WVILLIAM ALEXANDER PERCY-PLANTER, WRITER, AND (AS HE SUP-posed) racial liberal and" friend of the Negro"-was concerned. As he finished his autobiographical Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son, Percy fretted over the increasingly acrimonious state of race relations in the South. Published in 1941, just before the southern legal and cultural edifice of racial segregation and official white supremacy began to dissolve under the ideological strain of the Second World War, Lanterns on the Levee included" A Note on Racial Relations" in which Percy worried about the erosion of black manners. Referring to white violence, Percy" noted that the Negro is losing his most valuable weapon of defense-his good manners." He continued:" When a Negro now speaks of a'man'he means a Negro; when he speaks of a'lady'he means a Negress; when he speaks of a'woman'he means a white woman. Such manners are not only bad, they are not safe, and the frame of mind that breeds them is not safe. Covert inso-lence is not safe for anybody, anywhere, at any time." 1 Identifying and interpreting" covert insolence" among the subjugated has become something of a cottage industry in the academy since