Book Review: A Stone of Hope

David L. Chappell. A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow

          In A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, David L. Chappell sheds new light on the components of the civil rights movement, concretely adding prophetic religion to the mix of ingredients of those tumultuous times from 1940s-1960s. Chappell’s thesis states “that faith drove black southern protesters to their extraordinary victories in the mid-1960s, grew out of a realistic understanding of the typically dim prospects for social justice in the world.” The protester’s prophetic content of their speeches, diaries, and other paraphernalia related to the civil rights movement, illuminates this great divide. With an eye for detail, Chappell points to the factors of religion that have been overlooked by other historians as our country ended Jim Crow and segregation.

          One of Chappell’s interesting beliefs was that the civil rights movement and the end of Jim Crow and segregation took place at a weak point in white solidarity. He claims that Southern blacks did not have the same number of supporters as segregationists, but “that white racism could not withstand the strength of the cultural resources that some black protesters brought to bear on the struggle.” In short, antiracists and black protesters had a greater understanding of human nature that helps explain their defeat of segregationists.

          To acknowledge all of the leading protesters and their theories on racism, liberalism, and the like would take more space than Chappell could probably afford. Instead, he highlights several of the most well-known and “ordinary” leaders of the civil rights movement, and details their theories and philosophies. Of the more interesting to read about were Bob Moses with his prophetic brand of skepticism about human progress, the outspoken preacher Fannie Lou Hamer who felt that the civil rights battle was an inherently spiritual struggle for black Americans and held on to the adage that the most segregated hour in America was ten o’clock on a Sunday morning, and Fred Shuttlesworth, a charismatic leader who believed that the movement was “a religious crusade, a fight between light and darkness, right and wrong, good and evil, fair play and tyranny.” Bringing to life these types of characters in such a defining moment of American history, and not just relying on the most well-known such as Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., pulls into focus the point that the civil rights movement was a movement led by ordinary people faced with extraordinary racial and religious obstacles.

          Bringing religion into the picture, Chappell compares the civil rights movement to a historic revival. The civil rights movement “shifted the focus of church doctrine away from eternal salvation and toward attaining justice in this life.” The enthusiasm of the movement moved into the streets, and if it did not directly influence every listener, Chappell claims that the message reached them nonetheless, whether or not they accepted. The church was the perfect breeding ground for the movement to take place. Weekly meetings, racially divided, large groups, prophetic messages, nowhere else would large numbers of Southern blacks be gathered together and easier to organize than the church house.

          Of books related to the civil rights movement, most overwhelmingly center on desegregation and it’s defendants. Chappell does something interesting by highlighting segregationists and their thinking, the evil in a good versus evil battle. Part of his claim is that the white South did not put up much of a fight. He spends an entire chapter trying to explain this seemingly incomprehensible phenomenon. Fear was a driving force behind white southerner’s relationships with each other. The minds of the segregationist faction feared what the “white bigots and demagogues” would do and react. According to Chappell, this division in effect, lost the segregationist battle of the civil rights movement. “Fortunately for the black protesters, they were not united.”

          Chappell deserves a ton of credit for completing A Stone of Hope, especially given the subject matter: prophetic religion. In his conclusion, Chappell admits, “First approaching this story as an atheist, I was surprised and skeptical to hear so many of my subjects – whom I admired from afar – expressing what Bayard Rustin called “fundamentalist” views.” Chappell goes on to describe his reluctance to believe his subject’s testimony of “miracles” had it not been for their frequency and key to the beliefs of his subject’s choices. In a catch-22 situation, perhaps only an atheist could tell this story with an objective mind, but perhaps a religious mind could have given more clarity to certain aspects.

          Clearly a well-researched book, A Stone of Hope is nevertheless not an easily understandable book by someone who is not somewhat familiar or the least bit interested in the civil rights movement of the twentieth century. Chappell obviously has a great handle on the material but seems to have trouble getting that material to the reader in a fashion that is interesting and relatable. It is more a book of general theories than facts, which is more difficult to understand.

As compared to W. J. Cash’s book, The Mind of the South, A Stone of Hope picks up Cash’s story long after The Mind of the South was published. Cash lays a foundation of the general racial attitudes of the South before the civil rights movement gained steam. Cash’s generalizations about African-Americans are just as offensive in the twenty-first century as they would have been in the middle of the twentieth when black protesters marched on Birmingham. Cash would have scarcely believed the desegregated America that emerged as a result of the civil rights movement. Chappell clarifies this movement and gives black Americans a legacy to be proud of. He very clearly shows that the protesters of the civil rights movement were not deaf and dumb to their plight. Their hope of equality set them apart from Cash’s typical African-American.

          

Book Review: American Slavery, American Freedom

Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1975.

          One of the great questions Americans could ask of history is: How could a nation be founded upon freedom and liberty but enslave twenty percent of its citizens? Edmund S. Morgan attempts to answer this question in American Slavery, American Freedom. This is a magnificently researched book that sets out to cut to the root of this great topic, slavery and freedom. His thesis, how freedom came to be supported by slavery, a relationship of exact opposites, is one that many Americans continue to have trouble accepting. Morgan asserts that the answers to this hypocritical situation lie in Virginia since that state was the most influential and most populated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

          To begin, Morgan addresses the hypocrisy of our Founding Father’s separation from England because of tax enslavement. While white Virginians attempted to wrest control of the fledgling American government from England, those same wealthy plantation owners had no problems enslaving an entire race of people. There may be no exact answer, but Morgan places himself and Virginia in the best position to account for the hypocrisy. Morgan centers his research on Virginia and his reasons are clear and important: “Virginia was the largest of the new United States, in territory, in population, in influence – and in slaveholding.” Tobacco, the crop that Morgan claims helped buy American independence, was grown in great quantities in Virginia by Virginian slaves. Plus, many of the Founding Fathers were from Virginia. Many of our country’s great documents were written by Virginians. Morgan’s point is that Virginia was the center of early American economics and politics. Without Virginia, it would be hard to answer the paradoxical question of the simultaneous growth of slavery and freedom. American Slavery, American Freedom is also the story of Virginian Slavery, Virginian Freedom.

Detouring slightly from his proclaimed thesis, Morgan has a fascinating chapter on the lost colony of Roanoke Island. What happened to the colonists on Roanoke Island remains a great mystery in the history of the colonization of the New World. While Morgan has no new theories as to where the colonists disappeared to, his storytelling and research is hard to discredit. To be sure, Morgan has an interesting topic to being with, but “The Lost Colony” is made all the more better by his writing and attention to detail.

The tale of slavery and freedom cannot be told without mentioning tobacco. Morgan ably describes how the weed saved the new colony of Virginia and gave rise to servitude and eventually led to racial slavery. The first colonists who planted tobacco exported their crop to England. As this practice became more and more profitable, the crop became the only thing Virginians wanted to plant. Even after the English government tried to control and limit the planting of tobacco to raise the price, wealthy Virginians continued to export the plant. However, these Virginians could not farm tobacco alone. Labor was required.

Initially, Morgan attests that forms of indentured servitude furnished the necessary labor to farm tobacco. Englishmen were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean and would enter into servitude for a period of time as payment for their passage to the New World. Morgan goes into great detail chronicling the ins and outs of this early servitude, including the trade-off of transportation versus the amount of time to be served, punishments allocated to servants, and the high mortality rate of those servants. This information is just fascinating and Morgan’s dedication to the subject is appreciated.  

Morgan points out that over time the impressed servitude of English servants gave way to outright racial slavery. Although it is hard to pinpoint a moment in time that racial slavery took hold, Morgan seems certain that the switch happened on Virginian tobacco plantations. Admittedly, Morgan has a little trouble stating exactly why Virginians began enslaving imported African slaves and why this practice accelerated. He points out that it made better economic sense to buy servants rather than slaves. Granted, slave owners would own slaves for a lifetime, that lifetime would be statistically short in early Virginian society. On the other hand, a servant would serve a master for a period of years and then be freed. The plantation owners were faced with paying a high price for a slave who probably would not live for an extended amount of time, or pay a price for a servant during their peak working years.

Finally making his way to his thesis, Morgan begins to specifically address the relationship between slavery and freedom. For the reasons behind the seemingly simultaneous growth of slavery and freedom, he points to a slave force who had become isolated by race and racism, a large group of wealthy, politically minded planters who were extremely loyal to Virginia, and an even larger group of poorer farmers who had become convinced that their interests would be best served by those wealthy plantation barons. Plantations needed labor to grow their tobacco and other crops. African-American slaves proved to be the solution to the labor question. The wealthy Virginians wanted to control the economics of Virginian society. Poor whites realized that it would be better to have relative liberty and go along with the wealthy plantation owners than to be the blood, sweat, and tears behind the wealthy plantation labor. These three components, mixed with the rise of republican ideas, allowed American slavery and American freedom to prosper side by side.

One of W.J. Cash’s main theories was the continuity of American history. He claimed that there were no definite breaks in American history. Morgan’s impeccably research American Slavery, American Freedom pinpoints the changes in how wealthy Virginians obtained their labor. What began as impressed servitude of Englishmen developed into full-blown racial slavery in about one hundred years. If one compares the two forms of servitude at their respective heights, the differences are blatant. It could be argued that as racial slavery developed from English servitude, the differences were a little more subtle, however, given the standpoint of time, there is no continuity of the history of American enslavement practices.

American Slavery, American Freedom is more valuable for the minutely researched information on early Virginian society than for the conclusions drawn. Morgan provides a comprehensive look at the driving forces of Virginian economics and society. Students of Southern history or Virginian history should make time for this informative book. 

Book Review: The Strange Career of Jim Crow

Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. A Commemorative Edition with a new afterward by William S. McFeely. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

From the distance of sixty years since its original publication, The Strange Career of Jim Crow may not ignite reader’s passions as it did on the eve of the Civil Rights Movement of the nineteen fifties. But with the hindsight that history offers, The Strange Career of Jim Crow continues to be, as Martin Luther King, Jr. described, “The Historical Bible of the Civil Rights Movement.” C. Vann Woodward forever solidified his importance in Southern History with his groundbreaking essays on Reconstruction, race, and the Jim Crow South.

History is not always transparent or easy to interpret. The decades following the Civil War are sometimes characterized as harmonious and without conflict. Woodward turned that perspective on its head with The Strange Career of Jim Crow. His thesis runs that Jim Crow laws and segregation did not occur until after the Civil War, with Reconstruction well on its way. Instead, he argues that white racial superiority manifested itself at the very beginning of the twentieth century in the form of Jim Crow laws and segregation. Jim Crow was not an inevitable outcome of the Civil War or Reconstruction. Those laws were a choice made by white Americans, Northern and Southern.

The majority of the first part of The Strange Career of Jim Crow is a much-needed history lesson on racial circumstances from the Civil War onward. Woodward asserts that segregation stemmed from slavery. Although most slaves worked in the presence of their slave owners, a large amount other daily activities took place away from the whites. Slave’s sleeping, bathing, eating, and other daily activities took place away from the whites whom they served. Despite this seclusion, there was little other segregation. Black slaves, especially house servants, were constantly in the presence of whites. Woodward also mentions the fact of slave health in relation to the nearness of whites. It was in the best interest of the slave owner to maintain their slave’s health. Slave owners would have tended to wounds and otherwise been in close proximity with their property for mere financial reasons.

In what is considered a historical revelation, Woodward suggests that Jim Crow and segregation weren’t inevitable aftershocks of the Civil War or Reconstruction, but were instead part of a bigger political picture. The South did not go from Civil War to racial segregation over night. While it took nearly one hundred years for blacks to be recognized as full citizens, many held prominent positions in society. Woodward lists name after name and number after number of black men to hold respected societal positions up to the turn of the century, including members of state senates and postmasters. Next, the author points to the relationships blacks and whites held in day-to-day life. In certain areas, blacks and whites shared train rides. They shared restaurants. They shared barbers. They shared churches and religion. Woodward is quick to point out that Jim Crow laws regarding transportation began in the North, not in the South where they would eventually flourish. However, far from blaming the North for Jim Crow laws, Woodward goes on to explain how the laws and segregation permeated the South. He points to a fateful mix of Southern politics, white supremacy and economics as the factors that ultimately led to the South’s divided public.

Despite the doom and gloom the South created for itself, Woodward also hopefully maintained that if Jim Crow and segregation could come to be accepted, then desegregation and the Civil Rights movement could change what had previously been wrought. It is this hopeful endearment that makes The Strange Career of Jim Crow such a timeless piece. In the face of all of the hate, all of the negativity, C. Vann Woodward is able to live during these tumultuous times and still have hope for a better South.

The distance between W. J. Cash and C. Vann Woodward as writers rings loud and clear (not to be confused with Cash’s “gallop of Jeb Stuart’s cavalrymen”). Cash writes The Mind of the South as a great Southern fiction novel, while Woodward in The Strange Career of Jim Crow is clearly an academic writing for the general public. When comparing the two books, it is again evident how Cash pays little to no attention to the blacks. On the other hand, Woodward focuses on the plight of the black man and the challenges he faced.

Most significantly, Cash’s broad thesis surrounds his theory of continuity: a continual link between the Old South and the New South. Woodward begins The Strange Career of Jim Crow by comparing American history to that of a stream flowing through the centuries. The stream flowed down from the seventeenth century, reaching a level plain in the eighteenth century. Woodward points out that at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Southern history took a different path, plunging over falls or swirling through rapids. “The breaks in the course of Southern history go by the names of slavery and secession, independence and defeat, emancipation and reconstruction, redemption and reunion.” Without question Southern history took a different course, not only prior to the Civil War, but in the years known as Reconstruction. Clearly, Cash saw a continuity where Woodward did not.

And finally, Cash is never able to cut to the heart of the black experience as Woodward does. Mostly given to criticizing the black man for his laziness, Cash rarely mentions blacks and never does he champion their burgeoning civil rights cause. However, Woodward is able to see the black man’s point of view in regard to slavery, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement. The Strange Career of Jim Crow is itself an advocate for Civil Rights. Perhaps, given the chance of a longer life, W. J. Cash could have had a chance to remedy some of his interpretations of history.

The Strange Career of Jim Crow details the life of one of America’s biggest embarrassment in terms of legislation. Woodward has completely mastered the pen and builds steam as the Civil Rights Movements crests. Generations of Americans have turned to The Strange Career of Jim Crow to learn about our shared history. This relatively short book still has much to teach Americans and will continue to teach even over the distance of time. 

Book Review: The Mind of the South by W. J. Cash

Cash, W. J. The Mind of the South. With a new introduction by Bertram Wyatt-Brown.          New York: Vintage Books, 1991.

The year 1941 saw a landmark book published, The Mind of the South, by W. J. Cash. Cash determined to delve into the true mindset of the South. His thesis contends that the South was divided into three minds, or “frontiers:” pre-Civil War, where the white planter class dominated all aspects of society, with little regard to Native Americans, African-Americans, or women; the Reconstruction era, where African-Americans were still not really free and elite whites continued to dominate society; and the beginning of the twentieth century where the old social order of the South charged on, with Confederate soldiers and elite whites assuming the lead roles in all parts of society, thus laying the groundwork for the Civil Rights movement. This is a shocking and almost comical book for modern readers, but remains a landmark book in early-twentieth century Southern scholarship.

From his first few lines, Cash assumes his readers are just like him: white, male, and above all else, Southern. In the introduction by Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Cash’s writing is compared to a country attorney addressing a jury of other like-minded Southern white men. The Mind of the South is a first-rate example of traditionalist historical writing. The only point-of-view defended is that of the elite Southern white man. Women are ignored except to criticize their behaviors. African-Americans are mentioned, but just as members of the lowest social order throughout the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the early twentieth century. True to the traditionalist stand-point, the Southern white man is glorified and exemplified. Given today’s distance from the time of his writing and the progression of Southern historiography, these points are easy to observe. Thankfully, we do not have to rely on Cash’s work as the final say as the true “Mind of the South.”

          Of his three frontiers, the first section of Cash’s Mind of the South, the pre-Civil War frontier, is most interesting to read. Much time is spent defending the white planter class against a descent from English aristocracy. Cash claims that most nineteenth century planters had instead started as poor whites who were somehow able to tame the wilderness and rise to prominence in early American history (pg. 7). When not defending elite whites, Cash can be counted on to excoriate poor whites. His categorizations are not only wrong, but offensive. Not every poor white man would do nothing but sit under a shade tree getting drunk (pg. 24). He considers the poor whites to be less cunning and less lucky than their counterparts. Cash seems to create a separate species when he writes about poor whites.  

          Another important aspect of the mind of Cash’s South, is the paternalism he describes elite whites as having over the poor whites. To begin, Cash’s elite Southern white man is distantly related to everyone in a thirty mile radius (pg. 26). This situational-connectedness allowed the elite man to socially preside over the poor white man. With Southern romanticism, Cash asserts that the elite white man would tend to and care for the poor white man in times of extreme need. Planting advice was given as needed to the poor man, resources were shared; a weird paternalism existed. Cash also touches on the inevitable haughtiness that would come from the elite whites. If the poor whites received scorn from the elite planter class of white men, the scorn was unnoticeable (pg. 41). Cash basically defends Cotton Snobs for their snobbery. Cash’s interpretation of this time period is reminiscent of the Margaret Mitchell’s historical novel, Gone With the Wind.

          In his second section, Cash addresses the Civil War and Reconstruction-eras as a mindset of the South. No less shocking in his generalizations and stereotypes, Cash charges on with his ideals. The Old South is depicted as a society overwhelmed by the aspect of defeat, shame, and guilt. Southerners were no longer in control of their government, and in their secret heart, Cash asserts that guilt was expressed over slavery (pg. 61).

Additionally, as a Southerner himself, Cash defends the “Lost Cause” mindset. African-Americans are depicted as pleasure-seeking rapers of white women. (What about the rape of black women?) Cash admits that the initial emergence of white violence towards former slaves was because of the defense of the white woman and the ease of which blacks were the scapegoat (pg. 117). 

          Another interesting aspect Cash uses to defend the “Lost Cause” mindset of the South, is his claim that the planter class died out and gave way to a gentlemen’s class, mostly made up of former Confederate soldiers (pg. 121). It is true that Confederate soldiers were revered in the South during the Reconstruction years and even afterward, most Confederate soldiers were themselves poor farmers, hardly wealthy landowners on the whole.

          Finally, Cash’s third frontier is what he claims to be the quiet years as the twentieth century dawned. Cash contends that the poor white farmers of the nineteenth century remained at the bottom of the social order as the lowly factory workers. The wealthy planter class morphed into the factory owners. Instead of large plantations, the elite white men were building columned homes, buying large cars, and their wives were joining country clubs, the D.A.R. and the U.D.C (pg. 239-240). Blacks remained at the very bottom of the social strata much as they had before, during, and after the Civil War.

It takes little effort to discover the W.J. Cash committed suicide shortly after publication of The Mind of the South. This fact begs the question: What part does his mental illness and physical disabilities play into his generalizations, stereotypes, and prejudices in his mind of the south? Cash was recorded as experiencing manic episodes, melancholia, and alcoholism (xxviii). Had he lived longer after the publication of The Mind of the South, Cash could have had time to heavily revise some of his key points.

Lucky for Cash, he is a good writer. When not being overly-romantic, his words are beautiful. However, this cannot take away from the fact that over one hundred year’s time has gone by and almost all of his conclusions have proven to be false. Perhaps Wyatt-Brown said it best of The Mind of the South: “It has its own special voice through which it articulates the author’s singular perception of the South.” (vii) Singular and one-dimensional, indeed.

History 5374 - Seminar in the History of the American South

1. Book Review: The Mind of the South, by W. J. Cash

2. Book Review: James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery, by Drew Gilpin Faust

3. Book Review: A Stone of Hope Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, by David L. Chappell

4. Book Review: The Strange Career of Jim Crow, by C. Vann Woodward

5. Book Review: American Slavery, American Freedom, by Edmund S. Morgan