Professor Harold Forsythe, of Fairfield University, requests
that I forward this to the list. His university, for
whatever technical reason, won't permit him to post directly.
Warm regards,
Kevin
> To Kevin and All,
>
> Kevin it is good to read you in this debate.
Kevin you will remember you and I met first in Richmond back
in 1992 when we were both researching our doctoral
dissertations.
>
> A simple answer to the question about the racial
values of southern politicians today as compared to say the
1950s, is to look at those who are in the national spotlight
today. We can say that Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are
each unique, but it is important to remember that they were
(former) Confederate State governors before they became
President. Each has talked openly and authoritatively about
race; Carter more comprehensively and honestly than
Clinton. Indeed, listening to Jimmy Carter, particularly
post-Presidential, is like listening to the late Hubert
Humphrey, but with a southern accent and a deeper, more
probing (engineer-like) mastery of the details.
> In fact, for the last 25 years, to my mind, only
southern politicians have spoken honestly about race: on
both sides of the issue. A leader as renowned as Ronald
Reagan could say with a straight face that he could remember
a time when this country didn't have a racial problem. (To
which the San Francisco wit, Mort Saul, said "Gosh, the man
must be four hundred years old!)
> Strom Thurmond, who shifted from strong
segregationist to mild non-segregationist in a long career,
wouldn't have gotten away with saying anything so
rediculous.
> Many southern Republicans address race with more
care and consideration than do those from say the Mountain
West. Name Trent Lott and I reply with Thad Cochrane. It
is my guess that Cochrane is incapable to the gaff that
wrecked Lott's career as Republican Senate leader. Ditto
John Warner, Bill Frist, and Kay Hutchison. Partly, this is
just a matter of maturity and length of time spent in the
public eye, perhaps along with considerable higher
education. But there is also the matter than running for
office in the South now, as compared to 1950, means shaking
the hands of many black women and men and asking for their
votes, even if you are a Republican. Most people's
personalities are not so complex that they can do this day
after day, and then the minute they are behind closed doors,
start telling "N*****" jokes to the good ole boys.
> (Please note that the typical woman or man in public
life is not as complex as was Richard Nixon.) Such an
internal contradiction would inevitably leak out at the most
inopportune moment, as it apparently did to the Texas
Agriculture Commissioner (fact?) back in the late-1970s in a
speech about Booker T. Washington.
> And where are the 1950s southern "moderates" in
national, state, and local southern politics now? They are
generally African-Americans!! The era of the "Cape
franchise" in southern politics is over. Blacks represent
blacks in districts at every level of government. The
gerrymandering of representative districts in the South has
not only produced black districts but safely white ones,
too. And these districts (and in some cases whole states)
have produced an array of white southern politicians: some
in the "traditional" mode, some "New Right" Republicans
(i.e. Tom DeLay), some remarkably "progressive," even on
matters of race. The name that comes to mind just this
moment in John Edwards, senior Senator from North Carolina.
Were he anything like the southern Senators that Adlai
Stevenson was compelled to choose as running mates in the
1950s (and Senators Sparkman and Kefaver were politicans of
considerable ability), Edwards would never have been
considered for national leadership by the Democrats.
> I don't doubt that racial prejudice abides,
certainly here in New England, and probably in the South as
well. But as a political historian I am bound to tell you
that the U.S. South has changed radically since 1950-1955,
and those changes are reflected in its political
leadership. It is the complexity and nuanced nature of
those changes that is fascinating.
> One other thing and then I will close. A major
change that has taken place within the South is the rise of
a critical intellectual class, chiefly harbored in southern
institutions--universities, newspapers, etc.--that
mercilessly critiques the foibles of the leadership class in
a way that was unthinkable in the 1950s. For instance, in
1955 to be safe Molly Ivans would have to have written from
Madison, Wisconsin. The white South now has an independent
and critical conscience, that isn't forced into exile or
silenced. All southerners get to read and hear several
sides of an issue, whereas those dissident voices had been
stiffled if not silenced generally since the "long coup" of
1877-1898. It is this latter phenomenon that has
constituted or reconstituted the American South as a whole
society.
>
> Harold S. Forsythe
> History & Black Studies
> Fairfield University
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Fri 3/12/2004 9:25 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Cc:
> Subject: Re: VA-HIST Digest - 10 Mar 2004 to
11 Mar 2004 (#2004-33)
>
>
>
> Paul Finkelman argues that there is still
substantial racism
> in the South today. He cites a range of
evidence to support
> this claim--statements by Senator Lott,
intimidation of
> black voters in Florida. He is correct, it
seems to me.
>
> OK. Fair enough. Let's probe that a bit,
though.
>
> Has there been any meaningful change in the
cultural values
> of mainstream southern whites in the last 50
years with
> regard to race?
>
> Douglas Smith wrote a superb short biography
of Armestead
> Boothe, a moderate Virginia state senator in
the 1950s and
> 1960s. Smith's essay originally appeared in
the VHMB--it
> has been republished twice to my knoweldge,
once by Hershey
> and Lassiter in the MODERATES DILEMMA, and
once by Hardwick
> and Hofstra in VIRGINIA RECONSIDERED. As
Smith makes clear,
> Boothe--a true moderate, well "ahead" of
most politicians of
> his generation--was also a true racist,
committed to the
> notion that as a group, blacks were inferior
to whites.
>
> Are moderate Southern politicians today,
relatively
> speaking, comparable in their racial values
to those of
> 1950s moderates like Boothe? Has the public
conversation
> about race in the South remained static, or
have the values
> and assumptions underpinning the
conversation changed?
>
> I am most interested to hear how folk
respond to these
> questions.
>
> Warm regards,
> Kevin
>
> Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
> Department of History
> James Madison University
>
> To subscribe, change options, or
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>
>
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University
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