The Making of a Racist: A Southerner Reflects on Family, History, and the Slave Trade by Charles B. Dew (review)

Historian Charles B. Dew invites readers to join his personal journey, from his beginning as "A Confederate Youth" in St. Petersburg, Florida, in chapter 1 to breaking free from racism as a distinguished scholar exposing the grim reality of slavery. Combining autobiography and archival research, The Making of a Racist: A Southerner Reflects on Family, History, and the Slave Trade will persuade students in both secondary schools and colleges to think more critically about the myth that the Confederacy fought for honor and states' rights rather than for slavery. Parents may also learn to be careful about what they say and read to their children because Dew learned racism from both parents. His mother, Amy Meek Dew, called Dear Dew, was "convinced that segregation was 'best for both races'" (p. 45). In chapter 2, "The Making of a Racist," Dew describes such books as Elvira Garner's Ezekiel (1937), an illustrated account of "'a lil' cullerd boy,'" and Harry Stillwell Edwards's Eneas Africanus (1920), which narrated in dialect the story of "'Sambo,' or the 'faithful darkie'" (pp. 33, 47).

His lawyer father, Jack Carlos Dew, wanted Charles Dew and his brother John Carlos Dew, graduates of Woodberry Forest School in Virginia, to attend Williams College, "a first-rate teaching college" (p. 28). "The Unmaking of a Racist," chapter 3, begins at Williams. Professor Robert L. Scott's "life-changing seminar on the history of the Old South" forced Dew to reject bigotry "for the evil that it truly is" (p. 64). A second defining experience occurred when Illinois Browning Culver, the family maid, whom Dew drove home after work, asked, "Charles, why do the grown-ups put so much hate in the children?" (p. 73). He has dedicated his book to her.

Mentored by C. Vann Woodward at Johns Hopkins University, Dew concentrated his research on slave ironworkers, slave owning, and slave trading. "The Document" in chapter 4 was the all-important August 2, 1860, circular by Richmond, Virginia, auctioneers Betts and Gregory that graded slaves by "categories—'Extra,' 'No. 1,' 'Second rate or Ordinary'" (p. 98). Children, rated by height, could be sold away from their parents. Women with a first child were valued for their childbearing abilities. Because selling slaves to the Deep South was so profitable, Dew's ancestor Thomas Roderick Dew observed in 1832, "'Virginia is in fact a negro raising state for other states,'" producing "'enough for her own supply and six thousand for sale'" (pp. 101, 102). In chapters 5 and 6, "The Correspondence, Part I" and "The Correspondence, Part II," Dew studies letters from dealers to R. H. Dickinson and Brother, leading Richmond slave traders. Slaves were "'consols,'" wrote Frederick Law Olmsted, or "'consolidated annuities,'" bought and sold to discharge debts of white owners (p. 126). "The Market," chapter 7, produced great profits. More than a million slaves were transported from the Atlantic coast into the South's interior agricultural regions between 1790 and 1861. The value of all slaves in 1860 totaled about $4 billion, a figure cited in Mississippi's secession declaration. Between 1860 and 1861, the "out-of-control bubble" collapsed (p. 149).

Dew's conclusion does not spare his ancestors, who "endorsed" slavery, secession, and civil war, or their descendants, who supported racial segregation and even lynching (p. 160). Students in his history of the Old South course were evenly divided over whether white southerners felt "'guilt over slavery'" (p. 160). Profit and greed overwhelmed guilt, argues Dew. White southerners must still free themselves from racism and cease putting "'hate in the children'" (p. 167).