Manners and Southern History

Civilities and Civil Rights in Mississippi

Civilities and Civil Rights in Mississippi Joseph Crespino In the 19505 and 19605, during African Americans' historic confrontation with southern white supremacy, nonviolent civil rights protests dramatized the shortcomings of any number of white southerners' political and moral commitments:their fealty to formaldeclarations ofdemocratic government; their loyalty to Americanvalues of equality and fair play; their Christian sense of brotherhood across racial lines. But the sight of well-dressed, dignified black southerners bravely asserting basic rights against vicious and violent whites also mocked the notion that most white southerners had of themselves as a peculiarly polite and well-mannered people. Civil rights struggles were, at least in part, a conflict over manners. In 1965, the novelist Walker Percyruminated on whathe described as "the extraordinary apposition ... ofkindliness andunspeakableviolence" in his home state of Mississippi, perhaps the most recalcitrant and ill-mannered southern state during these years. The problem, Percy explained, was the relative absence of any division between public and private space in Mississippi . The state was one big kinship lodge, as Percy put it. The situation gave rise to a remarkablelevel of affability among whites, who could show the most heart-warmingkindnessto people within their group, but the state lacked a developed urban setting where black and white strangers might pass each other in relativeanonymity. Publiclife in Mississippiwas like one big front porch, Percy argued, and whites dictated what amounted to the house rules. Thus,JamesMeredith's attempt to enter the UniversityofMississippi in 1962, far from an effort to put into action the lawof the land, was for white Mississippians a brazen and thankless assault on the status quo, as though Meredith had employed federal thugs to push his way into their 114 Joseph Crespino 115 very living room. This, as much as anything, was the source of the outrage and violence among whites in Mississippi.1 Yet even in Mississippi, white leaders knew that bad manners were bad politics. Bad manners alienated allies in the black community. They also did not play well nationally. An important part of the civil rights fight involved public relations, controlling the images of racial confrontation, explaining to other Americanswhy southern segregationwasreasonable, good, and proper. Howelse to explain MississippiGovernor Ross Barnett's bizarre comment concluding his infamousstand in the schoolhouse door, blocking James Meredith from registering at Ole Miss? After reading a proclamation in which he formallydenied Meredith enrollment, Barnett announced that his conscience was clear, and handed over the proclamation to Meredith. John Doar, the Justice Department lawyer accompanying Meredith,asked Barnett a final time if he refused to let Meredith go through the door. "Yes sir," Barnett responded. "I do so politely."2 Barnett's comment suggests that there wasan important relationship between the manners and the political power of white southerners. This essay explores that relationship and its implications for how we understand the nature of political change in the civil rights era. Mannerswerealways intimately tied up with the operation ofJim Crow.The elaborate systemof segregation laws and racialpractices had developed as a way of definingappropriate behavior in public spaces shared by white and black southerners. But by the civil rights era, black southerners felt sufficiently empowered to abandon the games of racial etiquette that Jim Crow had dictated, and white southerners realized that new demands of national and international politics cast the traditional racial mores of the region in a harsh new light. In this context, the good manners of white southerners amounted to very little. Their civility was not the subtle tool by which they maintained social and political power. Instead, it was a last-ditch effort to stave off a new system of politics, one in which substance would be much more important than manners. Paternalism and Civility in Greenville and Greensboro Walker Percy wrote his reflection on manners and southern politics during the centennial anniversary of the Civil War, when white racism and unpunished political violence in Mississippiwere subjects of national and 116 Civilities and Civil Rights in Mississippi international concern. Percy wondered what had happened to his native Mississippi. The orphaned Percy had spent his formative years in Greenville , Mississippi, in the household of his "Uncle Will," the poet and writer William Alexander Percy who was actually Walker Percy's second cousin. Like many white southern boys, Percy had been reared on the legendary bravery of Mississippi Confederates during Pickett's Charge towards Cemetery Ridge in July 1863. SurelyGettysburg wasan honorable fight, Percyreasoned ; the Mississippians...