Portrait of a Scientific Racist: Alfred Holt Stone of Mississippi

3 NO TWILIGHT ZONE

37 1. A. H. Stone, “Some Recollections,” chap. 2, p. 20. 2. W. W. Stone, “Some Post-War Recollections,” 231 (originally read before the Washington County Historical Association in 1912 and 1913), and H. T. Ireys, “Autobiography,” 1 (originally read before the Washington County Historical Association in 1910), both in respective subject files at MDAH and later published in William D. McCain and Charlotte Capers , eds., Memoirs of Henry Tillinghast Ireys: Papers of the Washington County Historical Society, 1910–1915 (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1954), 231–89 and 6–36, respectively. 3. A. H. Stone, “Some Recollections,” chap. 1, p. 1. Stone referred to the incident publicly in a speech to the Jackson Lions Club on May 30, 1947 (typescript, 1947, MDAH), 2. 3 NO TWILIGHT ZONE The first glimpse we have of Alfred Holt Stone’s early life comes from the pages of an autobiographical sketch he wrote on a train in 1938 while traveling home after a meeting with the National Association of Tax Administrators in New York.1 He was sixty-seven years old at the time, and recalling early years in the Mississippi Delta was customary for the region’s prominent citizens. Stone’s father had recorded his recollections twenty-five years before , and Stone’s father-in-law two years before that.2 Stone began his memories with the account of an incident that still shone brightly in his mind’s eye. His recollection of this incident is important, not only because it sheds light on a memorable event in a significant life, but also because it prefigures a paradox that complicates our understanding of Stone’s thinking when he assembled his huge collection of publications dealing with “the Negro and cognate subjects.” There is no question that Stone thought of the incident as a metaphor for his later work on the race problem. “I suppose that each of us has some earliest recollection, some incident or event which is so emphasized by time or circumstance as to tie his subsequent life to its beginnings,” Stone recalled.3 “Doubtless these first impressions are sometimes more imagination than PORTRAIT OF A SCIENTIFIC RACIST 38 4. Ibid. 5. “Census Data for the Year 1870,” fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/censusbin/census/cen .pl?year=870. 6. Nicholas Lemann, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006), 55–61; Vernon Lane Wharton, The Negro in Mississippi, 1865–1890 (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 176. Ames defeated Alcorn by a vote of 69,870 (58 percent) to 50,490 (42 percent). memory. Long association or frequent repetition has clothed them with the attributes of life for those to whom they become a cherished possession. But there is no border line of doubt, no twilight zone, in my own case,” Stone added. “If every incident of my life were as vivid and as real as this, I would have no misgivings as to the safety or significance of the joint adventure upon which you and I, as passenger and pilot, are presently about to embark.”4 The incident Stone was referring to occurred in the fall of 1876 when he was six years old. As it turned out, 1876 was an important year in Mississippi ’s history. Seven years earlier, African Americans had gained the right to vote when the state’s constitution, framed during the early days of Reconstruction , was ratified. With blacks outnumbering white Mississippians 54 percent to 46 percent, black voters and their white allies in the Republican Party had instantly become a political power to be reckoned with.5 As could be expected, Democrats were not willing to accept their status as a minority party lying down and began to fight back. Initially, their opposition proceeded along legal paths, such as fielding strong candidates and courting black voters. But this strategy failed, and the statewide election of 1873 saw a rejection of the Democratic Party’s conservative platform when black Mississippians and white Republicans captured both houses of the legislature. In addition, a former Union general from Maine, Adelbert Ames, defeated a native Mississippian, James L. Alcorn, in the race for governor. Ames’s victory was particularly important because, under the provisions of the state’s Reconstruction constitution, the governor had the authority to appoint judges, and all three branches of the state government were now firmly in Republican hands.6 At this point, racial attitudes in the conservative white...