Black, White, and Southern: Race Relations and Southern Culture, 1940 to the Present

Preface

Preface I had just finished giving my students a mental walking tour of Uptown (as downtown is called in this upbeat city) Charlotte some time in the 1950s. Wepretended we were black. We packed a picnic lunch because no restaurants or lunch counters would serve us, and we boarded the bus and took a seat in the rear. Ifadepartment store was on our Uptown agenda, there were many items we could purchase, but few we could try on. Ifwe were fortunate, the salesperson would serve us in turn; ifnot, we would wait until the white people received assistance whether they came in after us or not. The salesperson obviously had difficulty with names becauseshe continued to call us "Auntie"or "Boy" or "Uncle," though some might venturea "Mister" or "Miss."If we had business in a public building—thecounty courthouse, for example —we would ride to our floor in an elevatormarked Colored,go to the rest room with the same designation, and, if we were thirsty, drink from the separate water fountain. Ifwe brought childrenwith us, they could likely tell, even if they couldn't read, which facilities were "colored" and which were "white." We would hope that theywould not ask any questions, at least not until we got home. Weadults may have long since grown accustomed to the differences and scarcelynoticed any, or we may have felt that familiarpangofhumiliation or rage or frustration. As we left the courthouse, a well-dressed white man coming up the steps smiled at our young son and said, "Hey there, fellow, how ya' doin?" Charlotte was a friendly place. The bell rang, and the students began to disperse. One student came up to me with a wry grin on her face and askedif I had put it on a little thick with that reference to separate water fountains. Iassured her that such customs existed in our not-too-distant past. Her reply was, "Wow! That's weird!" Indeed it was. And it dawnedon me that it must have seemedweird to her colleagues as well. Most were not yet born when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil RightsAct into law in July, 1964. Almost all of my students, particularly those who were raised in the South, had attended integrated schools. "White" and "colored" for them were laundering instructions. xiii xiv Preface In some ways, this lack of knowing is good. White supremacy exacted a terrific toll on white and black southerners and uponthe South. It was a reality that could find no logical support in the region's culture—its history and its religion in particular—yet past, place, and religion had been marshaled to serve this construct. Southern writer William Price Fox tells the story of an elderly pair ofsisters in Charleston , aristocrats to the core, but of seriously reduced financial circumstances . In their younger days of better means, they had fled the city's oven summers for Paris. Now, every summer night they steal quietly from their shuttered home to take their constitutional on the Battery. One night, a child recognizes them and is about to blurt out a "hello" when her mother pulls her short and says, "No, dear, we don't speak to them in the summertime. They're still in Paris." Appearances are important in the South, andwhite southernershave a great capacity for ignoringunpleasant things. Their capacityforignorance has served them well, because defeat, ostracism, occupation, poverty, and illiteracy would be more than sufficient to conquer a lesser people. Butat some point it is no longer possible to pretend; the thing being avoided may make its presence known in a very decided manner, or the burden of trying to square values and culture with ignorance becomes too great to bear. Ifthe sisters invite you over for tea one summer afternoon or if your child does finally accost them, the fiction may be blown. My students need no longer maintain the fiction of white supremacy . That is a strength, but ignorance ofits existence can also becomea serious weakness. In the wake of racial violence on campuses across the nation during 1987, Washington Post columnist Jonathan Yardley asked, "Can it really be true that only a decade and a half after the climax of the civil rights movement, American college students are widely ignorant of the circumstances in which it beganand the forms it brought about?" Ifthat is so, then, according to Yardley,it is anotion that "is as dangerous as it is preposterous, for in essence it asserts that history...