Today is history-geek day here at Old Hickory's Weblog. For one thing, I need to get caught up on my Confederate "heritage" month postings.
Edward Sebesta's entry for April 18 is yet another quotation from the Confederate Veteran, this one from 1906 justifying racial violence against blacks during what Sebesta describes as "white race riots" in Atlanta. The piece purports to be a "Northern view of race troubles," although the writer is identified only by a pseudonym in Sebesta's post. Southern supporters of segregation, Jim Crow law and racism were eager to point to Northern whites' approval of their actions, at the same time they accused Northern whites of hypocrisy and scorned the notion that proud white Southerners cared about the opinion of "outsiders."
The April 18 selection again raises the question that if Confederate idolotry is about "heritage not hate", just what would it take for the present-day fans of the Confederacy to designate any action or statement by white people against blacks as "hate"? From the article:
The negro must be taught the rudimentary virtues he has forgotten before he can aspire to a higher education. He must be made to obey absolutely. He must be compelled to restrain himself. He must fear and respect the law, and he must be made to understand that if he dares so much as think wrongfully of a white woman he will deserve death, and at the slightest indication of an intent to commit wrong he wilt receive it. The North can do its duty by first understanding the condition as it is and then uniting with the Caucasian of the South in knowledge of and sympathy with his situation to devise proper, adequate, and permanent relief.
This piece is also notable because in other paragraphs quoted in Sebesta's piece, the "Northern" writer expounds at length on the depravity of African-Americans, declaring that neither prison nor the prospect of immediate death can hope to deter their "loathsome", "shocking" and "debased" impulses. But then after giving an extended description of the alleged menace and degeneracy that seems to leave only the prospect of the most gruesome tortures or complete ethnic cleansing as possible solutions, he then tosses out the ritual assertion that lynching was a practice carried out by a disreputable few supposedly disdained by respectable white folks.
Note the tone and context in which this "Northern" admirer of Confederate "heritage" defends the honor of the respectable whites:
This national cancer [i.e., black people] is a revolting, hideous subject. One is loath to speak of it in clean type on unpolluted paper, lest its contemplation should breed pestilence; but if it is ever to be cut out, it must be realized and considered in all its horror, especially by Northern people who have too long shut their eyes to the truth. The South understands it, and the better classes of whites, to whom our sympathy and aid should be extended in the fullest measure, know further that, beside; the vicious negro, they have with them a large element of ignorant, violent, intemperate white people for whose crude and revolting execution of Lynch law they are held responsible by the world.
To pose the question again, what kind of statements or actions on the part of white people would it take for the admirers of the Confederacy to declare them "hate not heritage," or maybe even just plan "hate"?
Incidentally, this thoroughly unconvincing criticism of "Lynch law" was not probably really meant to be taken seriously. Although one should keep in mind the ludicrous degrees of self-deception of which racists and xenophobes are susceptible. It was more likely to be a sadistic kind of joke, as in: "Oh, no, we don't endorse lynching, yuk, yuk."
Sebesta provides a couple of other links for less genocidal-minded descriptions of the Atlanta race riot, on of which seems to be malfunctioning at the moment. The other is
Defending Home and Hearth: Walter White Recalls the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot. White was executive director of the NAACP from 1931-1955, and was well-known for his long campaign to suppress lynching. White's account gives the political background leading up to the riots, which occurred when White was 13 and of which he was a personal witness. He provides a very interesting glimpses at Southern politics during the early Jim Crow decades. (The "Jim Crow" laws mandating legal segregation became a widespread phenomenonin the 1890s.)
This selection at the Web page just linked is from White's 1948 authobiography. In this paragraph, he describes on of the more notorious figures of Southern politics at that time:
To overcome the power of the regular Democratic organization, [gubernatorial candidate] Hoke Smith sought to heal the feud of long standing between himself and the powerful ex-radical Populist, Thomas E. Watson. Tom Watson was the strangest mixture of contradictions which rotten-borough politics of the South had ever produced. He was the brilliant leader of an agrarian movement in the South which, in alliance with the agrarian West, threatened for a time the industrial and financial power of the East. He had made fantastic strides in uniting Negro and white farmers with Negro and white industrial workers. He had advocated enfranchisement of Negroes and poor whites, the abolition of lynching, control of big business, and rights for the little man, which even today would label him in the minds of conservatives as a dangerous radical. He had fought with fists, guns, and spine-stirring oratory in a futile battle to stop the spread of an industrialized, corporate society.
His break with the Democratic Party during the '90s and the organization of the Populist Party made the Democrats his implacable enemies. The North, busy building vast corporations and individual fortunes, was equally fearful of Tom Watson. Thus was formed between reactionary Southern Democracy and conservative Northern Republicanism the basis of cooperation whose fullest flower is to be seen in the present-day coalition of conservatives in Congress. This combination crushed Tom Watson's bid for national leadership in the presidential elections of 1896 and smashed the Populist movement. Watson ran for president in 1904 and 1908, both times with abysmal failure. His defeats soured him to the point of vicious acrimony. He turned from his ideal of interracial decency to one of virulent hatred and denunciation of the “nigger.” He thus became a naturally ally for Hoke Smith in the gubernatorial election in Georgia in l906.
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