: after the Civil War. 33

ALTHOUGH AMERICA HAD WAGED many continued

abroad,

cit-

to

a

war against totalitarianism

condone Jim Crow

at

home. In

rhetoric, if

not in action, the federal government displayed an awareness of such hypocrisy. Violent racism in the South

to America's foes incon-

endured in the United

trovertible proof that injustice

writer Ilya Ehrenburg took a trip to sissippi as a place

handed

America

in

States.

Russian

1946 and described Mis-

where whites "shiver with fright thinking about the

mass of unfortunate, angry people

who may become

tired of singing

'Hallelujah' while waiting their turn to be hanged." In 1955,

Emmett

Till

was lynched near Money, Mississippi, and

his

into the Tallahatchie River. After Tills death, Dlisseldorf's

reported, "The

life

of a

Negro

in Mississippi

is

mill, but

encouraged other nations to

body thrown

Das

Fret Volk

not worth a whistle."

Racial violence in the South not only lent grist to the

ganda

young

communist propa-

criticize

America. White

southerners continued to use whatever means they wished to keep blacks in their "place" in the 1940s, but their heinous crimes no longer

occurred in a geographic vacuum. federal

As

government and international

their plight. In this atmosphere,

demanded more rights, the media became more attuned to

blacks

white southerners could no longer wield

the rope, the gun, or the knife with such impunity. 34

The coin of internationalism had another decreased, in light of America's Cold

side.

Even

as lynchings

War rhetoric and global

ambitions,

an ascendant ethos of anti-communism lent Jim Crow's defenders explosive

fuel.

Anti-communist hysteria spawned blacklisting and red-

baiting nationwide;

its

ability to

become tangled up

in race relations

was

— THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

38 especially pervasive in the South.

As names

like

Joe McCarthy, Alger

Hiss, and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg captured headlines across the

country,

anti-communism shaped the South with

—and

any challenge to the status quo

to

its

capacity to derail

Jim Crow, in particular. In

1946, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) launched

its

"Operation Dixie" campaign to unionize southern workers. Instead of challenging southern traditions, however, the locals

CIO formed

and practiced anti-communism. The CIO's

segregated

fears of integration

and

communism resonated with the majority of white workers that it courted. The Scottsboro trial of the 1930s had first solidified many of these issues in southern minds. The Communist Party came to the defense of accused African- Americans, and focused an international spotlight on the horrors

of southern racism. Simultaneously,

its

prominent

role in the Scottsboro

case allowed white southerners to equate black civil rights

with com-

munist conspiracies. Many white southerners pictured the National Association for the

Communist

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the

Party as one and the same, blacks

who

struggled for equality

became dupes of a Soviet scheme, and northern advocates of civil

rights

looked like communist-inspired "outside agitators." The black and red

menaces shaded into each ers'

other.

A central

tenet of many white southern-

worldview, anti-communism possessed staying power.

white southerners' perceptions of the federal government, the

movement, and the African-Americans

Of all

It

colored

civil rights

in their towns.

the forces that were unleashed in the 1940s, few proved

more

durable than anti-communism. White southerners' fears of the red menace were not confined to the high tide of the Cold War, but endured for

decades. "Before the tion,

Supreme Court decision"

Frank Smith wrote, "Negroes were

just

in

Brown

v.

Board of Educa-

one of the hate objects

Jews, Catholics, labor unions, and communists were indiscriminately intermingled."

soon coalesced,

The many challengers to white southerners' way of life and anti-communism stood as an inseparable part of that

amalgam. 33 Frank Porter Graham's 1950 bid

for reelection to the U.S. Senate

North Carolina showed anti-communism's southern

strength.

from

Graham

was the progressive former president of the University of North Carolina, beloved

by many. Governor W. Kerr Scott had appointed Graham

to the Senate in

1949

to finish out the

Broughton. Graham ran the Democratic primary.

for reelection,

He

term of the deceased

J.

Melville

and won a plurality of the vote in

finished ahead of attorney Willis

Smith by

— Pnludt: In tht Wakt of the War,

1945-1955

39

margin of 49 percent to 41 percent, but polled just short of the required outright majority. As a runoff approached, Smith's campaign

a

who

spearheaded by Jesse Helms, senator

—

realized

Graham's past

it

as a

later

had to gain ground

became

Smith and Helms played on

fast.

member of Harry Truman's

and the Southern Conference

Human

for

a leading conservative

Civil Rights

Welfare

Commission

(SCHW). The cam-

paign circulated a doctored photograph that pictured Graham's wife

dancing with a black man. North Carolinians found handbills in their

"WHITE PEOPLE WAKE

mailboxes that read,

UP!" and asked, "Do

you want Negroes working beside you and your wife and daughters?"

Helms tagged

the University of

North Carolina

as the "University of

Negroes and Communists." Smith and Helms alleged that Graham was "tip to his

races." It

neck" in communists and that he "favors mingling of the

begged the question, which did southern whites

communism closely

or integration? In this particular case, the

Smith defeated Frank Porter Graham a juggernaut.

Mississippi senator

SCHW,

James Eastland

SCHW

elec-

when he brought a 1954. Former members of

raised the ante

attracted southern liberals like Clark Foreman,

reform Dixie's politics.

SCHW

When

suffered for

sympathizers from

that

1950

an organization formed in 1938, became Eastland's primary

Williams, and Virginia Durr, as

ties

in the

36

McCarthy-like spectacle to the Big Easy in

War,

so

52 percent to 48 percent. For supporters of segregation, anti-

communism became

get.

two were

entwined in the minds of many that the answer did not seem to

matter. Willis tion,

really fear

its

its

it

previous refusal to ban

that

SCHW

as "explosive

destroying American democracy," and that

Negro

was

SCHW

November 1948. Many lished in January

of

to

disbanded its

Communist

Party

it

after

a

communist

front,

and revolutionary tinder in advocated "an independent

Soviet Republic in the southern Black Belt

call to civil war."

movement

House Un-American Activi-

ranks. In 1947, the

used the issue of race

Aubrey

America plunged headlong into the Cold

Committee (HUAC) alleged it

represented a legitimate

tar-

which

in essence

Henry Wallace's

members had

is

a

defeat in

joined an offshoot estab-

1946: the Southern Conference Educational Fund

(SCEF). In 1954, Eastland attempted to resuscitate the red ghost of the

SCHW in the minds of white southerners. He held a series of hearings in New Orleans,

and called to the stand various members of SCEF and

for-

mer members of SCHW. Eastland accused the defendants of communism, and planted witnesses who would corroborate his allegations. The

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

40

were a sham, and most of the public saw through Eastland's

trials

smears. In the short term, Eastland suffered.

main objective

plished his

between

Durr

civil rights

—he

asserted that while few of her fact that

we

tantamount

Supreme Court issued

months

later.

As

communism.

Montgomery neighbors are against segregation

Virginia

believed she

was blazoned

The curof The Crucible went up on March 16;

to being subversive if not actually insane."

tain for Eastland's southern version

the

Advertiser

Yet Eastland accom-

and in the minds of most Southerners

forth to all the Southern world, is

"

publicly reinforced the connection

activism and the specter of

was a communist, "the

that

The Montgomery

on 'Southern honor.'

called his hearings a ''blight

decision in Brown

its

v.

Board of Education two

that ruling approached, Eastland's hearings suggested

to white southerners that supporters of integration were subversive

munists

at the very least, if

Many caught

his drift.

any advance the

Little

Whites were poised

"communist"

to shout

at

—

movement might make from the Brown Montgomery bus boycott to school desegregation in

civil rights

decision and the

com-

not deranged. 37

Rock, the Civil Rights Act, and untold protests in towns across

the South.

The meteoric

rise

of Citizens' Councils in 1954 and 1955 sat-

urated the southern air with anti-communist propaganda. Soon after the Brown decision, Senator Eastland charged that the

Supreme Court

was under communist control. The Court has become "indoctrinated and brainwashed by left-wing pressure groups," Eastland contended. The

Supreme Court agreed. Jewell

Lamm

gressman, "Personally be exiled to Russia." state,

must be communists, many white southerners

justices

many white

of Middlesex, North Carolina, wrote to her con-

think

I

all

nine of the old political hacks ought to

When Emmett Till was

home hand of communism in

lynched in Eastland's

Mississippians glimpsed the

the grisly murder. Reporters descended on the courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, to cover the trial of

Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, who con-

fessed to the crime years after they

bespectacled old

woman

were acquitted.

A

well-dressed,

declared to television cameras, "I'm almost con-

vinced that the very beginning of this was by a communistic front."

Everywhere

civil rights

The anti-communist rural areas to

communist

38 appeared, white southerners saw red.

furor reached whites across the South

urban centers, Upper South and Deep South

—from

alike. Ideas of

conspiracies seized not only small Mississippi towns or white

supremacist strongholds. The constituents of Charles Raper Jonas

illus-

trate this point. Jonas was a U.S. representative from the North Carolina

Vrditdc: hi the

Wake

of the War,

1945-1955

41

Piedmont, and a Republican. His district formed the backbone of North Carolina's "progressive mystique,"

and represented a chink in the armor

of an otherwise one-party region. Yet Jonas 's constituents were as con-

cerned with

came up

bill

communism for

When

any other southerners.

as

debate in Congress in 1956,

Lamm

wrote Jonas,

of you to help defeat President Ike's 'Civil Rights' Bill.

communism

resist

at

home

and sovereign nation

New

'Marxist'

like

as well as abroad.

it

to L.

it

God and

Deal took over.

.

beg

We want

.

to

the U.S. a proud

Christ gave us segregation.

his .

.

.

us integration." Just the thought of intefears of a godless

G. Blodgett, another of Jonas

not the most pressing issue.

We want

.

"I

was before Franklin D. Roosevelt and

The commies propose to give gration dredged up in Lamm But

a civil rights

When

and

dictatorial society.

constituents, civil rights was

s

the bill

became law, Blodgett argued

was "not too important from the point of negro

'rights,'

though many

hereabouts would differ from me." Blodgett worried far more about

communism 1957.

used

"It

than about the toothless,

suddenly dawned on

me

as a 'popular front' for the

definitely

behind the

sive resistance,

'race' situation." It

his

'rights,'

but

Communism was

was 1957, the heyday of mas-

community would not

overnight.

More threatening than desegregation

behind

After the integration of Little Rock's Central

it.

Act of

that the Civil Rights Bill was being

negroes

and Blodgett knew

Civil Rights

if significant,

integrate

was the red plot

itself

High

School,

One University of North Carolina eyes when he saw the photographs in

however, others were not so sure.

alumnus could barely believe his

hometown

Charlotte News.

his

"Can

this

be America?

It

looks

more

like a

smuggled photo from behind the Iron Curtain!" The Charlotte man did not think communists were behind the desegregation in Little Rock, but

was certain the events would aid the Soviets in their deceitful plans. "Those persons behind the integration push have

finally

dividing our nation to an extent that must please

Moscow

degree!"

succeeded in to the 'n'th

39

Anti-communism was not

who

the sole province of whites

segregation. Liberal nationwide organizations like Americans for cratic

War

Action (ADA) raised the banner of anti-communism II,

and the

SRC

also dissociated itself

Schulz, minister of the First Congregational Florida, belonged to the state's Interracial

become

a

member

inquired about the council's stance on

DemoWorld

from communism. Louis

Church

in

Committee.

of the Florida Council on

after

favored

Human

communism

Winter Park,

When

asked to

Relations, Schulz

before considering

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

42 its offer.

possible

"I

seldom join an organization

means

to be assured that

like this

without using every

not infiltrated by

it is

Communism,"

Schulz wrote in 1956 to the SRC, the parent organization of the state councils. "There

no doubt of my interest in working

is

play and good citizenship rights for

they did not bend too far to the

white southerners

who

—from

advocated

—could

Through the mid-1960s, southerners

head Klansman

Sam Bowers and

—

and

fair

so long as

United in anti-communism, many

who

joined state interracial councils

tive.

Americans," he noted

all

left.

those

for justice

states' rights to

those

appreciate Schulz's prerogaas ideologically

opposed

as

progressive Mississippi newspaper edi-

Hodding Carter would agree that communists aided the black civil 40 rights movement. Dixie's leaders, from members of Citizens' Councils to elected officials, painted stark images of communist conspiracies. Most white southtor

and internalized the anti-communist

erners, in turn, easily accepted

message. Over time, resistance.

it

became an indispensable piece of the puzzle of

The anti-communism of the 1940s and 1950s rode more meaningful

of national paranoia, and became

the

wave

to white southerners

movement progressed. The direct movement added a new dimension to

as the black civil rights

action phase

of the civil rights

southerners'

anti-communism

communism had rated

it

in the 1960s,

it

such power for them

later

became apparent why

—why many

into their racial attitudes and behavior.

discovered a force they could

Postwar anti-communism

War

and

mold

may

so

anti-

smoothly incorpo-

White southerners had

to their needs, fears,

and confusions.

have been the product of

specific

Cold

circumstances, but once lodged in the minds of southerners,

power did not depend upon that gles challenged the southern

its

initial context. Later civil rights strug-

way of

life

head-on; white southerners

wielded anti-communism to rationalize their customs and combat those threats for as long as they persisted.

as

THE years unfolded

likely that southern cities

between blacks' desires

communities catalyst.

on the

as they

after

would

for

World War

II, it

act as arenas for an

seemed increasingly

impending

collision

freedom and whites' wishes to keep their

had been. Every southerner imagined a different

Richard Franco, an Atlanta doctor, always considered himself

liberal side of the race issue. Franco's

Jewish identity helped him

Prtludii In tbi

Wake of the War, 1945-1955

to

empathize with the plight of blacks.

of

universal

humanism

43

When presented

with the choice

versus provincial individualism, he always chose

the former. Franco was right that the postwar era

would bring changes

in

and

race relations to the South, but he incorrectly predicted their form,

"The emancipation of blacks would take place by the

their impetus.

enlightened evolution of the white community," Franco had long thought. "Politicians and leaders

make

tude

the changes."

.

.

.

would by

Mayor William

their enlightened atti-

Hartsfield ran a progressive

administration in Atlanta, and Franco thought that ethos would evolve, gradually, until

it

enshrined equality for

that the avenue of the change that they

make

the

all. "It

.

.

power and

exert the

'that this society isn't

.

me

would come from black people themselves,

would marshal the energy and

demand

didn't really occur to

basically

going to work unless you

us in the door. We're not going to abide by

let

That was not how

this.'

I

envisioned or anticipated the change." Franco was light-years ahead

many white

of

equality

—but

southerners in that he possessed a vision for racial

it

stemmed from

grant equality to blacks.

a belief that whites

Many more white

would voluntarily

southerners lived in a con-

new racial order even while they braced themselves for it. As blacks' demands for equal rights and white resistance both heated up after the war, many southerners waited for a spark. No one knew precisely what would ignite the flame. By 1954, the flicted

limbo; they refused to envision a

Supreme Court

reluctantly wielded the matches.

41

Straight lines did not connect events in the age of civil rights.

Groups

and individuals responded in ways that were rarely predictable to events that were even less so.

White southerners exhibited tendencies toward

both acceptance of and resistance to black

civil rights in

the 1940s and

1950s; upheaval finally forced those proclivities to the surface.

Brown decision did not usher ers,

in

new

tendencies

among white

but deepened existing trends. At the time,

whether the black struggle would advance or future promised larger

jolts,

fied the extent or racial

phenomena at once

—

just as they it

fall

southern-

was often unclear

back

—whether

the

or whether the previous tumult had signi-

change.

tomorrow's overwhelmed

it

The

Many

southerners grappled with both

attempted to adapt to yesterday's news,

and sent individuals on different

arcs

toward

different ends.

The

civil rights era

began in the

relative quiescence of the 1940s, in

the push and pull between the old and the new, the change and the reaction.

North Carolinians who tuned

into

Durham's

WDNC radio on Sat-

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

44

urday night, January 13, 1945, could hear Dr. James Shepard, founder of

North Carolina Central University. Shepard

North Carolina." "As you well know, the average

Racial Progress in

white Southerner

entitled his speech "Inter-

is

a fairly decent citizen

who wants

do the right

to

"He can be perarguments; he can even be shamed through a fair

things," Shepard quoted a letter he recently received.

suaded with reasonable

appeal to his [conscience], but he cannot be coerced into a course of

He is stubborn, proud, and utterly allergic to Many preferred tranquillity, meaning adherence to segregation,

action however right. threats."

over any kind of turbulence. Examining the civil rights era in

its

larger

postwar context, a report from Newsweek's southern bureau pointed out that race was "an unresolved issue except in the

on both

Nice people preferred not

sides.'

minds of the 'extremist

to discuss the issue."

With

every piece of legislation, every court decision, every local struggle, the civil rights years

came

how

eroded that silence and complacency. "The responses

them. Bit by bit people began to sound out exactly

as events forced

they did

feel."

toward change.

And

bit

by

bit the civil rights

Between the end of World War Brown

movement drew them

42 II

and the Supreme Court's decision in

Board of Education, the past dueled the future in the South. In

v.

general, big cities began to look ahead as rural areas clutched old cus-

toms. While some examples defied that generalization, the pattern held in Dallas County, trip to Dallas

Alabama. Harris Wofford, while

County

in 1952.

Wofford 's observations helped to recap-

ture rural white southerners' mind-sets rights struggles had

become

a reality

and ways of

woman

in charge of the Dallas

told Wofford. "I'd say this nitely

is

who wouldn't Selma

assumptions of black

knew

desires,

and

woman

riots.

.

.

.

The niggers know

come and

tell

you, and there

their place

around here. is

If

not a person

"their

with stereotypes, myths, epithets, and bedrock

inferiority. It rested

on a conviction that southern

Negroes" intimately, understood their needs and

fulfilled those

are the ones in the

Selma

County Chamber of Commerce

feed and clothe a nigger." Paternalism was alive and well

in 1952, replete

whites

well taken care of

place. They're the friendly sort

they are hungry, they will

lifestyles too

a nigger heaven. Segregation there defi-

of course. But no race

and seem to keep in their

in

is

is

before civil

life

—worldviews and

ingrained for a court ruling to upend. "The nigger here," a

a law student, took a

needs whenever they could.

whole United States who

assured Wofford. To prove

it,

love

she

"We

in the

South

the colored people," a

summoned

a black ser-

Pniitdi: In tin \X\d-c

the War,

f

1945-1955

and asked him, "Now, Bascum,

\aiii

45

down

here the white people and

colored people understand each other, don't they?" "Yes, ma'am," he replied.

A

"Down

here

Her

series

understand the colored people," the

since the

first

was not

paternalism continued to flour-

this

cruelty and tension. "That an underlying affection

all

between Southern blacks and whites seems

reiterated.

days of Jim Crow. 43

Wofford pointed out that where ish, life

woman

suggested that racial attitudes in Selma had not changed

beliefs

much

we

of questions and answers continued along these lines.

certain. ... In the tenant

along with the hostility

exists

and servant systems of the black belt

these relationships have been slow to die."

The old dynamics did begin

to recede, slowly but surely, as larger social processes blazed into Dallas

County

—

the

movement

of southerners from rural to urban areas, along

with gradual economic and political changes. "What the resulting

rela-

tionship between Negroes and whites will be cannot perhaps be known,"

Wofford continued, "but one thing

is

between a white cotton planter and

'his

cotton work

is

mechanized,

as the

become

stock ... as Negroes

certain:

the old relationship

niggers'

is

ending

—

as the

farms switch from cotton to live-

tempted to

displaced, or

city

employ-

ment." Race relations were beginning to change well before the Brown decision and the

Montgomery bus

boycott. Despite enduring paternal-

ism, perceptible shifts in consciousness

environment.

in the rural southern

Wofford saw signs

way

—

in the attitudes of

complemented transformations

44

subtle but substantial

white southerners.

—

An

that changes were under

influential

Selma

"We want the Negro to him to know just where his

asserted during a public meeting, place, but

buses

it's

it

must be hard

behind; on trains

generally speaking,

it's

for it's

up

front; in

down." This was

keep in his place

is.

In

it's

up, and

acknowledgment

that the

white churches

a rare

citizen

accepted customs and traditions out of which the fabric of the southern

way of life was woven smacked of absurdity. While no admission of black equality, the

even

if

remark possessed powerful implications.

suggested that

one believed in black inferiority and the idea of a

"place," that concept

made

was nonsensical in practice, dards. It

code

It

little

for

it

race's

proper

sense outside of white minds. "Place"

required obedience to confected stan-

assumed that blacks could understand a white code, when the

itself

was predicated on the belief that African-Americans could

comprehend nothing of the imposed upon them. 45

sort

—and

that they thus needed a code

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

46

The expectation

that blacks could divine whites' logic also suggested

that African-Americans

might understand whites quite

By

well.

con-

the age of civil rights demonstrated over and over that white

trast,

southerners in fact had no idea

problem

to assault

is

who

one of the

"their

Negroes" were. "To

state this

assumptions of southern whites,"

first

Wofford wrote, "that only they know the Negro. 'Come out and you about the

nigger,'

here and live and

.

.

.

work with them'

—

remained the constant white refrain

movement

rights

themselves

—

know them

'You can never this

is

until

I'll tell

you come

the constant refrain."

It

in a given locale until the civil

through that town, and until African-Americans

tore

the very substance of whites' assumptions

—exposed

such

Some whites simultaneously defended white supremacy and sympathized with blacks. The words be the cruel myths they were.

beliefs to

of one Selma lawyer exposed an underside of the white myth. "This

thing

a

is

problem and

it

has got us worried like the dickens," the law-

yer remarked about the prospect of integration, and admitted that

if

he were African- American, he would move out of Dallas County. This lawyer feared and loathed the possibility of equal rights for African-

Americans

—but he did not buy

into the idea that Dallas

had reason to be content with their

Many Selma

station.

County blacks

46

residents displayed similarly

mixed

racial feelings.

dreaded federally imposed integration even as they understood vation.

"We

haven't given

them

going to cause us a heck of a farmer

said. If

lot

a chance.

Now

of trouble, but

it is

whites could ensure that separate

equal, he contended, they

the

its

They moti-

Supreme Court

is

our fault," a white

facilities

might avoid struggles with the

were actually federal courts.

In 1952, whites in Dallas County already feared that the federal govern-

ment might

intervene against segregation. Schemes for massive resis-

tance and segregation academies predated the Brown decision. "We'll

away;

just let the public schools fade

once

.

.

.

but gradually we'll drop the

we won't sales

tax

cut

them out

all

at

which supports the

schools," as one Selma citizen laid out his plan in the eventuality of

"forced" integration. "We'll let private schools take over." Realities

in

Selma often clashed with those

Atlanta, Charlotte, or

New

Orleans.

Many

in

47

larger cities like

southerners themselves per-

ceived vital differences between rural and urban areas. During the 1940s

and 1950s, the South underwent

a shift

from a majority-rural region to

an increasingly urban one. In 1940, only one in metropolitan area home.

By i960,

five

southerners called a

15 percent lived on farms and

44

per-

— Wake

Priludi: In the

of the War,

1945-1955

47

cent in the cities. "In the strictly rural areas the feeling

is

.

.

more explo-

.

sive," NiWSU/eek's

William Emerson cabled from Birmingham

"The

has been

racial issue

made

a political football for so long

Alabamian has been convinced that

the rural

'pinks' of the cities

from de{s]ecrating his

The

be

fear

(whether

it

end of segregation

real or

imaginary)

in colleges.

.

.

.

But

is

his

it is

with

state

not so

.

.

.

that

duty to prevent the racial equality.

.

.

.

much concern with the

in grade schools 'Never.'

southerners could say whatever they wished in

in 1953.

"

White

the 1940s and 1950s, but

no one could predict how they would act when

civil rights struggles

heightened. During the years of the civil rights movement, opinions

would fice;

collide

with

Soon declarations of resistance would not

reality.

whites would have to support their words with action.

When

the

Supreme Court issued

its

decision on

May

ern leaders scurried to position themselves against Eastland,

Herman Talmadge, and Georgia

suf-

48

17, 1954, southPoliticians like

it.

senator Richard Russell

quickly condemned the ruling. Russell charged that the Supreme Court

had overstepped

its

constitutional bounds, and

demanded

a curb

on the

Court's powers. Across the South, elected officials and state bodies

renewed their oaths to uphold segregation. The Louisiana State Educa-

Committee passed

tion

a resolution,

by a vote of 83— 3, in favor of main-

taining school segregation. Southern newspapers also beat the

drum

Jim Crow. The

Supreme

Charleston

News and

Courier lamented the

Court's decision as "another nail in the coffin of states' rights." years before

and

it

Brown showed,

was not predicated

this defiance did not

solely

of

As the

come out of nowhere

on the Brown decision. Since the end of

the war, reformist politicians in the South had battled old-style racebaiters.

But the Brown decision gave

race-baiters a powerful target.

The

content of southern politicians' exhortations had gestated for years, and their

pronouncements revealed multitudes. 49

Southern leaders

who

and segregation

raised the flags of states' rights

betrayed worries that their lives would never be the same.

means can be found whereby the

traditional

"I

hope some

customs of the past will not

be upset in the South," said Robert Arnold, chairman of the Georgia State

Board of Regents. The Birmingham News made a

that those customs

might not have been

healthy.

rare

admission

"Admittedly segrega-

tion has produced emotional reactions that have not always been good.

But we feelings

are

much

concerned that the ending of segregation

and problems

far

more

.

.

.

may produce

difficult to deal with." Indeed,

white

southerners would at last have to "deal with" the fact that blacks were

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

48

human, and

that they, too, desired and deserved freedom and equality.

After a lifetime of being told that blacks were inferior, the end of segre-

many Many wished to

gation would most certainly generate "feelings and problems" for

white southerners that could well be called

postpone that trauma.

member

school board

"It really

"difficult."

wasn't going to apply to us," Selma

Morgan hoped. "A

Carl

ruling had been

made but

how it was going to be interpreted, and it Our initial thought was: 'Well, that's what they decided in Washington, but it may not affect us that much.' Whites hoped their lives could remain untouched. The superintendent of DeKalb, Georgia, schools, Jim Cherry, hoped the Supreme Court decision could stay "largely an abstraction." For many white southerners, it there were no guidelines as to

seemed

like a

bad dream.

.

.

.

'

remained

just that.

While the

50

Brown

Board of Education "Black Monday," few white southerners embraced such ManiCitizens' Councils proclaimed the day of

chaean portraits. Immediate signs of rupture in their apparent. "Well the Great Decision less

seemed tranquil than

I

to Durr.

had thought

before the storm." soon.

The Brown

whites.

"When

I

it

be,

but

19.

still

far

would," Virginia Durr wrote

it

May

A

week

things

later,

"The reaction here on the decision

would

Few

were not

lives

came on yesterday and has caused

excitement than anyone thought

from her Montgomery home on

v.

that

is

still

calmer

might simply be the calm

southerners saw the apocalypse coming anytime

decision did not even register on the radar of

picked up

a Courier-Journal at the

remembered John Egerton, who was

a student at

Western Kentucky

State College, "I took a quick glance at the banner headline

Court bans school segregation

—and then nipped

many

student cafeteria,"

—Supreme

to the sports section."

Atlanta native Phyllis Franco remembered hearing about the Brown decision, "but that's

about

it.

.

.

was sweetheart of AZA. ... I'm ashamed of it now. But erners, the

it

.

I

When

I

didn't

go

was

Brown decision had

in

was 16

I

got a driver's license,

to these subjects [civil rights].

my culture."

little

I

For most white south-

immediate impact.

It

may have

energized the careers of politicians and litigators, and nourished the

hopes and dreams of African-Americans, but for little

—

at least until integration actually

While the Brown decision loomed some white

as

came

many whites it meant own town. 51

to their

"an abstraction" for the majority,

the Atlanta area Fulton County Teachers Association sion.

Members of bemoaned the deci-

teachers and students felt thrust into the

fire.

"Negroes and whites in the same schools in Georgia

just

won't

Pftindt: In the

Wake of the War, 1945-1955

49 Roswell High School.

work,'' said Lucien Bell, a science teacher at

Other educators concurred.

Many

have been associated with Negroes for

"I

more than 40 years and some of them

are

my

good

but they are

friends,

happiest in their

own

cipal of College

Park High School. Few whites saw reason to abandon

schools," said Mrs. Gaither Cochran, assistant prin-

"We

are giving the

Negroes equal

and they have stated they are well

satisfied," said

Ben Hutchin-

their views about African-Americans. facilities

good

son, principal at College Park. "Lets maintain that built up."

Not

all

feeling we've

Georgia citizens agreed. While politicians threatened

to close public schools

and defy the Supreme Court

teachers thought that tactic unwise.

At

at all costs,

many

one had the courage to say

least

so in public. "I have taught in the white public schools of Georgia for 16

Veima Miller of Thomasville wrote. "Some of the

years,"

ating the impression that Georgia can go

it

alone.'.

our public schools would ... be a catastrophe.

Union

ready for Georgia to leave the

had to

ties

later, this

flare

up

argument

again.

felt

.

face the reality of school integration,

—between

.

Browns

room, he realized

Most of us

.

classes. Franco's

be

.

.

.

years or decades

it

public education and segregation

at Atlanta's

Grady High School

—would

in

1954 and

indirect effects through his teachers. In the class-

for the first

time that

racial prejudice

English teacher,

whom

was not the

among

sole

all social

he had deeply respected and

He

admired, was the agent of this realization.

tell

are not

southern communi-

province of poor white southerners. Bigotry thrived

fully

Doing away with

52

Richard Franco, a student 1955,

.

When

again."

.

defiant are cre-

"read poetry beauti-

and introduced us to Shakespeare and Wordsworth. You could

he had a

human

about the

real sensitivity

doxes of life, about the fact that

life is

condition, about the para-

painful, that there are lessons to be

learned, insights about the nature of our existence."

While leading

dis-

cussion on The Merchant of Venice, Franco's teacher insisted that Jews and blacks possessed racial characteristics inherently different from those of

Anglo-Saxon Protestants that sense of

—

that all races were not equal.

humanity that

I

got from

many others.

out he was as bigoted" as

decision, Franco's teacher acted

on

him

In the

"With

an individual,

as

it

all

of

turned

wake of the Supreme Court

his beliefs,

and resigned from the

public school system before racial integration could reach his classroom.

Yet in that

act, integration

to even be in a situation

that

had already shaped

where he might have

his

life.

"He

didn't

want

to teach in a public school

would eventually be integrated, even though there was nothing

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

SC

pressing. People were [saying]

decade or twenty years.

.

.

.

would never happen

it

or

it

would take

But he got out of that school system." As

a

his

teacher departed, Franco could no longer hold on to his notion that better

educated white southerners would gradually bring about integration

and

"My sense that it was going to be done by enlightdon't know how long that would have taken." He realized

racial equality.

ened people,

I

change to occur,

later that for

agenda

—and on

the timetable

would have

it

—

'would not have done

it

been a hundred years,

Along with

I

Now

otherwise.

2003, "who knows when don't

it

effects.

that

I

for

white southerners

look back on

would have happened.

It

it,"

Franco

might have

know."^

teachers and students,

Browns immediate

the

of southern blacks, and of the federal

government. Such impositions were necessary,

said in

come through

to

some southern churchmen

The Supreme

felt

Court's 1954 ruling forced

church bodies to choose between segregation and federal law. While southern politicians rallied to the segregationist cause, most religious organizations backed the law.

an

official

Baptist Convention issued

June 1954 meeting: "That we recogSupreme Court decision is in harmony with the

recommendation

nize the fact that this

The Southern

at its

constitutional guarantee of equal freedom to

all citizens,

Christian principles of equal justice and love for tion

commended

the Court, and reiterated

its

all

and with the

men." The conven-

support for public educa-

The vote on Broun garnered 9,000 in favor and only 50 against. While the General Assembly of Presbyterians also supported the desegtion.

regation decision, the margin was closer: 239—169. Those

who

repre-

sented the region's Catholic minority followed with statements of

agreement. The bishop of Little Rock, Albert Fletcher, urged Catholic churches and schools to admit blacks. "Persons of every race

be

made

to feel at

tember 1954. "All sion posed a

home

.

.

.

should

in every Catholic church," Fletcher said in Sep-

are His, not our, invited guests."

momentous dilemma

for

But the Brown

southern church leaders.

deci-

Many

ministers were forced to negotiate between the stances of their national 54 church bodies and the sentiments of their congregations.

In an article entitled "The

McGill articulated tates of conscience

of those floggers'

who .

.

.

Agony

of the Southern Minister," Ralph

this plight. "Ministers are

squeezed between the dic-

and church policy on the one hand, and the prejudices

'run' the

church, on the other. Save for the so-called 'Bible

and those who are sure that God himself is chief among seg-

5

Pr$l*d$: hi the

Wake of the War, 1945-195

regationists, this

heart

is

a

5

time of agony of spirit

and mind." Ministers either had to

their constituents.

Baptist

Church

for the ministers of sensitive

church policy or enrage

flout

Reverend Robert Trotman, a minister

in Terrell

at

Bronwood

County, Georgia, supported the Brown decision

during a sermon. In June 1954, the church deacons requested quickly received

1

—Trotman

—and

s

resignation. Events over the following year

proved that this type of episode

was hardly unusual. Ed Jones, pastor of

Fortune Baptist Church near Parkin, Arkansas, preached that segregation

was

February 1955, the church dismissed him. At a meet-

sinful. In

ing of Mississippi's Methodist Conference in June 1955,

was appointed to one of the

demned Jim Crow

Roy Delamotte

churches. After Delamotte con-

state's

found no church

in a speech, the conference

still

will-

ing to accept him. In Batesburg, South Carolina, U.S. federal judge (and father of South Carolina's governor)

campaign against eyes,

George Timmerman,

his minister at First Baptist

Reverend G. Jackson

Stafford's

Church. In

lines.

Timmerman

's

crime was to vote in support of

the Southern Baptist Convention's Brown resolution. Stafford resigned his pastorate.

led a

Sr.,

On

October 19,

The torment of ministers knew no

state

55

Across the South, congregants and deacons battled those ministers

who spoke

out for integration. Presbyterians in central Mississippi tar-

geted Durant's Reverend Marsh Callaway.

A

native of Texas and sixty

— wake two men—Dave

years old in 1955, Callaway served in Mississippi churches

Drew and Columbia

before

Durant

—

for twelve years. In the

Brown decision, Holmes County residents alleged that Minter and Eugene Cox, who ran a cooperative farm tors." Citizens of

first

—were

in

of the

racial "agita-

nearby Tchula called Minter and Cox before a mass

meeting, and condemned them as advocates of integration. Rev. Call-

away stood up and denounced the meeting christian."

The

elders of

Callaway's resignation.

Durant Presbyterian Church then demanded

He

reported to the Central Mississippi Pres-

bytery that the elders "kicked zens' Council."

He was

"undemocratic and un-

as

me

out because

I

spoke against the Citi-

referring to the audience at the Tchula

mass

meeting, where several white supremacist leaders played a prominent role.

In

November 1955,

the Central Presbytery voted to "dissolve"

Durant Presbyterian's "pastoral relationship" with Callaway. Callaway asked to stay on through the end of the following March, but the church

body terminated

his contract as of

December

3

1

.

Callaway vowed he

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

52

would appeal the decision

to the statewide Presbyterian body, but his

pleas proved futile. "I just believe deeply that the future of the church

is

The Presbytery's decision meant "that every minister will be under the thumb of his elders. The Sunday before the Tchula meeting, we had one of the largest crowds in several Callaway

at stake,"

reflected.

.

months.

.

.

.

But because

were boycotted and

I

dared stand up for what

was asked

I

tors lost their pulpits for less.

Few congregants and black

many vior

.

.

.

and

my services

56

One Methodist

accepting

the

just because

with a Negro boy,

believe,

I

detected connections between Christian teachings

civil rights.

is

.

to resign." In the age of civil rights, pas-

I

Brown

Lord Jesus Christ

don't want

don't see

I

what

why

layperson could not see

religious organizations supported the

Christian

.

so

decision. "Being a

as

my

personal

sa-

my granddaughter to go to school it has got to do with my being a

Christian or not." Denominational resolutions could not compel congre-

gants to change their views on race. tinued to rest with those

Many

who made

The

real

power

in the churches con-

financial donations

and ran

local life.

ministers were unconvinced, even enraged, by the declarations in

favor of Brown.

The majority of

the white southern clergy, like white

southerners in general, opposed the rising civil rights movement. the nation's largest Baptist church, Dallas's First Baptist, Reverend

Criswell lampooned the "bunch of infidels" dirty shirts

and make

lost their pastorates

all

who

"sit

up there

W. A.

in their

their fine speeches." In the face of ministers

and congregants who refused to change

At

who

their racial

views, the initial speeches in support of Brown seemed almost like flukes.

One Southern first

supported Brown. "They were just a

they got back with the it."

why

Baptist tried to explain and excuse

home

folks a lot of

his convention

little bit exalted.

.

.

.

When

'em wondered how they did

Southern churches were not exalted places; they were indisputably

defined and shaped by the customs, traditions, and attitudes around

them. At the 1956 Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Kansas City, Missouri, C. C.

cussion" of the

many

Warren declared

Supreme Court

it

"unwise

decision.

When

for us to

reopen any dis-

came

to integration,

it

southern ministers quickly learned to keep their mouths shut. In

the spring of 1956, Reese Griffin, the pastor at Bass Memorial Methodist

Church ought

in

Macon, Georgia, suggested that black and white children

to attend

church schools together. The usual chain of events

occurred, and Griffin resigned in June. "It has

come

to the place

where

a

Pnludt: In tbi Waktoftb* War, i()4j> -i()j> j>

minister will lose his pulpit Griffin wrote

how

he says

if

he says anything in favor of integration,"

on June 16, 1956.

He must

it.

53

not a matter of what he says nor

"It is

not dare say anything at

ONE did NOT have TO glance

all."

oppressed African- Americans,

at

rights supporters, or agonized ministers to see the

They were

57

coming

just as evident in the actions of steadfast civil rights

nents, from high school English teachers to southern politicians

Councilmen. At times, those who feared

izens'

their

civil

convulsions.

civil rights

oppo-

and Cit-

gains were

most accurate prophets. As the Albany Herald mocked King's claim

that he

would turn the town "upside down" soon before the community

was actually thrown into upheaval, so Citizens' Council members and Klansmerr who resisted for

it.

By 1955,

racial equality

movement against integration had Deep South and the Black Belt. "The

the Citizens' Council

established beachheads across the feeling

helped to provoke federal support

on the Supreme Court decision

wrote in January 1955. "These people

is

running high," Virginia Durr

down

here are so paradoxical

—

so

gracious and kind until you hit the race question and then they are as

hard as iron." White southerners, through their everyday mannerisms

and interactions, betrayed deep same.

fears that their

world would never be the

58

"The most serious challenge

to their social order since the Civil

loomed on the horizon, historian John Hope Franklin wrote

White southerners responded

"characteristically

combination of praising things that they abhorred."

as

in 1972.

by that remarkable

they were and resisting the change

The most important

would not be the pitched

War"

coming

years

protests, the charged confrontations, the

waves

parts of the

of demonstrators, or the impassioned crowds. "It

is

not the interracial

confrontations, important and tragic as they were, that are of prime significance. It

is

the Souths confrontation with change,

defending what

it

regarded as a perfect society, that

White southerners fought

—whose minds — fight

fire

hoses,

holders

Crow what

—

lines.

The

the Civil

instructive."

And

that

from kitchens and living rooms to

more about southern

and picket

is

response in

with myth, Franklin argued.

battlefields stretched

revealed

of Jim

reality

its

life

civil rights

War and

than armies of attack dogs,

movement showed

defenders

Reconstruction had taught slave-

that just as black slaves were not faithful and

happy Sambos,

neither were twentieth-century black southerners content with dancing

— THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

54

Jim Crow. And they never had been. As Franklin ideal rallied many in the white South:

obsession was to maintain a government, an economy, an

Its

arrangement of the

sexes, a relationship of the races,

system that had never existed of those

who would

the change that

The

civil rights

.

.

.

confronting

changes in hard

closer to reality.

to overturn all these interre-

59

World War

II

painted the backdrop for such changes.

Tales of white southerners in the postwar years

march toward

That meant not only

centuries of white myths, but attempting to force

reality.

years after

a social

not confront either the reality that existed or

would bring them

movement would attempt

many

and

except in the fertile imagination

lated parts of the southern lattice of discrimination.

The

argued, an illusory

racial progress. Instead,

frustrations, forward sprints

they are

do not full

reveal a steady

of ambiguities and

and backward stumbles. Moreover, white

southerners themselves had differing visions of "racial progress," of what

was "forward" and what was "backward." Few denied that World was waged

for

War II

freedom, but "freedom" admitted of different meanings in

movement would

different minds.

Soon the

of southern

that had always been partially concerned with race

life

politics, education, flicts

civil rights

everyday interactions with employees

that were, on their face,

"nice people"

still

became ever more

unavoidably about

difficult.

The

—

Those who had always accepted the way the rival gusts.

Montgomery bus in 1955, no one full-blown movement to come. White south-

might have detected subtle changes

felt their

in "their Negroes," but

everyday lives and beliefs being transformed. More had

into cities, fewer continued to lynch blacks in the light of day,

fought beside them in a war, and the United States strike life.

of

On

life

into con-

vast majority of

the time Rosa Parks boarded a

was yet able to predict the erners

it.

preferred not to discuss integration, a choice that

wind blew became caught between

By

translate facets

down

as

all

intact. Before the

boro or the school

crisis for

moved

some had

had witnessed the Supreme Court of

way of Montgomery, that way

unconstitutional a pillar of their

the eve of the 1955 boycott, for those in

was

few

i960 student

those in

sit-ins for

whites in Greens-

New Orleans; prior to the

1961

inte-

gration of the University of Georgia for Athens citizens, or before the

Albany Movement

in

1962

for

Southwest Georgians; before the massive

Pr$ind$: In the

Wake of the War, 1945-1955

55

demonstrations on Birmingham streets in 1963 or the 1964 Civil Rights Act; before the 1965

march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge

for those in

Selma, or the sanitation workers' strike in 1968 for whites in Memphis, the southern

way of life

reigned. In that sense, the years between the end

of the war and the beginning of direct action protests could be called a prelude.

The reckoning awaited.

TWO

No More

"Our Negroes"

an abyss separated

white

racial attitudes

southerners walked a tightrope.

from

civil rights

plain that prevalent beliefs about blacks had

lar

traverse

it,

all

movement made

the substance of thin

were too diverse to admit of a single "mind of the South," a

If whites

vast

To

While few were conscious of the mental

high-wire act they daily performed, the

air.

reality.

number

of

them

in

communities across Dixie subscribed

complex of views about African-Americans.* Before

gles hit their town,

many

to a simi-

civil rights strug-

believed that race relations were good, that

blacks were content with segregation, that white southerners understood

African-Americans and knew what was best across the color line

for

them, and that their love

was returned. Whites were shocked when African-

*In 1941, W.J. Cash argued that there was a discernible "mind of the South." Cash detailed

components

in a vivid portrait of

white southerners from colonial times to World

War

Williamson's The Crucible of Race argued that southerners were of more than one mind. lined three specific worldviews: conservative, liberal, and radical. clarification to

James Cobb

Cash presented

as a

and the 'savage

deeply flawed

ideal'

mind was

He

out-

welcome

of hostility to criticism or innovation, what

more

actually

like a regional

remarkably consistent behavioral pattern forged in the crucible of Civil still

Joel

Cash when he wrote: "Crippled by racism, an exaggerated sense of individualism,

a tragic proclivity for violence

and

offered a

dominant and unyielding more than

sixty years later."

To

temperament, a

War and

this list,

Reconstruction

one might add that

the southern temperament, in Cash's original formulation, marches from present to past.

Cash, The

Mind of the South (New York,

and the Mind of the Modern South," II on the

W.

J.

1941); Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White

Relations in the American South Since Emancipation

War

its

II.

in Neil

(New

York, 1984); James Cobb, "World

McMillen,

American South (Jackson, MS, 1987),

ed.,

p. 3.

War

II

Remaking Dixie: The Impact of World

Also see James Grossman,

"

'Amiable

Peasantry' or 'Social Burden': Constructing a Place for Black Southerners," in Rick Halpern and

Jonathan Morris, Context

(New

eds.,

American Exceptionalism? U.S. Working-Class Formation

York, 1997), pp. 221-43.

:

in

an International

"Our Ntgroes" No More

Americans rose up

57

in defiance in the 1960s.

sharply with white perceptions that

many

Black rebellion clashed so

disbelieved their

own

turn, white southerners insisted the struggles that hit their

the brainchild of distant enemies

northern

liberals.

—

of communists, the

"Their Negroes" were happy,

the 1960s, they had

many

become the dupes of "outside

eyes. In

towns were

NAACP,

or

reasoned; and in

agitators."

The claims

of bewildered whites collided with the reality of organized blacks,

who

exploded the myth that they were anyone's Negroes, or that they ever

had been.

White paternalism found expression ent degrees

—

—

in varying forms

and to

differ-

everywhere, from Dallas County, Alabama, to Dougherty

County, Georgia; from small parishes in Louisiana to urban centers of the

Upper South. Mississippi

native

David Cohn captured the mind-set

that prevailed a generation before the civil rights

movement when he

man of the Delta says to the world beyond his gates: I live with my family among an overwhelming mass of Nowhere do we receive them on terms of social equalNegroes. ity. Most of us have a deep and abiding affection for the Negro. Our described in 1935 what "the white

.

.

.

.

.

.

paternalism

is

not designed to enslave him.

Negroes on our plantations white

man

are

It is in

our blood. The

both our partners and our wards."

A

in rural Mississippi could possess racial beliefs similar to

those of a politically liberal

woman

in a Virginia university town. "I

loved Negroes," wrote Charlottesville resident Sarah Patton Boyle, "and, in

my

segregated way, respected and admired them. ...

I

believed that

our relationship was complementary and mutually satisfying. a

Negro

didn't 'keep his place'

I felt

outraged."

It

.

.

.

When

was a way of thinking

that had no definable year of death. Yet almost everywhere black southerners

waged struggles

deeply held

beliefs.

with shock and

for civil rights, whites

They responded

endured challenges to

in diverse ways:

some were gripped

fear as they gradually realized "their

Negroes" were no

more; others denied what their senses told them, unwilling to abandon teachings of a lifetime;

more exhibited ways of thinking

still

that

com-

bined fragments of a romanticized past with pieces of a perceptible future.

A

1

predominant white

before the Civil War, as

racial

temperament stretched

James McBride Dabbs

in

time back

said in an interview dur-

ing the late 1960s. "In antebellum days the Negroes were our people and the whites our whitefolk," tion in South Carolina.

remembered the native of Rip Raps Planta-

Too

often,

Dabbs maintained, whites believed

58

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

affection could take the place of fairness.

Some

justice

was denied African- Americans, yet they evaded the

and wrong. "In our inmost

justice

we knew we were wrong. And so

like a [quiet]

noon and

smoke on

in public

the piazza.

somebody

But

for

bad

isn't

such sen-

at twilight.

to be sentimental at high

are never clear,

you have

run over or

to get

we have run over the Negro and then reasthat we loved him." It was another weight that

else as

sured ourselves by saying

white southerners had long balanced.

when they

we

to be in great danger. Unless your eyes are clear,

is

and eyes of the sentimentalist to run over

...

talked about love. But love unsupported by

had serious limitations. 'This

it

that

issue of right

becomes sentimentality." There was a time and place

timentality, but It's

[ears],

we

didn't talk about justice,

knew

southerners

Many thought

said they cared deeply for blacks.

But

it

themselves sincere

was a care based upon

inequality, rooted in oppression, layered with discrimination, fully blind to those very facts.

and will-

2

In the popular attitude, white southerners not only cared for blacks

but knew them intimately. Such notions powered the myth of "good race relations." life,

Many

white southerners fancied themselves experts on black

an expertise they grounded in experience.

claimed to represent "the views of 'the

through the years a

Raper Jonas

lot

are

many

Charlotte resident '

"I

have employed

of negroes," he wrote to Congressman Charles

in 1957. "I

among them,

One

little people.'

understood them and treated them well and,

respected friends.

and are always glad to see

me

They know

and would do anything

I

am

for

their friend

me, and

I

for

them." Conditions for blacks had gradually improved, the Charlotte

man

asserted,

and he urged

ference in this process. gressive

his

congressman to oppose any federal

"Unwise misguided agitation" halted

improvement and

has, in fact, retarded

him

condition of a half century ago." Such views put

many

it

inter-

"this pro-

back toward the in the

company of

in Charlotte, as well as his rural brethren. Clarence Morrison, a

general contractor in Shelby, North Carolina, registered his disapproval

of school desegregation. "This letter ditches along beside Negroes.

befriended

them

in every

way

I

is

coming from

a

man who

has

have laid brick beside them. ...

possible,

and

I

am

still

I

their friend."

dug have

His

legitimacy established, Morrison then asserted, "The relation[s] between the races are the worst in

time." To

many white

nadir of race relations.

my community

than

I

have

known

southerners, the age of civil rights

They had considered black workers

in

my

life-

marked the close friends

"Our NigTOiS" No More for

many

years.

59

When

civil rights struggles

exposed black discontent,

3 whites despaired that the days of "good race relations" were gone.

Natives of the east Tennessee town of Clinton believed that race relations

had always been good. According to a Newsweek background report,

"What

the good' relations seem to

amount

to

absence of trouble and

is

submissive acceptance on the part of Negroes of a social system that excludes

them from everything except menial job opportunities streets, access to

down-

and the annual exchange of church choirs." Whites

inter-

community, occasional friendly exchanges on the

town

stores

in the

preted black veneers of deference as actual friendship. Furthermore,

whites insisted that blacks were content with the racial status quo; thus,

change must have derived "from 'outside influence'

attempts

at

NAACP,

the Communists."

was not necessary to

It

white supremacy on Mississippi cotton

glimpse the power of these ideas

—

fields or

.

.

.

the

travel to bastions of

Alabama plantations

to

they resonated powerfully in Ten-

nessee and Kentucky. In Sturgis, Kentucky, Berea College professor

Roscoe Griffin found in 1956 that "race relations in the community are described historically both by whites and Negroes as friendly." But the

two

races invested the concept of friendliness

caste system

with different meanings; a

maintained the peace. "Acquiescence of Negroes to the

dominant position of the whites was the condition of the peace. Negroes have 'stayed

When

in their place'

and whites in

theirs."

.

.

.

4

blacks attempted to desegregate the high school in Sturgis, old

patterns began to die fast

—much

faster in black

neighborhoods and

minds, however, than in white ones. Gone was "the old easiness of their relations within the rigid lines of separation,"

tension

—

a tension that

would

Negroes are

dissatisfied

lack of awareness ran

persist until a

"Whites

tions reigned. Griffin wrote,

and in

new

its

place existed a

pattern of race rela-

in general are not aware that the

with their status and bent upon change." This

smack

into whites' claims that they

knew

"their

Negroes." White assertions of black happiness stemmed more from whites' "psychological needs" to believe in social

harmony than from any

evidence that such concord actually existed. This truth defined white

communities from the border

states

and the Tennessee

hills to the cities

of the North Carolina Piedmont and Georgia's Black Belt. 5 If white southerners ever wrestled

only after black

with deeply held

civil rights struggles hit their

beliefs,

they did so

town. School desegrega-

tion in Clinton and Sturgis forced whites to confront their

myths

in

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

60

1956, while those in Albany, Georgia, could entertain beliefs about

"good race relations" into 1961

—and

well beyond.

Howard Zinn

elo-

quently captured white sentiment in Albany in a January 1962 report

published by the SRC:

Again and again

—

in the office of a political leader, in the ante-

room of a businessman,

sitting

with a newspaper

ing room of a middle-class white family

made, "Albany has always had good race ored folks have been satisfied. progress. ..."

.

.

.

We

Memories remain poor;

—

editor, in the liv-

the statement was

relations.

have

.

made

for the

.

.

Our

col-

considerable

same statements

were made in Montgomery before the bus boycott, in Atlanta before the sit-ins, and

all

through the South in the days of slavery.

Perhaps these claims had some substance, Zinn speculated. Interracial peace seemed to reign in Albany, and blacks did not voice widespread disapproval prior to the civil rights era. Yet whites mistook black silence

and when white claims were transported "out of simple

for acceptance,

isolation into the texture of life itself," they

began to unravel. In Zinn's

apt phrasing, "The white South has been notably unequipped with the

kind of social seismograph that would detect the unrest,

and too

loudest noises.

.

.

II

tremors of

Thus, southern whites have been hurt and shocked

by the eruptions of the past few

War

faint

out of touch with Negroes ... to hear any but the

far .

first

years." Certain that the era after

had brought increasing advancements in black

whites were seized with confusion for civil rights. "Intelligent

when

blacks

World

Albany

life,

mounted demonstrations

and good-hearted white people"

failed to

understand that token gains did not quell blacks' desires for progress, but whetted their appetite for more. "To the Negro community,

was

like

able to

improving the food inside

wrap

their

minds around

a prison."

all this

Few southern whites were

this point before black struggles for

freedom engulfed them. The paradox, novelist and native southerner

William Styron argued, was that few whites had any blacks. Instead, inequality

Many

claimed they

and pretense saturated

felt affection for blacks,

all

real contact

with

their interactions.

but, according to Styron,

whites actually harbored a racial animosity rooted in a lack of knowledge. "Whatever knowledge

I

gained in

my

as if

puppet show," he wrote

in Harper's in 1965.

would make

it

I

had been watching actors in an all-black

gained from a distance,

I

youth about Negroes,

The

civil rights

movement

"the moral imperative of every white southerner," Styron

1

"Our N$grO€S u No More

down

hoped, "to break

and

his real desires

6

fears, in fact rather

Many

of

them were born

"social

Negroes"

store

your

life

.

.

you

.

just take

owner John Carswell.

it

"It's like

on every day or brushing your

beliefs

about "their

more than psychological needs; they

seemed part of an unshakable landscape. all

seismographs" was

chicken and Bible lessons. Beliefs about

"excellent race relations" were

tom

6

into families, and reared in

communities, that served up traditional southern beside plates of fried

know the Negro,"

to

than in myth.

That white southerners lacked adequate little surprise.

come

the old law" and "to

teeth,

"When

you're raised in a cus-

for granted," said

Chapel Hill drug-

getting up and putting your clothes

you do

it

automatically."

Few ques-

tioned whether their upbringing was right or wrong; the most important thing

was that segregation (and the prejudices

spelled reality.

it

encouraged)

7

For most white southerners, the system of segregation inspired reflection.

Many

accepted

it

as a fact of life.

little

Birmingham's David Vann

pointed out that because segregation was so ingrained, few whites dis-

The system was simply a part of one's daily life. Little Rock native Craig Rains remembered that his family's yardman always ate outside. The African- American worker used a separate plate, and a separate Mason jar, that the Rains family reserved only for him. "That was something we all took for granted." Few whites secondplayed awareness of

it.

guessed such arrangements. "There was very

way things were,"

recalled

little

questioning of the

Ole Miss student Jan Robertson.

"It

all-white world." Like the lakes or the trees, racial separation

was an

came

to

possess the feel of something natural. Journalist Fred Powledge, a native

of

North Carolina, captured

that sentiment with particular effect.

Although segregation remained noted,

it

integral to whites'

was something they barely detected.

lives,

Powledge

"If they did notice

it, it

was in the way they noticed water flowing from a tap or hot weather the

summertime

—

century southern

it

life,

was unremarkable." The defining

fact

in

of twentieth-

a system of racial separation codified in the law

and

buttressed by everyday behavior, infiltrated the collective subconscious

and precluded conscious thought. 8 This reality produced a sort of helplessness. Many whites, like Joe Smitherman, witnessed habitual cruelty to blacks. Smitherman did not particularly enjoy

it,

and admitted feelings of shame, but, he

"wasn't anything you could do." the facts of southern

life

He

said, there

concentrated more on living with

than on seeing through them.

Many

resigned

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

62 themselves; as John Carswell remarked,

wouldn't be the one to change

"I

make

didn't

the custom and

Smitherman worked

it."

I

an appliance

as

salesman before he became Selma's mayor; Carswell ran a pharmacy. But their feelings of

and middle

impotence were not limited to whites in the working

Such emotions

classes.

marked Robert Penn Warren,

also

Kentucky native and one of the Souths most famous

Warren penned an

essay that he described as a

tion carried an

inhumane

"But

quality.

anybody could do anything about was

a

the South sive

I

it

my mind

never crossed

The

it."

carried in

that

idea that segregation could

my head," Warren wrote in

all

ways ...

1965, "was one of mas-

was an image of the unchangeable

it

condition, beautiful, sad, tragic." 9

White southerners would not transform to African- Americans. civil

"humane defense" of seg-

thought that had not occurred to many whites. "The image of

immobility in

human

writers. In 1930,

Even then, Warren "uncomfortably suspected" that segrega-

regation.

cease

a

When

life's

the civil rights

rhythms. That task

movement took

some observers thought such

disobedience,

the form of

would

protests

fell

signal

the death knell of white racial myths. Faced with undeniable images of rebellious blacks, white southerners

would be hard-pressed

to claim that

When

black North

African-Americans were happy with segregation. Carolina

A&T

down

students sat

Greensboro on February

at a

Woolworth's lunch counter in

i960, they sent ripples through the South.

1,

"The myth" that blacks were content, David Halberstam wrote "exploded with the

sit-ins."

in i960,

Students in Nashville followed closely on

the heels of those in Greensboro, and by April, sit-ins had spread to four cities in nine states. Halberstam was not the only one in these actions the

into the 'preacher,' the

of

.

.

who glimpsed

end of a white mind-set. Ralph McGill wrote, "One

of the most persistent falsehoods ...

'Mammy.'.

is

the 'stereotype' of the

'Amos and Andy,' 'Uncle Tom,'

Most Southerners do not know,

Negro development."

When

or

want

to

know, the

They

facts

the student sit-ins came, they shattered

the students in their sit-ins

effect.

Negro

'Boy,' 'Uncle,'

stereotypes and began a revolution in consciousness. "This

why

fifty-

.

.

.

is

one reason

have produced such a revolutionary

have fitted none of the stereotypes."

Some

southerners

asserted that the protesting students had rendered the old stereotypes

absurd.

The Southern Regional

ins "the first step to real

Negroes

just aren't

having

Council's Harold Fleming called the

change it

—when

anymore."

sit-

the whites realize that the

10

In the aftermath of struggles for freedom, some whites attested to

"Our NigfOis" No More

wrenching

63

realizations.

"The Negroes

I

felt that,

now knew

envisaged since childhood.

.

was a traumatic heart-twisting

by i960, she had stepped into a new world.

.

resemblance to the Negro

little

I

had

No greater dislocation of my thought and

.

if I

had been catapulted to another planet."

blacks exposed the old truths for myth, Boyle could feel the earth

shaking.

was

roles, "it

bore

emotion could have resulted

When

Sarah Patton Boyle discovered that blacks

Jim Crow

did nor cherish their experience." Boyle

When

Her

familiar.

way of seeing changed. "Nothing

entire I

had landed

ther liked nor understood me, and

woman from Natchez

rights

came along,

we knew

people

a lot of us

whom

"When

echoed Boyle's sentiments:

were shocked.

Negroes

who

nei-

could not understand."

I

A

civil

was shocked to find black

I

we many

participating in the marches, because

they were unhappy." Similar feelings penetrated

whenever and wherever

in

nightmare world, among people

in a

white

saw

I

southerners,

The

appeared.

civil rights struggles

know

didn't

sight of

blacks risking their lives for rights and freedom indicated that white

images of them were deeply flawed, and could no longer stand the reality.

But stereotypes died

slowly.

They proved

where

beliefs can persist in the face of occurrences that

them.

Many white

lion rather than

own

creation,

seem

to dispel

southerners would explain away acts of black rebel-

acknowledge them

Wakefield found this mechanism

at

for

what they were. Journalist Dan

work

in

years after the bus boycott rocked that city

the sit-ins elsewhere. Montgomery's black

through the boycott; lives.

heart of the table,"

it

and

problem

a

few months following

community wielded power

is

not that the white

man

man

blacks gained white audiences,

he

when

is

is

sitting across from."

good

can blame his blind refusal to see that

life

many

their respect for the

still

has prepared

Even

saw

in

him

to

ol'

Preacher Brown; and

it is

Martin Luther King

instead?" In the cradle of the Confederacy, the civil rights yet to change

down at the when he does,

communities, many whites

across the table

"The

they listed their grievances

the deferential figures of yore. "His whole

man

reach.

refuses to sit

Wakefield wrote in The Nation, "but rather that

believe that the

who

and

in i960, four

But the minds of many whites proved beyond

fearlessly organized their

them

Montgomery

forced changes in municipal laws and disrupted

he refuses to see the real face of the

when

of

rarely susceptible to logic,

reason, or even events. Myths thrive on worlds of their

white

test

11

movement had

whites. "The successful boycott did not increase

Negroes who carried

it

out, but rather increased the

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

64 mistrust and hatred of them." eyes and changed

While

embolden white support

further

some whites

civil rights struggles

some minds, they had the

who was

For every white

at last

direct action protests, there were

opened some

on others

Jim Crow, and more

for

to the old stereotypes.

reverse effect

tightly

—

to

wed

12

convinced of black dissatisfaction by

many

others

who

still failed

to hear

those pleas. Soon after McGill wrote that student protesters "have pro-

duced

a revolutionary effect," he received a deluge of mail

southerners a negro in

who had

"I

negroes and

I

man wrote to McGill. am quite sure that I am

every one of them

.

.

While the

.

have employed a great

"I

many

respected and liked by each and

but under no circumstances do

consider

I

direct action phase of the civil rights

change in some whites, many more joined

stirred

have never seen

my life that if given an opportunity would not abuse it," a Suf-

folk, Virginia,

equal."

experienced no such revolution.

from white

them

my

movement

in the Virginian's

endeavor to "hold [blacks] at arms length but practice being polite to

them and demand

it

in return." Black actions only occasionally

upended

white myths and transformed worldviews. Often, those actions nudged

white southerners closer to the comfort of traditional

the chasm between persistent

W.

racial visions.

13

the sudden reality of black rebellion and the

image of black

fealty

yawned wide

in

Albany, Georgia.

Du Bois immortalized the city of Albany, and the outlying areas

E. B.

of Dougherty County, in his 1903 classic, The Souls of Black Folk. "The corner-stone of the Cotton

Kingdom was

laid" in

Dougherty County,

Du

Bois wrote, and Albany stood "in the heart of the Black Belt." For the riches that called

sprung from Albany's

Du

"curiously mingled hope and pain,"

—

bare, unshaded,

ory of forced

and

human

their masters,

Bois mused. "It

toil."

Southwest Georgia rooted

White power its

tive "curious" to describe the .

a depressing

Albany

itself in a history

ruled the Cotton

naked

was obvious. Where, then, was the hope?

.

is

mem-

Populated overwhelmingly by black tenants

and exposed "the Negro problem in

.

area admitted at once of

with no charm of past association, only a

followed by sharecropping.

story

The

"the Egypt of the Confederacy."

it

place,

nineteenth-century observers

soil,

Du

dirt

of slavery,

Kingdom,

and penury." The pain

Bois again used the adjec-

area, layered as

it

tragedy and laughter, and the rich legacy of

was with "untold

human

life;

shad-

"Our NtgfOis" No More

Owed with

65

a tragic past,

and big with future promise!" Blessed with

the land itself held promise

tility,

people. blacks.

Du

so,

Bois suggested, did

its

Somehow all the toil did not beat hope out of Dougherty County Albany brimmed with life and spirit when they came to town on

Saturdays.

of the

—but

fer-

It

was, in 1903, "a typical Southern county town, the centre

14 often thousand souls."

life

Kingdom's

Sixty years later, one could detect the Cotton

expanding commercial installations,

shell in

an

Albany attracted industry, two military

city.

and had grown to 56,000 residents by 1961. Whites clung

though blacks

to a three-to-two majority,

far

outnumbered them

in the

Oglethorpe Avenue cleaved the white section of

surrounding rural

areas.

the city and the

downtown from

the black neighborhood,

Harlem. Though poor and disenfranchised, hope

known

as

mingled with pain

still

Many would say that the mass civil rights meetings held at Shiloh and Mount Zion churches flowed with fervor rarely

for blacks.

Albany's

attained in other cities. Perhaps the intensity of Albany's blacks during

the civil rights years could be matched only by that of

its

whites.

Com-

merce and growth had remade Albany, but white thinking about race

seemed relics

Du

ossified

—trapped

in a different time. Racial attitudes

of earlier days. "This land was a

little

Hell," a black

remained

man had

Bois. "I've seen niggers drop dead in the furrow, but they

kicked aside, and the plough never stopped."

Du

tall as

The

the 1960s dawned, but soon

civil rights

it

were

Bois remarked, "With

such foundations a kingdom must in time sway and stood

told

fall."

The kingdom

began to wobble. 15

struggle in Albany arose out of local blacks' long-

festering grievances. In 1957, African- Americans

began to lodge a

series

of formal complaints, ranging from unpaved roads and sewage problems to segregated polling places sioners' utter refusal to

Albany whites

still

and bus

stations.

meet with black

SNCC

campaign

in 1961,

organization tin

—

commis-

leaders magnified the problems.

life

and

with smiles of doting sub-

chose Southwest Georgia as the site of an organizing

and Albany blacks

the Albany

Luther King,

civil rights

city

treated blacks with paternalistic condescension,

expected them to embrace their lot in servience.

The white

Jr.,

came

also

formed a

local civil rights

Movement. At the movement's to the

town on December

request,

Mar-

15, 1961. Massive

demonstrations soon gripped Albany. Police Chief Laurie

Pritchett countered King's nonviolent civil disobedience with restraint

of his own.

While Albany

police imprisoned black protesters by the

thousands, and at times held

them

in

wretched conditions, prisoners

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

66

were rarely brutalized in public. Albany whites showered King with wrath, and Pritchett with praise.

The

local

newspaper served

forum

as a

for the expression of

white

Some citizens signed the letters they wrote to the editor the Albany Herald; many more preferred to identify themselves merely

racial beliefs.

"Caucasians," "readers," or "Albanians."

On

as

July 31, 1962, the Herald

published one reader's "Open Letter to Dr. King." sition of the interlocking opinions that

of

It

contained an expo-

animated many southern whites.

"For a century, the white race has lent considerations and provided assistance to the Negroes in overcoming the savage and uncivilized back-

ground from which they

Many thought blacks

—and

so recently emerged," the "Advocate" began.

paternalism proved equally beneficial to whites and

that

established a certain social harmony. "Citizens of

it

Albany (white and black) have heretofore mony, and offering mutual assistance ... informed King of his objection "to facilities) until

much more

your race." Whites

still

and in har-

lived happily

to

one another." The reader

total integration

progress has been

(we support equal

made by multitudes of

believed in the promise of Plessy

v.

Ferguson, the

landmark 1896 Supreme Court case that had established the "separate but equal."

More than anything

for the days of perceived peace

else,

"It is

of Albany to revert back to our normal status

whites in Albany longed

— —

and perfection

supremacy and habitual black deference.

legality of

of unquestioned white

the preference of citizens to continue assisting our

colored friends in whatever their needs be." Significantly, the writer

penned

his letter not to the Herald's

he represented. local

"I feel it

Negroes with

only

fair to

white readers, but to King and those use this

this message."

He

medium of news

to reach our

threatened "our local Negroes"

with economic retribution, and promised that African-Americans joined the fight for civil rights

would

find themselves

without

white pleas could not coax blacks into the straitjacket of types, then perhaps

economic

Albany whites mixed nostalgia

retaliation for

would do the

who

jobs. If

racial stereotrick.

an imagined past with

Many

fear of

an

uncertain future. To them, blacks were simultaneously docile and threatening.

16

A week later, ring thoughts

and that the tled

the Herald displayed a similar ability to marry two war-

—

that the civil rights

city could

movement had changed Albany,

somehow remain

the same. In an editorial enti-

"King Can't Change Albany," editor and publisher James Gray

"Our NtgTOiS" No More

67

described Albany "as peaceful as

which may come

known

to be

it

as

has ever been in the halcyon period

B.K.

flamboyant intrusion into purely local

—

before Martin Luther King's

affairs."

Gray saw no apparent

contradiction in identifying a fundamentally new era and simultaneously claiming that

it

was no different from what came

west Georgians "will find Albany today, as

community, interested

in filling their needs

dence upon their good

will.

feeling."

Whites

it

before. South-

was yesterday, a friendly

and

fully

aware of its depen-

Martin Luther King can never change that

insisted that

harmony had always prevailed

—but

if

blacks wished to disrupt that harmony, they were quite ready to take

Many

other measures.

professed love but threatened hate, a blend of

sentiments that only an upbringing and an entire way of ingrain

—

for

know how

reason and logic would never abide

precarious, tenuous, and conflicted

the civil rights

southern

cities.

Organizers

movement

was

life

could

Whites did not

it.

their

worldview until

sent shock waves through the tranquil air of

17

who

arrived in 1961 sought to shake Albany's foundations

of white supremacy. Determined to achieve full integration by means of

SNCC workers found allies in black students at Albany State College. After SNCC wrested control of the NAACP Youth direct action,

young

Council, local black organizations formed the Albany

Movement

—and

W. G. Anderson, as its head. While black students demonstrated, Anderson led community mass meetings. Over a threeweek span from the end of November through mid-December, five hundred black protesters were jailed. Demanding the integregation of installed a doctor,

public

facilities

and seeking an audience with the

city

commission, col-

lege students sat in at a Trailways bus station lunch counter, high school

students

waged

protests,

and two hundred blacks marched on City Hall.

Police Chief Laurie Pritchett imprisoned

them

all.

Despite the Albany

Herald's claim that demonstrators were "largely ignored," white citizens

took in the spectacles. "They herded us into those

community stood

across

jails,

while the white

Oglethorpe and observed what was happening,"

an Albany preacher remembered. 18

At W. G. Anderson's

request, Martin Luther King traveled to Albany King was arrested the next day, along with 264 other 15. demonstrators. The city agreed to release all the prisoners before Christ-

on December

mas, to desegregate train and bus complaints

—

if

the Albany

facilities,

Movement would

and cease

to hear further black its

protests. After the

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

68 protests stopped, the city reneged

on

its

King headed back

promises.

to

Atlanta, and Albany whites applauded as peace displaced black protest in the streets. In January, the

campaign.

A

buses, but

when

Albany Movement attempted

to revive its

successful bus boycott achieved desegregation

on

city

movement (on King's advice) pressed the city for company shut down. Despite black boycotts of

the

further measures, the bus

buses, businesses, and the local newspaper, whites yielded

Try

little.

as

they might to dismiss black protests, however, few Albany whites were unaffected.

"The boycotts

are hurting them," reported

Albany Movement's executive

secretary.

are we staying out of downtown because they

"Not only

the stores, but the white people are not going are scared." In February, a permit.

He was

King stood

trial in

Albany

found guilty, and returned

movement.

for

parading without

for sentencing in July.

summer, Albany attracted national attention rights

Marion Page, the

That

as a center of the civil

19

Through the spring of 1962, whites denied that black demonstrations had led to any changes. The kingdom of segregation stood tall, while paternalistic views of African-Americans flourished.

staunchly segregationist in

even 100 years ago

when

it

its

outlook today as

.

.

.

May

hundred

years.

speaking for

racial

as

its beliefs,"

the

31, 1962. "The South lost that belief." If Albany

but a ruinous defeat did not remove the

had their way, traditional

is

was 50 years ago and

fought a war in testimony to

Albany Herald editorialized on

war

it

"The South

views would reign for another

whites fifty

or

"That thinking will not change," the Herald concluded,

many Dougherty County

downtown wrote the turbulence.

in to affirm that she did not

"We

have

lots of

A woman who

whites.

worked

blame Albany blacks

good Negroes

for all

here," the "taxpayer"

wrote, "but until the City can throw those agitators out and get Albany

back to normal, Like

I

guess the other Negroes will be scared half to death."

many Albany

whites, this reader thought of herself as an advocate

for the local blacks.

Columnist H.

T.

Mcintosh

railed,

deliberately chosen to be the scene of a 'Movement' in

which the people

of Albany had no part." His perplexity reverberated with whites, as a

who

asked

why

this

municipal 'test-tube' for

Mcintosh, "Was

it

many Albany

"growing, progressive city was chosen racial conflict."

Many wondered, with

because relations between white and Negro citizens

had been cordial and friendly

Albany became

"Albany was

for so long?" In this line of thinking,

a target precisely because

it

was so harmonious.

On

"Our NtgfOts" No More

July

1

69

Mcintosh argued that Albany "has

},

injured,"

its

suffered," the city "has

people "were bewildered," and Albany

been

the victim."

"is

Fueled by convictions like these, Albany whites responded to African20 American protests with confusion and outrage.

In July 1962,

King was sentenced

to

While many whites thought

jail.

Mayor Asa Kelley, King would attract

prison stripes King's proper uniform, Chief Pritchett,

and other Albany power brokers realized that a nationwide publicity and sympathy for

jailed

civil rights

—and

potentially

him out of jail on July 12, after an anonymous person (whom we now know to have been city attorignite a

blacks. Pritchett tossed

fire in local

ney B. C. Gardner) paid his bond. "[Our] protest will turn Albany

King promised days

upside down,"

whites

made

known

it

going to stay in

Faced with this prospect, local

later.

they had no intention of idly watching. "I'm

my rightful place,"

D.

J. Gillis

of nearby Douglas main-

tained, "and I'm going to place the Negro in his or die trying." Mrs. C.

Brown

"A Negro is O.K. as long as they stay As African- Americans mounted protests throughout July

of Blakely, Georgia, agreed,

in their place."

and August, whites clung to notions that Albany blacks were for

one believe

leave

if

the outsiders

Albany colored

before this mess

all

would tend

to their

own

would

... be as

good

folks alone they

satisfied. "I

business and as

they were

wrote Mrs. Roy Logan of Albany. She

started,"

reported that her black workers seemed "happy and content" and they

opposed

"all this

hate to see the

carrying on

King has

to offer."

Logan continued,

good colored people of Albany have

when

to suffer

She pictured Albany citizens, black and white,

are innocent."

as

"I

do

they

victims

of outside schemes. 21

Agreement rang out on Albany and resided

this score.

W.

C.

Through

in Broxton.

Todd

ran a lumber mill in

his interactions

with black

millworkers since the 1940s, Todd could attest that "they are good

Negroes, and would continue to be good the outsiders."

Todd assured

judges "simply don't

know

his fellow

if

they were

Negro

concurred that local blacks would be happier

gation," wrote Mrs.

W.

.

.

.

alone by

white southerners that federal

the American

departed. "The thinking ones

left

as

you and

if civil

do."

Most

rights workers

realize they are better off

T Brightwell of Tifton.

I

"The others

with segre-

are easily led

by agitators." Even Mrs. David Edwards, a recent transplant to Albany, quickly embraced the local thinking on race. Confident that she was "not biased in

my

viewpoint," Edwards found,

when

she

moved

to Albany,

— THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

70

"both white and colored to be friendly and sincere, living together in

harmony strife,

until 'outsiders'

came

White rights

to our city."

.

.

.

troublemakers, and promoters of hate and

22

convictions about local blacks, "outside agitators," and civil

formed

a definable

worldview and buttressed a way of

worldview possessed a certain logic

(circular

though

and interpretation of history (inwardly consistent a

Jim Crow defender could

establish that

it

may

life.

This

have been)

grossly distorted). If

if

no past problems existed

between whites and blacks, several conclusions followed:

civil rights

demonstrations were unnecessary, people from outside of Albany devised

them, and the

local blacks

permeated each other

wanted no

at every turn.

part.

The

Whites

material and the mental

built prosperity

on the lack

of black opportunity. Exploitation of blacks both presupposed and

encouraged black

upon the white

inferiority.

belief that

it

The

health of this social order depended

was tolerable

—even

pleasant

—

for every-

one. That belief allowed whites to degrade blacks, to justify the degradation,

and

The

to then believe that blacks abided

seemed instantly legitimate. surely

it.

various premises commingled: If one claim stood, the others

good

If whites

were the best friends of the blacks,

race relations prevailed. If

Albany blacks were happy with

segregation, they were grateful to the whites

tem

—and

them from

they

felt

slavery,"

who powered

victimized by the outsiders in their towns.

that sys-

We "freed

Rex Knight of Remerton wrote, and "gave them the

right to vote." Instead of responding with grateful thanks, however,

demanded further rights. African-Americans gave the lie to these white notions when they demanded freedom and equality. If blacks were in fact unhappy, then whites' entire worldview would be false, and they might have to admit that, for blacks, their city was more purgatory than blacks

paradise.

23

On July

17, Herald publisher

sion station to praise criticized "the

Albany

as

James Gray appeared on his own televia "friendly progressive community." He

Albany Movement with

social quacks."

Gray extended

answer those claims on the

to

air.

its

get-rich-quick politicians and

W. G. Anderson

the opportunity to

Anderson's reasoned defense of black

demands moved one Albany white

to publicly sift the truths

from the

tropes and peer through the fog of racial myth. She was the rare white

who

dissented and possessed the courage to say

"came

as

something of a shock" to

"a shock in that

it

this

so.

Anderson's candor

native white southerner

brought into the open some questions which have

— 1

"Our Nigr

and Civil

id! Chicken,

ro

be believable.

Rights: The

Young

recalled that in the

before the law passed, a waitress had poured coffee

him with

served

a smile. Perhaps

and

full

same

restaurant,

on him.

Now

she

was the kind of extraordinary change

by people whose

racial

of paternalism and

fear.

that could be achieved only flicted, paradoxical,

it

201

1964 Civil Rights Act

behavior was con-

On

the other hand,

perhaps the transformation was not nearly as thorough as appearances suggested.

Days St.

30

Rights Act was passed,

after the Civil

many

businesses in

Augustine desegregated. Black marches died down,

Americans tested newly integrated regation had dawned, night

fell

facilities. If a

as African-

new morning

of deseg-

quickly. In the face of civic leaders'

unwillingness to take stands either for integration or a return to segregation,

white supremacist organizations stepped into the emerging power

vacuum. During some

civil rights

marches,

abused police and attacked reporters.

Ku Klux Klan members

had

On July 4, Klansmen chased blacks

from restaurants. The Klan began to picket businesses that integrated, including the

Monson Motor Lodge. On July

16,

Brock again barred

African- Americans from his restaurant. Yet even that act of resegregation could not save

him from

Although Brock reached zation, out-of-town

the punishment of violent segregationists.

a truce

with the

local

white supremacist organi-

Klansmen firebombed the Monson. Cowed by white

supremacist threats,

many

other

St.

Augustine businesses resegregated

by the third week of July. Lawsuits were prietors. In a series of hearings at the

filed against a

number of pro-

end of July, defendants confessed

that they stopped serving African-Americans after white segregationists

threatened violence.

The

ordeal of St. Augustine businesses exposed the

messiness in that sprawling process of social change. Segregation and integration were less permanent states than shifting realities, subject to

the powerful winds of the age.

The countervailing

forces of the federal

government, the black freedom struggle, and white resistance pushed southerners this

many

way and

different reasons.

ended and another began.

On

that, in

thousands of different directions for

When

integration finally came, one process

as

31

July 28, a host of restaurateurs appeared before federal judge

Bryan Simpson. They

all

attested to the

same

basic experience. Leonard

Grissom, owner of Grissom's South Seas, recounted a phone

call

he

received on July 5 — two days after he integrated. Asked if he was serving blacks,

Grissom responded, "Yeah, everybody

caller threatened, the

is." If

he did not stop, the

South Seas would be "closed up."

When

Grissom

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

202

window had been

arrived at the restaurant the following morning, one

shattered by a rock.

Whites picketed that

told them, 'you win.'

"

day. "I

my

put

hands up and

Segregation returned to the South Seas. After

Wallace Colley received a phone threat, Colley's Shrimp House also

Tom

began to ban blacks.

Xynidis, through a thick Greek accent,

detailed similar tribulations at his Seafarer restaurant. Xynidis, clearly

torment on the witness stand, constantly wrung his hands.

in

on July

recalled a beating he witnessed

upon

a black

nearby inn.

man and

On July

approached the

his

white attorney

told the waitresses they

would

people." Xynidis was "afraid didn't sleep

all

resegregated. ness owners

Sam

blacks.

anonymous

The

night."

men

Three white "see

my

if

Seafarer

gang of whites

after they

set

emerged from a blacks

five

entered at the same time and

whether or not

I

served the colored

place exists in the morning. ...

I

stood the next morning, but

it

still

White supremacists began

who buckled under

a

and orderly" group of

16, a "peaceable

Seafarer.

when

12,

He

to focus

more energy on

busi-

the Civil Rights Act than on protesting

Russo, owner of the Flamingo Cafe, recounted that one caller "told

me

that I've fed 'em, I'm a bigger sonofabitch

than the niggers." Russo, like Grissom, Xynidis, and Colley, soon

from an integrated business back to a segregated one.

moved

32

So did James Brock. After Brock took the witness stand, a Newsweek reporter

dubbed him "the

star of the show."

Brock embodied the deep

strains of the decade's social conflict. In the span of a

doused

civil rights protesters

During an age of intense

with acid and was bombed by the Klan.

passions, the

"You're the James Brock

month, he both

middle could be

a difficult place.

who poured muriatic acid in the swimming swimming there?" asked attorney Tobias

pool while the Negroes were

Simon. Brock admitted he was, and confirmed that weeks

swimming-pool received

bomb

incident, he served blacks at his motel. threats.

From July 9

Monson. "Delicious food, "Niggers sleep here,

eat

after the

Brock then

to July 11, whites picketed the

with niggers here" read one of their

signs.

would you?" asked another. Cars with Confederate

flags

watched over the motel, and few white customers crossed the picket

line.

"I'm scared," Brock said. "I'm scared of elements

I'm not scared of what uniquely situated, Jr.,

as

I

can

one

see,

I'm afraid of what

who drew

motel; the other

bombed

it

One

can't see."

to

me.

Brock was

the ire of both Martin Luther King,

and hard-line white supremacists.

threatened by both sides."

I

unknown

"I've

had the pleasure of being

side forced the integration of Brock's

after that desegregation occurred.

33

BsrbtOH, Fried Chicken, and Civil Rights: The 1964 Civil Rights Act

The Monson became

all

1,

1

after three days of pickets,

the powerful

thousand-member Ancient City Hunting Club. In heavily

leader of the St.

Brock requested

Manucy was

audience with Halstead "Hoss" Manucy.

Catholic

with Brock caught

a civil rights battleground,

On July

in the crossfire.

203

Augustine, the club served as a local complement to the

Ku

Klux Klan. Several members of the Ancient City Hunting Club doubled as

deputy

back."

sheriffs.

Manucy

Brock asked Manucy

to "get these pickets off

replied, "I don't think they

want you

my

to serve niggers."

Brock concurred, "Nobody wants to serve them." James Brock was not trapped by his conscience, but pulled in opposing directions by the law

on the one hand and Manucy on the explained the plight of

caught in a dilemma. hurts our business. If the business away."

.

we

As

a

We

.

Another motel owner

Augustine businessmen.

St.

.

other.

are forced to serve

"We

have been

Negroes although

it

serve them, the white pickets turn the rest of

Newsweek dispatch stated,

St.

Augustine busi-

nessmen "have thrust themselves between the grinding forces of the vigilantes

and the Civil Rights Act." Put another way,

Simon

said,

as attorney

Tobias

"These guys have committed suicide." Such was the predica-

ment of many white business owners

in the age of civil rights. For a

time, firebombs spoke louder than court injunctions. St. Augustine businesses endured segregation, integration,

and reintegration. enjoined

Finally,

Manucy and

on August

his followers

and processes of resegregation 5,

Judge Simpson

specifically

from disrupting desegregation.

He

also ordered the integration of seventeen segregated or resegregated

public businesses.

The Old

but segregation started to

Nothing about

Slave

fall.

that process

Market

still

stood at the center of town,

34

was smooth.

Amid ongoing white attacks,

African-Americans continued to fear for their safety through July and

August. Few

St.

Augustine whites accepted the decade's

racial changes,

and the events of 1964 left the city bitterly divided. While whites embraced traditional racial attitudes, few tried to claim that harmony still

existed.

A

Florida investigative commission issued a report in De-

cember that blamed the summer's

racial crisis

on Martin Luther King.

In January 1965, B. C. Roberts, superintendent of the Castillo de San

Marcos National Monument, articulated rights leaders]

The

come

again, they

local

white sentiment. "If [civil

would be met with the same

attitudes haven't changed." After

1964, race relations

reaction. lost

all

veneers of cordiality. African-Americans could eat in white-owned

St.

Augustine restaurants, but word would

travel

back to their bosses

—and

— THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

204

many

of those blacks then feared for their jobs. White-on-black violence

persisted into 1965 and 1966,

wrest control of the

PTA

when

at St.

the John Birch Society attempted to

Augustine High School. By 1968, Birch

supporters were finally defeated, and school desegregation came to

Augustine in 1970. Into the 1980s,

in

An old NAACP mem-

James Jackson, reported shock and amazement

Manucy.

Manucy

When

said,

bumped

the two almost

"Excuse me,

sir."

Club was

Manucy

at the

changes he saw

into each other

downtown,

To Jackson, these words marked

ously inconceivable transformation. But while

may have changed,

St.

Augustine saw change and stag-

Hoss Manucy embodied that antagonism.

nation. ber,

St.

Manucy

's

a previ-

racial etiquette

he continued to believe the Ancient City Hunting

during the 1960s.

in the right

said in 1985. "I

still

think so."

thought we was right,"

"I

35

OBSERVERS ARGUED THAT IF WHITES held out against the Civil Rights Act, and if the new law cultivated violent resistance, it did so in the Black Belt. Claude Sitton wrote, "The change

more quickly and

member

easily in

pliance. states

—

new Community

of President Johnson's

The

far

taking place far

urban areas than rural ones." David Pearson, a Relations Service, a

by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, commented,

race relations agency created

"The pattern so

is

has been:

The

larger the city

rural areas will be difficult." In

—

many

the greater the

cities across

com-

southern

Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte, Mobile, Greenville, and others

blacks successfully tested the Civil Rights Act. Reports of violence most often

came from Black Belt

Alabama. "Restaurants,

areas like Grenada, Mississippi,

theaters,

and courthouse

facilities

and Selma,

seem

as segre-

gated as they were at the turn of the century," journalist Paul

Good

wrote from Grenada. Conventional wisdom had

came

most smoothly at the

Alabama and

Mississippi.

Watts Grill outside Chapel

tension permeated

St.

that integration

and Florida, and that the

to Texas, Virginia,

tance occurred in

it

Hill,

But there were beatings

North Carolina; violence and

Augustine, Florida. Blacks were served at Bir-

mingham's Town and Country Restaurant and Jackson, Sun-n-Sand Motel. In the summer of 1964, izations

and conformed to them.

Georgia exhibited

all

fiercest resis-

realities

Mississippi's,

both defied general-

36

of these clashing truths, and a study of the state

during July 1964 throws these patterns into sharp after the passage of the Civil

Rights Act,

many

relief.

In the weeks

of Georgia's larger cities

boasted compliance. In Atlanta, most hotels and restaurants quickly

Bsrbicut, Friid Chicken,

and Civil

Rights:

205

The 1964 Civil Rights Act

desegregated. Lester Maddox's Pickrick restaurant and Moreton Rolleston's

leart of

1

Atlanta motel were exceptions, though notable ones. But

away from the wealthier "island suburbs," high-

the Pickrick's location,

lighted the point that class lines occasionally revealed

and

"The City Too Busy

rural distinctions. In

pools,

and golf courses

whites had already racial transitions,

restaurants

often

poor

in those areas that

37 public places became hotly contested arenas.

Savannah had experienced

came

other business to parks,

Where urban neighborhoods grappled with

fled.

Elsewhere in Georgia,

protest

to Hate," the desegrega-

and —from — went smoothly

tion of various facilities

more than urban

to a place

cities

met desegregation

racial unrest in

where many

still

in varying ways.

1963. That year, direct action breathed the

lived in the

air,

mansions, and harbored the prejudices of the Old South. But demonstrations succeeded,

By

grated.

New

and on October

1,

public and private

facilities inte-

Day 1964, Martin Luther King could

Year's

Savannah "the most desegregated city south of the Mason-Dixon

call

line."

In Savannah, no resistance to desegregation followed the Civil Rights

Macon and

Act. Blacks in the state's third and fourth largest cities,

Columbus, integrated

Almost every Macon, as

like

anything

facilities shortly after

passage of the legislation.

and restaurant served African- Americans.

hotel, motel,

much

Savannah, experienced black sit-ins prior to 1964. As else, this fact

helped to explain which locales took desegre-

gation in stride. Those that had witnessed black protest before seemed

much more

willing to abide by the

new

law.

While Columbus hosted

protests in the early 1960s, the previous demonstrations were ineffective.

But

in 1964,

most businesses complied with the new

law.

Two

restaurants desegregated despite the threats of a segregationist county

commissioner, and a hamburger stand that initially banned blacks was serving tionist

them by July 20. In Augusta, the dominion of leading segregaRoy Harris, reaction to the Civil Rights Act was mixed. Tal-

madge Memorial Hospital and the

city golf course

refused service to blacks in

became an all-white private

its

club.

cafeteria,

But blacks

reported no other trouble in desegregating hotels, motels, and restaurants. General compliance

with the Civil Rights Act greeted blacks

in the southeastern coastal city of

teenagers approached a city pool,

northwest corner of the desegregate. at the

A

state,

black bellhop

it

was shut down. In Rome,

lunch counters and motels

who

Hotel General Forrest

Brunswick, but when a handful of

all

in the

agreed to

led an African-American to his

reflected, "I've

room

waited 33 years for this

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

206

moment." That moment came of 1964.

As

to

many Georgia

cities in

summer

the

38

a city

wedged

between urban and

firmly in the Black Belt,

rural.

newspapers ran stories about

were events to

fit

Albany blurred the

line

Because of Albany's previous infamy, national its

response to the Civil Rights Act. There

any argument.

Many

hotels, motels,

and restaurants

complied. But at the private pool, ten black would-be swimmers were arrested

and convicted

for "idling

in refused service to blacks.

An

and

loitering."

The Arctic Bear

drive-

who

tested

African- American reverend

new law had moonshine planted in his car and was arrested. In many national periodicals, shaded maps of the South appeared. Dark splotches the

colored Mississippi, Alabama, and parts of Louisiana and Georgia to

denote resistance to the Civil Rights Act. In Texas, Florida, Virginia, and

North Carolina,

light shades of gray appeared

a considerable degree of compliance.

But

—apparently

to designate

realities like those in

Albany

could not be shaded. They combined dark episodes of resistance with bright instances of smooth compliance.

The shade of gray captured noth-

ing and everything about that experience. "Compliance" and "resis-

many

tance" to the Civil Rights Act were difficult things to track. In

small towns, neither violence nor widespread desegregation occurred.

Black

fear

and white threats could leave towns without

law or

tests of the

mean-

with

affairs

of integration that were so orchestrated they had

ing.

News

reports often described towns as either "violent" or "quiet."

But those words described few southern

locales.

One

little

could not

say,

with

any precision, that either "compliance" or "resistance" reigned. The truth was far

more muddled. 39

The march toward than in the

cities.

integration was

more tortuous

in rural

Georgia

Northeast of Macon, motels and restaurants desegre-

gated in the town of Milledgeville. After the hospital forced blacks to the rear entrance for three weeks, the police reversed that policy. In

more small towns, violence propped up

segregation.

A mob

of

many

Winder

whites turned blacks away from a theater. Whites in Waynesboro and

Washington, two small towns in eastern Georgia, met the law with tance. Fights broke out at several

Waynesboro gas

stations

attempted to use the bathrooms. They tested no other

when

resis-

blacks

facilities there.

Businesses in Washington did not integrate because blacks were too fearful of violence to test

them. 40

To many Georgians, unless

it

sat in the

a locale did not truly qualify as rural Georgia

southwestern Black Belt

—among

the twenty-three

/>.//•/'

238.

New

York Times, January 14, 1970.

York Times, April 18, 1971; Atlanta

1971.

Paul Gaston, "The Region in Perspective," in The South and Her Children: School

Desegregation,

1970-1971,

p.

18, Southern Regional Council Papers,

1944-1968,

Reel 220. 112. Marshall Frady,

197

1 );

"A Meeting of

Atlanta Constitution,

May

Strangers in Americus," Life (February 12,

14, 1971.

.

, ;

.

37 6

Notes

"A Meeting of Strangers

113. Frady, 1

to

pages 1 80-193

in Americus"; Morris, Yazoo, p. 21.

14. "Decatur High School," Newsweek Collection, Box 11, Folder: School Desegre-

gation Situationer (November 1970); Gaston, "The Region in Perspective," p. 19.

FOUR Barbecue, Fried Chicken, 1.

and Civil

Rights: The

1964 Civil Rights Act

Atlanta Journal and Constitution, July 4, 1964; Sherrill, Gothic

Politics in the

Deep

South, p. 277; Frady, Southerners, p. 56; Time (July 17, 1964), p. 26. 2. "Lester Maddox Backgrounder," Newsweek Collection, Box 9, Folder: Lester Maddox (August 1964); New York Times, September 30, 1966, June 26, 2003;

Deep South,

Sherrill, Gothic Politics in the

191 5-2003" (Marietta, 3.

GA,

Sherrill, Gothic Politics in the

Newsweek Collection, Box week Collection, 4.

Box

p.

283; "Obituary: Lester Garfield Maddox,

2003).

284; "Lester

Maddox Backgrounder,"

Maddox (August

1964); "P.A.S.S.," News-

Deep South,

9, Folder: Lester

p.

2, Folder: Atlanta Racial Current.

Atlanta Constitution, July 4, 7, 1964; "Lester

Collection; Richard Cortner, Civil Rights

Atlanta Motel and

McClung

Maddox Backgrounder," Newsweek

and Public Accommodations: The Heart of

Cases (Lawrence,

KS, 2001),

p.

39;

New

York Times,

July 10, 18, 1964; Albany Herald, July 11, 1964. Cortner, Civil Rights

5

and Public Accommodations,

New

p. 5 6;

York Times, August

1 1

1964. 6.

New

7.

Ibid.,

August

8.

Ibid.,

February

9.

Michael Durham, "Ollie McClung 's Big Decision,"

Ollie's

York Times, August 12, 14, 1964. 14, 1964. 2, 8, 23,

1965. Life

(October 9, 1964),

Barbecue (December 17, 1964), Newsweek Collection, Box

p. 3

1

4, Folder: Civil

Rights Cases; Cortner, Civil Rights and Public Accommodations, pp. 78-79. 10.

Durham,

"Ollie

McClung

Collection; Cortner, Civil Rights 1 1

lic

Durham,

"Ollie

Big Decision,"

's

p. 31; Ollie's

and Public Accommodations,

McClung Big 's

Decision," p. 3

1

;

Barbecue, Newsweek

p. 79.

Cortner, Civil Rights

and Pub-

Accommodations, p. 64; Time{}\Ay 17, 1964), p. 25. 12.

New

York Times, September 3, 18, 1964; Montgomery Advertiser, September 18,

1964. 13.

Cortner,

Civil

Rights

and Public Accommodations,

McClung Big Decision," p. 31. 14. Durham, "Ollie McClung

p.

77;

Durham,

"Ollie

's

December 15.

's

Big Decision," pp. 31-32; Birmingham News,

16, 1964.

Birmingham News, December 14, 15, 16, 17, 1964;

New

York Times,

Decem-

ber 17, 1964; Ollie's Barbecue, Newsweek Collection. 16.

1963), ald,

members of Georgia Council on Human Relations (July 1, Frances Pauley Papers, Box 10; Gallup, Gallup Poll, vol. 3, p. 1829; Albany HerFrances Pauley to

July

17.

1,

1964.

Iredell

Hutton

to Charles

Raper Jonas (July

3,

1963), Charles Raper Jonas

Papers. 18.

to Sam Ervin (January Sam J. Ervin Papers.

Nathan Blanchard

Ervin (June 25, 1964),

10, 1964);

George Colclough

to

Sam

.

\

to

fei

paga

i

94—206

LJ. Moore

n)

to

377

Sam

Ervin (June 13, 1964),

Sam J. Ervin

Papers;

Tommy Moore,

interview with author, by telephone (April 29, 2005).

Raymond 2 cil

1

Infold to

Sam

Ervin (July 8, 1964),

Sam J.

Ervin Papers.

Benjamin Muse, "Memphis" (July 1964), pp. 33-36, Southern Regional Coun-

.

1944-1968, Reel 220. Interview with Jesse Boyce Holleman, by Orley Caudill (August 9-10, Septem-

Papers, j j.

ber 17, 1976), Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive. 23. Albany Herald, July 3, 1964; Peter de Lissovoy, "Mixin' in South Georgia," The

Nation (December 21, 1964), p. 486. 24. Albany Herald, July 3, 1964; Atlanta Journal 25.

New

26.

Time (July 17, 1964), 25;

and Constitution, July

1964.

4,

York Times, July 6, 13, 19, 1964.

New

York Times, July 7, 9, 1964; Albany Herald,

July 7, 1964.

David Garrow, Bearing

27.

(New

tian Leadership Conference

Nonviolent Way," pp. 36-37, Florida,

28.

New

Martin Luther King, Jr., and

the Cross:

the Southern Chris-

York, 1986), p. 326; John Herbers, "Critical Test for the

York Times Magazine, July 5, 1964, p. 30; Branch, Pillar of Fire,

in; David

Colburn, Racial Change and Community

Crisis: St. Augustine,

1877-1980 (New York, 1985), pp. 46-47, 63. Colburn, Racial Change and Community Crisis, pp. 44-7 1

29. Garrow, Bearing the Cross, pp.

330-33;

New

York Times, June 12, 1964; Branch,

Pillar of Fire, pp.

354-55. 30. Colburn, Racial Change and Community

101; Garrow, Bearing the Cross,

Crisis, p.

p. 336; Bass and DeVries, The Transformation of Southern

31. Garrow, Bearing the Cross, p. 341;

Racial Change 32.

tion

"St.

—

St.

and Community

Augustine, July 29, 1964," Newsweek Collection, Box 14, Folder: Segrega-

Augustine.

"St.

and Community

344; Colburn, Racial Change and Community

p.

327. .

Colburn, Racial Change and Community

Southern Journey: 36.

New

A

Return

New

South

497. For incidents

Charles Jones,

Duke

Adam

lections.

to the

Crisis, p.

Crisis,

Civil Rights Movement

York Times, July 12, 15, 26, 1964;

1964; Paul Good, 2, p.

Crisis, p.

128.

Augustine, July 29, 1964," Newsweek Collection; Garrow, Bearing

p.

35

York Times, July 24, 1964; Colburn,

Crisis, p. 9.

33. Ibid.; Colburn, Racial Change 34.

New

Politics, p. 10.

(Summer

at the

pp.

1 1

(New

St.

the Cross,

112; Branch, Pillar of Fire

4-1 5 182,203; ,

Tom Dent,

York, 1997), pp. 201-7.

Petersburg Times,

November

9,

1966), reprinted in Reporting Civil Rights, Vol.

Watts Grill near Chapel

University Oral History Program,

Hill, see interview

Duke

University Special Col-

Fairclough argues that segregation remained the

Louisiana following the Civil Rights Act, while

many

with Rev.

norm

in

rural

cities integrated. Fairclough,

Race and Democracy, pp. 339-40. 37. Kruse, White Flight, pp. 38.

105-30, 205-33. "The Civil Rights Act: Compliance as Reported

Human

to the

Relations" (July 15, 20, 1964), Frances Pauley Papers,

Georgia Council on

Box

10, Folder 6;

New

York Times, July 14, 1964; Tuck, Beyond Atlanta, pp. 127-53; Pat Watters, "Brunswick at the

Time of the

Civil Rights Act," Southern Regional Council Papers,

1944-1968,

Reel 220. 39.

"The Civil Rights Act: Compliance

as

Reported to the Georgia Council on

8

378

Notes

Human

to

pages 2 o 6-2

1

Relations" (July 15, 20, 1964), Frances Pauley Papers. For examples of that

New

press reaction, see

York Times, July 12 (see map), July 26, 1964; U.S. News

November

Report (July 20, 1964); Birmingham News,

& World

29, 1964; "5 Years Ago," Delta

Democrat -Times, July 4, 1969. 40. "The Civil Rights Act: Compliance as Reported to the Georgia Council on

Human

Relations" (July 15, 20, 1964), Frances Pauley Papers.

41. Tuck, Beyond Atlanta, pp. 158, 176; "The Civil Rights Act: Compliance as

Human

Reported to the Georgia Council on Pauley Papers; 42. Ralph tion,

Box

New

Lowe

Relations" (July 15, 20, 1964), Frances

York Times, July 9, 1964. to

Richard Russell (May 30, 1964), Richard B. Russell, Jr., Collec-

39, Correspondence: June 5-6, 1964;

New

York Times, July 16, 1964.

43. Peter de Lissovoy, "Mixin' in South Georgia," The Nation (December 21, 1964),

pp. 487-88. 44. Ibid., p. 488. 45. Ibid., p. 489. 46. Ibid., pp. 489-90.

November

47. Birmingham News,

December

20, 1965;

48. Samuel Petersburg Times.

Adams, "Highways of

November

49. Ibid.; Samuel burg Times.

November 9, 1964. Hope Opening to Negroes

8,

York Times,

9,

in the South,"

St.

1964.

Adams, "Road of Hope Dotted by Ruts

November

New

in Carolinas,"

St. Peters-

1964.

Samuel Adams, "Scenic Trip Yields Warmth, but Color Barrier Cumbersome,"

50. St.

29, 1964, January 30, 1965;

Petersburg Times,

St.

November

Petersburg Times.

51. Thornton, Dividing

News and Observer

editorial,

10, 1964.

Lines, p.

469; Birmingham News, January 31, 1965; Raleigh

quoted in

New

York Times,

December

20, 1964.

52.

Birmingham News, December

53.

Frances Pauley, "Compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act" (October 6,

6,

1964.

Box 10, Folder 6. December 20, 1964; Pauley, "Compliance with

1965), Frances Pauley Papers,

New

54.

York Times,

Rights Act," Frances Pauley Papers; U.S. News 55. Mrs. Alton

&

the 1964 Civil

World Report ( July 20, 1964).

Bland

to Charles

Raper Jonas (May 28, 1963), Charles Raper Jonas

Bland

to Charles

Raper Jonas (June

4, 1963), Charles

Bland to Charles Raper Jonas (June

8, 1963), Charles

Papers. 56. Mrs. Alton

Raper Jonas

Papers. 57. Mrs. Alton

Papers; Booker

T

Washington, Up from

Slavery, in Three

Negro Classics

Raper Jonas

(New

York,

1999), p. 159. 58. Mrs. Alton

Bland to Charles Raper Jonas (June

8, 1963), Charles

Raper Jonas

Papers. 59.

Mr. and Mrs.

J. E.

Russell, Jr., Collection,

Redmon

Box

to Richard Russell

(June 12, 1964), Richard B.

39.

60. June Melvin to Charles Raper Jonas ( June 19,1 963), Charles Raper Jonas Papers; F.

M.

Bain,

Sr.,

and

David McDougal

F.

M.

Bain,

Jr., to

Sam

Ervin (May

1,

1964),

Box 40, Correspondence: May 27, 1964; Preston Wilkes, Jr., July 9, 1 963), Charles Raper Jonas Papers. As Jack Davis writes

(

Sam J.

to Richard Russell (May 1964), Richard B. Russell,

Ervin Papers;

Jr.,

Collection,

to Charles Raper Jonas in his study of Natchez,

\

to

t$s

pages

Mississippi,

218 227

379

"Whites were convinced that the

'civil

wrongs' legislation granted blacks

not only equal rights but spec id rights that 'seriously impaired' the liberties of others."

Davis, Race Against Time, p. 169.

fune Melvin to Charles Raper Jonas (June 19, 1963), Charles Raper Jonas

61.

M. Bain, Jr., to Sam Ervin (May 1, 1964), Sam J. Ervin Mrs. Romeo Powell to Sam Ervin (January 9, 1964), Sam J. Ervin Papers.

Papers;

F.

Papers;

M. Bain,

Sr.,

and

F.

Mrs. Alton Bland to Charles Raper Jonas (June 8, 1963), Charles Raper Jonas

62.

Papers;

F.

V. Taylor to

Sam Ervin

(April 30, 1964),

Sam J.

Mary

63.

Idol Breeze to Charles

Raper Jonas (June

Wood

Ervin Papers; Florence

(May 20, 1964), Richard B. Russell, Jr., spondence: May 20, 1964; New York Times, June 28, 2003. to Richard Russell

Collection,

Box 40, Corre-

12, 1963), Charles

Raper Jonas

Papers.

64. Nancy Anderson to Richard Russell (December 8, 1963), Correspondence: December 1963; Mary Ann Clarke to Richard Russell (October 24, 1963), Correspon-

dence: October 1963; Richard B. Russell, Jr., Collection; Melvin Rockleff to

Sam

Ervin

1964), Sam J. Ervin Papers. Nancy Collinson to Richard Russell (March 23, 1964), Correspondence: March 1964; James O'Hear Sanders to Richard Russell (December 2, 1963), Correspondence:

(May

3,

65.

December 1963; Richard

B. Russell,

Jr.,

Collection.

66. Harriet Southwell to Richard Russell

(December

8,

1963), Correspondence:

December 1963; Richard B. Russell, Jr., Collection. 67. Audrey Wagner to Charles Raper Jonas (June 27, 1963), Charles Raper Jonas Papers; Hugh Lefler to Sam Ervin (January 21, 1964), Sam J. Ervin Papers. The text-

Hugh Lefler and Albert Newsome, North Carolina: of a Southern State (Chapel Hill, NC, 1954).

book mentioned was co-authored by The History 68. B. lection,

1964),

F.

Wardlow

Sam J. Ervin

69. Mildred and sell, Jr.,

to Richard Russell

Collection,

American

does most closely

to

Sam

Russell, Jr. Col-

Ervin (January 9,

Gene Carr to Richard Russell (May 14, 1964), Richard Box 40, Correspondence: May 20, 1964.

Among

history, surprisingly

is

W Hines

Papers.

70. Albany Herald, July 3, 1964. ness" in

(May 22, 1964), Richard B.

Box 40, Correspondence: May 1964; O.

B. Rus-

the books on the construction of "white-

few of them focus on the South. The one that

Grace Elizabeth Hale's Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation

in the South, 1 890-1 940

(New

York, 1998). See also Roediger's The Wages of Whiteness,

Michael Rogin's Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants

in the

Hollywood Melting Pot

CA, 1966), Alexander Saxton's The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class and Mass Culture in Nineteenth -Century America (New York, 1990), Noel

(Berkeley, Politics

Ignatiev's

How

the Irish

Became White

(New

York, 1995), and Morrison's Playing in the

Dark. 71. Interview with Joe Smitherman, by Blackside Inc.

(December

5,

1985),

Wash-

ington University Libraries; Albany Herald, July 13, 1964. 72. Albany Herald, July 22, 1964; Birmingham News,

December

15, 20, 1964.

73. Atlanta Constitution, July 18, 1964.

74. Ibid. 75. Interview with Clara Lee Sharrard, by author. For different takes on the success

of the Civil Rights Act, see Tuck, Beyond Atlanta, pp. 193-94; Fairclough, Race Democracy, p. 376; Dittmer, Local People, p. 402.

and

1

.

380

Notes

Howard Glenn

76.

to

Sam

Ervin (May 15, 1969),

77. Robert Coles, "Civil Rights

(May

1967); Joseph

7,

Is

2, Folder:

New

York Times Magazine

(November 30, 1964), Birmingham, AL (December 1964); Martin Luther

King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham City Jail," p.

Ervin Papers.

Also a State of Mind,"

Cumming, "Birmingham

Neu sweek Collection, Box

Sam J.

pages 2 2 8-2 4

to

in

Revisited"

Washington,

ed.,

A

Testament of Hope.

295. 78. Interview with Richard Franco, by author.

New

79. Veil:

York Times. April 27, 1985; interview with Margaret Rogers, Behind the

Documenting African- American Life in

New

versity Special Collections;

the Jim

Crow

South.

1

940-1 997. Duke Uni-

York Times. April 6, 1985.

80. Frady, Southerners, p. 71; Atlanta Journal

and Constitution. June 26, 2003.

81. Frady, Southerners, pp. 55, 71; Bass and DeVries, The Transformation of Southern Politics, p.

142; Sherrill, Gothic Politics in the Deep South, pp. 285-88.

Frady, Southerners, p. 56.

82.

83. Sherrill, Gothic Politics in the Deep South, p. 288.

p.

84.

Frady, Southerners, p. 57; Bass and DeVries, The Transformation of Southern

143;

New

Politics.

York Times. June 26, 2003.

85. Frady, Southerners, pp. 60, 74; Sherrill, Gothic Politics in the Deep South, p. 280;

Neu York

Times.

June 26, 2003.

86. Pomerantz, Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn, p. 359; Sherrill, Gothic Politics in

Deep South, p. 280.

the

New

87.

York

June

Times.

191 5-2003" (Marietta,

GA,

26,

Garfield

Maddox,

31, 1998, September

n, 2001;

"Obituary:

2003;

Lester

2003).

88. Birmingham News, June 3, 1997,

December

Birmingham Business Journal. June 25, 1999, September 21, 2001.

New

89.

York Times. September 29, 2000,

May

4,

2004.

90. Frady, Southerners, p. 107. For the complete story of the Souths Republican

transformation, see Earl Black and Merle Black, The Rise of Southern Republicans (Cambridge,

MA,

2002); also see Bass and DeVries, The Transformation of Southern

Politics.

FIVE "Softly, the

Unthinkable": The Contours of Political and Economic Change

1

Garrow, Bearing

2.

Steven Lawson, Black Ballots: Voting Rights in

the Cross, p. 77. the South. 1 944-1 969

1976), pp. 12-13; Chandler Davidson and Bernard Grofman,

3.

n,

The Impact of the Voting Rights

Jimmy Couey

to

Act.

William Emerson (August 30, 1957), Newsweek Collection, Box

Folder: Segregation

4.

York,

196 5-1 990 (Princeton, 1994), pp. 29-30. C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career ofJim Crow (New York, 1955).

the South:

See also

(New

eds., Quiet Revolution in

—

Story.

Davidson and Grofman,

eds., Quiet Revolution in the South, p. 38;

Garrow, Bearing

372; Birmingham News. January 24, 1965. Elizabeth Hardwick, "Selma, Alabama: The Charms of Goodness,"

the Cross, p. 5.

New

York

Review of Books (April 22, 1965); interview with Joe Smitherman, by Blackside Inc. (December 5, 1985), Washington University Libraries; Garrow, Bearing the Cross. p.

391; Thornton, Dividing

Lines, p.

481.

381

Sota topaga 242-254 (»

smut and Cass, Black

in Selma, p. 172;

(

lu

(

hestnut and Cass, Black in Selma, p. 154.

8.

Branch, Pillar of Pin, pp. 82, 554, 564.

9.

Thornton, Dividing

Lines,

Powledge, Free at Last?,

p.

616.

pp. 486-87; Carter, The Politics of Rage, pp. 246-47;

Branch, Pillar of Fire, pp. 593-606.

New

10. Politics

oj

York

Rage,

'limes,

March

Alabamian who often ruled see

Jack Bass,

Taming

New

Lines, p.

York Times,

White Southerner,"

The

(New

March Going

in

and suffered

in favor of black civil rights

the Storm:

South's Fight over Civil Rights 11.

1965; Thornton, Dividing

8,

487; Carter, The

249. For the compelling story of Judge Frank Johnson, a white

p.

Life

terrible ostracism,

ofJudge Frank M. Johnson and

and Times

the

York, 1993).

16, 1965;

Ralph

to the Territory

Ellison,

(New

"The Myth of the Flawed

York, 1986), pp. 86-87; Garrow,

Bearing the Cross, p. 407; Lawson, Black Ballots, p. 312; Renata Adler, "Letter from

Selma,"

New

Yorker (April 10, 1965); Carter, The Politics of Rage, p. 255.

12.

Adler, "Letter from Selma"; Thornton, Dividing Lines, p. 489.

13.

Garrow, Bearing

412; Adler, "Letter from Selma";

the Cross, p.

Jimmy

Breslin,

"Changing the South," New York Herald Tribune, March 26, 1965. 14.

Lawson, Black

15.

Lawson, Black

Ballots, pp.

321-31; Birmingham News, November

6,

1966.

337, 308; Thornton, Dividing Lines, pp. 498-99,

Ballots, pp.

559-60; Birmingham News, November 9-12, 1966.

New York Times, April 2, 1985; interview with Duke University Special Collections.

16. Veil,

17.

There

is

some debate about whether Wallace

Carter, The Politics of Rage, pp.

actually

New

Carter, The Politics of Rage, pp. 11, 262;

19.

Carter, The Politics of Rage, p. 417, also see the leaflet;

made

comment. See

this

95-96.

18.

"Wake Up Alabama"

Roosevelt Williams, Behind the

York Times,

photo

May

23, 1965.

insert to

view Wallace's

Birmingham News, November 25, 1972.

20. Carter, The Politics of Rage, p. 460; "George Wallace Overcomes," Time (Octo-

ber 11, 1982), pp. 15-16;

Demons,"

Boston Globe,

21. Interview with

New

York Times, April 4, 1986; "George Wallace Faces His

December

2,

1993.

George Wallace, by Callie Crossley, Blackside,

Inc.

(March 10,

1986), Washington University Special Collections. 22.

Ibid.

23. Interview with Joseph 24.

New

Cumming, by

author,

May

20, 2004.

York Times, April 17, 1966.

25. Bass and DeVries, The Transformation of Southern Politics, pp. 38, 206;

and Grofman,

eds., Quiet Revolution in the South, pp. 39,

Davidson

374; "Voter Registration in the

South, Spring-Summer, 1970," Southern Regional Council Papers, 1944-1968, Reel 170; Lawson, Black Ballots, pp. 233, 331. 26. Carter, The Politics of Rage, p. 247; tions in the Southern

Economy Since

the Civil

ration of Black Belt whites' traditional

Key's Southern Politics in State

and

Gavin Wright, Old South, New

War (New York, 1986),

dominance over southern

Nation.

South to the service of their peculiar

South: Revolu-

259. For an explopolitics, see V.

Key described black-majority

counties as the "hard core of the political South," and they entire

p.

local needs."

"managed

O.

plantation

to subordinate the

Key continued, "The

politics

of the South revolves around the position of the Negro." In the Black Belt, his position

was most prominent. C. Vann Woodward put

it

another way

when he argued

that

New

382

Notes

to

255-262

pages

South politics were not about white supremacy, but which whites would rule supreme. Politics in State and Nation, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge, 195 1).

Key, Southern South,

Vann Woodward,

p. 5; C.

27. Bass and DeVries, The Transformation of Southern

Politics,

Origins of the

pp. 412-13; Sullivan,

Freedom Writer, p. 360; Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority

ed.,

Rochelle,

NY,

New

(New

1969), p. 212.

28. Lawson, Black Ballots, pp. 130, 330; Norrell, Reaping the Whirlwind, p. 87; Breslin,

"Changing the South"; New York

"Greene County, Alabama

—

November

Times,

Softly, the

Cumming,

27, 1964; Joseph

Unthinkable," Newsweek Collection, Box 6,

Greene County (October, 1973).

Folder:

December

29. Birmingham News,

Lawson, Black

Ballots, p.

30. Norrell, Reaping the Whirlwind, pp. 31. Ibid., p. 165;

New

32.

New

1966;

1,

209; Norrell, Reaping

New

York Times,

the

York Times,

November

27, 1964;

Whirlwind, pp. 89, 92.

96-97, 10 1, 104.

November

27, 1964.

York Times, June 2, 1966; Birmingham News,

November 6—9, December

1,

9-10, 1966.

Gene Roberts, "A Kind of Black Power

33.

in

Macon County,

Ala.,"

New

York Times

Magazine (February 26, 1967). For developments in Wilcox County, see Gene Roberts,

"A Remarkable Thing

Is

Happening

in

Wilcox County,

Ala.,"

New

York Times Magazine

(April 17, 1966). 34. Norrell, Reaping the Whirlwind, pp.

Marriage," Roberts,

New

"A Kind of Black Power

"Greene County, Alabama

35.

200-204; Marshall Frady, "An Alabama

Times (March 8, 1974), reprinted in Frady, Southerners, pp. 261-78; in

—

Macon County,

Ala."

Statistical Profile,"

Student Nonviolent Coordinat-

ing Committee Papers, Reel 37; "Black Power at Work," Newsweek (February 19,

—

Cumming, "Greene County, Alabama Softly, the Unthinkable," p. 11, Newsweek Collection; The New Republic ( January 16, 197 1), p. 11. 36. New York Times, August 3, 1969, September 3, 1983; Marshall Frady, "Night1973);

watch Belt,

in

Greene County," Newsweek (May 16, 1966). Throughout the Alabama Black

was not

it

difficult to find

evidence of traditional white racial views. In Lowndes

County, during jury selection for the 1965 Viola Liuzzo

woman murdered when

Detroit

trial

(Liuzzo was a white

she traveled south to assist the cause of civil rights), a

"Do you

prosecutor asked C. E. Bender, a worker at an auto agency near Fort Deposit, believe that a white person

man

believes that."

is

superior to a Negro?" Bender responded, "Every white

As Charles Eagles writes

in his history of Lowndes County,

residents intuitively understood that the civil rights life.

An

movement threatened

end to segregation would, they believed, inevitably threaten not

nomic and

political

power but every aspect of their

lives. ... It

"White

their

way of

just their eco-

had to be stopped."

New

York Times, February 14, October 19, 1965, October 31, 1966; Eagles, Outside Agitator, p. 144.

37.

Frady,

"Nightwatch

in

Greene County"; Birmingham News, November

6,

1966;

Frye Gaillard, Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement That Changed America (Tuscaloosa, 2004), p. 319; Pat Watters and Reese Cleghorn, Climbing Jacob's Ladder:

The Arrival of Negroes 38.

Frady,

in Southern Politics

"Nightwatch

39. Birmingham News,

40.

in

(New

York, 1967), p. 302.

Greene County."

November

30, 1966;

New

York Times, August 3, 1969.

John Egerton, "White Incumbents, Black Challengers," Newsweek

Collection,

.

1

1

Box

to

pages 26

6, Polder:

383

271

]

Greene County (January

2,

Cumming, "Greene County

1973);

—

Softly,

the Unthinkable," Newsweek Collection.

Sweep of County Alarms Alabama Whites," New York

Bl.u ks

1

I

ber 5,

1970; Birmingham News, November

1,

Times,

Novem-

3, 4, 24, 25, 1970; Louisville Courier-

Journal, January 10, 1971. Louisville Courier-Journal,

2 I

43. Interview with Joseph

Learned

in

Black and White:

February 23, 1997;

January 10, 197

Cumming, by

An

1

author; Joseph

Cumming,

"Lessons

Irresistible Force," Times-Georgian (Carrollton,

Cumming, "Greene County

—

Softly, the

GA),

Unthinkable," Newsweek

Collection.

44.

Cumming,

"Lessons Learned in Black and White," Times-Georgian, February 16,

1997; interview with Joseph

Symposium on

the

Cumming, by

Media and the

author; "Covering the South:

Civil Rights

A

National

Movement," University of Mississippi,

April 3-5, 1987.

Cumming, by author. Cumming, "Greene County Softly, the Unthinkable," Newsweek Collection; Joseph Cumming, "Greene County, Ala.: The Hope of the Future," Southern Voices, 45.

Interview with Joseph

—

46. Ibid.;

Vol.

1,

No.

1

(March/April 1974), pp. 22-29.

— — — —

Softly, the Unthinkable," Newsweek Collection; 47. Cumming, "Greene County Cumming, "Greene County, Ala.: The Hope of the Future," pp. 22-29. Softly, the Unthinkable," Newsweek Collection; 48. Cumming, "Greene County Cumming, "Greene County, Ala.: The Hope of the Future," pp. 22—29. Softly, the Unthinkable," p. 14, Newsweek Collec49. Cumming, "Greene County tion; Cumming, "Greene County, Ala.: The Hope of the Future," p. 26. Softly, the Unthinkable," pp. 16, 18-19, News50. Cumming, "Greene County week Collection; Cumming, "Greene County, Ala.: The Hope of the Future," pp.

26-27. 51.

—

Cumming, "Greene County Softly, the Unthinkable," pp. 17, 19-20, NewsCumming, "Greene County, Ala.: The Hope of the Future," pp.

week Collection;

26-27. 52.

—

Cumming, "Greene County Softly, the Unthinkable," pp. 15-16, Newsweek Cumming, "Greene County, Ala.: The Hope of the Future," p. 26. The

Collection;

Birmingham News reported that Rogers was "one of the few whites in the cessfully seek

Cumming s

and gain the backing of the party

report

—

that the

NDPA

at the

county

approached Rogers

—

is

state to suc-

level." In this instance,

probably more

reliable,

given his extensive interviewing of Rogers, Banks, Branch, and other main participants politics. Birmingham News, November 8, 1972. Cumming, "Greene County Softly, the Unthinkable," pp. 23-25, Newsweek Collection; Cumming, "Greene County, Ala.: The Hope of the Future," p. 28. Softly, the Unthinkable," pp. 8-10, 25-29, 54. Cumming, "Greene County Newsweek Collection; Cumming, "Greene County, Ala.: The Hope of the Future," pp.

in

Greene County

— —

53.

24, 28-29;

Box

Eugene Johnston

to

Joseph

Cumming

(June 17, 1973), Newsweek Collec-

Greene County (October 1973). 55. Davidson and Grofman, eds., Quiet Revolution

tion,

6, Folder:

son, In Pursuit of Power: Southern Blacks

and

in the South, p.

376; Steven Law-

Electoral Politics, 1 965-1 982

(New

York,

1985), p. 265. For the story of the switch to black power in Fayette, Mississippi, see

Delta Democrat-Times,

May

11, July 6, 7, 8, 1969; Watters

and Cleghorn, Climbing

384

Notes

Jacob's Ladder, p. 32. For other episodes of the "unthinkable"

to

272-284

pages

becoming

political reality,

and DeVries, The Transformation of Southern Politics, pp. 191, 273-74. Also Watters and Cleghorn, Climbing Jacobs Ladder, pp. 336-39. see Bass

56.

Sam

Ervin to Mittie Pickard (June 23, 1964); Katherine Foster to

Sam J.

(June 20, 1964),

Sam

see

Ervin

Ervin Papers.

Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the 57 Laws That Changed America (Boston, 2005), pp. 154, 223, 228; Birmingham News, November 8, 25, 1964; "The Morning After," The Nation (November 16, 1964), .

p.

,

346; Birmingham News, 58.

New

November

1964.

8,

York Times, September 30, 1966.

59. Newsweek (October 9, 1969), p. 52; Joe 5,

1968); Martha

Adcock

Denmark

to Charles

Raper Jonas (April

Raper Jonas (April 1968), Charles Raper Jonas

to Charles

Papers. 60. Atlanta Constitution, Bartley,

61

.

The

Atlanta Constitution,

lican Majority, p.

62.

November 2,3, 1968; Newsweek (October

New South, 1945-1980,

p.

November 6,

1968; Phillips, The Emerging Repub-

7, 11, 12,

286.

Peggy Ruth

Nixon (May

to Richard

5,

1969), Charles Raper Jonas Papers.

63. Delta Democrat-Times, October 2, 1969; Atlanta Constitution, Bartley, The

9, 1969), p. 45;

378; Lassiter, The Silent Majority, p. 237.

New South,

p.

New

389;

November 6, 1972;

Hundreds of local

York Times, July 25, 2004.

races

that occurred between

1968 and 1972 either confounded or confirmed this pattern. For more information on those elections, see Numan V. Bartley and Hugh D. Graham, Southern Politics

and

the Second Reconstruction (Baltimore, 1975);

Bass and DeVries, The

Transformation of Southern Politics; and Lassiter, The Silent Majority, pp. 25 1-74.

New South,

64. Bartley, The

p.

41

1

;

Bartley and

ond Reconstruction, pp. 166—68; Carter, The

Graham,

Politics of Rage, p.

Southern Politics

and the Sec-

426.

66.

November 3, 12, 19, 1972; Bartley, The New November 8, 10, 1972. Atlanta Constitution, November 1,2,3, 6, 9, 1972.

67.

Bass and DeVries, The Transformation of Southern

68.

Roy Reed,

65. Birmingham News,

South, p.

412;

Atlanta Constitution,

Politics,

pp. 127—28.

interview with Jack Bass, Southern Oral History Program; Edgar

Mouton, interview with Jack

Bass, Southern Oral History Program.

John Lewis, "From Rosa Parks to Northern Busing," New York Times, December 26, 1975; Howell Raines, "Revolution in the South," New York Times, April 3, 69.

1978; Time (September 27, 1976); John Lewis, Walking with

Movement 70. J.

(New

York, 1998),

Morgan Kousser,

the Second Reconstruction

p.

the

Wind:

A

Memoir of the

417.

Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights

(Chapel Hill,

NC,

and the Undoing of

1999), pp. 47, 145, 152, 171, 181, 256-57.

Overall, Kousser argues, "Redistricting, not racial attitudes, primarily determined congressional policies

71.

New

on

race in both the late nineteenth

York Times. September 3, 1983; Joseph

and the

late

Cumming,

twentieth centuries."

"Black Power

at

Work,"

Newsweek (February 19, 1973). 72. Bartley, The

New South,

pp. 2, 123, 134, 269; "Distribution of Agricultural and

Nonagricultural Workers in the South, 1950," Southern Regional Council Papers, 1

944- 1 968, Reel

21; Wright, Old South,

73. Bartley, The

New

New South,

row," Time (September 27, 1976), p. 99;

p.

257.

Vann Woodward, "The South TomorWoodward, The Strange Career ofJim Crow,

South, pp. 23, 262; C.

— Notts topagei

385

284 291

"The Souths Glowing Horizon," Saturday Review (March

[92; Ralph McGill,

p

[968), 74.

9,

21.

p.

Figures

based on author's calculations of data gleaned from Wright's Old

art-

South, Ncir South, pp. 245-46; Southern Regional Council Papers, 1944-1968, Reel $9;

Very Rony, "Sorrow Song in Black and White,"

75

.

New South (Summer

1967).

Memo from Stokely Carmichael, Bob Marts, Tina Harris, Alabama Staff to Staff,

"Who Owns

the Land in the Black Belt Counties of Alabama," Student Nonviolent

Andrew Kopkind, "Lowndes County, in Andrew Kopkind, The Thirty Years' War: Dispatches of a Radical Journalist (New York, 1995), pp. 259, 261-62; New York Times, December 30, 1975; Christian Science Monitor, JanuCoordinating Committee Papers, Reel 37;

Alabama: The Great Fear

Is

Gone," Ramparts (April 1975), reprinted

ary 15, 1986.

Mike Garvey

76. Interview with Unita Blackwell, by Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive;

A Journey

Through

New South

the

(New

Through Mississippi

They Are 78.

1

Anthony Dunbar, The Will Words of

the

2,

80. Ibid., pp. 7,

Its

Citizens,

to Survive,

June

A

p.

3,

pp. 5—6.

13. Whether slavery was denned by brutal capicommunal bonds has been a matter of much debate.

Institution: Slavery in the

Roll, Jordan, Roll:

changed

Commu-

Southern Regional Council Papers,

Time, p. xviii.

—

or did not

—

their seminal works,

Kenneth

(New York, 1956) and Made (New York, 1974) still

Ante-bellum South

The World

frame the terms of that debate. To understand their bosses

12, 1969.

Study of a Mississippi Plantation

on the subject has advanced since

Stampp's The Peculiar

Eugene Genovese's

A Journey

to Survive, p.

talism, negotiated reciprocity, or literature

My Name:

1-12; Lawson, In Pursuit of Power, p. 231.

1

81. Dunbar, The Will

While the

Hear Them Calling

1969; Anthony Dunbar, Delta Time:

to Survive:

944-1 968, Reel 220; Dunbar, Delta 79. Dunbar, The Will

12, 1977),

York, 1990), pp. 169-70; "Mechanization of Scott: Times

a Changin'," Delta Democrat -Times,

Based on

nity

Fuller, /

May

(Boston, 1981), pp. 94, 97.

November

77. Birmingham News,

Chet

(April 21,

the Slaves

how

between black workers and

relations

after the abolition of slavery, see

Leon Litwack's

Been in the Storm So Long and Trouble in Mind. For an illuminating look at slaveholders,

not only on large plantations but also on small farms, see James Oakes's The Ruling Race:

A

History of American Slaveholders

82. Dunbar, The Will

and many others

—

to Survive,

York, 1982).

in the Mississippi Delta, see Wirt,

83. Dunbar, The Will in the

(New

pp. 13-14. For a thorough study of these themes

to Survive,

p.

14. In

Economy and Society of the Slave South

in effect, that slaveholders

(New

The

"We Ain't What We Was."

Political

Economy of Slavery: Studies

York, 1965), Eugene Genovese argues,

were not businessmen

—

or at the least, they were not cap-

italists.

84. A.

W.Joel Williamson Exams.

85. See Robert Korstad's Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers

Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century South (Chapel Hill,

and

NC, 2003)

the Struggle for

for the story of

Winston-Salem; Robin Kelley's Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During Depression (Chapel Hill,

and

political struggles

86. Wofford,

Alabama,"

p.

NC, 1990)

the

Great

narrates a story of African-Americans, unionism,

during the 1930s.

"A Preliminary Report on

the Status of the Negro in Dallas County, Cobb, The James Selling the South: The Southern Crusade for Industrial 44; of

386

Notes

Development (Urbana, IL, 1993), p. 94.

Cobb

argues that, in

often misjudged the priorities of northern companies.

was not always the

s

pages

292-300

southern businessmen

Cheap and unorganized

labor

primary need.

"Interim Report on Survey of Southern Trade Unions and the Race Problem"

87.

(May

latter

fact,

to

10, 1957), Southern Regional Council Papers,

Minchin, Hiring

the

1945-1980 (Chapel

1944-1968, Reel 171; Timothy

Black Worker: The Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry, Hill,

NC,

1999), p. 237; Timothy Minchin, The Color of Work: The

1945-1980 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991),

Struggle for Civil Rights in the Southern Paper Industry, p. 170.

Ginny and Buddy Tieger (August 12, 1965), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers, Reel 40; interview with Thomas Knight, by Charles 88. Letter from

Bolton (February

Marc

89.

South

(New

7, 1992), Civil

Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive.

Miller, ed., Working Lives: The Southern

Exposure History of Labor

in the

York, 1980), p. 283; Local 65, Electrotypers and Stereotypers Union to

Richard Russell (June 1964), Richard B. Russell,

Jr.,

Collection.

90. Minchin, The Color of Work. pp. 178, 174. 91. Ibid., pp. 172, 184.

"How

92.

a Southern

Community Helped

1966), Southern Regional Council Papers,

1

Break a Union,"

to

Labor (March

Steel

944-1 968, Reel 170; "Vote Against the

Union," Moore County Neus, September 29, 1966, Southern Regional Council Papers,

1944-1968, Reel 170. 93. Time (September 27, 1976), pp. 75-76.

94. Interview with James Reynolds, by David and Carol

DC

Lynn

Washington,

(February 4, 1972), p. 25, Sanitation Strike Archival Project, University of

phis; Commercial Appeal. February 16, 1968; interview with Mr. Bill

Yellin,

Thomas, Memphis,

TN (July

and Mrs.

L. C.

Mem-

Reed, by

15, 1968), p. 8, Sanitation Strike Archival Project,

University of Memphis.

"Labor in the South," Southern Patriot (January 1968); Robert Analavage, "A

95.

New Movement

in the

White South," Southern Regional Council

Papers,

1

944-1 968,

Reel 219; Robert Analavage, "Workers Strike Back," Southern Regional Council Papers,

1944-1968, Reel 219.

96.

"Labor in the South"; Analavage, "Workers Strike Back."

97.

New

York Times. September 24, 197

White South"; Analavage, "Workers

New

98.

From Cotton

York Times.

May

19, 1969;

Belt to Sunbelt, p. 140.

1;

Analavage, "A

New Movement

in the

Strike Back."

Cobb, The

Selling of the South, p. 118;

Minchin, Hiring

the

Schulman,

Black Worker, p. 4.

"Occupational Employment by Race in the Textile Industry in the Carolinas,

99.

1966," Papers of the North Carolina Council on Allred,

Jr., to

Papers of the

Human

Relations; letter from Will

members and friends of Human Relations Councils (March 28, 1967), North Carolina Council on Human Relations. See Minchin's Hiring the

Black Worker for an illuminating discussion and tabulation of racial hiring practices, disparities in position,

and wage

rates.

members and friends of Human Relations Councils (March 28, 1967), Papers of the North Carolina Council on Human Relations; Union Voice, Vol. 2, No. 9 (April 19, 1967), Papers of the North Carolina Coun100. Letter from Will Allred,

cil

on

Human

Relations.

Jr.,

to

Notes to pages

Reese

[01. Times

387

100-311 C

A

Leghorn, "The Mill:

Giant Step

for the

Southern Negro,"

New

York

Magazine (November 9, 1969).

New

York Times,

June

May

19, 1969.

102.

[bid.;

103.

Wall StreetJournal, April 29, 1969; Minchin, Hiring

12, 1969,

the

Black Worker, pp. 16,

3;

Carolina Journal, September 22, 2003.

Henry Leifermann, "The Unions Are Coming," New York Times Magazine

104.

(August

5,

1973)-

James Hodges,

105.

and Merl Reed,

"J. P.

Stevens and Union: Struggle for the South," in Gary Fink

eds., Race, Class,

and Community

in Southern

Labor History (Tuscaloosa,

1994), pp. 57-59-

Coming"; Cobb, The

106. Leifermann, "The Unions Are

Selling of the South, pp.

256-58.

Coming."

107. Leifermann, "The Unions Are

Could Be Finer than

108. Barbara Koeppel, "Something Progressive

to

Be

The

in Carolina,"

(June 1976), pp. 20, 23. Historian James Cobb argues that by the end of the

1970s, "antidnionism had supplanted racism as the Souths most respectable prejudice."

Cobb, The

Selling of the South, pp.

259, 270.

109. Koeppel, "Something Could be Finer than to

Be

in Carolina," p. 2

1

;

Ron Dun-

"One Poor White," New South (1969), p. 49; The Nation (May 20, 1968), p. 668; McWhorter, Carry Me Home, p. 15. A white native of Birmingham, McWhorter wrote can,

grew up on "the wrong

that she 1

side of a revolution."

Duncan, "One Poor White,"

10.

p. 50.

in. Raymond Wheeler, "The Challenge No.

1

(Winter 1969),

Dunbar, Delta Time, 112. Diane

Home

(pp.

1

p. 4;

p. 17; interview

McWhorter

to Black

and White,"

William Alexander Percy, Lanterns on

New South, the Levee,

Vol. 24,

quoted in

with Clara Lee Sharrard, by author.

often writes about the "country-club Klanner" in Carry

Me

5-30); interview with Richard Franco, by author.

113. Chestnut and Cass, Black in Selma, pp. 176, 185; Fleming, Son of the Rough South, p. 244.

McWhorter, Carry Me Home, pp. 15, 17, 21. In an interview with Eyes on the Vann argued that Birmingham businessmen

114. Prize,

lawyer and former mayor David

never encouraged Connor's tactics. Interview with David Vann, Washington University Libraries. Harkey,

John Jennings

115. Papers,

The Smell of Burning to

Crosses, p.

Emory Via (August

65. 9, 1966),

Southern Regional Council

1944- 1968, Reel 70. six

The Price of Liberation 1.

William Faulkner, quoted

in

James

Times Magazine (July 19, 1964); Robert the South 2.

P-

(New

On

Silver, "Mississippi

Penn Warren,

York, 1956), p. 113; Sullivan, ed., Freedom

King's "Letter from

355» Watters,

Down to Now,

Rights, Vol. 2, pp.

Birmingham City Jail," p. 13;

John Hersey, "A

Must Choose," New

Segregation:

see

The Inner

York

Conflict in

Writer, p. 121.

McWhorter, Carry Me Home,

Life for a Vote," in Reporting Civil

223-24; interview with Fannie Lou Hamer, by Neil McMillen

(April 14, 1972), Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive.

.

.

388

Notes

James Baldwin, The

3.

to

pages 3 1

Next Time (1963), reprinted in Baldwin,

Fire

1-324

Collected Essays,

pp. 334,293,342. 4. Ibid., pp. 294-95; James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson (New York, 1933), p. 318.

David Blight,

5.

ed., Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,

Written by Himself (Boston, 1993), pp. 59-60, 64;

phant," in Orwell,

A

(New

Collection of Essays

An

American

Slave,

George Orwell, "Shooting an Ele-

York, 1946), p. 152.

Atlanta Constitution, July 29, 1946; Sibley Commission, Fifth Congressional Dis-

6.

Atlanta,

trict,

Folder,

GA (March 24,

Emory University

Views the

Sit-in

Box 146, Witness Testimony "A Southern White Rights Newsletter (May 3, 1961), South-

i960), John Sibley Papers,

Special Collections; Margaret Long,

Movement,"

USNSA

Civil

ern Historical Collection. Coles, Farewell

7.

to the

South, p. 10; Leslie

Dunbar, "The Annealing of the South"

(1961), reprinted in Dunbar, The Shame of Southern

Dunbar, "The Annealing of the South,"

8.

Free at Last?, p.

the

Hodding

ters,

by Jack Bass (April

1,

1974), Southern Oral His-

New

in

York

1991).

Pat Watters, The South and the Nation

"The South and the Nation," New South

11.

1,

The Story of the Civil Rights Movement

York, 1977), pp. 23-24; Howell Raines, "Grady's Gift,"

Times Magazine (December 10.

Carter,

My Soul Is Rested:

Howell Raines,

(New

Deep South

265; Powledge,

64 1

Interview with

9.

tory Program;

Politics, p. 6.

p. 6; Frady, Southerners, p.

Interview with Florence Mars, by

(New

York, 1969), pp. 4, 374; Pat Wat-

(Fall 1969), p. 20.

Thomas Healy (January

5,

1978), Civil

Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive; interview with Warren Ashby, by William Chafe (September 25, 1974, and October Collection, p.

Duke

3,

1974), William

Henry Chafe Oral History

University Special Collections; Anderson, The Children of the South,

116. 1

2

Watters,

Down

to

Now, pp. 161,

11.

13.

Kotz, Judgment Days, pp. 336-37.

14.

Marshall Frady, "A Meeting of Strangers in Americus," Life (February 12,

1971). 15.

Ibid.;

Joseph Cumming, "Been

Esquire (August 197

1), p. 1

16. Atlanta Constitution,

Down Home

So Long

It

Looks

like

Up

to

Me,"

14.

November

13, 1972; Delta Democrat -Times, April 4, 1969.

17.

Interview with Richard Franco, by author.

18.

Sullivan, ed., Freedom Writer, p. 388; Time (September 27, 1976), p. 48; Joel

Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations cipation

(New

in the

American South Since Eman-

York, 1984), p. 499; P.M. P. (December 19, 1972), Joel Williamson

Exams. 19. cle,

Joseph Cumming, "A Final Farewell," Georgia (June 1972),

Joseph

Cumming

to Athens Observer

20. Congressional Record (Vol. 116, 21.

(November

No.

87),

May

p. 52; draft

of arti-

18, 1975).

28, 1970.

Ibid.

22. Ibid. 23.

Dunbar, Delta Time,

p. xx.

24. Goldfield, Black, White,

and

Southern. Goldfield has a section entitled "Civil

Rights and White Southerners: The Fruits of Liberation," pp. 169-73.

Notes to paps

26.

in Frady, Southerners, p. 373.

(

lampbell, Forty Acres

(

Ampbell, Forty Acres and a Goat, quoted in Fred Hobson, But

Southern Racial Conversion Narrative (Baton

Walker

Looks 28.

and a Goat, quoted

Will

Today, p. 78; It

389

J9

)

Will

The Whin 27.

]24

Percy, "Mississippi:

Thornton, Dividing

Up

like

to

Me,"

p.

1

The

Lines, p.

Rouge, 1999),

p.

Now

I See:

277.

Fallen Paradise," in Morris, ed., The South

582;

Cumming, "Been Down Home So Long

14.

Interview with James McBride

Dabbs (1965-1968), by Dallas Blanchard, "The Squire of Rip Raps," The South

Southern Oral History Program; Jack Bass, Today (December 1969).

29. Albany Herald, July 17, 1962; de Lesseps Morrison to Betty

New

ber 15, i960), de Lesseps Morrison Papers; 30.

Lowry (Decem-

York Times, July 13, 2004.

Wilkie, Dixie, pp. 299, 323-24.

Thomas Healy (January

31. Interview with Florence Mars, by

5,

1978), Civil

Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive; Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS), January 7, June 15,

2005;

New

York Times, June 12, 2005.

32.

"Southern Town Struggles with a Violent Legacy," New York Times,

33.

New

York Times, January 7-8, 2005.

34. Ibid.; Clarion-Ledger,

June

12, 2005.

35.

New

36.

Gary Younge, "Racism Rebooted," The Nation (July

June 37

12, .

May 29, 2004.

York Times, January 7-8, 2005.

2005;

New

Clarion-Ledger, January

38. Ibid.,

June

11, 2005); Clarion-Ledger,

York Times, April 3, June 2, 12, 2005.

15, 12,

8,23,2005.

2005;

New

York Times, June 12,21,2005.

June 22, 2005.

39. Clarion-Ledger,

40. Ibid. See James Silver, Mississippi: The Closed Society

McComb

Moses wrote from the

jail

that he

was

in "the

(New

York, 1964); Robert

middle of the iceberg." Branch,

Parting the Waters, p. 523.

41.

New

December

York Times,

The Battle of Oxford,

Mississippi,

15, 2002;

William Doyle, An American

1962 (New York, 2001);

Insurrection:

Ellis Cose, "Lessons of the

Trent Lott Mess," Newsweek (December 23, 2002), p. 37. 42. 43.

New New

York Times,

December

15, 2002;

York Times,

December

14, 12, 2002.

44. Ibid.,

December

Newsweek (December 23, 2002),

21, 22, 2002. Southerners

rible" racial episodes occurred

would doubtless point out

everywhere in America, in

New

York City

Pascagoula. The Nation opined: "In the end, as Martin Luther King,

Jr.,

p. 23.

that "ter-

as well as in

prophesied,

they liberated white Americans too, including white Mississippians, by removing this historic stain

from our

(December 30, 2002), 45.

Edward

Ball,

society.

Senator Lott was not saved, however." The Nation

p. 3.

"Ghosts of Carolina,"

New

York Times,

December

22, 2002.

46. Ibid. 47.

New

York Times,

December

21, 2002.

H. Butcher (New York, 1961), p. 78. 49. Joseph Cumming, "Lessons Learned in Black and White: Unforgettable Characters," Times-Georgian, March 2, 1997; interview with Will Campbell, by Orley Caudill 48. Aristotle,

(June 50.

Poetics,

8, 1976), Civil

translated by

S.

Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive.

August Meier, "On the Role of Martin Luther King," New

1965), in Reporting Civil Rights, Vol. 2, pp.

456-57.

Politics

(Winter

39°

Notes

to

pages

Hardwick, "Selma, Alabama: The Charms of Goodness,"

51. Elizabeth

340-353

New

York

Review of Books (April 22, 1965).

Down

52. Watters,

Now,

to

p. 54.

53. Interview with Jerry Clower, by Orley Caudill (July 12, 1973), Civil Rights in

Mississippi Digital Archive. 54. Interview with Peter Klopfer (June 5, 1974),

Duke

University Oral History

Program. 55. Sullivan, ed., Freedom Writer, pp. 56. Charles Longstreet Weltner,

318-19, 327, 342, 375.

"My

Friend Calvin," Atlanta Magazine (November

1969). 57.

Wyman,

Hastings

John Egerton, "A ter 1969), p. 47.

narrative,"

Visit

Chattanooga Times/Chattanooga Free

with James McBride Dabbs,"

Press,

New South,

February 16, 2003;

Vol. 24,

For an in-depth exploration of the "white southern

No.

racial

1

(Win-

conversion

probed mostly through a study of autobiographies, see Hobson, But

Now

I See.

58. Joseph

tember 1969),

Cumming, "The American Idea in the South," Atlanta Magazine (Sepp. 17; interview with M. W. Hamilton, by Orley Caudill (February 13,

1978), Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive. 59.

Time (September 27, 1976), pp. 4-6.

60. Karl Fleming, "The South Revisited After a

Momentous Decade," Newsweek

(August 10, 1970). 61. Ibid.

An

62. Doyle,

American

173—74, 316; interview with Brodie 26, 1974), Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital

Insurrection,

Crump, by Orley Caudill (February

pp.

Archive. 63. Interview with Clara Lee Sharrard, by author (Springfield, 64.

Cumming,

"Lessons Learned in Black and White:

An

MA,

2003).

Irresistible Force," Times-

Georgian, February 23, 1997.

65. Ralph Ellison, quoted in George Tindall, The Ethnic Southerners (Baton Rouge,

1976), p. 19. 66. Interview with

(June 67.

(New

5,

1974),

Duke

Hugh

Wilson, by

Wendy

Watriss and Reginald Kearney

University Oral History Program.

Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy p. lxxvi. The phrase "this is a white man's country" comes from

York, 1944),

American Negro Slavery (191 8), by Ulrich Phillips, an early-twentieth-century historian

and apologist

for slavery.

68. Myrdal,

An American Dilemma,

pp. 997-98.

69. Ibid., pp. 1004, lxxv. 70. Editors of Ebony, The White Problem in America (Chicago, 1966), pp. 1-2, 4, 6. 71. Ibid., pp. 171, 154.

72. Ibid., pp. 174-7573. Ibid., pp. 180-81. 74. Time (September 27, 1976). See Schulman, From Cotton Belt

How the South

Applebome, Dixie

Rising:

(New York, 1996); New Times (March

Coles, Farewell 8,

to the

Is

Shaping American Values,

South; Marshall Frady,

to Sunbelt;

Politics,

Peter

and Culture

"An Alabama Marriage,"

1974), reprinted in Frady, Southerners, p. 263; Time (Septem-

topagu

Notts

In

i

j?,

1

p.

lH-357

976),

p.

39 l

29; Greene, Praying for Sheetrock, p. 2

97-i 76.

of 1

Fuller, /

Hear Them Calling

My

200.

75. Charlie LeDufT, "At a Slaughterhouse,

dents

1;

'1'ln

New

York Times,

How

Race

Is

Some Things Never Die," in Correspon(New York, 2001), pp.

Lived in America

s.

Ibid.

77. Ginger

Thompson, "Reaping What Was Sown on the Old

respondents of The

New

York Times,

How Race Is Lived in America,

78. Editors of Ebony, The White Problem in America, p. 32.

Plantation," in Cor-

pp. 141, 147.

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A cknowledgments

When

I

first

conceived of this project, almost four years ago,

I

never could have imag-

ined the journey that ensued. As the seed of an idea developed into the book that fortunate to have produced, quite a few people lent

me

minds, and opened their homes. This book belongs to

all

feel

of them.

my adviser at the University of California, Berkeley, guided me He helped with the initial conception of the project, directed me

Leon Litwack, through every

I

their hands, exercised their

step.

through research treks to the South, cast a

critical

eye on each paragraph and chapter,

and offered tremendous help with the book contract. Waldo Martin also read the manuscript in

its

early stages.

Along with others

in the

much

of

UC-Berkeley History

—among them Robin Einhorn, Margaret Chowning, Reggie Zelnik, and graduate program. Jim Kettner— he shepherded me through Department

the

Patricia Sullivan's

thorough comments on the manuscript, and her general help launching academic world, have proved invaluable.

Tom Leonard

me

into the

read over every chapter, and was

always generous with his time.

Joe

Cumming

never tired.

He

sat

down

for

chapter whose incisive

my

title

me

opportunity to present

comments while

my work I

in his

NYU

was formulating

my

and

I

articles, clip-

feedback on the

Form wait

bears his mark: "Softly, the Unthinkable." Lee

comments on my chapter about Albany. Robby Cohen was

section on the integration of the University of Georgia,

helpful

me

an interview; sent

pings, and photographs; e-mailed his recollections, and gave

offered

a great help

thank him

with

for the

classroom. Joel Williamson gave topic,

and he provided

me

me

with a gold

mine of primary documents. I

am

ever grateful to Phyllis and Richard Franco.

their past,

and welcomed

Moore was

also friendly

New

me

stories

home.

from

Tommy

with photos and mementos

Bern. Clara Lee Sharrard not only took the time to

her Virginia childhood with me, but put up with Jeremy Sharrard, Daniel

Oppenheimer, and I

They shared many

like family into their beautiful Atlanta

and forthcoming, and regaled

from Moore's Barbecue in revisit

me

me

throughout our excellent years in Springfield, Massachusetts.

who was gracious enough to respond to Some who met with me, offered crucial advice,

cannot possibly mention every individual

my various entreaties or provided a

by phone or mail.

good meal or

shelter during

my

various research sojourns to the South

include William Chafe, James Cobb, Robert Coles, Paul Duval, Steve Estes, William

406

Acknowledgments

Dowd Hall, Tom Hallock, John Inscoe, Matt LasJim and Joan Martin, Gary Pomerantz, and Harry Watson. Any young historian quickly learns that his staunchest allies work in the archives.

Ferris,

Raymond

Gavins, Jacquelyn

Betsy Lerner,

siter,

Their prodigious knowledge, labor, and

would

like to

thank John White and the

Randy Gue,

lection in Chapel Hill;

Wayne

Special Collections;

Linda McCurdy and others

skill

became indispensable. In

Teresa Burk, and the staff at

New

Everard and his staff at the at

Duke

particular,

I

of the staff at the Southern Historical Col-

rest

Emory

University's

Orleans Public Library;

University's Rare Book, Manuscripts, and Special

Collections Library; the staffs at the Hargrett Library and the Richard Russell Library

and Chris Pepus

at the University of Georgia;

at

Washington University's Special

Collections.

Generous grants from the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, under the auspices of the U.S.

Department of Education, and the UC-Berkeley History Department made these research trips

—and

this project

—

possible.

Two

of

my

colleagues in the History

Mao and Jen Burns, gave me helpful advice on several chapters. Camilo Trumper, Celso Castilho, Tim Rose, and many more dear friends made my Department, Joyce

graduate school years unforgettable its

—from

the

Bay Area's assorted basketball courts

to

extraordinary cafes.

My

undergraduate advisers

at

Oberlin College have been instrumental in

Gary Kornblith helped

lectual growth.

Norman

research project, and

me

to guide

Care taught

me

through

my

major

first

my

intel-

historical

countless lessons about the world of

learning.

As

for the title of this

book,

I

must acknowledge Dallas

My

penned the song "There Goes

My

Everything."

and Scott Sokol, helped

me

to arrive at that title

rison ject.

Which

hundreds of people ley tag

and

outsider.

welcomed me

My editors would

at

gestions,

hankering

for barbecue,

towns and into their

I

think captures

I

my

sub-

many

specifically to the

Alfred A.

Knopf have been

thank Ashbel Green

would

like to thank:

I

met, or with

whom I corresponded,

past.

helpful and gracious through this process.

for taking

on

and Luba Ostashevsky and Sara Sherbill

book. Others

and

Nina Mor-

could not help feeling at times like an

I

But almost every southerner

to their

like to

—one

to white southerners in general,

man who

Frazier, the

close collaborators,

have quoted. As a Springfield, Massachusetts, native with a Berke-

I

a suspicious

unwelcome

I

me

brings

two

my

project and offering varied sug-

for their help

on various

facets of the

production manager Tracy Cabanis, text designer

Wesley Gott, cover designer Carol Devine Carson, production editor Ellen Feldman, copyeditor Fred Chase, and proofreaders Susan Finally,

I

want

to

They have provided wish

for.

This book

to recognize

thank all is

VanOmmeren and

Laura Starrett.

Their achievements are mine,

as

mine

are theirs.

the love, compassion, thought, respect, and space that

dedicated to

and thank

Sokol, Mazie Sokol,

my family. my

parents, Fred and Betsy Sokol.

my grandparents,

Jim

Pirtle,

all

and Lucy

I

would

I

could

also like

of whom remain models of resilience: Saul

Pirtle.

My

brother, Scott Sokol, deserves the

me in the bad times and always revel upon me untold gifts. Her love has seen me

highest praise for his ability to commiserate with in the good.

Nina Morrison has bestowed

through each day in Berkeley, San Francisco, and now Brooklyn; together, we will brate

many more.

cele-

2

:

Index

Aaron, Hank, 2io«

Aberdeen, Md., 23-4 Abernathy, Ralph, 75, 78, 200, 264,

310 Adams, Clinton, 35 Adams, Elenora, 211-12 Adams, Samuel, 2 1 1-1

146 Alabama,

black candidacy and voting

Dallas County, 22, 37, 44-5, 46, 57,

294

240-1, 247-8,254

21, 292

Greene County, 13, 246, 254, 255, 258-71, 280, 284 Lowndes County, 74, 245, 246, 254,

African- Americans

changes in courtesy

titles of, 4,

108-9, 110-11, 268

contentment and happiness seen

in,

3,6, 12,20,24, 59,62,66, 69, 71, 92, 98, 109-10, 112,

153-4 of, 17,

288, 315

economic retribution against, 66, 81, 143

156,

of, 19,

22-3, 33,

no— 11,

317-18

260, 263, 271

70, 153, 154, 174,317 interracial marriages of, 162,

288

"our negroes," 12,15, 44~5> 54.

56-113, 153, 199, 259-60, 266, 295 Second Great Migration

and towns 2 io»,

of,

215

Alabama Advancement Association (AAA), 262,268 Alabama River, 243 98, 100,

no,

144, 213, 310,

326 Albany High School

in,

82-3, 93,

95 Arctic Bear drive-in in,

206

black boycotts and protests of,

127

no

white exploitation

of,

white fear

14, 15, 16, 19,

of, 4, 7,

Alabama, University

Albany, Ga., 4, 12, 60, 64-84, 93-7,

inferiority seen in, 3, 35, 44, 49, 64,

as

263, 284-5

Macon County, 247, 254, 255-8, see also specific cities

debt enslavement

in,

239-40, 246-50, 253-71, 285

affirmative action programs,

humanity

9, 25, 26, 27, 115, 127, 164,

213,248-71

Adcock, Martha, 92, 274 Aderhold, O. C, 150, 159

AFL-CIO,

Agnew, Spiro, 175 "Agony of the Southern Minister, The" (McGill), 50-1 A. H. Wilson School Cooperative Club,

70,

24,26,33,34-6,37,39,47,53, 57,74,97, 111-12, 135, 156

in,

67-8,

69,72,74,75,76,96, 316 black maids and cooks fired black neighborhoods

of,

in,

81

65, 75,

209-10 black protesters jailed

in,

65-6, 67

408

Index

Albany, Ga. {continued)

Cabin in the Pines restaurant in, 208 Catholic and Episcopal churches in, 82

Chamber of Commerce in, 77 City Commission of, 75, 77, 93 City Hall City Jail

in,

in,

civil rights

Alexander

in,

65-84,

67-8, 69,

of,

70, 71, 72, 80

v.

Holmes, 11, 169, 170, 171,

172, 173,277

208-10

Alexandria, Va., 320

desegregation of public

68

in,

facilities in,

208-10

in,

Church

Alford, Helene, 35 Allen, Ivan, Jr., 184, 234, 235

Allen, Milford, 295

"Egypt of the Confederacy," 64 expanding commerce and industry as

of,

81-2

formal demands of blacks

in,

Allen, Richie, 167

Almond, Lindsay, 118, 119, 166 Amalgamated Clothing Workers, 292

65, 67,

70

Amalgamated Garment Workers, 294

Holiday Inn

in,

Ambassadors, The (James), 352

196

integration of churches and public places in, 82, 96, 102

integration of restaurants in, 196

Jim Crow laws repealed in, 93 Mount Zion Church in, 65 municipal agreements in, 67-8

in,

in, 16,

white moderates

Albany Herald.

65, 75

in,

American Veterans Committee, 21—2

in,

82

Americus, Ga., 179-80, 207, 317

in,

67

Amerson, Lucius, 257-8 Amos and Andy, 3, 62, 99

94

Trailways bus station sit-in

Democratic Action

Electrotypers Union, 293

police actions in, 65-6, 67

Episcopal Church

for

(ADA), 41 American Stereotypers and

96 1 population of, 65 Oglethorpe Avenue in, 65, 67 1

Park Pool

Anderson,

70—1, 82

L. L.,

241

Anderson, Margaret, 116, 165, 316

4, 12, 70, 223, 224,

Anderson, Nancy, 219-20

326 "Albany Will Stand"

Anderson, Reuben, 248

editorial in, 72 "King Can't Change Albany" editorial in, 66—7 "Open Letter to Dr. King" in, 66 "People's Forum" of, 7 1—2 8 1 94, 96

Anderson,

white

Anguilla, Miss., 173

,

racial beliefs

(Myrdal),

ism Endowment Fund, 28

Americans

Shiloh Baptist Church

An

349-50 American Federation of State, Employees, 295 American Legion National American-

71,72-3,75,76

St. Paul's

American Dilemma,

County, and Municipal

national attention focused on, 68,

Tift

of,

74,75

208-9

desegregation of city buses

65, 94 First Baptist

of, 65, 67 mass protest meetings

Albany State College, 67

struggle

196, 206,

formation

white criticism

67, 75

74,

Albany Movement, 54, 74, 93-4, 95 "day of penance" declared by, 75

expressed

,

in,

53,

Anderson, S.C., 295

W

G., 67,

70-1

Andrews, Jimmy, 95, 96 Andrews, Red, 170

66-7, 68, 71-2, 78, 80-1, 82-3,

anti-Catholicism, 38, 89

84, 192

anti-communism, 57, 231

3

409

hnltx

Jim 1

(row

and, S7-42, 59, 83-93,

12, 184, 187, 199,

labor

movement

liberal

support

226, 272

Northside High School

41-2

123, 164

Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs)

and, 38, 291, 298

of,

in,

of,

122

Pickrick restaurant

anti-Semitism, 23, 29, 38, 49, 88, 112

in, 13,

183,

184-5, l8 6-7, 189, 191, 205,

231,232,235,236

Arabi Elementary School, 141

resegregation of schools in, 163, 176

Areola, Miss., 171

Arkansas, 6, 26, 27, 106, 115, 127,

Roswell High School Spring Street School

279-80

in,

in,

49 122

Arkansas National Guard, 116

Sweet Auburn neighborhood

Arkansas Travelers, 167 Armstrong, Neil, 261

Technical High School

Army,

U.S.,

21-4

Arnall, Ellis, 30//, 120, 232-3,

234

184,226,232,

277,278

Ashmore, Harry, 9 Askew, Jack, 257 Askew, Reubin, 276, 279 Associated Press, 127, 234-5

civil rights

Athens, Ga., 4, 30, 31, 54, 149-63,

"Pulse of the South"

High School

High School

in,

178

108

in,

column

in,

116

Atlanta Journal, 122, 313 Atlanta Journal and Constitution,

1

96,

22I«

178

in,

Atlanta, Ga., 4, 5, 29, 31, 35, 42-3,

Atlanta Methodist Ministers' Associa-

60, 68, 77, 97, 120-4, !49> I7 1 *

176, 183-7

tion,

32

Atlantic Steel, 184

Brown High School in, 164 High School in, 49

College Park

Ebenezer Baptist Church

Gateway Cafeteria

in,

in,

in,

Augusta, Ga., 219-20

Talmadge Memorial Hospital

242

205

186, 189, Bain,

205, 225

Henry Grady High School

in,

49,

123-4, 164

F.

182-7,204-5 64-5, 176-8

Maddox

185

Cafeteria in, 187

Lester's Grill in,

184

School

in,

164, 167

248

Baldwin, James, 112, 311-12, 351-2 Ball,

integration of schools in, 9, 48-50,

in,

Wade, 355

Baker, Wilson, 240-1, 247,

integration of public facilities in,

Lake wood Park

M., 217, 218

Bainbridge, Ga., 300 Baker,

in, 2 1

x

in,

Avants, Ernest, 330, 333

187

Heart of Atlanta motel

Murphy High

29, 30, 31,

176, 178, 318

help wanted ads

integration of schools in, 178

Lester

in,

Atlanta Exposition, 216

Clarke Central

76, 120-4,

coverage

36, 116, 123, 150, 152, 159-60,

217, 223

Hungry Club

184

Chamber of Commerce, 195

A tlanta Constitution,

Ashby, Warren, 316

Valdosta

242

of,

white flight from, 177, 178 Atlanta Board of Education, 167, 177 Atlanta Braves, 2ion Atlanta

Arnold, Robert, 47 Aschaffenburg, Lysle, 146

in,

Edward, 337

Banks, Jamie, 267-8 Banks, Phil, 267 Banks, Ralph,

Jr.,

Banks, Ralph,

Sr.,

267, 268-9, 270

267 Banks and Co., 267 Bannister, Mrs. B. R.,

96

410

Index

Barbee, Florence, 78-9, 82

1963 and 1964

Barnes, Frances, 29

Barnett, Ross, 220, 334-5, 341,

4, 87, 166, 226, 229, 252,

346

Barnum, Thelma, 180 Barton, Lewis, 19, 20 baseball, 167, 2ion, 262

Ollie's

Barbecue

330 187-91,

in, 13,

228, 235-6 school boycott in, 166

Batesburg, S.C., First Baptist Church

La., 130, 141,

1

6th Street Baptist Church

in,

330 Town and Country Restaurant

51

Baton Rouge,

demon-

215 1963 bombing of black churches in,

Barnes, Roy, 330

of,

civil rights

strations in, 54-5, 105, 199,

191

Battle of New Orleans, 125

166,

in,

189, 204

Bayou Academy, 170, 171 Beaulaville, N.C., 320

Birmingham News, 47-8, 87, 109, 213,

Beech, Nathaniel, 196

Birmingham Post-Herald, 253

Bell, Lucien,

Birmingham Restaurant

225, 250, 263, 264, 278, 286

49

Belle Glade, Fla.,

284

Bendet, Rita Schwetnet, 332 Bennett, A.

P.,

black churches, 94, 251

bombing

90

Bennett, Lerone,

Jr.,

Association,

189 87, 166, 226, 229,

of, 4,

330

350, 352

Bentley, James, 275

civil rights leadership in, 12, 65,

Berea College, 59

75

Bergen, Alex, 124

blacklisting, 37

Bergman, Leo, 133, 140 & Son Shift Corporation,

black music, 107

Bernstein

black newspapers, 24

294 Bessemer Galvanizing Wotks, 184 Bessinger, Maurice, 236

Black Panthers, 98, 229, 273, 318 Black Power, 4, 1 1, 74, 92, 98, 170,

237,263-4,273,318,351 black vote and, 255, 257, 271

Bevel, James, 247 Bible, 84, 100-1, 106, 182, 184,

329

Blackwell, Unita, 285

Biggers, George, 213

Blakely, Ga.,

Bilbo, Theodore, 27

Blanchard, Nathan, 193

Biloxi, Miss., 192

Bland, Ethelenida, 214-16, 218

Birmingham,

Blanton, Fred, 273

Ala., 9, 13, 16, 47, 86,

Blanton,

100, 104-5, 2 4°

Dinkler-Tutweiler Hotel as epicenter of civil

ment,

189 rights movein,

4, 54-5, 87, 105, 166,

183, 189, 199,204,215,226,

228-9, 2 49 "Good Friday Statement" of ministers in,

integration of public facilities in,

228-9

226, 229, 330

E., Jr.,

330

Blount, Roy,

Jr.,

Bogalusa, La., Bolsterli,

13

in

Margaret Jones,

6,

106

Bootle, William, 149, 152 Boston Globe, 251,

327

148 Bowers, Sam, 42, 330-1, 334

as "laboratory of segregation,"

murder of four girls

Thomas

Blodgett, L. G., 41

Bourdette, Marion, 128, 146—7,

105

189, 204,

69

in,

167

87, 166,

Boyle, Sarah Patton, 57, 63

Boynton, Samuel, 241 Braden, Anne, 87

1

411

Index

Burlington Merchants Association,

Braden, Carl, 88 Brahana, Thomas, 152, 155, 161, 162.

BraiK h, Taylor, 8, 105, 109,

243

263, 264, 268, 270

Mary

Idol,

buses, 19,

36

black boycott

219

149, 150

Busbee, George, 235

Bremer, Arthur, 277 Bresler, Susan,

80

Faye,

Tommy,

Burnside,

Branch, William McKinley, 259, 262,

Breeze,

193

Burnham,

165

20, 40, 45,

of, 4, 1 1,

54, 60, 63-4, 74, 191, 238, school, 175-6,

97

Bush, George W., 334, 336

Jimmy, 7-8, 246 Brewer, Albert, 250 Bridges, Abon, 143 Breslin,

Bridges, Ruby, 128-9,

310

277-8, 279

Bush

v.

Butt,

I3Ii J

42

>

Orleans Parish School Board, 125

Ira,

29

Butterball (pool shark),

209

Byrd, Harry, 118

143 Brightwell, Mrs.

W.

T.,

Byrd, Robert, 336

69

Brock, James, 199-203

Bronwood Baptist Church,

Cable

5

News Network, 335

Brookhaven, Miss., 25 Broughton, J. Melville, 38 Brown, Annette, 172, 173

Cain, Bobby, 116

Brown, Bradly, 267 Brown, Burnell, 172-3 Brown, Mrs. C, 69

California, 31,

Cain, Mary, 108

Calhoun, Callaway,

Brown, Tommy, 172, 173 v. Board of Education, 10, 36, 19, 124, 166, 208,

227, 239, 249, 292, 349,

355 as "abstraction," 48, 50,

religious reaction to,

Jr.,

Howard

"Bo," 232-3, 234

153

S.C., 265 Campbell, Cull, 75 Campbell, Will, 33, 101-2, 112,

324-5, 339

Camp Claiborne, La., 24 Camp Lee, Va., 23 Camp Lucky Strike, 24 Camp Shenango, Pa., 23 Cannon, Charles, 301

50-3

as target of race-baiters,

Cannon

white reaction

Carmichael, James, 29

to,

47 43—52, 87,

301

Mills,

Carmichael, Stokely, 98, 318

114, 118, 175, 176, 191

Broxton, Ga., 36, 69 Brunswick, Ga., 205

Carroll, Grady,

Carpenter, Charles

C, 105

169

Bryant, Bear, 2ion

Carroll, John,

Bryant, Roy, 40

Carroll, Paul,

Bumpers, Dale, 276, 279-80

Carswell, John, 61, 62

Burch, Selina, 292

Carter, E. L.,

Burlington, N.C.:

Carter,

Glenn's Frozen Custard stand

227-8 Paramount Theater

152

78

Camden,

Brown

1

Wendell,

Callaway, Marsh, 51-2

Brown, Claude, 241, 242 Brown, H. Rap, 98

38, 40,

P.

in, 193 Burlington Industries, 299, 302

in,

326 300

83 Hodding,

9, 42, 90, 108, 171,

314-15,327,346 Jimmy, 179, 235, 276, 280,

Carter,

304 Carthage, N.C., 294-5

412

Index

Cash,

W

J., 5 6«

Civil Rights

Cashin, John, 261 Castillo de San

Civil Rights

Marcos National

Act of 1957, 41, 256 Act of 1964, n, 13,36,

40, 55>94> !o6, 108, 169,

Monument, 203

182-237, 240, 271, 272, 297

Caudle, Bradley, 300

agencies created by, 204

Centrala fatm cooperative, 270

ambiguous legacy

Central Georgia Advertising Co.,

public debate over, 204—31, 247 Senate filibuster against, 16, 183,

222-3 Holmes Academy, 169, 173 Central Mississippi Presbytery, 51-2 Central

Chafe, William, 8

199,293 Title II of, 183, 190, 195,

white opposition

Y, 97 Chaney, Fannie Lee, 332 Chaney, James, 89, 210, 226, 327-9, Chancellor, A.

332 "Changing Mind of the South, The" (Dunbar), 100

Chapel Hill, N.C.,

106-7, 222 2 99> 3 2 ° integration of Chapel Hill

Watts

in,

Grill,

of,

2 50,

318-19

black skepticism about, 242

disobedience

62, 65—6, 73,

in,

85 140-1, 176,

class struggle in, 128,

High

283, 287-8, 304-6

communism

107, 167

204

Chapel Hill Daily

associated with, 39-42,

83-93

Tarheel,

day-to-day

299

Chapel Hill School Board, 167 Chappell, David, 73W Charleston

black leadership

61,

>

School

civil

218

182, 183,

to,

185-95, i97" 2 04, 2 Q7-37> 271-2, 292 rights movement, 3—8

civil 3, 4, 15, 16,

214, 227

of,

News and Courier, 47

by,

4—5,

105

175-6

disparate avenues of change in, 4,

18-19,

12, 13,

106

inevitability of change in, 106,

196

Chatham Manufacturing

Co.,

n,

direct action phase of, 42, 55, 62—4,

214, 218,222,273,276 school busing controversy in, 1

changed

154 delay and tokenism in, 60, 115, 118, 128

Charlotte, N.C., 36, 41, 58, 181, 204,

Charlottesville, Va., 57,

life

12, 118, 143,

299

legacy and lessons

Chaupette, Ben, 168

27

1,

310

19-20,

of, 12, 14,

309-13

219—20

Chauviere, Claire, 147

moral imperatives

Bobby Frank, 330 Cherry, Jim, 48

opportunity for white liberation and

Cherry,

Chestnut,

Chicago,

J. L.,

111.,

redemption

31,32,229

principles

221

Citizens' Councils, 13, 126, 288, of,

309 10— 1 1,

48, 53,88, 125, 137, 167, 171

rise of,

40, 53

of,

actualities in,

radical factions in, 98,

Christianity, 71, 98, 100-6,

anti—civil rights agenda

becoming

177-80

Children of Crisis (Coles), 9 Christian, Charlie, 149

anti-communism

102, 103,

179-80, 309~ 2 5

242

23,

in,

of,

42, 90

1 1

1-12, 273

reshaping of South by, 3-8, 18, 309 resistance to, 4, 6, 8, as

10-1

1,

36—7

"Second Reconstruction," 16,

272,309,319,348 shock component

of,

70-1,75,76, 107,

56-7, 63, 67,

in,

112, 173

4i3

Index

.is

kx 1

revolution, 8, 75, 98, 102,

ial

159,

>3,

74~5>

1

l

Colmer, William, 335 Columbia, S.C., Maurice's Piggie Park

J23-4, 327 trials for

murder of workers

in,

restaurants in,

327-34 white freedom seen challenged by, 11, 36-7,

216-18, 223-5, 310 for, 16-17, 3^, 42-3

white support see also

Civil

210 220

Collins, Leroy,

Collinson, Nancy,

7^> 264,

desegregation;

specific

236

Columbia, Tenn., 32-3, 34 Columbus, Ga., 76, 103, 1 16-17, 205 Coming of Age in Mississippi (Moody), 107

organi-

zations

Commercial Appeal, 296

War, U.S., 53, ^6n, 57, 165, 238,

Commission on

battles of, 16 civil rights

39

Committee

of,

198

struggle compared with,

153, 158, 159 lessons

Civil Rights,

Florida Advisory

319,323

and legacy

southern defeat

of,

in,

159, 326

68,

1

12-13, 159

"War of Northern Aggression," 9i,333 Clark, James, 29-30 as

Committee for Public Education, 126 Communications Workers of America (CWA), 292-3

Communist

Party, 38, 39,

85-6, 89,

91-2

6,

Community

Relations Service, 204,

247-8, 252, 255, 285, 307, 311 Clark, Kenneth, 175

210-11 Compromise of 1877, 238 Compton, Mary, 272-3 Compton, Ray, 273, 274

Cleghorn, Reese, 86, 93

Concerned Parents Association, 176

Clements, Nelda, 145 Cleveland, Ohio, 273

Cone

Clark, Jim, 78, 240-1, 242, 244,

Clinton, Tenn., 120, 171,

bombing of homes and

316

flag of,

schools in,

High School

in,

116

159

257

Congress, U.S., 91, 94, 189-90, 193,

240, 244, 281

115-16, 165,239, 316 Close,

129, 159, 200, 202, 236,

245,334 soldiers of, 6, 197,

integration of schools in, 59—60,

Clio, Ala.,

299

secession of, 10 1,

116, 165

Clinton

Mills,

Confederacy, 63, 245, 249, 275, 295

248

civil rights

Tommy, 149

debate

in,

civil rights legislation

Clower, Jerry, 341-2

41, 235 passed by, 11,

13,41,213,237,320 House of Representatives,

Cobb, James, 56^

see also

Cochran, Ga., 207

U.S.; Senate, U.S.

Cochran, Mrs. Gaither, 49 Cohn, David, 57, 108

Congress of Industrial Organizations

Coinjock, N.C., 168

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE),

Colburn, David, 9 Colclough, George, 193

Connerjim, 135, 136, 137-8, 147,

(CIO), 38

in

Cold War, 10, 37, 38, 39 Coles, Robert, 5, 7-8, 9, 142, 143, Colley, Wallace,

Collins, Joe, 152

202

167

314

Conner, Margaret, 135-9,

I

4° _I

,

147, 148, 155, 162, 167, 172,

347

1

1

4 i4

Index

Connor, Bull, 109, 240, 249, 285, 304, 307-8, 311 Constitution, U.S., 84, 189, 219, 220,

22m

Daspit, Laurence, 140 Davis, Jefferson, 249, 335 Davis, Jimmie, 125, 126, 166

Deacons

for Defense,

in, 112

Cook, Rodney, 278-9

Dearman,

Cooper, Johnny Mae, 81

Decatur, Ga., 31, 180-1

Cooper,

Owen, 173

Stanley,

328

DeCell, Herman, 173

Cooper, Roland, 246, 255

Deer Creek Day School, 171

cotton, 28, 31, 45, 59, 64-5, 94, 164,

Deering-Milliken, 302

210, 282, 286-90

Defenders of State Sovereignty and

Council of Federated Organizations, 87 Cox, Eugene, 5

defense-related industries, 65,

Cracker Barrel restaurant, 236—7

DeKalb, Ga., 48

Craig, Calvin, 232, 343,

de

346

Craig Field, Ala., 22 Criswell,

Croom,

W.

A., 52,

Sylvester, 2

106

Delta

300 251-2

&

Pine Land Company, 286

170-1, 277, 286, 314-15, 346 democracy, 10, 17, 30, 39, 71, 98, 156,

221,254

in

Crucible of Race, The: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation (Williamson),

56W

Democratic National Committee, 338 Democratic National Convention of 1964, 210, 229

Democratic Party, 27, 31, 229, 232,

237,248-9,271-2

Crump, Brodie, 346 Crump, Ed, 281

Cumming, Joseph,

1

all-white primaries in, 26, 28—9,

239 black voters

14-15, 164,

228-9,253, 255, 259,262, 264-9, 2 7i 282, 318, 320, 325, 338-9, 344, 346-7 Cunningham, W.J. 103-4, 10 & ?

,

Dabbs, James McBride,

7,

57-8, 80,

112-13,221, 325-6, 337, 343-4 Dahmer, Vernon, 330, 331-2

Mary Caperton Bowles, 344

Dallas, Tex., First Baptist

Church

106

County Chamber of Commerce,

44 River Mills, 299

Danville, Va.,

C&E

Darby, Bruce, 174

Grill in,

civil rights

liberalism in, 273, 275,

progressivism

in,

278

276-7

white shift away from, 253, 271 Denmark, Joe, 273-4 Department of Transportation, Miss.,

33i Depression, Great, 183—4

ambiguous legacy of, 176-7 black and white negotiation on, 76 experiencing realities of, 48-50, 137 federal mandates of, 114, 1 16-17, 152, 156 forced,

212

in, 31, 247, 257, 285 advocacy in, 273

desegregation, 8 of,

Dallas County Voters League, 241, 243

Dan

5

Delta Democrat-Times, 90, 107, 108,

Crowley, La., 135 Crown Zellerbach Corporation,

Dallas

Beckwith, Byron, 330, 333

de Lissovoy, Peter, 196, 208-10

ion

Crouch, Sam, 219

52,

298^

Delaware, 115

Crossley, Callie,

Dale,

la

Delamotte, Roy,

crop liens, 17 Cross, Rufus,

Individual Liberties, 119

1

16-17, I2 6, 128-48,

277 of private business, 13, 182-237

1

,

4i5

Index

of public

facilities, 5, 13,

Durr, Virginia, 39, 40, 48, 53, 254-5,

36,99,

310,314,319,342-3

182-237 of schools, 5 9, ,

1 1

,

1

2

36, 40, 4

,

1

48-50, 58, 59-60, 96, 99, 109, 1 14-8 terminology and semantics white alternatives white opposition

of,

175

Eastland, James, 39-40, 47, 90,

273 East Tallassee, Ala., 272

35-6,47-54,58,62,71, 115, 124-48 to, 12,

10-1

for,

350-1,352,357

Ebony,

Edwards, Mrs. David, 69—70

115, 138,

Edwards, Edwin, 276

Egertonjohn, 35,48

150, 155-6, 159

white support

Eagles, Charles, 9, 10

to, 12

to, 8, 12, 14,

white resignation

Dylan, Bob, 229

1,

20, 21-4,

40,75, 106-7, 131, I33-4 1 of workplace, 5, 215, 291-4, 299,

Ehrenburg,

Ilya,

Eisenhower,

37

Dwight

D., 28, 41

federal troops mobilized by, 36, 116,

302-3

264

Detroit, Mich., 31,

elections, U.S.:

273

Dittmer, John, 8-9

county-unit system

Dixiecrats, 27, 254, 335-6,

of 1944, 26

337

Dlugos, Anne, 146

of 1946, 28-30, 31-2

Doar, John, 246

of 1948, 27, 39 of 1950, 38-9

Domino,

Fats,

128

29

in,

Dorminy, John, 185

of

Dorsey, George, 28, 30, 31-2

of 1956, 272

Mae Murray, 28, 30, 31—2 Dos Passos, John, 25 Dougherty County Courthouse, 75

of i960, 125, 126, 127-8, 256, 272

Douglas, Ga., 69, 162

of 1966, 232-3, 257, 260-1, 265

Douglass, Frederick, 312

of 1968, 249, 254, 261, 274-5,

of 1958, 249

Dorsey,

of 1964,

Downs, Mrs. Edward, 160

decision,

of 1970, 250, 262-3, 2 68,

E. B.,

353

of 1984, 252

64-5, 91, 210

Elizabeth City, N.C., Albemarle

Bowling Center

Duckett, Alfred, 24

Duke

University, 342

in,

193

Ellender, Allen,

245 Prioleau, 130

Dunbar, Anthony, 287, 288, 289,

Ellis,

324 Dunbar, Leslie, 100, 314, 319 Dunbar, Peggy, 152 Duncan, Mark, 329, 332 Duncan, Ron, 304-5 Durant, Miss., Presbyterian Church 51-2 Durden, Adie, 94

Ellison, Ralph,

Durham, N.C., 43-4, 274, 304-5

279-80

of 1972, 254, 269, 277-9, 334> 335 of 1974, 269

Drolet, Jerome, 131

Du Bois, W.

237,272-3

276-7, 278, 334

Doyle, Helen, 344 Drake, Jack, 262, 263

Dred Scott

1952,249

244-5, 3 X 9> 347 Emancipation Proclamation, 247 Emerson, William, 5,47, 115, 1

Emory in,

17-18, 124-5, 264 University, 162

Engelhardt, Sam, 255, 256 Episcopal Church, 82, 10 1, 105, 270

Equal Employment Opportunity

Commission, 182-3

1

416

Index

Ervin, Sam, 16, 193-4, 217, 222, 223,

227-8, 237, 245, 252, 271-2 Erwin Mills, 300—1 Eskew, Glenn, 9 Eutaw, Ala., 4, 258-9, 260-3, 2 ^5»

266-7, 2 7°> 27 1 2 ^2 Cotton Patch Restaurant, 267 '

Jimmy's Restaurant

in,

in,

354

Merchants and Farmers Bank

in,

267 Evans, Rowland, 89-90

Ewing,

see also

Folsom, "Big" Jim, 27, 249 Ford, Johnny, 258, 314

328

Foreman, Clark, 39 Foreman, Lloyd Andrew, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136, 167, 172 Foreman, Pamela, 131, 132, 133, 135, 142, 167 Fort Myers, Fla., 344 Sill,

Okla., Artillery Officers in,

21

Fortune Baptist Church, 51

331-2

286 251-2

Foster, Katherine,

272

Fowler, Don, 338

Early, Jr.,

Eyes on the Prize.

of,

Committee of, 41 specific cities and towns

Training School

298

Evers, Medgar, 199, 330,

Relations

Interracial

Fort

Evans, Wilson, 22, 34-5 Evers, Charles, 112,

Human

41-2

Fordice, Kirk,

263, 267,

269 Judge William McKinley Btanch Courthouse

Council on

Frady, Marshall, 6, 183, 231, 258,

260-1, 264, 265, 316, 317, 318, Fairclough,

Adam,

9,

14

353

Faubus, Orval, 116, 117, 166, 279-80 Faulk, Frank,

Jr.,

82

Franco, Phyllis, 48 Franco, Richard, 42-3, 49-50,

Faulkner, William, 100, 309-10, 314 Fayetteville, N.C., 15, 217,

300

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),

229-30, 306, 319 John Hope, 53-4

Franklin,

13-14

Free at Last? (Powledge),

freedom, 10, 105

13.85,330 Feminine Mystique, The (Friedan), 229

competing visions

of,

n,

Fields, Harlon,

Freedom Rides, 345 Freedom Summer (1964),

Fifth Circuit

Friedan, Betty,

195 Court of Appeals, U.S.,

173, 177, 186, 189-90 Fifth District

Court of Appeals, U.S.,

126 Fire

29-30,

Frist, Bill,

1 1

229

336

Front Royal, Va., Daughters of the

Confederacy

Finian's Rainbow,

17,

36,42-3,54, 156, 181

Fernandez, Mercedes, 355 Fielder, Ben, 24

Museum

in,

118

Fulbright, William, 252

313

Next Time, The (Baldwin), 311,

Fuller, Chet,

285, 353

Helen, 125

312,351-2 Fitzgerald, Ga., 224

Fuller,

Fleming,

Fulton County Criminal Court,

Fullerwood, Fannie, 198

Billy, 32,

34 Fleming, Harold, 14-15, 21-2,

185 Fulton County Teachers Association,

62 Fleming, Karl, 307, 344-5

48-9

Flemming, Cora, 108-9 Fletcher, Albert,

Gabrielle, Daisy, 131-3, i34», 135,

50

Florida, 26, 27, 109, 204,

279

139-40, 148, 162, 167

4i7

Indtx

Gabrielle, James, 131, 132, 133, 134,

Georgians Unwilling to Surrender

39-4o, 167, 172 >7. >5. Gabrielle, Yolanda, 13 1-3

(GUTS), 185 Georgia Restaurant Association, 196

Gammill, Stewart, Jr., 197-8 Gandhi, Mohandas K. "Mahatma," 74 Gardner, B. C, 69

Georgia State Board of Regents, 47 Georgia State Legislature, 159

Germany, Nazi, 29, 31, 32

Garrow, David, 8

Gerrard,

Gaston, Paul, 178

Giarusso, Joseph, 129

gay rights movement, 229

Giles, Alice,

Geer, Peter Zack, 184-5

Giles, B.,

General Assembly of Presbyterians,

Gillis,

'

'

1

50 Georgia, 9, 12, 26, 28-32, 35-6, 92, 115, 120-3, 176-80,

Hyram, 173 108

96 D.J.,69

Gilmer, Joe, 19, 20, 34 Gilmore, Thomas, 260-1, 262, 263,

204-10

268

Baker County, 74, 207 Black Belt of, 153-4, : 79> 204-10

Ginn, Dewitt, 172 Glenn, Howard, 227-8

Butts County, 230-1

Glover, Buddy, 196

Dougherty County, 57, 64-84, 207,

Golden, Harry, 304 Goldneld, David, 324

209 General Assembly

122-3

of,

Goldwater, Barry, 186-7, 22 5, 2 37,

Hancock County, 271 Lee County, 74W, 207

252,272-3,274 Good, Paul, 204 Goodman, Andrew, 89, 210, 226,

Mcintosh County, no, 353 Marion County, 124 poor whites secession Terrell

in,

3 2 7~9>

from union

by,

159 County, 51, 74, 75-6, 207,

230 Walton County, 28, 32, 35 see also specific cities and towns Georgia, University of (UGA),

Gordon, Marcus, 332, 334 Gordon, Robert, 198 Gore, Albert, 27, 245 Graham, Frank Porter, 27, 38-9 Grant, Bill, 285 Gray, James, 66-7, 70, 71-2, 73, 94,

12,

123, 165,335

alumni

of,

144,

Arch

essays

in,

15 1-2

on integration by students

Future" (Cumming), 265-6 of,

152-9 "passive resistance" at, 167

violent struggle over integration of,

149-63, 177 Georgia Council on Human Relations, 12, 54,

76, 84, 192

Greene County Golf Course, 270 Greensboro, Ala., 239 Greensboro, N.C., 8, 115, 299, 316

Chamber

87 Georgia Institute of Technology, 121,

of Commerce

i960 student

sit-ins in,

of,

321—3

n,

54, 62,

191 Greenville, Miss., 90, 108, 171, 204,

Georgia Education Commission, 84,

151, 184

223-4

Greene, Melissa Fay, 9, 353 "Greene County, Ala: The Hope of the

159, 160, 163

of, 149 Center-Myers Hall

33 2

Goodman, Carolyn, 332

216—17

314-15,333 Green

v.

New Kent County, 169-70

Greenwood, Miss., Greer, Rudolph, 77

no

1

4i8

Index

Grenada, Miss., 169, 204 Griffin, Marvin, 84 Griffin, Reese,

Highlander Folk School, 84

High

52-3

Griffin, Roscoe, Griffin

Hester, Bob, 28

95-6 Emmett, 262, 263 Hill, Lister, 252 Hindsville, Ga., Chuck Wagon Drive-

Board of Education of Prince

v.

Edward County, 164 Grissom, Leonard, 201-2 Gulliver, Hal, 176,

Point, N.C.,

Hildreth,

59

in

in,

211

Hines, Eugene, 107

318

Hines,0. W.,223 Halberstam, David, 62

Hiss, Alger, 38

Dowd, 10 257-8

Hall, Jacquelyn

Holcutt, Lillian, 169

Hall, L. O.,

Holland, H.C., 31

Hamburg,

Hamilton, Eula, 82

Holleman, Jesse Boyce, 195 Holmes, Hamilton, 12, 149—50, 152, 157-8, 160-1,

Hamilton, M. W., 344 Hamlet, N.C., 219

Holton, Samuel, 167

Ark.,

294 Hamer, Fannie Lou, 180, 310— 1

162-3

Hanes, Art, 109 Hanoi, 296 Hardwick, Elizabeth, 240, 340 Hardy, J. B., 29

Hood, Jim, 329 Hood, Orley, 331-2

Hare, James A., 307 Harkey, Ira, 308

House of Representatives,

Hoover, Ala., 236 Hoover, J. Edgar, 85

279,321 House Un-American

Harpers, 60-1, 173 Harris, Roy, 205,

220

mittee

Harrison, Loy, 28, 32, 35 Hartsfield, William, 43, 121, 123,

Billy,

Activities

(HUAC),

Com-

39, 84, 86-7, 89

housing:

184

Hartshorne, Charles, 161

Harwood,

U.S., 183,

355

discrimination banned

in,

274, 305

public, 305

segregation

in,

216, 222

Hattiesburg, Miss., 292

Hudgins, Ed, 8

Hawkes, Danny, 82 Haygood, Wil, 251

Huey, Ann, 145 Huggins, Nathan

Hayling, Robert, 198, 199

Hulett, John, 263, 285

Hayneville, Ala., 285

Hazel wood, Terry, 151

Humphrey, Hubert, 254, 274-5, Humphreys, Robert, 106-7

Health, Education, and Welfare

Hunter, Charlayne, 12, 149-50,

Department, U.S., 169 Heard, Susan, 180

Helms, Jesse, 39, 279 Help Our Public Education (HOPE),

Irvin, 17

151-2, 157-8, 160-1,

162-3 Hutchinson, Ben, 49 Hutton, Inedell, 193

12 1-4

Henry, Aaron, 112

Indianola, Miss., 163

Henry, Patrick, 185

Indianola Academy, 171

Henson,

Indianola Times,

W C, 159

Herndon, Dennis, 260-1, 262, 263,

264

108—9 26

Ingalls Shipyard,

Inside Agitators (Chappell), 73*2

2 77

7

,

419

InJcx

integration,

m desegregation

International Ladies

clash of American ideals with,

Garment Workers

Union, 295 International Paper Company, 21 International

29-30 emergence

gradual dismantling

Woodworkers of

instruments of oppression

North

26, 240, 243, 249,

Carolina" (Shepard), 44

legal

system

myth and Jackson, Andrew, 125, 268

Lee,

304

322

stereotype inherent in, 3,

64, 66, 69, 76, 77, 82, 85, 92,

243

Jackson, Maynard, 235

97,98-9, 100, 112, 153, 156,

Jackson, Miss., 109-10, 328-9,

259-60,355 violence used in defense

333-4

Chamber of Commerce

197 Galloway Methodist Church in, in,

in,

304

in,

Robert E. Lee Hotel

in,

to, 19,

21-3,

138 white support

197-8 King Edward Hotel

53,

29-30, 51, 81, 82, 101,

197

accommoda-

integration of public

of,

129, 145, 240, 243, 244, 249,

white opposition

103-4, IQ 6 Heidelberg Hotel

of,

in, 17, 19,

4,6, 12, 14, 15, 16,20, 24, 33, 35, 44-5, 53-4, 56-61, 62, 63,

Jackson, James, 204

Jimmie

26, 93,

of, 7,

229-30, 321, 323

America, 297 "Inter-Racial Progress in

Jackson,

of, 1

tions in,

for,

20, 23, 37-8, 47,

53-4, 62, 64, 74, 95, 100-6,

197 197-8

104 Sun-n-Sand Motel in, 197, 204 Jackson, Ron, 199 state capitol in,

Jackson Clarion-Ledger, 3 2 8-9 3 3 0-2 ,

117, 200 John Birch Society, 199, 204

Johnson, Charles Allen, Jr., 172 Johnson, Frank, 244

Johnson, Guy, 20, 27, 283, 284 Johnson, Helen, 96

333 Jackson Daily News, 85-6, 91, 197

Johnson, James Weldon, 312

Jacksonville, Fla., Morrison's cafeteria

Johnson, Lyndon B., 198, 204, 231,

in,

237,252,272,274,280

196

James, Henry, 352 Jaynes, Helen, 177

civil rights legislation

championed

by, 11, 103, 183, 186, 192, 196,

Thomas, 118, 312 Jefferson County Community Action Jefferson,

216, 223, 244-5, 247, 271-2,

316-17

"We

Board, 97 Jemison, D. V., 241

of the South" speech

of,

245

Jenkins, Linda, 328

Johnson, Myra, 328

Jennings, John, 308 Jessup, Ga., Holiday Inn in, 213

Johnson, Tom, 335 Johnston, Arthur, 77, 82

Jews, 15-16,42-3, 101

Johnston, Eugene, 255, 270-1,

see also

anti-Semitism

Jim Crow, 82, 125, 168, 191 anti-communism and, 37-42,

347 Johnston, Reed, 302 59,

83-93, 112, 184, 187, 199, 226, 272

Jonas, Charles Raper, 40-1, 58, 218,

219,274 Jones, Albert,

87-8

1

420

Index

Jones, Ed, 5 Jones, Mrs.

holiday proposed

M.

Jones, Nancy, 144

of,

for,

105, 310, 318

Jonesboro, La., 111

mocking

Jordan, Crystal Lee, 303

nonviolent principles

Jordan, Vernon, 319 J. P. Stevens,

335

Birmingham City Jail"

"Letter from

D., 275

53,73, 3 2 6

of, 4,

of,

65, 74, 75,

98,273

299, 302-3

smear campaigns against, 84-5, 88,

Justice Department, U.S., 231,

256

Civil Rights Division of, 186,

92,234 King, Martin Luther,

Sr.,

242

King, Tom, 109

189

Kinman, H. W.,81 Kannapolis, N.C., 301

Klopfer, Peter, 342, 343 Knight, Rex, 70, 80 Knight, Thomas, 292

Kansas City, Mo., 52, 196 Kasper, John, 116 Keever, Charles, 256, 257, 258 Kefauver, Estes, 27

Keith, Walling, 225 Kellet,

Rosa Freeman, 128

Kelley, Asa,

Knowland, William, 31 Kopkind, Andrew, 285 Korean War, 143, 220 Kruse, Kevin, 9 Ku Klux Klan, 13, 42, 53, 83,

69

Kenloch, Robert, 81

90, 105, 151, 169,232,234,

Kennedy, John E, 71, 127, 272 assassination of, 183, 221 n, 229,

332,343

300, 304, 309, 329, 330, quasi-religious appeal of, 102

civil rights

advocacy

of,

166, 183,

192, 193, 198, 199, 215, 219,

revival of,

27

violent activism of, ill, 166,201,

222

202, 203, 238, 266, 297, 298,

Kennedy, Robert, 71, 187, 189, 193 assassination of, 92,

307 white warnings against, 10 1-2

229

Kentucky, 59, 62, 88, 115, 212 Killen, Edgar Ray, 329-30,

331-4

King, C.

B., 75, 94, 208,

King, Martin Luther, Jr.,

209 7, 63, 71, 78,

integration

opposition of,

67-8,75, 105,200 1

1-12, 92, 96, 229,

271,273-4,329 biographies

movement, 291—303

291,297 communist taint

79, 95, 233, 278, 334 arrests, trials, and sentences

assassination of,

labor

black membership

KillenJ. D., 329 Killens, John, 351

of, 8,

74

civil rights leadership of, 11, 53,

65-6, 67-8, 69, 72, 73, 74, 75, 78, 79, 83, 84-5, 90, 93-4, 96,

of,

111,215,

38, 291,

298

215, 291-2

of,

to,

in,

27-8, 291-2, 294-5,

301-2,303 organizations in, 27-8, 184, 292,

295,302 segregated unions

in,

38

seniority system in, strikes

293 and picketing in, 55, 98,

137,295-8,299-300 see also

workplace;

specific

labor unions

98-9, 105, 106, 158, 199-200,

Lamm, Jewell,

202, 203, 224, 229, 238, 242,

Lanier, Chip,

244-6, 248, 260, 264, 291, 315,

Lanier, Joe, Jr.,

318-19

Lanterns on the Levee (Percy), 305

40, 41

180 295

9

421

hiihx

287-9

Ltpham, Mrs. John, 82

Louise, Miss.,

LaPointe, LaVal, 32, 33

Louisiana, 9, 26, 27, 57, 90,

Matthew,

Lassiter,

297-8 Lawrence, David, 225

Orleans Parish, 125

Lawrenceburg, Tenn., 33, 34 Lazarus, Ernest, 124

St.

Plaquemines Parish, 74, 125, 168-9 Bernard Parish, 129, 141

and towns Louisiana Criminal Bureau of see also specific cities

Ledford, Henry, 94 LeDuff, Charlie, 355

Identification,

259-61, 262, 263, 264, 270

88-9

Lee, Clay, 8,

Lee, Robert E., 159,

87

Louisiana State Education Committee,

47 Louisiana State Legislature, 128, 141,

198

142

Leftridge, Allen,

24 Lemann, Arthur, 25-6 "Letter to

115

Jefferson Parish, 147

9, 274/2

Laurel, Miss.,

Lee, Bill,

1 1 1,

My Nephew"

Louisiana State Senate, 125 (Baldwin),

311-12

Louisville, Ga.,

97

Louisville, Ky., 115

Levison, Stanley, 85

Louisville Courier-Journal, 48,

264

Lexington, Ky., 326-7

Thomas, 30 Lumberton, N.C., 19 Lumberton Robesonian,

Lexington, Va., 101, 227, 305-6, 346

Lurie, Seth, 22-3, 34, 37

Lexington Herald-Leader, 326—7

Luther, Martin, 82

Liberty County Truck Center, 211

Lykes Brothers Shipbuilding, 135, 137 lynching, 17, 30-2, 35, 37, 40, 54,

German, 25

Levy,

Lovett,

Lewis, John, 247, 251, 265,

Lincoln,

280

Abraham, 196

Lindley, Neil, 141

313,323,330 mobs involved in,

Ling, Peter, 10

Rock, Ark., 50, 61, 120, 151,

Little

170,

Central

171,229 High School desegregated

in, 11, 1

36,40,41,74,77,

16-17, 166-7, 2 39

closing of schools in,

economic

117— 18

losses of, 77,

117

federal troops mobilized in, 36, 116,

264 school board politics in, 117, 167

West Side High School

in,

167

1

28, 30-2

wartime, 20

white condemnation

of,

30-1

Mableton, Ga., 275

Macmurdo, Charles and Edwanda, 1 34 Macon, Ga., 76, 205, 206, 208 Bass Memorial Methodist Church in, 52-3 Maddox, Dean, 183, 233 Maddox, Lester, 7, 183-8, 195, 222 character and personality of, 182,

Loeb, Henry, 296

183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 231-2,

Logan, Mrs. Roy, 69 London, Angela, 334

233-5 childhood and adolescence

Long, Betty, 300 Long, Jefferson, 278

as "cracker

Long, Margaret, 313-14 Los Angeles, Calif., Watts

death

Lotto, Jack,

85-6

of,

183-4

Quixote," 183, 187,

232 riots in,

of,

235

desegregation fought by, 92, 177, 182, 183, 184-7, 225-6, 231-5

273,351 Lott, Trent, 279,

Don

334-8

early jobs of, 184,

lawsuit against,

233 185-6

1

422

Index

Maddox,

McLean,

Lester (continued)

political career of, 182,

184-5,

of,

267

McMath,

186-7, 231-5, 281 religious bent of, 184, 187

restaurant business

Peter,

McLeansville, N.C., 223

182, 183,

184, 185-7,205,231,233 Maddox, Virginia Cox, 184, 187 Malcolm, Dorothy, 28, 30, 31-2 Malcolm, Roger, 28, 30, 31-2 Malcolm X, 318 assassination of, 229, 351

Sid, 27 McMillan, James, 175—6 McNeill, Robert, 103

McTatie, Leon, 28

McWhorter, Diane, 9, 86, 307 Meadows, J. L., 189 Meany, George, 292 Mehlman, Ken, 338^ Meier, August, 339

Mansfield, Mike, 245

Melvin, June, 217, 218

Manucy, Halstead "Hoss," 203, 204 Marietta, Ga., 29, 220

Members

Marion, Ala., 243 Mars, Florence, 315-16, 327 Marshall, Burke, 210

Memphis, Tenn., 98, 271

of the

Dads and Mothers

Club, 145 desegregation of public accommoda-

196

tions in, 195,

Martin, Harold, 150

The Flame

Martin, H. R., 167

1968 sanitation worker's

Maryland, 115, 250-1

55,98,295-7 The Pancake Man restaurant in, 195 Public Works Department of, 296

Masonite, 297-8, 302

Matthews, Zeke, 75—6 Mattson, Kevin, 10

restaurant in, 195

voting patterns

in,

strike in,

281

Maury County Jail, 32

Memphis Restaurant

Mayersville, Miss., 285

Merchant of Venice, The (Shakespeare),

Mays, Willie, 2ion

49

McCarthy, Joseph, 38, 39

McClung, James Ollie, 187-8 McClung, Ollie, Jr., 188, 190, 235-6 McClung, Ollie, Sr., 187-95, 222 integration resisted by, 182, 187—9,

190-1, 192-5, 225, 228, 347-8 religious bent of, 188, 190 restaurant business

of,

182, 188-91,

192-5, 225, 228, 235-6

McClung McClung

v.

Katzenbach.

189-91

v. Kennedy. 189 McCullough, Joe, 294 McDougal, David, 217

McDowell, Constance, 333 McGill, Ralph,

9, 36,

Association, 195

50-1, 62, 64,

102, 109-10, 116, 150-1, 232,

274, 284 McGovern, George, 254, 277, 278 Mcintosh, H. T., 68-9

McKinley, Marion, 134—5 McKinley, Mrs. Marion, 134—5

Meredith, James, 166, 334, 341, 346 Merts, Milton, 77, 78, 79, 82

Methodist Church, 101, 102, 103-4 Metropolitan Association for Segregated Education (MASE), 124

Mexicans, 354-5 Michaux, Mickey, 281 Middlesex, N.C., 40 Milan,

J.

W.,40

Military Order of the Stars and Bars,

235 Milledgeville, Ga.,

206

Velma, 49 Miller, Zell, 235 Miller,

Minimum Wage Law

of 1966, 287

Minter, Dave, 5 Mississippi, 5, 7-9, 24-5, 26, 27, 30,

34-5, 37, 40, 57, 87-92, 103-4, 112, 115, 325 black population of, 88 black voting in, 240, 253

1

423

hi J*, x

(

.irmll

Money, Miss., 37, 327 Monroe, Ga., 28, 30-2, 35, 313, 330 Monroe, La., 291

County, 170

hardship of black

life in,

107-12

Holmes County, 51, 169, 173 Humphreys County, 287, 288 Jones County, 297-8

Monteagle, Tenn., 84, 88

Montgomery,

Neshoba County, 89, 316, 327-9, 33 >334 I

Ala., 8, 40, 48,

change in municipal law

63 Dexter Avenue Baptist Church

Rankin County, 333-4 rural areas and farming

integration of public in,

25, 59,

tions in,

196

1955 bus boycott

285 Sunflower County, 171 activities

90 Washington County, 171 Wilkinson County, 172-3

federal troops mobilized in support

149, 166, 249,

at,

310 1965 march from Selma

Moore,

Mississippi, University of, 61, 10

341,346 Sigma Nu fraternity

246 20, 40,

to, 4, 7,

105,243-6,249,257 Moody, Anne, 107

and towns

at,

in, 4, 11,

45, 54, 60, 63-4, 74, 191, 238,

committee

of,

of integration

accommoda-

Jefferson Davis Hotel in, 7,

98, 101, 143, 164, 170,283,

see also specific cities

334-5

Mississippi Chemical Corporation,

L. J.,

193-4

Moore, Mike, 329 Moore, Tommy, 194

Morgan,

Carl, 48 Morgan, Edmund, 17 Morris, Carill, 149, 150

Morris, Willie, 173, 174, 175

Morrison, Clarence, 58

173

Morrison, de Lesseps "Chep," 125, 126,

Mississippi Delta, 21, 25, 57, 89,

108-9, in, 170-5,

129-30, 133-4, I39-40, 143-4,

258,

158,326

289-90, 305, 311 Department of Education,

Morrison, Toni, 17

90

Moses, Robert, 88, 89-90, 112

Mississippi

Mississippi Education Association,

Mount Freedom Democratic

Party,

180, 210, 245??, 310, 351

Handbook for

grams,

Political Pro-

88

Mississippi Legislature, of,

House

Bill

459

90

Mississippi Methodist Conference of

i955,5i Mississippi State Sovereignty sion,

145,

Moultrie, Ga., 96

172 Mississippi

Mississippi

in,

242

Panola County, 170

un-American

249

in,

Commis-

87-8, 91, 93

Mississippi State University,

Missouri, 115 Mitchell, Clarence, 345

Mobile, Ala., 134, 204, 293 Molpus, Dick, 328

2ion

Gilead, N.C., 194 Mouton, Edgar, 109, 280 Moyers, Bill, 272

Mulholland, Joe, 330 Munford, Luther, 171

Murphey, Arthur, Jr., 160

Murphy, N.C., 219 Murphy, Reg, 278 Muse, Benjamin, 195 Myers, Frank, 179 Myers, Mary, 179 Mylcraft Manufacturing, 292

Myrdal, Gunnar, 349—50 "Myth of the Flawed White Southerner, The" (Ellison),

319

1

1

424

Index

Nashville, Ga.,

219 115,204,222,239

Nashville, Term.,

i960 student

sit-ins in,

11,62, 191

Eighth Ward

Garden

heterogeneity

Nation, The, 63, 196, 273,

McDonogh

140

127

of,

idiosyncratic history of, 128

304

National Association for the Advance-

ment of Colored People (NAACP), 38, 57,59,84,96,

School No. 19

McMain High

School

Mardi Gras

126

in,

in,

127-8, 129, 130,

of,

147, 169, 305, 347

North Galvez

Street in,

Pontchartrain Hotel

in,

128 146

postwar industrial and population

236

boom

National Collegiate Athletic Associa-

(NCAA), 2ion

in,

144

Preservation Hall

144

in,

National Democratic Party of Alabama

Robert Lusher School

(NDPA), 254, 261-3, 264, 269 National Guard, 116, 170, 264

Sewage and Water Board

National Labor Relations Board

St.

National Lawyers Guild, 89

1 1

New

34-43>

Newport News,

Society of

118

93, 97, 118

Newsweek, 5,25, 44, 47, 59, 102-3, 114-15, 124-5, I2 7> 164,

180-1, 202, 203, 228-9, 239, 253, 255, 259, 260, 264, 282,

in, 9, 12,

163, 167, 176,216, 305

"Desire" streetcar in, 128

Va.,

New Republic, The, New South, 264

128, 140—

Mi

Times -Picayune, 126, 130,

Christian Service, 134^

129, 130

Desire Public Housing Project ?

J

Classroom Teachers'

New Orleans Women's

54, 117, 125-48, 151, 155, 158,

I35

Elementary

128-33,

141, 146

127

desegregation of schools

in, 12,

Federation, 142

in,

124-48, 154, 170, 171 A. H. Wilson School in, 146-7 in,

in, 12,

New Orleans

New Deal, 10, 41, 89, 265, 342 New Left, 92 New Orleans, La., 4, 22, 39-40,

class divisions in,

131

145, 147 Orleans Baptist Theological

New Orleans

of,

in,

133

Seminary, 134

328

193-4

City Hall

T. Frantz

School

Neshoba Democrat, 328, 332 New Bern, N.C., Moore's Barbecue

black population

in,

125-6, 129-48, 163, 168

William

Neilson, Melany, 10 1, 169 Fair,

132,

Mark's Methodist Church

in, 139 white boycott of schools

Native Americans, 130, 354 Navy, U.S., 32, 270

Neshoba County

145 of,

Walgreen's

National Spinning Co., 299 National Urban League, 319

"Negroes with Guns" (Williams),

in,

139 Touro Synagogue

3° 2

2 99>

145

133-4, I39-40, 141, 143, 145,

National Association for the Preserva-

(NLRB), 294-5,

in, 12,

128-30, 139, 141, 143, 145

Ninth Ward

165, 198, 199,204 communists purged from, 91 legal work of, 185 Youth Council of, 67

tion

127, 128

of,

District of,

Natchez, Miss., 63, 167, 330 Natchitoches, La., 356-7

tion of White People,

127-8

of,

French Quarter

307, 344 in,

New New New

Times,

258

Yorker, The,

311

York Herald Tribune, 89-90,

246

,

425

Index

New

York Mtts, 262

New

York

Neu

)

'

Renew

ork limes,

10 1st Airborne troops, 116

of Books,

240

279,298,315,355,

Organization of American States, 144 Orleans Parish School Board, 125-6, 128, 129, 130, 142

civil rights coverage in, 71, 72, 75,

New

Orwell, George, 313

93, 94, 103, 177, 207, 210, 230,

"outside agitators," 12, 38, 57, 59,

244, 264, 281, 300-1, 336 York Times Magazine, 257

69-70, 77-9, 83-4, 94, 98, 199,224,241, 291,296 Owsley, Alvin, 28

Ninth Ward Private School Association,

Owsley,

145

campaigns

of,

249, Page, Marion, 68

274-6, 277-9, 334 "Southern Strategy"

of,

274-5, 334

for Public Schools,

25-6

122, 128, 204 Parkin, Ark., 51

119 Norrell, Robert, 8

North Carolina,

in,

Palo Alto, La.,

Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs),

Norfolk, Va., 118, 119

Norfolk Committee

29

Oxford, Miss., 166

Nixon, Richard, 127, 226-7, 2 54 presidential

Cliff,

1 1 1

17, 26, 27, 61, 74,

115, 281

Bladen County, 354 Hertford County, 99-100,

paternalism, 44-5, 57-8, 68, 85, 270,

no, 112

Moore County, 294-5 Nash County, 289-90 Northampton County, 292 Piedmont district of, 40-1,

of,

65,

113,295 love vs. justice in, 58,

59,

of, 16,

1

13

"new," 290

white defense

and towns

North Carolina, University

287,289 condescension and prejudice

95-6, 289, 299-300 "progressive mystique" of, 41 see also specific cities

Parks, Rosa, 54 Pascagoula, Miss., 26, 334, 335 Paschall, Davis, 119

38,

of,

57,

Patterson, Mrs.,

142-3

Patterson, John,

249 142-3

Patterson, Paul,

66

Patton, George,

North Carolina Bureau of Investiga-

240 Pauley, Frances, 76-80, 83-4, 192, 207,213,214 Payne, Charles, 8-9, 13-14

tion, 87 North Carolina Central University, 44 North Carolina Council on Human

Peabody, Endicott, 199 Peabody, Mrs. Malcolm, 199 Pearson, David, 204

39,41,99,222,299, 320 North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, 62

Relations, 115

North Carolina Fund, 98 North Carolina State University, 16 Novak, Robert, 89-90 Nunn, Sam, 235, 279 Nuremberg trials, 31 Ocean Springs, Miss., 21 O'DellJack, 85 O'Neal, Harmon, 331

Pennsylvania, 212 People's Association for Selective

Shopping (PASS), 185 Pepper, Claude, 27 Percy, Walker,

325 William Alexander, 305 Perez, Leander, 125, 129, 168

Percy,

Perkins, James, Perry, Ga.,

248

207

Petersburg, Va., 196

426

Index

Pett, Saul,

127

Protestantism, 127, 278

public accommodations, 182-214

Philadelphia, Miss., 8, 74, 88-9,

331-2

black employees

of,

187, 188

Carousel Gifts, Pools, and Spa

in,

blacks barred from, 65, 67, 183,

328 murder of civil rights workers 89,210, 3i5~ l6 3 2 7-9

in,

integration

185, 186, 187-91, 192, 195

-

Abby, 334

Philley,

sit-ins, 4,

Phillips, Kevin, 254,

274^ Pillowtex Fieldcrest Cannon, 301 Pineville, N.C., 214-15 Pique, Mrs. Dan, 141 Pittman, Paul, 170-1, 277 Plains, Ga.,

n,

cotton, 28, 31, 45, 59, 64-5, 282,

286-90

36, 54, 60, 62, 63,

and towns

see also specific cities

Pulliam,

W.

H., 298

racism:

images

plantations, 57

19, 183, 187, 189,

177, 185,229

complexities

179

of,

of,

13-15, 16

13-14

international criticism of, 17, 18

white inhumanity and, 312-13

sugar, 25

see also

tobacco, 291 Playboy, 105,

of,

191-2, 194, 195-6, 212-13

Jim Crow;

lynching;

segregation

Raeford, N.C., 217

265

Pleas, Robert,

Rainach, William, 125

Plessy

Raines, Howell, 315

310 Ferguson, 66

v.

Plunkett, Amelia, 129 Polhill,

Jim, Jr., 97

Polhill,

Jimmy,

III,

Raleigh, N.C., 300

97

Poling, Everett, 134^ politics,

26-31, 65, 238-308

see also

voter registration drives;

vot i ng rights;

specific elections

Populism, 238—9, 249 Port Huron Statement, 229 Posey, Billy

Wayne, 329-30

Powledge, Fred, 13-14, 21, 61 Presbyterian Church, 103

321-2

Prince, James, 328,

330 Prince Edward County Board of Supervisors, 119—20 Prince Edward Educational Foundation,

163—4

Pritchett, Laurie, 65-6, 67, 69, 73, 74,

75,78,93,95-6,210 Proctor-Silex, Progressive,

Ramsay, Claude, 21, 22, 34 Ramsey, Brooks, 81—2, 83 Randall, Robert, 95

Reagan, Ronald, 226-7, 2 5 2 2 8o, 334 Reagan Democrats, 280 >

Reconstruction, 53,

294-5

303

Progressive Party, 27

Promised Land school, 168—9

5 6n,

91, 232, 238,

263,272, 319 "tragic era" of, 6,

Red and Black

Powell, Dallas, 84

Preyer, Richardson,

Rains, Craig, 61, 117

(UGA

222 newspaper),

151

Reeb, James, 244 Reed, Roy, 279-80, 298, 301 Reed, Sarah, 142 Reese,

F.

D., 243

Reliance Manufacturing, 292

Remerton, Ga., 70 Republican National Committee,

338* Republican Party, 232, 237, 242, 249, 272-3 increased white southern support

9,253,254-5,275-6,280, 285-6

for,

427

Indtx

black activism

Reynolds, James, 296 Reynolds, J. Rich, Frank,

198-201, 203,

in,

204

224 336-7

S.,

integration of public facilities in,

Kits, Bernard,

200-4 Monson Motor Lodge

right-to-work laws, 295

202-3 Old Slave Market

Richmond,

Va.,

23

302 Riggins, Bo, 208 Ritter, Josie,

racism

Robbins, Clarke, 98

tourism

E. Lee

Management Company,

St.

in,

in,

198—204 198, 200

in,

George, S.C., Green's Restaurant

C, 203

"St.

Marc," 99-100, 112

1— 12

Roberts, Gene, 257

St.

Roberts, Georgia, 245

Sanders,

Roberts, Pat, 286

Sasser, Ga.,

Robertson, Jan, 61

Savannah, Ga., 76, 85, 205, 214

Robinson, Jackie, 2io«

Save

Rockleff, Melvin,

Petersburg Times, 2

1

James O'Hear, 220

75-6

Our Schools, 125-6

Scarbrough, Tom, 88

220

Rocky Mount, N.C., 289-90

Scharfenstein, Leo, 141

Roediger, David, 17

Schiro, Victor,

Rogers, Breck, 269

schools,

1

144-6 14-81

Rogers, Margaret, 230

aptitude tests in, 170

Rolleston, Moreton, 186, 205, 225

busing and, 175-6, 277-8,

Rolling Fork, Miss., 171

Roman

279

Catholic Church, 50, 82, 10 1,

children as closing

127, 203

Rome,

pawns in, 12, 171 7-2 1, 122, 125-6,

of, 1 1

186

Ga., 292

Hotel General Forrest

in,

205-6

debate about survival of public

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 27, 41

education

Rosenberg, Ethel and Julius, 38 Rosenthal, Henry, 333

169-70

Rowan, Carl, 357 Rumble, Lester, 31,313, 314 Rupp, Adolph, 2 ion Russell, Bill, 2ion Russell, Richard, 47, 85,

207-8, 216,

217, 219, 220-1, 222-3, 2 79>

in,

desegregation

114, 117-24, 126,

of, 5, 9, 1 1, 12,

99, 109, 114-81,216, 305

dual systems abolished

in,

169-70

faculty desegregation in, 177,

in,

169 169, 177

integration of sports in, 107, 167,

178,317 integration taken in stride by

Saint Andrews, Tenn., Scotty's

Augustine,

180

"freedom-of-choice" plans adopted

of,

Ruth, Peggy, 276

restaurant in,

36,

40, 41, 48-50, 58, 59-60, 96,

funds withheld for non-integration

293 Russo, Sam, 202 Ruth, Babe, 2ion

St.

in,

212

198 Roberts, B.

198, 203

in,

198

129

Roanoke Rapids, N.C., 302-3 Robert

199-201,

quadricentennial celebration

142

Rittiner, Lloyd,

in,

212

Fla., 9,

some children

in,

165, 178-9

198-204

neighborhood, 278

1

17, 148,

1

428

Index

"Bloody Sunday"

schools (continued) parochial, 135, 141

Brown Chapel

private, 12, 118, 120, 124, 127,

143, 146, 147-8, 154, 163, 166,

168-9, 170-4, 176, 177.

r 79.

255,270,282 114— 15,

163, 170

of,

12, 115, 125-6,

129-43, ^3 -4»

J

66, 168, 169

286-7

gomery from,

4, 7, 105,

243-6,

249,257

in,

241,

voting rights struggle

240-8

in,

Selma Times -Journal, 212-13

W.,77,80

Senate, U.S., 38-9, 235, 279, 334, 335

126

anti-civil rights filibuster in, 16,

segregation:

183, 199,293

de facto, 356

Judiciary

growing up with, 149, 153-9, ^2, 164 "humane defense" of, 62 as natural order to whites,

58—61

of public accommodations, 65, 67,

183, 185, 186, 187-91, 192, 195 religious justification of, 41, 50-1,

100-6, 329, 333

two separate

Church in, 242 march to Mont-

civil rights

242

Kerr, 38

secession, 10 1,

55,

242

Scottsboro case, 38

Scruggs, J.

in,

Tabernacle Baptist Church

327-9, 332

W.

Pettus Bridge

in, 23, 44-5, 46-7, 240-8 Reformed Presbyterian Church in,

41-2

Schwerner, Mickey, 89, 210, 226,

Scott, Miss.,

291

facilities in,

racism

see also schools in specific cities

Schulz, Louis,

in,

212-13

19,

1965 I

242, 243—4

in,

of Commerce

First Baptist

17 1-2

Scott,

Chamber

243-4,249,251,252,306

in "segregation academies," 12,

white boycotts

African Methodist

Episcopal Church

Edmund

169 of,

243-4, 245,

desegregation of public

radical transformation of,

resegregation

in,

257

societies

8, 16, 61, 66,

white opposition

mandated

by,

100 to, 19,

20-3,

29-30, 51, 81, 82, 101, 138 white support for, 8, 12, 14, 35-6,

47-54,58,62,71, Jim Crow

115, 124-48

Committee

sexual revolution,

Shakespeare, William, 49 sharecropping system, 17, 25, 64, 180,

284,288,310,334 Sharkey-Issaquena Academy, 171 Sharrard, Clara Lee, 101, 227, 305—6,

346 Shaw, Sheila, 333 Sheffield, Johnny, 179 Shelby, N.C., 59 Shepard, James, 44 Sherrill, Robert, 183, 234 Sibley, Celestine,

Sibley,

160-1

John, 123

"segregation academies," 12, 17 1-2

Sieverman, Frank, 278

Segrest, Mrs. J. B.,

Simon, Tobias, 202, 203

272

Simpson, James, 307-8

257

Sellers, Granville,

Sims, Charles,

297

Selma, Ala., 6, 62, 74, 78, 204, 224,

240-8, 249-50, 270, 271, 281 black businesses

in,

193

Sibley Commission, 123—4, 3 I 3

see also

Segrest, Marvin,

of,

229

in,

Sitton, Claude,

75-6, 93, 204

Skolund, Julie, 141

241, 242

black disenfranchisement

1 1

Singreen, John, 126, 127

240-2

slavery, 53, 60, 64, 165, 179,

236, 259

1

429

//;./< \

abolition of, 17, 153, 196, brutality of, 222,

288

rural areas of,

312

204

"of debt," 17, 288, 315

myths about,

6,

suburban, 9, 13

53

religious justification of, 101

slave-landowner relationship

Sunbelt, 122, 352 in,

53,

288 white freedom and dependence on, 1

10, 284,

17 Slaves in the

Family

(Ball),

transformation

108

wartime in,

Lillian,

61-2, 108, 224,

in,

57, 325

236

state legislature of,

Southern Baptist Convention (SBC),

240, 248 Smithfield Packing Company, 354-5

Smyer, Sid, 228

socialism,

specific

and cities

Rip Raps Plantation

Smith, Willis, 38-9

"social equality,"

riots

South Carolina, 22, 26, 27, 51, 75, 115, 164, 211-12, 319

129 6,

and military

white southerners;

states

97 Smith. M. M. "Muggsy," 121, 122,

civilian

20

see also

Smitherman, Joe,

3-8, 18, 309

of,

Upper, 27,40, 57,98 urbanization of, n, 25—6, 34, 46-7, 54, 127,282-4,287,

303-4

337

Smith, Ben, 16-17, 333 Smith, Frank, 21, 22, 36, 38, 90, 91,

Smith,

25-6, 29, 44, 45,

46-7, 57,65,98, 99, 115, 127,

50, 51, 101, 103, 106

Southern Bell, 292-3 Southern Christian Leadership Confer-

16

ence (SCLC), 12, 73, 74, 75, 78,

231

Sons of Confederate Veterans, 235 Souls of Black Folk, The (Du Bois), 64-5

90, 93, 96, 199-200, 240, 314

SNCC feud with,

243

Southern Conference Educational Fund

South:

Black Belt towns in 4, 39, 53, 59, 64-84, 99-100, 119, 122,

153-4, l6 6, 179,204-10,

(SCEF), 39, 298

Southern Conference for

254-68 Deep, 5, 12,28-9,40,

Human

(SCHW), 39

Welfare

Southern Pines, N.C., 217, 294—5

53, 74, 115, 125, i52«, 163, 166, 167, 170,

187,222,227,233,240,272, 277,283

Southern Regional Council (SRC), 14, 20, 21, 27, 32-3, 41-2, 60, 62,

97, 100, 120, 178, 265, 283,

287,305,314

fractured communities in, 4, 11, 12,

Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, 291

1 3 1-4 Gulf Coast

Southern of,

industrialization of, 11, 25-6, 65,

94,

in, 282-6,

influx of Latinos to,

move

287, 292-304

"New," 26, 122, 124, 165, 174,

211,251,258,

10, 25-6, 27,

290-1

Sparta, Ga., sports,

265

170

262

integration

354-5

of corporations to, 26, 94,

294

of,

107, 167, 178, 210,

317 workplace, 303

Spotted Horse Party, 262, 268

327,35 2

"Old," 16-17, 197, 352 post- World War II economy

Voices,

Southwell, Harriet, 220-1

7-8, 130

Spring Street Parent Teacher Associaof,

282-3, 284-5,

tion,

Stafford,

121

G. Jackson,

Statesboro, Ga., 302

5

1

1

43Q

Index

states* rights, 42, 47,

Swannv. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, 175-6,

156, 220, 223,

224-5 States'

276

Rights Party, 27, 127

Sweeney, James, 139 Swinney, WH.,77,79

Steadman, Henry, 30 Stebbins, Charles,

Steinbeck, John,

99 130—

Talmadge, Eugene, 27, 28-31, 140 Talmadge, Herman, $on, 47

Stephens, Alexandet H., 159

Stephenson, Gladys, 32, 33 Stephenson, James, 32, 33

Tar Heel, N.C., 354-5

Stephenson, John, 32, 33 Sterne, A. H., 35

Tate, William, 151,

Stovall, Walter,

Tate, Curtis,

162

Tennessee, 26, 27, 59, 115, 212

Committee (SNCC),

Maury County, 32—3

13, 65, 67,

73,74,75,78,87,88,89,93, 96, 158,224,247,251, 309 communist affiliation charged to, 90 integration activism

of,

of,

94, 240, 241,

243 Students for Passive Resistance (University of Georgia), 160, 161

student sit-ins of i960, 4, 60, 62, 63, 177, 185,

1 1,

36, 54,

59-60 Styron, William, 60-1 Suches, Ga., 161

64

Miss., 108

Sumner, Miss., 40 Sumter, S.C., 178

Supreme Court, Georgia, 30/z Supreme Court, Miss., 248 Supreme Court, U.S., 252, 261

43-5 2

,

26,

54, !Q9, 129,

153, 157, 164, 169-70, 175- 6

,

190-1, 225, 227, 233, 236, 254,

256,276,277 communist sympathy

317 Texas Western University, 2ion

298—303

Workers Union of America

(TWUA), 295, 301-3 Thomas, J. L., 31 Thomas, Steve, 179 Thomas, R, 159 Thomasson, Hugh, 332

W

Thomasville, Ga., 49, 152, 207

Thornton, J. Mills,

9, 14,

325

Thurmond, Strom,

9, 27,

273, 275,

220 Emmett, 37, 40, 306, 309, 330, 331-2,333

Tifton, Ga., 69, 207, Till,

Time, 251,

353

Timmerman, George, seen in,

Todd,

40

"separate but equal" legality

white defiance and condemnation Sutherland, Matthew, 126, 127

Norman, 16 1-2

Dempsey, 23—4 Trotman, Robert, 5 Truman, Harry, 27, 39 Tuck, Edwin, 263 Travis,

of,

Sr.,

W C, 69

Tolbert,

affirmed by, 66

40,47,49,53, 125, 129

230

335-6

civil rights decisions of, 10, 1 1,

36, 38, 40,

Clinic,

Thompson, Allen, 109-10, 197 Thompson, Era Bell, 351 Thompson, Ginger, 356 Thompson, Gregory, 139 Thompson, Jim, 80-1 Thompson, John, 139-40, 172 Thompson, Melvin E., 3072 Thompson, Michael, 139

229

Sturgis, Ky.,

Summit,

County Medical

Texas, 23, 26, 51, 115, 204, 275, 316,

Textile

Students for a Democratic Society, 229

Suffolk, Va.,

Terrell

textile industry,

207, 257

feud with, 243

voting rights drive

159-60

tenant farming, 25, 64, 287—91

Student Nonviolent Coordinating

SCLC

356-7

51

1

431

InJtx Tuc k, Stephen, 9,

Prince

730

Tuck, William, 263, 282

126

16,

1

19-20,

68, 169, 171

see also specific cities

Virginia, University of, 118

Tumblen, Unita, 81

Virginia

Tupelo, Miss., 353

Committee

for Public Schools

(VCPS), 119

259

Tuscaloosa, Ala., 189,

Tuskegee, Ala., 8, 166, 250, 255-8

Tuskegee Institute, 166, 251, 255,

Virginia

Supreme Court of Appeals,

119 voter registration drives, 34-5, 89, 94,

256,257 Twin

J

Warren County, 118 and towns

Tulane University, 139 Tulsa, Okla.,

Edward County,

163-4,

City, Ga.,

in, 240-8, 256 n, 94, 109, no, in

102

voting rights,

Underwood, James, 33, 34 Union, Miss., 329 Union Camp paper factory, 294 Union of American Hebrew Congrega-

black disenfranchisement and,

tions, 140 United Council of Church

white reaction to black gains

Women,

35

238-42 black gains

in,

28, 31, 239-40,

247-8,253-73,281-2 28, 34-5, 266-7, 2 88 Voting Rights Act of 1 965

,

United Transport Service Employees Union, 308 universities,

in,

149

54, 149-63, 177.

215-16 2ion

increase in black

and white

voting promoted by, 253-4, passage

15 1-3, 156, 159-60, 161

of,

237, 246-7, 248, 259,

264,281-2,353 southern politics changed by, 253—5,

see also specific universities

264, 266, 269, 282

U.S. Steel, 248

Valdosta, Ga., 207

Wagner, Audrey, 222

Valentine, Tim, 281

Waiteman,

Vance, C.

Wakefield, Dan, 63

J.,

333

Vanderbilt Chapel, 10 Vandiver, Ernest, 122-3,

49>

I

5°>

ate States,

Army

of the Confeder-

197

296

Vietnam War, 92, 277 casualties of, 170, 229 opposition to, 278 Virginia, 26, 27,

83

Walker, Wyatt Tee, 78, 314 Wallace, Cecil, 345 Wallace, George, 7, 9, 87, 166, 185,

Vardaman, James, 140 Veterans of Foreign Wars, 99 Veterans of the

Bill,

Walker, Jack, 123 x

152, 177, 179 Vann, David, 61

Viet Cong,

,

264

integration of sports in, riots in,

3 94,

264

divided public opinion of, 12,

1

231,244,280,316,317 federal examiners assigned by, 253,

148-63

integration

n,

in, 13,

57,64,74, 115, 118-20, 204, 212

186, 208, 215, 220, 225, 236,

246,248-53,304 assassination-attempt paralysis

of,

249,250-1,277 national political career of, 226-7,

231, 248-51, 252, 261, 262, 263, 268, 274-5, 277-8, 280,

298 racial reconciliation

251-3

sought

by,

1

1

432

Index

Wallace, George (continued) racial rhetoric of,

deference interpreted as friendship

249-50, 251-3,

275 religious rebirth of, 251,

253

segregationist stance of, 166, 215,

D Y> 59> 63, 66, 70 defiance of white

mobs

mob violence

28, 30-2, 112,

of,

Wallace, Henry, 27, 39 Wallace, Lurleen, 342

131-48

116, 128-48

moderates among, 13,

244, 249-50

by,

1

31-41,

172-3 profound change in way of life

of,

Waller, William, 277

3-8, 10-13, 17-18,38,42,

Walterboro, S.C., 211-12, 230

53-4, 106-9, 139, 158-9, 181,

Walton County Civic League, 32 Wander, I. Q., 83 war on poverty, 273 Warren, C.

C,

309-10 realization of injustice by,

10— 11,

15,62-3,70-1, 106-7, 157 resistance to racial equality by, 4, 6,

52

Warren, Charles, 317-18

8,

Warren, Robert Penn, 62, 112, 310,

10-12, 14-15, 18, 23-4, 35-6 seismographs" lacking in, 60,

"social

61,98

314 Warrenton, N.C., 218

status anxiety of,

Warrior Academy, 270, 282

suburban

Washington, Booker

traditional food of, 3, 182, 184, 185,

166, 216,

T.,

256 Washington, D.C., 231, 273 Washington and Lee College, 227 Watson, Plez, 293

33-5

flight of,

177

187-8, 191,231,236,237 "Ugly Southerner" image of, 151 violent reactions of, 11-12, 17, 20,

23, 26, 116, 124

Watters, Pat, 75, 315, 316, 34 - 1 Waycross, Ga., Ware Hotel in, 2 1

white supremacy, 30, 31, 32, 40, 66, 93, 109, 125, 165, 195, 202, 240

Waynesboro, Ga., 223

Whiteville, N.C., 299

WDNC radio, 43-4 "We

Shall

Whitney,

Overcome,"

7,

257, 340—1

West, John, 276

Western Kentucky State College, 48

West Point-Pepperell, 295 West Virginia, 115,212 Wheeler, Raymond, 305 White, Ben Chester, 330

of,

Williams, Hosea, 243 Williams, Joseph, 152

82, 102, 103, 104,

movement of,

as liberation

Williams, Wadine, 262

102, 103,

Williamson, Joel, ^6n, 319-20

179-80, 309-25 confusion and uncertainty

Wills, Garry, 98 of,

14-16,

43-5,60,69 culture and history cherished by, 6, 16, 31,

112-13

Williams, R.J. ,79-80 Williams, Robert R, 1 1 Williams, Roosevelt, 248

white southerners:

and redemption

Wilkie, Curtis, 327 William Carter Co., 295

Williams, H. O., 263

106 civil rights

283-4

Williams, Aubrey, 39 Williams, Grady, 315

White, Theodore, 89 white churches, 81-2, 100-6 integration

Eli,

Wicker, Tom, 244 Wilkerson, Steve, 332

Wilmington, N.C., 299, 308 Wilson, Hugh,

3, 4, 15,

Wilson, Imogene, 108 Wilson,

Sammy Lee,

107

17-18, 348

1

hi Jcx

433 World War

Winder, Ga., 206

Winston-Salem, N.C., 220, 291, 299,

302 Winter Park,

Fla., First

Congregational

Church of, 4 Wisconsin primaries, 248-9

II,

10, 11, 54, 60, 122,

220, 249, 259 black and white veterans

of, 10,

19-25,28, 32,34-5, 36-7, in,

273 conservative and reactionary trend

Wofford, Harris, 44-5, 46, 108

following,

27-9

Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools, 117 women's liberation movement, 229 Wood, Florence, 219 Wood, G. H., 285 Woodlawn High School, 168 Woodstock, N.Y, 261

economic changes

Wood ville,

Pacific theater of, 19, 21, 24, 36,

Miss.,

Woodward,

172-3

C. Vann,

283 Wordsworth, William, 49 Workman, Claude, 304-5

19-20,21-4, 32, 34,79 of, 30, 34, 36

legacy

black soldiers

programs

in,

of,

in, 282-6, of, 5,

POWs vs.

23

Hastings, 343

Wynn,WT.,25

292

integration

in,

Wright, Fielding, 27 Wright, Skelly, 125, 126, 130, 170

Wyman,

industrialization of, 11, 25-6, 65,

94,

19-25, 34 integration of blacks and whites in,

273

294 design

25-6, 27,

hostility vs. acceptance of blacks in,

treatment of German

workplace: affirmative action

after,

282-3

Wynne, Ken, 330

287, 292-304

215, 291-4, 299,

Xynidis, Tom, 202

302-3 intramural sports and, 303 paternalism in, 295

Yanceyville, N.C., 272

picketing

Yazoo

137, 298

of,

unfair labor practices in,

299-300,

302 unsafe conditions in, 295 see also

labor

movement;

corporations

World Series, 262 World War I, 220

specific

Yarbrough, Mary, 262, 263 City, Miss., 99,

1

10,

173-5, 176, 180 Yazoo High School in, 173-4 Young, Andrew, 200-1, 278-9

Young, Cindy, 332 Younge, Sammy, 257 Zinn, Howard, 60

Permissions Acknowledgments Grateful acknowledgment

is

made

to the following for permission

to reprint previously published material:

Brown and

Little,

from Children of Crisis:

Co.: Excerpts

Courage and Fear, Volume

I,

A

by Robert Coles, copyright

Study of

©

1964,

1965, 1966, 1967 by Robert Coles. Reprinted by permission of Little,

Brown and Co.

Routledge: Excerpts from Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters

©

from the Civil Rights

Years, edited

by Patricia Sullivan, copyright

& Francis Books, Inc. Reprinted Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. 2003 by Taylor

by permission of

Photo Credits

The author and publisher would

like to

thank the following indi-

viduals and institutions for permission to reprint images in the art insert:

Page

1

Page

2:

:

Corbis Look Magazine Collection, Library of Congress, Prints

Photographs Division, photographer: G.

Page

3:

Page

4:

&

Thoma Kersh

Tommy Moore Copyright by The Birmingham News, 2005, photographer:

Jones. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Page

5: (top)

Frances Library,

Page

6:

Joseph

Cumming;

(bottom) Portrait of Frances Pauley,

Pauley Papers, Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book

Emory (top)

University

Joseph Cumming; (bottom) Al Clayton

&

Southern

Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Page

7:

Al Clayton

&

Southern Historical Collection, University

of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Page

8:

author

A

Note About the Author

Jason Sokol grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, and attended

Oberlin College and the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his doctorate in

American

New York,

Cornell University.

and teaches

at

history.

He

lives in

Brooklyn,

A The

text of this

book was

Note on the Type

Garamond No. Claude Garamond

set in

copy of any of the designs of

but an adaptation of his types.

It

3. It is

(ca.

probably owes as

not a true

1480-1561),

much

to the

designs of Jean Jannon, a Protestant printer working in Sedan in the early seventeenth century. This particular version

is

based on an

adaptation by Morris Fuller Benton.

Composed by North Market

Street Graphics,

Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Printed and bound by Berryville Graphics, Berryville, Virginia

Designed by Wesley Gott

10

t}(p

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

3 9999 05166 553 5

revolution taking place around them.

Drawing on

recorded interviews, magazine bureau dispatches,

newspaper

iiiil

editorials, Sokol seamlessly

weaves

rag it her historical analysis with firsthand accounts. I

;

:

rv

i

re

the stories of white southerners in their

own

words, presented without condescension or moral

judgment.

An

unprecedented picture of one of the historic

periods in twentieth-century America.

Jason Sokol grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts,

and attended Oberlin College and the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his doctorate in

American

New York,

history.

and teaches

With

He

Brooklyn,

lives in

at Cornell University.

8 pages of photographs

Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson Jacket photograph: William Eggleston, Untitled (Sumner, Mississippi,

© 2005

C assidy Bayou

in Background),

1971

Eggleston Artistic Trust, courtesy Cheim

New York.

Used with permission. All

Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher, www.aaknopf.com 8/2006

&

Read,

rights reserved.

New

York

IN

PRAISE OF JASON SOKOL'S

THERE GOES MY EVERYTHING

Tor most

of

us,

'white southerners' remain an undifferentiated

mass

forces hostile to the social and political progress of African-Americans civil

in

of

the

rights era. Jason Sokol brilliantly reveals, for the first time, that this

image was only one dimension

of a vastly

more complex range

of

emotions

and opinions within the white southern community between 1945 and 1975. There Goes

My

Everything

that explores the ways

in

is

a subtle,

nuanced, and strikingly original study

which the white community was not only threatened

by but also conflicted about the black revolution that engulfed so with sympathy and grace."

—HENRY

it,

and

it

does

LOUIS GATES,

JR.

ISBN 0-307-26356-8

HISTORY

52 795

9

'78030

7"

263568