Once Upon A Time Next Door

By Rod Dreher • February 4, 2013, 7:55 AM

A friend here in my town sent me a 1964 Ebony magazine article about some black citizens registering to vote at the courthouse down the street from me — the first black folks to register to vote here in 61 years. It’s breathtaking to think of the courage of those men, preachers and sweet potato farmers. It’s shocking and humiliating to think that this happened right here, in this peaceful community, only three years before I was born. But it did. Excerpt:

The bus pulled up in front of the St. Francisville courthouse. About 100 whites milled around in front of the building. … “Look at ‘em over there like a bunch of buzzards,” shouted one white. “Look like coons,” taunted another. “Are those your good niggers?” shouted still another white man. Curses and racial epithets disturbed the morning air.

Some of the men succeeded in passing a “literacy test,” and, with Justice Department officials present, were registered to vote. More:

Rev. Carter signed a vote registration book and received a receipt. As he left the courthouse, a photographer snapped him. “Take his picture,” shouted a member of the white mob. “It may be the last one he takes.”

That night, a group of whites paid a visit to one of the black tenant farmers who had registered to vote that day. One struck him with the butt of a gun and took the farmer’s own weapon from him. They made the black man plead for his life, fired a gun between his legs, and threatened to kill his wife and their 10 children.

If you were reading this blog last fall, when I was walking the streets of Paris, you’ll remember how jarring I found it that so much blood and hatred and violence spilled during the Revolution onto streets that are now so beautiful and serene. After reading this article, I think the same thing, driving around our lovely parish, which has changed so much for the better, thanks in large part to the bravery of men like Rev. Carter and those tenant farmers, who had had enough.

Posted in Louisiana, The South. Tagged civil rights, St. Francisville, voting rights.

39 Responses to Once Upon A Time Next Door

Sam M says:

February 4, 2013 at 8:43 am

This is something that always shocks me, the fact that this sort of thing was so RECENT.

It also drives my constant harping about how careful you need to be when talking about cultural decline, and how hard it is to be a parent these days. Yeah, it’s hard. But it’s not 1964 hard. Not even close.

“Take his picture,” shouted a member of the white mob. “It may be the last one he takes.”

You want coarse? That’s coarse.

How do you ditch the bad and keep the good? I am not sure it’s possible. Ditching the bad requires a certain disdain for gatekeepers and for tradition. Once you start to actually question such things, it’s hard to stop.

A while back you used the phrase “bind and instruct.” Binding can be good. It can also be horrible. And it seems to me that the social glue you like and the social shackles you disdain are often the same binding.

That’s the challenge in everything. In my area, how do we combine hard work and blue-collar jobs with an ethic of conservation?

Dunno.
JohnE_o says:

February 4, 2013 at 9:15 am

Injustices don’t stop until people demand justice.
Douglas C. says:

February 4, 2013 at 9:36 am

“This is something that always shocks me, the fact that this sort of thing was so RECENT.”

Indeed. I’d say even to call the post “Once Upon a Time … ” has the unfortunate effect of attempting to put additional rhetorical distance between our time and the 60s. But don’t we always want to draw hard lines between our “better times” and earlier “times of trouble”?

[Note from Rod: I used the "Once Upon A Time" construction ironically, as a comment on how this stuff happened just yesterday, but it seems like it happened a thousand years ago. It really does. I was talking to an older adult, a lifelong resident of the parish, about all this over the weekend, and he told me that very few kids around here today -- black and white both -- know what happened. I was born three years after the incident written about in that Ebony article, went to an integrated school, with black and white teachers, and I had absolutely no idea it happened. Another older white person with whom I spoke about it said that for whatever reason, nobody wants to talk about it. Some local people a few years ago started an African-American oral history project to document as much of this as they could, but there was little participation from the black community, and most of those who took part in pushing for it were white. I don't know why this is. I suspect part of it is simply a desire by everyone to live in racial peace now, even at the cost of not talking about recent history. But I really don't know. The point is, you mustn't believe that sending all of this down the memory hole is a project of older white people alone. This stuff is really complicated. -- RD]
Mr. Pickwick says:

February 4, 2013 at 9:39 am

I abandoned liberalism several years ago, and ever since have been intrigued by crunchy/traditionalist conservatism. If there were more such conservatives who published pieces like this, I might actually join the crunchy/traddy con fold. You, Rod, have been very encouraging in this respect. But whenever I see a documentary on the Freedom Riders or read a news article such as the Ebony piece you mention, I get uncomfortable again with conservatism in general.

Both liberalism and conservatism have skeletons in the closet. And at least for now, those skeletons are keeping me from embracing either ideology.

Even so, good on ya, Rod. A heartfelt and thought-provoking post.
Sam M says:

February 4, 2013 at 9:55 am

Rod,

I am interested in you thoughts on being back as an adult. Now that I am here, I notice that I am very much more in touch with the parents of my friends growing up. This is especially true at work, where some of these parents are now my collegues. In a sense, this makes me a little “older” and binds me to their experiences as well.

What I mean is, now you are an adult and interact with people who did live through these things, who do remember them first hand. I wonder if that offers new perspective. It might also explain some of the reluctance to talk about such things: Some of these parents were the people on the courthouse steps.

You are correct: it’s interesting that it’s the white people more eager to talk about it. Huh.
Shawn says:

February 4, 2013 at 9:56 am

This is one of the themes of Taylor Branch’s history of the King years, especially the second half of volume II and the first half of volume III. Every section I’d brace myself for the appalling violence to come, and every section I’d be shocked all over. The almost insane courage of the locals and the young civil rights workers is unimaginable.

Fortunately, Branch is releasing an abridged version of the work.
Nicholas Needlefoot says:

February 4, 2013 at 10:14 am

On the one had, stories like this make me annoyed at left-leaning folks when they imply that this country hasn’t made any progress (or only minimal progress) on racial issues.

But it also disproves some rightward-leaning people who make “They just need to get over it” assertions. This stuff is well within the living memories of people.

I live in the Northeast. Our history is a bit different, but there are jobs that my grandparents had that that became the economic foundation for my family being “middle class”. Yet these jobs, at that time, were completely off-limits to non-whites.
Douglas C. says:

February 4, 2013 at 10:29 am

“The point is, you mustn’t believe that sending all of this down the memory hole is a project of older white people alone. This stuff is really complicated.”

I suppose I do wonder though how much “all of this” is indeed being sent “down the memory hole”. We’re talking about events during the formative years of the Boomers. As you’ve so often correctly noted, there are all kinds of binds on what can be expressed in the public square. But these events, these magazine stories, are still held clearly in mind by, say, the adults of today who were reading Ebony in 1964. My mother-in-law certainly hasn’t forgotten, and it still influences her thinking as much as the material I was reading in my teens influences mine. I think the stories of the civil rights era are being maintained, at least orally, within black communities. Maybe St. Francisville is a unique story, but my first guess would be that what happened in 1964, for example, is still occasionally talked about quietly behind closed doors by your black fellow St. Francisville citizens.

Just like mothers I’m sure still tell their daughters about the kinds of horrible wigs that were advertised in Ebony back in the 1960s. Talk about causes worth celebrating over the past few decades: the emergence of the black natural hair care movement, and the increasing marginalization of wigs and harsh chemical hair straighteners.
Thomas Andrews says:

February 4, 2013 at 10:47 am

Yes, we’ve come a long way since then.
I’m glad you raised this very important point.

Of course, it is worth noting that the attempts at voter disenfranchisement (I won’t mention by which party) this past election and the comments by a Pennsylvania politician of a certain non-liberal persuasion (I won’t mention which side of the culture wars he stands on) as to how this disenfranchisement would give the election to his party do raise the question as to just how far we really have come.

I guess we’ll see after the Supreme Court throws out the voter protections put in place for black people this spring.

(Not, of course, that we liberals haven’t pandered to blacks to get their votes. Not us, no, of course not.)
Siarlys Jenkins says:

February 4, 2013 at 10:50 am

There are many reasons Americans of African descent wouldn’t be anxious to talk about it. Some years ago, I was tutoring the children of two friends during the summer, just to keep up their reading and math skills. My approach to reading began with dumping a pile of books on the table, and telling each child to find something they wanted to read about. (Its easier to work on mastering skills if there is something that grabs their interest).

One young man looked over a book called “Jubilee,” a very good, detailed, semi-biographical novel taking place before and after the Civil War. He announced fiercely “I’m not reading any books about slavery.” It was a moment of epiphany, that is, if what flashed through my mind is what was flashing through his mind.

This child was four generations removed from Jim Crow, much less slavery. The point of the Civil Rights movement is that he should be able to be his own unique self, first and foremost, not be constantly characterized as a “black” boy / man. No doubt his well-intentioned teachers had been thrilled to teach about slavery and Jim Crow in a way that certainly didn’t appear in my Eighth Grade history text book. But they obviously conveyed an assumption “you’re black, this will be of special interest to you.” He wasn’t having it, and there is no reason he should either.

(Many people, assumptions, gestures, events, DO reinforce the notion “like it or not, people will see you as black before they see YOU as a unique individual,” which is why there are still plenty of sensitive attitudes among “black” people about race, that “white” people are slow to grasp. But its not mandatory to go along with it.)

“White” people who were not directly involved can afford to feel benevolent about documenting and remembering history. “White” people who (or whose immediate ancestors) WERE perpetrators of the atrocities described either carry a grudge, or want to forget it all. “Black” people on the one hand, don’t want to rub wounds raw that are starting to heal, it that would upset the relative peace and partial dignity they have managed to gain. Further, who wants to revel in the fact that your ancestors, or people who look like you, just because they did look like you, were subjugated, humiliated, and beaten at will?

BUT, Rev. Carter and the nameless “black” tenant farmers were real heroes, and should be remembered as such. How to tell the story to get just the right balance takes some careful thought and persistent work. One important point is not to shove it in people’s faces, just make the information available. Another is to focus on individuals, and their motives, which certainly featured racial animosity, but not to talk about a “white race” and a “black race” marching in lockstep. Race, however many people it motivated, has always been a manipulative tool for demagogues, not an objective condition.
Matt in TX says:

February 4, 2013 at 10:56 am

They made the black man plead for his life, fired a gun between his legs, and threatened to kill his wife and their 10 children.

So he was married, and in the home with his children, and he and his wife were reproducing at well above the replacement rate. You can’t stop where you did, Mr. Dreher! You’ve got to point out the ironies, and the Eternal Verities! Look the world in the face!

After reading this article, I think the same thing, driving around our lovely parish, which has changed so much for the better,

Your parish might’ve. But let’s not be sentimental–that’s liberal. Time to talk about Detroit, St. Louis, New Orleans, etc., and 70%+ black children born out of wedlock.
SDS says:

February 4, 2013 at 11:02 am

As libertarian as I have become in my “old age”(55)….I still have to make a comment when my in-laws (~90) long for the “good old days”….Which I have to remind; was not that good for everybody…. even in the NE here…..
M_Young says:

February 4, 2013 at 11:17 am

“Talk about causes worth celebrating over the past few decades: the emergence of the black natural hair care movement, and the increasing marginalization of wigs and harsh chemical hair straighteners.”

LOL. Obviously you didn’t watch the Superbowl halftime show. (I was (un?)fortunate enough to have seen about a minute of it in passing and was fascinated by a henna-ed ‘woman of color’ repeatedly whipping front row fanboys with her long, flowing, artificially colored and textured locks).

For comparison, here is Beyoncewith a natural ‘doo’ (except for color, I suspect).
Duncan in London says:

February 4, 2013 at 11:26 am

I remember you writing the post about Paris at the time, saying that the events sounded so primal and yet were so recent, and I think I commented on the post saying the description of the French Revolutionary event sounding a lot like a lynching. I worried at the time about sounding like a sanctimonious Brit – I don’t think you responded – but I’m glad you recognise the parallels. Public violence has only just been consigned to the history books in most of our countries.

In a related point (and again the smug Brit raises his head, I’m sorry) I was proud but mildly surprised to read the following entry in Wikipedia after seeing Lincoln, about Frederick Douglass’s experience (or rather lack thereof) of racism in Britain and Ireland over a hundred years before the 1964 events you describe:

I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as his slave, or offer me an insult. I employ a cab—I am seated beside white people—I reach the hotel—I enter the same door—I am shown into the same parlour—I dine at the same table—and no one is offended… I find myself regarded and treated at every turn with the kindness and deference paid to white people.

Again, this is not to be smug – we Brits basically invented the whole dang Atlantic slave trade – but merely to show that racism and the social control that requires it is not inevitable, nor is lack of racism the preserve of modern liberal societies. Your quote teaches us something because of its closeness to us (and particularly you). The Douglass quote is fascinating because of its distance.
Elizabeth Anne says:

February 4, 2013 at 11:30 am

“I suspect part of it is simply a desire by everyone to live in racial peace now, even at the cost of not talking about recent history.”

I think that’s one possible answer.
I think it’s also possible that there’s still a lot of fear out there.
M_Young says:

February 4, 2013 at 11:48 am

My, and my family’s, experiences are a bit different. You see, as a young couple my parents lived near South LA and area that a few years before I was born was effectively ethnically cleansed of whites and white businesses by black rioting. My parents packed up my older siblings and headed 20 miles down the road. There were among many whites to do so — nice, inner suburbs like Inglewood that had solid white majorities in 1960 where virtually all black by the mid 1970s.

The move cost my father about an hour a day for every single day of his working life (a thirty minute commute versus a ten minute commute). It cost in terms of gasoline and auto maintenance. But we were safer.

Still, these things weren’t talked about in my household. I held conventional views of race etc. We should be colorblind, Southrons were ignorant rednecks who were just hateful, etc. Even when I was 14, and my next door neighbor was robbed in his home — at gunpoint, in front of his young children — by two of his black employees, I remember my first thought being that it was too bad the kids (very young) would have a bad impression of black people.

It took the second LA Riots my going to ex-Yugoslavia to learn what a powerful thing ethnicity really is. And now I look at the situation white southerners were in — about to be dominated in places like West Feliciana by another ethnic group — and being amazed at how remarkably restrained (in global context) they were. The SPLC lists 36 ‘Civil Rights’ martyrs. Increase that 100 fold, and it will not equal the amount of black on white murders since the ‘Civil Rights’ era.
tofudog says:

February 4, 2013 at 11:56 am

I imagine the blacks did not want to participate in the African American Oral History project b/c they were unwilling to believe that even now it would not come back to haunt them. Maybe it’s not a complete parallel, but it makes me think of “Riding the Iron Rooster” by Paul Theroux. He went to China years after the Cultural Revolution expressly to interview survivors. No one would speak to him. They were too traumatized.
J says:

February 4, 2013 at 12:17 pm

The social and political world of before 1968 is vanishing fast now. There’s very little living memory remaining of living through the Great Depression or fighting of WW2 in 2013. The Korean war is soon to fade out also.

All that is fun to think about now, and easy to be sentimental about, and fascinates a certain kind of imagination precisely because it’s not longer real. Certainly not as painful and dismal and limiting and threatening as it was to the people who had to live it.
Floridan says:

February 4, 2013 at 12:18 pm

“He went to China years after the Cultural Revolution expressly to interview survivors. No one would speak to him. They were too traumatized.”

I was in China a couple years ago, and I found that still to be the case.
Douglas C. says:

February 4, 2013 at 12:20 pm

“LOL. Obviously you didn’t watch the Superbowl halftime show.”

I didn’t watch. Certainly, there’s still a lot of pressure on successful black women to “look white”, both by many other black women and men, as well as the broader American media. Lighter skinned black actresses certainly seem to meet with more success than darker skinned ones, and extreme hair modification is still common. But there’s definitely been movement on the surprisingly powerful, for black women, question of hair and hair care. For example, dreadlocks are no longer considered automatically inappropriate, for the most part, in professional settings.

“The move cost my father about an hour a day for every single day of his working life (a thirty minute commute versus a ten minute commute). It cost in terms of gasoline and auto maintenance. But we were safer.”

Without a doubt white families have suffered from the upheavals connected with the movement patterns of people due to racial issues in the 20th century, and I wouldn’t want to downplay the significance of your story and all those like it. But I can’t help but think of the exponentially greater impact on black families in general, so many of whom migrated away from the South entirely, not just up the road, in order to be “safer”. How much is the economic impact of that mass movement of blacks to Northern cities still being felt?
John Murray says:

February 4, 2013 at 12:46 pm

One imporant and overlooked aspect of the Civil Rights Movement is how broad it was. The level of violence used by white bigots ranged from implied threats to deadly. As a result, the level of courage and restraint required on the part of activists was, as Shawn noted above, insanely rigorous. And yet, so many people, all through the South, stood up to attend schools (even the little kids had that courage), sit at lunch counters, register to vote. To me, courage that widespread is just awesome.

As much as I dislike the emphasis on race-class-gender in academic history, it’s hard to imagine a broader and more effective movement than the CRM in the 20c US. Any time you see the claim to “grassroots” support that usually means driven by educated white elites. But the CRM was the real thing.
sdb says:

February 4, 2013 at 12:46 pm

Recognizing this, I don’t understand some of the opposition to various forms of affirmative action. I mean, I get why someone might be opposed to given AA program because she doesn’t think it is effective (and there is some data that suggests that some forms of affirmative action are not helpful). But this isn’t the principle argument I hear. Rather, it is more something along the lines of, my kid shouldn’t lose his slot at a university to let in a less qualified black kid. The problem with this criticism of AA is that it overestimates our ability to determine what qualifies a person for admission to a university (all of our metrics show a huge amount of scatter when it comes to predicting GPA within majors, graduation rates, etc… even if the mean GPA correlates quite well with various metrics) and underestimates the barriers that black americans have to overcome to excel academically.

This second issue is particularly relevant – the fatalism many decry among african americans didn’t come from nowhere. Watching your dad be humiliated for trying to vote, knowing the state has the deck stacked against you , etc… has a lot of lingering effects that don’t just vanish when the law changes. I don’t see how one can respond by saying “that was then, this is now”. It just doesn’t work like that for a lot of people.

I don’t know what we should do in particular – clearly a lot of the programs we’ve put in place have not been as successful as one might hope. On the other hand, given our history, I don’t see why we need to be colorblind when it comes to social programs as a matter of principle.
Gromitt Gunn says:

February 4, 2013 at 1:33 pm

I shall echo others that it does not surprise me that black folks who grew up under Jim Crow would not trust well-meaning white folks who grew up under Jim Crow. After all, 50 years isn’t that long when you’re talking about memories. I’m certain that many of the people in your parish that are in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s have very specific memories of that time that are accompanied by negative thoughts and emotions.

As you noted in a later comment, Rod, had you been slightly older, you may well have been one of the men in the crowd watching Rev. Carter. And even if you weren’t, you likely wouldn’t have been standing beside him. One of the tactics of the Klan, through its hoods, was to instill fear of all whites, since even the most seemingly well-meaning white man might have been one of the ones with the hoods and the guns and the dogs in the dead of night.
M_Young says:

February 4, 2013 at 3:42 pm

“But this isn’t the principle argument I hear. Rather, it is more something along the lines of, my kid shouldn’t lose his slot at a university to let in a less qualified black kid”

Yes, that’s right.

Jackie Robinson was starting quarterback for UCLA in the late 1930s. A ‘Negro’ (William Grant Still) conducted the LA Philharmonic in 1938 — that’s right there in the Ebony issue linked by Dreher. Yet in 2004, 65 years after these things, African American kids were still spotted .56 GPA and 220+ points on SAT (Verbal+Math).
Angela says:

February 4, 2013 at 4:45 pm

A good friend of mine, white, recently completed a history of her college town that, for the first time, included the stories of blacks in this Southern uni town. The previous histories had all been white history. She started the project eight years ago. Soon, she realized that no black residents would share their stories or memories with her.

She realized that she would need to embody good faith and trustworthiness. So she became part of their community. Hours spent in relationship. And always with honesty about her intent.

She saw capturing the full history of her town, white and black, as a ministry of truth. Eight years, and six of those years were spent on very intentionally proving herself trustworthy of honoring the stories of the black residents.

Dr Kim Singleton, in Broken Silence, talks about the difficulties black women have in naming their abuse. I don’t think we have gone very far in creating a safe climate and culture where the trauma of the violations such as the one you have described above can be brought into the light.
Tom S says:

February 4, 2013 at 5:48 pm

Some of the older white folks may not want to talk about the times (or instead present a rosy picture) because they participated in the intimidation of blacks seeking the vote.
Pat says:

February 4, 2013 at 6:17 pm

“We’re talking about events during the formative years of the Boomers.”

This is an important point. This blog often contains really hostile stuff aimed at boomers — but boomers’ opinions and positions have been shaped by things that happened before Rod was born. Perhaps those positions make more sense when we see what they were a response to.
Sam M says:

February 4, 2013 at 7:51 pm

Oof. TaNahisi Coates covers the same ground, from a different direction:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/02/visualizing-a-sham-social-contract/272842/

That’s nasty business. Remember that pic the next time you see some trollope on TV and wonder how we’ve fallen so far. Seems like 1964 sucked. But 1956 REALLY sucked.
Thomas Andrews says:

February 4, 2013 at 7:57 pm

Goodness.
The level of racism some people show in this thread merely serves to remind us how little we have come.
sdb says:

February 4, 2013 at 8:01 pm

@M_Young have you looked at the scatter in the college GPA v. SAT score correlations? While there is a correlation between average SAT score and college GPA within majors, the distribution is huge. Take a look at tables 5 and 6 in the linked doc to see what I mean. A kid who had to overcome a lot of adversity to graduate high school and earn a 1200SAT is not clearly less qualified than a kid who grew up being encouraged to excel and earned a 1420SAT.

I don’t doubt that there have been African Americans who have excelled despite large barriers such as the examples you noted. However, the fact that exceptional people exist does not mean that anyone can follow in their footsteps.
Noah172 says:

February 4, 2013 at 11:05 pm

Goodness.
The level of racism some people show in this thread merely serves to remind us how little we have come.

Criticizing affirmative action: racist.

Talking about black crime: racist.

Noting that whites, even liberals, invariably move away from poor, violent black people: racist.

Noting the use of hair dyes and straighteners among black female celebrities (in particular, one who is mixed-race and light-skinned herself): racist.

Your comment reminds us of how little insular, sanctimonious white liberals are willing to concede error, or acknowledge reality, on the subject of race.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

February 4, 2013 at 11:09 pm

Matt in TX… What in the world does a married man with a wife and ten children have to do with black children born out of wedlock?

Duncan, Brits have a more mixed record than that… the Portuguese invented the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but they tied into a trans-continental market put together by Arab merchants, when their traditional source of slaves, northern Europe, dried up. I don’t mean Christians kidnapped in the Mediterranean by Muslim privateers, I mean the pale barbarians sold by Christian importers to willing Muslim buyers. The Portuguese were expanding on a pattern of slave-labor sugar plantations in the Mediterranean, which WERE either worked by Muslim owners with Christian slaves or Christian owners with Muslim slaves.

The Royal Africa Company did make the highest volume and the most money, except fifty-five percent of all people removed from Africa went to Brazil, as a highly embarrassed Condoleeza Rice had to apprise her president in a meeting with the president of Brazil.

But, Britain acquired a good deal of race prejudice as a result of expanding its empire into Africa and Asia, so its hands didn’t stay clean. It did retain some capacity for honoring an individual of dark complexion as a human being, while consigning masses of people to subject status.

M_Young… the people of West Feliciana were not threatened by an INFLUX of black people. They were threatened with people who had lived there for generations wanting full participation in community life. There is a distinct difference. If southern blacks had more opportunity opened to them in their southern states of origin, and had not felt impelled to flee elsewhere, the scenarios you describe might never have happened.

Angela… thank you. That’s a good example of the effort, commitment, and simply willingness to stick around that it takes to earn real trust.
Thomas Andrews says:

February 5, 2013 at 12:48 am

Noah172,
I would remind you that ‘knee-jerk’ reactions are copyright and reserved exclusively to liberals.

Your comments actually just serve to demonstrate the difference between someone who basis their views on statistical analysis (however much I might believe his interpretation to be wrong) and someone who just plain wants to vent their spleen.

Taking your children out of an unsafe neighborhood in which the criminals are overwhelmingly black is not racist, it’s called being a good parent.
Ascribing the profoundly nasty behavior of those criminals in that unsafe neighborhood to all members of their race is, however, to be racist.

It might better help you grasp the point if I bring the fact to your attention that the overwhelming majority of conservative Christians support torture.
This hardly makes Christianity a religion which supports torture nor yet justifies either claim, that conservative Christians are all bad people nor yet that we liberals are all good people because opposition to torture has a near 1:1 correlation with those of us who call ourselves ‘liberal Christians’.

Correlation is not necessarily correspondence.
mlindroo says:

February 5, 2013 at 2:46 am

Nice to see Rod write something about African American culture/history, focusing on the negatives on the white side of the issue for a change.
Philip says:

February 5, 2013 at 9:18 am

Literacy test? That’s a fine idea, though a civics test would be more appropriate. So long as it’s mandatory for all voters. Or, should I say, would-be voters.

Down with the unconditional universal franchise!
M_Young says:

February 5, 2013 at 10:33 am

Siarlys

Yes, I understand that African Americans have been here from the beginning, and that they have been treated, even after slavery, with great injustice. I do believe that much of the current narrative about the Civil Rights era (and I’ll leave of the scare quotes here, but voting is indeed a Civil Right) has been overplayed, or lacks context. Much of that overplaying is, I think, simply to make some folks (I wouldn’t say you), feel good about being able to look down at white southerners, a people who were in a difficult situation (of their elite’s making, of course).

It is ironic that, outside of Memphis, there were no ‘uprisings’ in the south to match those in LA, Camden, Detroit, etc.
Glaivester says:

February 5, 2013 at 12:00 pm

Recognizing this, I don’t understand some of the opposition to various forms of affirmative action.

If it were only directed toward the 12% or so of the U.S> population that is descended from slaves, it might not be so bad.

But we are importing lots of new people who are eligible for affirmative action despite any history in the U.S. for us to make up for.

If the U.S. becomes majority non-white by, say, 2040, affirmative action will have a very large impact against native-born whites seeking employment.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

February 5, 2013 at 2:39 pm

It is ironic that, outside of Memphis, there were no ‘uprisings’ in the south to match those in LA, Camden, Detroit, etc.

You really need to read De Parles’s book. Take the most brutalized, ignorant, practically illiterate people out of the back of the worst plantations, where they could take out their anger on nobody but those of their own color, kick them out when automation makes them superfluous, replant them in a large, crowded, urban environment where they get a sense of being able to act with relative impunity, and watch the conflagration.

Its no mystery why it happened mostly in the north.
JonF says:

February 5, 2013 at 7:17 pm

Re: Noting that whites, even liberals, invariably move away from poor, violent black people: racist.

They will also move away from low income, violent people of any race, including their own. The issue is the “violent” part, not the racial part.
The most wretched human sump I have ever seen was a run-down trailer park in St Pete FL, down the road a bit from my neighborhood. Every morning when I went to work there was a parade of shirtless, shoeless men coming out of it and heading to the nearest store to grab their first 40 ouncer of the day. One occasionally also saw sun-burned hagish women with dirty children trailing after them, looking like refugees from the Great Depression who had slipped into the 21st century via a time warp. The trailer park festered with drugs (there were burned out trailers which had caught fire during meth-brewing operations) and the police were summoned there so often they should have just opened a sub-station at the gates. Oh, and yes– the people there were all white.