tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29394125085032354752024-03-13T05:21:26.183-07:00Larry Roth's BlogLarry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.comBlogger69125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-5414368185289269752023-12-29T06:03:00.000-08:002023-12-29T06:03:33.768-08:00<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span>FINDING SOLACE IN </span><span>AN EIGHTY-YEAR-OLD BOOK</span></span></b><b><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> <span> </span> I’ve
mentioned on several occasions that I spend the nights of our presidential
elections watching <i>The Best Years of Our Lives,</i> the 1946 film about the
challenges World War II servicemen faced when their services were no longer
required and they reentered civilian life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;"> After Pearl
Harbor my father rushed to enlist and was, to his great disappointment,
classified as 4-F. (The same thing happened to me during Vietnam except for the
rush to enlist and the disappointment.) He went to work for the Army Corps of
Engineers in St. Louis and from there he was recruited to work for the
Manhattan Project. He married my mother, and the Project hired her as well.
After the bombs were dropped, their services were no longer required. They were
transferred to St. Louis and, once there, laid off.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">When my father died in 2005, he left
behind a great deal of paperwork, including a memo dated January 11, 1946,
which reads:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“The attached Staff Bulletin is again
brought to the attention of all personnel.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“The following is also brought to the
attention of all personnel, some of whom have been previously cautioned:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“(1) Too many personal telephone
conversations<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“(2) Too much visiting within the
office-it disturbs others that are working<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“(3) A few are absent from their
desks too often—and for periods of time that sometimes run into 10 to 20
minutes.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">The Staff Bulletin is about empty
bottles and reads:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">“It has become necessary to call
attention to the fact that employees are not adhering to the rule that empty
bottles from vending machines are to be returned to the Canteen. On recent
occasions a number of empty bottles have been collected in the wash rooms. It
is directed that empty bottles be returned to the Canteen in every case.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">The bulletin is signed by E. H.
Shutt, Lt. Col., Corps of Engineers, Executive Officer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">My father must have kept this memo to
remind him how quickly one could go from being an important cog in a major
program to someone being monitored and criticized for being away from his desk
for (gasp!) twenty minutes at a time while waiting to be laid off.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">Twelve million service people were in
the same situation. One of the main characters in <i>The Best Years of Our
Lives</i> was a an Army Air Force bombardier captain and is only able to find a job as a soda jerk in the
drug store where he worked before the war. Another character predicts a postwar
depression. To me the most significant thing about this film is it was made
when it was impossible to know how everything would work out, which is the
reason I watch it as election returns are coming in. Most of the time I find
comfort in the knowledge that if my parents’ generation could get through the
challenges of their times, we can get through the challenges of ours.</span><span style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg68xSoICmn6JX9e5JhTdpbz-8eSDxfKd6o3eic7pAXK1gD5OPIzj_Zdmr1D63ViKBbokgDso6s5DfQsPDkOcrYNnCo7rKrOlN4AW3Ri5vrq_FCHbM9MVr6SNBDDUnmNXapvie1cy3WJDjEEXa5MF7eSpLgnWKdLgqRUqOU3dxEzpXWFosNwaytJsRx0A" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1599" data-original-width="1153" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg68xSoICmn6JX9e5JhTdpbz-8eSDxfKd6o3eic7pAXK1gD5OPIzj_Zdmr1D63ViKBbokgDso6s5DfQsPDkOcrYNnCo7rKrOlN4AW3Ri5vrq_FCHbM9MVr6SNBDDUnmNXapvie1cy3WJDjEEXa5MF7eSpLgnWKdLgqRUqOU3dxEzpXWFosNwaytJsRx0A" width="173" /></a></div><p></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%;">The same is true of John Roy Carlson’s
<i>Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America.</i> This book
was published in 1943, a time when it was impossible to know the outcome of
World War II. John Roy Carlson was the <i>nom de plume </i>of Arthur Derounian,
a Christian Armenian-American who infiltrated many Nazi, fascist, and
antisemitic organizations between 1938 and 1943. I came across the book at an
estate sale and found it helpful for a paper I was writing on, among other things, the
postwar decline in American antisemitism. Rachel Maddow gives it a brief
mention in her 2023 </span><i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism,</span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> which covers
much of the same territory and which I’ll address briefly at the end of this
essay.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">As I was
reading <i>Under Cover,</i> I couldn’t help but be amazed at how similar our
times are to Carlson’s. In his time there were a good number of congressmen who
were not just openly fascist, they provided fascist organizations with millions
of franked envelopes (postage paid by taxpayers) to mail their propaganda coast
to coast and border to border. Many of them knowingly accepted money from
Germany. Some in Congress even wrote fascist bile. These people hated
democracy. One is quoted as saying, “Democracy, Democracy, Democracy! They
throw it in our faces. You hear it on all sides till you get sick of it. What
is this Democracy? It is a rotten form of weakness and pacifist attitude that
can only mean defeat. I say to hell with Democracy and up with the banner of
American nationalism! America for the white, Christian Americans! And it’s
about time we stopped this absurd propaganda against Germany.” I would imagine
we wouldn’t have to look too far nowadays to find someone who would make the
same speech, only substituting Russia for Germany. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Carlson
describes how the fascist movement segmented itself into several groups to
appeal to various demographics from the mob and rabble rousers to those living
on Park Avenue. A surprising number of the people Carlson encounters are
old-line Americans, and many are members of the Daughters of the American
Revolution. I guess in a way we shouldn’t find this surprising. There are
always those who believe their family’s longevity in America somehow confers
upon them an innate ability to know what’s best for everyone when in fact they’re
angling for what’s best for them and their crowd. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">We meet Joe
McWilliams, who forms the American Destiny Party and admits to Carlson that the
people he’s talking to aren’t his “class of people,” but “you can’t talk
politics to these people unless you make it simple by bringing in the Jew every
time. It’s the only language they understand—the language of hate. Hitler made
it work, and that’s what I’m trying to do here. I want to give the man in the
street a Christian New Deal.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">He then
tells Carlson that if he’s elected, he doesn’t want to be called president. “I’d
run this country like a factory. I would appoint all the key men and have absolute control.” He
continues, “Our next step would be to break the people of the voting habit. I
want streamlined, modern government. Efficient as a factory, methodical as a
machine. Republicans, Socialists and Democrats represent nineteenth century
ideas. A new leadership is needed for a new America.” We wouldn’t have to look
too far to find folks who would agree with that today including those who
support a businessman who’s gone bankrupt six times. So far. And as for making
it simple by bringing in the scapegoat <i>du jour</i> to speak the “only language they
understand,” the aforementioned bankrupt-prone businessman is now channeling
Adolf Hitler by referring to those who disagree with him as “vermin” and
Madison Grant when he accuses immigrants of “polluting American blood,” which,
given that two of his three wives as well as his mother and both of his father’s
parents were immigrants, is a bit rich. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Later in
the book we come across various groups under a Mothers Movement umbrella, which
could easily have been a model for today’s Moms for Liberty. The former was not
very effective; the latter is increasingly, thankfully, proving to be
vulnerable inasmuch of one of the founders of the largely anti-gay group turned
out to be, shall we say, open to experimenting? And many of the Moms for
Liberty overestimated the interest in potential recruits for banning books,
preventing parents from being involved in their children’s sexual health and
becoming outraged over drag shows. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">One of the
things I learned from the book is these groups did not disband after Pearl
Harbor. I’d always imagined Pearl Harbor united the country. I was wrong. Synagogues
in the Bronx and Brooklyn were vandalized. Cops were indifferent and some may
have even been involved in the vandalism. Posters reading “The Jews started
this war. Make them pay for it” were distributed. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="css-k3zb6l-paragraph" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A big
factor in the pro-fascist movement Carlson writes about was Father Charles
Coughlin’s Christian Front. Coughlin was Catholic, but he affiliated with any
right-wing group, and the more antisemitic the better. The Christian Front had
millions of followers, many of them violent thugs. It survived the war,
although Coughlin was no longer in charge. By then its influence had dwindled.
Most returning veterans were not interested in joining pro-fascist groups,
having just won a war against fascism. We have our own right-wing
fundamentalist groups today. A recent <i>Wall Street Journal </i>article
reported many fundamentalists want their ministers to talk less about religion
and more about border security, gun rights, and, well, you get the idea. </span></p><p class="css-k3zb6l-paragraph" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="css-k3zb6l-paragraph" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The
article describes a sermon by eastern Tennessee pastor Shahram Hadian, who denounced
vaccine mandates, voiced doubts about the results of the 2020 presidential race, and said that Trump’s poll numbers were rising, despite multiple indictments,
because a remnant of people still loyal to God were finally waking up. He
concluded, “Here we are ramping up for 2024 and another crucial election, if
they don’t steal it or try to indict their way out of it, our response must be,
we will not comply. Amen!”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="css-k3zb6l-paragraph" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="css-k3zb6l-paragraph" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As we
can see, this country has been here before. I’m not a Marxist, but Marx did say
history repeats itself first as tragedy then as farce. I’m hoping the current trends
turn out to be harmless farce, and I have good reason to believe they will. We
live in a great country. We have one of the highest living standards in the
world. I doubt that many of us are willing to leave our warm comfortable homes,
miss whatever we’re watching on Netflix, and go to war with our neighbors over
drag shows, parents’ seeking or not seeking treatment for their possibly
transgender children, what books are in schools or public libraries, and so on.
Sure, as we saw on January 6, 2021, there are a few people who’ll believe
anything and follow the direction of the Orange Jesus <i>du jour,</i> but they’re very
few. So far attacks by the radical right have generated outrage rather than
revolt. Timothy McVeigh’s attack in Oklahoma City resulted in his execution.
The January 6 incursion has so far resulted in more than 1,000 people charged, several
of whom have been jailed. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="css-k3zb6l-paragraph" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="css-k3zb6l-paragraph" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And
the Instigator-in Chief is facing several indictments. It will be interesting
to see how all this plays out. Many of the fascists outed by Carlson and others
were tried for treason. As we find out in Rachel Maddow’s <i>Prequel,</i> which
I promised to address, the trial went on after the war. It was extremely
complex. The judge died, and basically the country was in no mood to rehash
wartime misdeeds. In short, the traitors got off. Let’s hope the judges in
Donald Trump’s cases take good care of themselves! </span></p><p class="css-k3zb6l-paragraph" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p align="center" class="css-k3zb6l-paragraph" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgMB9shWLyKnQ6N0-itpBWUro0Il2JNQNT2S_V9QFMhpAnQpSq9THwpTeBWOICdXGup1GEglLlnQkPxOnyVuXCmC03C30Myjcl9GFU573YJ8bM05-9xsZ334sMMKiTs3cHxjl5ViDZuEbZYB4ePT38sq86sCgF3EIZDq76V_oRCmUR0edLbUWYiU7h5Tw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="276" data-original-width="183" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgMB9shWLyKnQ6N0-itpBWUro0Il2JNQNT2S_V9QFMhpAnQpSq9THwpTeBWOICdXGup1GEglLlnQkPxOnyVuXCmC03C30Myjcl9GFU573YJ8bM05-9xsZ334sMMKiTs3cHxjl5ViDZuEbZYB4ePT38sq86sCgF3EIZDq76V_oRCmUR0edLbUWYiU7h5Tw" width="159" /></a></div></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Rachel Maddow is writing when we know
the outcome of World War II. She’s writing a history while Carlson covered the
same events while they were happening and as someone who saw first-hand what
these groups were like. <i>Prequel</i> is generally excellent, and I highly
recommend it. As you might expect, I have a couple of nits to pick. First, when
she describes George Detherage, who was truly loathsome, she says he was 6’5”
and 205 pounds, “an impressive girth for an American man before high-fructose corn
syrup.” In fact, Detherage had a BMI of 24.3, which would be in the normal range.
The guy was a fascist traitor, but he was not overweight. Second, when she
discusses George Van Horn Moseley, a retired general who was virulently
anti-immigrant and antisemitic and who would willingly have joined any (and
probably all) fascist anti-government groups had the Army not advised him he would
lose his pension if he did so, she says Moseley played a key role in launching
the Army’s violent 1932 attacks against American World War I veterans who were
protesting in Washington for “bonus payments they had been promised but never
paid.” In fact the bonus payments were not scheduled to be paid until 1945.
Finally, somehow one of the most repulsive members of Congress of the era, John
Rankin, who delivered a virulent antisemitic rant (one of many) that inspired
Laura Z. Hobson to write <i>Gentleman’s Agreement, </i>is not mentioned anywhere
in Maddow’s book. Rankin, ever the Jew-hater, was still defending the "honor" of Nazi war criminals during the Nuremburg trials. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><br /></p>Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-75256346096918887322023-06-04T12:34:00.001-07:002023-06-05T06:37:18.198-07:00Laura Z. Hobson, Gentleman's Agreement, and the Decline of Postwar Antisemitism: A Paper<p style="text-align: center;"><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhzACfaIgB4OMUQaBg-WMdg8aF6EzMR_h-MhQFQ4ATLqXU1u5MhPOMH5t8HFtmUx9_35r83hb5WDTLGDAvO3rQMxcOh9ueXoDmUI8dWhHzlJk7sklNVg6Ja2vOYJW1jmNNp9iS_csIL91oppWKZxK4XcqBd_X0_QK2QjA4hUITQPq5KFOGWjDheSAc" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="379" data-original-width="263" height="294" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhzACfaIgB4OMUQaBg-WMdg8aF6EzMR_h-MhQFQ4ATLqXU1u5MhPOMH5t8HFtmUx9_35r83hb5WDTLGDAvO3rQMxcOh9ueXoDmUI8dWhHzlJk7sklNVg6Ja2vOYJW1jmNNp9iS_csIL91oppWKZxK4XcqBd_X0_QK2QjA4hUITQPq5KFOGWjDheSAc=w240-h294" width="240" /></a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">This spring I took a class titled Jewish Popular Culture in America. Last fall I had a knee replaced and was doing really well. Unfortunately, on Friday, January 13, my kneecap snapped as I was walking down stairs at home. I wound up in a knee brace for six weeks. Frankly, I didn't know if I'd be able to keep up in class. As it turned out, thanks to Amazon, abebooks.com, and the library, I was able to excel. After all, there wasn't much else to keep me busy. We students were allowed to choose a topic, and I chose to concentrate on Laura Z. Hobson's <i>Gentleman's Agreement.</i> The film was required watching for the class. I'd seen the film before and had read the book. Other than that, I knew nothing--absolutely nothing about Laura Z. Hobson. When I got into the project I found both her and the antisemitism of the times she lived in fascinating. When I had first seen the movie I wondered what she it was about. The antisemitism portrayed in the film was totally foreign to me. What I failed to take into account was how much progress had been made between 1947, when the film was released, and when I first watched it. </p><p style="text-align: left;">I have run into a lot of flack from friends who have read the paper and say, "What do you mean DECLINE in antisemitism? haven't you read what's going on now?" The answer is of course I know antisemitism has experienced a rebirth of sorts, and yes, I am concerned, but my paper ends in the mid-1950s when antisemitism has ceased to be acceptable in most social circles. Whether current trends continue and the postwar to Trump period proves to be a high-water mark of acceptance and mutual respect between Christians and Jews or whether we devolve into Third Reich West remains to be seen, but I'm hopeful. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Finally, the paper is being considered for publication in a scholarly journal, and last month I was asked to do a presentation to the society that may publish it. The presentation had to be no more than fifteen minutes, so I'm leading off with that. The paper, which follows will have to be edited and probably shortened before publication, but I have until November to work on that. When that's done I'll post the revised version. </p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">LAURA Z. HOBSON, <i>GENTLEMAN’S
AGREEMENT,</i> AND THE <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">POSTWAR DECLINE OF AMERICAN
ANTISEMITISM <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">CONFERENCE PRESENTATION<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">I hope to turn my paper into a
publishable article that will discusses the antisemitic rant in Congress that inspired
Laura Z. Hobson to write her best-selling 1947 novel <i>Gentleman’s Agreement, </i>in
which a non-Jewish writer passes as a Jew to learn about antisemitism for a
magazine series. The author, a Jewish woman, may have been reluctant to
identify herself as a Jew to her readers. <i>Gentleman’s Agreement</i> was the
most important of the postwar anti-antisemitic novels and was almost
immediately turned into a feature film that won best picture at the 1948
Oscars. The paper explores the antisemitism of the era as well as the fears of
those Jews who remained stateside during World War II and the expectations of
those who served overseas who believed that their service earned them the right
to become an equal part of American society. It discusses the reluctance of many
Jews in the 1940s to address antisemitism for fear of making it worse. For this
presentation I will explore, with input from Laura Z. Hobson’s son, her
evolving relationship with Judaism. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><i>Gentleman’s Agreement</i> was serialized in <i>Cosmopolitan </i>in 1946, which
called it “The novel all America will discuss.” Before the book was published
Darryl F. Zanuck announced he would make a film of it. The reviews in both
major New York newspapers, which were printed the day the book was published,
were enthusiastically positive. Sales of the book eventually exceeded 1.6
million copies. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> Not all reviews
were positive. The </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Chicago
Star</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> found the
book a novel about antisemitism, “the action of which takes place entirely in
gentile circles” and deemed it interesting “but not too well written.” Along
those same lines, Diana Trilling found the book did not have enough Jewish
characters for a book about Jewish issues. Writing in the March 1947 issue of <i>Commentary,
</i>she noted that Phil Green, Hobson’s protagonist, laments that the only
three books about Jews he had in his library were about “a Jew who was a swine
in the wholesale business, a Jew who was a swine in the movies, and a Jew who
was a swine in bed.” There were indeed no swinish Jews in <i>Gentleman’s Agreement
</i>because in her words, “there are scarcely any Jews at all, just two
supporting characters—a scientist and a fine, personable veteran—and three or
four minor figures who appear in its pages only long enough to demonstrate that
although noisy Jews are no nosier than noisy Irish they are noticed more, or
that Jews themselves are often ashamed of their birth. In Mrs. Hobson’s novel
about Jews their cause is both explained and fought for them by Gentiles… .”
Later in the review she points out that, “There are certainly no religious Jews
in [Hobson’s] section of American society, and there are no Jews to whom
historical or cultural criteria have any meaning. Dave Goldman, the Jewish
veteran and Phil Green’s friend, is as little Jewish as Phil himself, except as
an accident of birth… . Similarly, there are no religious Gentiles. The
Gentiles in <i>Gentleman’s Agreement </i>who, like Phil and his editor, are
without anti-Jewish emotions, are not thereby more Christian; they are simply
the more decent.” Trilling conceded the book is commendable, even if it is
“poor—dull, non-dimensional, without atmosphere.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Others shared this sentiment. In an
article about anti-antisemitism novels, scholar Rachel Gordan pointed out
several critics considered the novel’s main flaw to be a lack of Jewish
characters. Likewise, Gordan remarked that Phil did “what no Jew in the 1940s
was likely to do: Phil announces, at every opportunity, that he is Jewish.” Similarly,
Gordan commented that some critics found the emotional experiences of actual
Jews were marginalized and “[i]t was the emotional responses of gentiles that
were prioritized… .” She quotes a <i>Saturday Review</i> editor as saying, “The
inner anxieties of persecuted races cannot be explored by tourists. They are
known only to those who dwell as natives among such slights, apprehensions, and
shameful humiliations.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> This sentiment was still held by some
years later. Film scholar George Custen remarked fifty years after the film’s
debut, “Having a lead character who is only pretending to be Jewish is not far
from using blackface instead of black faces to mask white anxieties about the
integration of American popular culture.” Gordan continues, “The problematic
quality of Hobson’s story of passing had only become more apparent over time.” I
disagree. Hobson’s target audience was gentiles. From what I’ve learned doing
research for my paper, there was not a Jew in America who was not aware of
antisemitism. They would hardly need a novel to point out the daily indignities
they encountered. I think it was a stroke of genius on Hobson’s part to invent
a gentile character who, along with the gentile readers of her book, could
discover just how much degrading antisemitism was going on under their noses in
America a mere two years after the German death camps were liberated. There
were five million Jews in America at the time, and 1.6 million copies of her book
sold. Her target audience was the source of those book sales. Hobson’s son,
whom I’ll introduce shortly, agrees on this point, quoting a Chicago <i>Tribune
</i>review saying it “permitted the Gentile to see the Jew as a personality
like himself.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> That said, it’s possible Hobson’s
using a gentile protagonist and using her ex-husband’s last name to write a
book that, as Gordan writes, was criticized by some rabbis as showing no marks
of Jewishness, may have contributed to some confusion among her readers as well
as those who saw the film. I’m embarrassed to admit my first assumption after
having seen the film many years after it was released but in pre-internet days
was that she was not Jewish. I believe it is possible that was Hobson’s intent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Hobson never wrote using a name that
was identifiably Jewish. In her younger days, she added an “e” to her mother’s
maiden name, and wrote as Laura Z. Keane. She then took the name of a man with
whom she was involved and wrote as Laura Mount. Finally, she used the name of her
non-Jewish ex-husband. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Hobson’s 1943 <i>The Trespassers</i>,
like <i>Gentleman’s Agreement,</i> intertwines a romance with a serious issue—assisting
refugees from Nazism, both of which are drawn from her life. The refugee family
escaped Vienna in 1938, after the Austrian Anschluss, and Hobson details the
myriad roadblocks she and the Austrian family, who had escaped as far as
Switzerland, encountered securing passage to America. Early in the book she
describes her protagonist as having a slightly foreign look—the look of a
Magyar or Slav or Central European. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> She describes her protagonist’s
father as being an American citizen who immigrated from Prague and changed his
name to Marriner for ease of spelling. Her mother, who had been her father’s
English teacher, was from a family whose ancestors had come over from England
in the eighteenth century and were “mixed up of a dozen different bloods,”
including one lonely Sephardic Jew. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> This discussion of the protagonist’s
physical features and certainly her family’s genealogy adds nothing to the
story. I also find it significant that the family Hobson’s protagonist is
assisting, as well as the one Hobson assisted in real life, were anti-Nazi, but
they were not Jews. There could be any number of reasons for this ambiguity,
including not wishing <i>The Trespassers</i> to be perceived as special
pleading, but another explanation could be that, given the antisemitism Hobson
was subjected to and witnessed during the first forty-three years of her life,
she was understandably reluctant to reveal her ethnicity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> In Hobson’s 1986 <i>New York Times</i>
obituary Robert D. McFadden wrote, “<span style="background: white; color: #363636;">While
Laura was Jewish, she once told an interviewer: ‘I grew up in an agnostic
broad-minded family. I think of myself as a plain human being who happens to be
an American.’” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #363636; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> While
it appeared to me Hobson was at best ambivalent about her ethnicity, I wanted
to get a more informed opinion on the matter.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #363636; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> I
was able to contact Hobson’s surviving son who gave my draft a cursory review
and was kind enough to respond to my query about his mother’s relationship with
Judaism as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I think it is a misapprehension. The root of the misapprehension
may be differences in approaching the assimilationist trend in Jewish life in
the 1930s and 1940s. Briefly, to Jews like my mother, there was no
contradiction between being fully American and also fully Jewish, though in a biographical
rather than cultural sense. That is, she always identified herself as Jewish,
and my brother (now deceased) and I, as children, were fully aware that we were
Jews. At the same time, she, and we, had basically zero Jewish culture. I think
understanding that people who weren't attuned to Jewish culture did identify
fully as Jewish is important. In terms of public statements, her profile
in <i>Current Biography</i> in 1947 quotes her, <span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">from an interview, discussing the reasons why “I can never simply
say, ‘I am an agnostic,’ but must say, ‘I am Jewish.’” At least in that
instance, she seemed entirely comfortable, not uncomfortable, being identified
as Jewish. Spelling out the "Z." as Zametkin, as she regularly did in
her <i>Who's Who</i> entries, also certainly identifies her as a
non-WASP. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #363636; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Regarding my writing that Hobson
never wrote using an identifiably Jewish name, he wrote: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I do think this is a bit ahistorical. Very few
divorced women, in the 1930s, resumed using their "maiden names" and,
indeed, the name Hobson was hers, not only Thayer Hobson's. Rachel Gordan, when
we were in touch, could never see LZH's continuing to use "Hobson" as
anything other than an attempt to hide her Jewishness, and I think there's a
little of the same sense in your piece.</span><sup><span style="background: white; color: #363636; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></sup></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> It was Hobson’s superfluous description
of her protagonist and her protagonist’s family history in <i>The Trespassers</i>
rather than anything Gordan wrote that first caused me to think Hobson might
not have been comfortable with her ethnicity. He certainly has a point about
his mother’s being entitled to use the name Hobson, but even before she married
Thayer Hobson, she wrote using names that were not identifiably Jewish.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> In books Hobson wrote the 1960s and
1970s she became more willing to reveal her ethnicity through her protagonists,
although she always emphasized their agnosticism. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> I believe that as the country became
less antisemitic, Hobson was more comfortable making her Jewishness evident, but
in the 1940s she was reluctant to reveal it to her readers, which is more a
reflection on American prejudice than on her.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Coming back to <i>Gentleman’s
Agreement</i>, after Phil Green’s series is a success, a publisher who is a
friend of Phil’s boss is interested in turning it into a book. The publisher
advises Phil to get an agent and says it’s better to pick a publisher (him)
rather than risk his agent sending it to “the wrong house.” Phil asks what he
means by the “wrong house.” The publisher elaborates:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> “If one of the Jewish houses put
their imprint on it, people might think it was just special pleading, and of
course it’s not.” Phil responds, “Jewish houses? You mean Jewish publishing
houses?” Of course that’s what the publisher means, and Phil responds, “Mr.
Minify and I have never heard of ‘Christian publishing houses’ and ‘Jewish
publishing houses’ except in the Third Reich. Even firms run by men who are
Jewish—we just call them ‘publishing houses.’ In a way, that’s what the whole
series is about.” When the publisher says it’s just a phrase in the book trade,
Minify responds, “'Jewish bankers’ is just a phrase, too, and ‘Jewish newspaper
owners’ and ‘Jewish communists’—just phrases.” The publisher has blown the
deal.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> In that same vein Hobson wrote in
her 1986 autobiography that <i>Gentleman’s Agreement </i>was selected by the
Jewish Book Council for their National Jewish Book Award as the Best Jewish
Novel of the Year. Hobson says her novel was not a best Jewish novel or any
kind of Jewish novel. It was instead a book about an American problem of
special interest to Jewish people, which seems to me to be splitting hairs. Although
in retrospect she admits it was a big mistake, she declined the award. Perhaps
that is one reason, as Gordan points out, Hobson is not included in the Jewish
Publication Society <i>Guide to American Jewish Literature </i>(2009), and
perhaps I shouldn’t feel too embarrassed about not knowing whether Hobson was
Jewish. Gordan writes the feminist critic Vivian Gornick made the same mistake
in a 2008 lecture about post-WW II American Jewish literature at the Radcliffe
Institute.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">LAURA Z. HOBSON, <i>GENTLEMAN’S
AGREEMENT,</i> AND THE <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">POSTWAR DECLINE OF AMERICAN
ANTISEMITISM</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">This paper discusses the
antisemitic rant in Congress in which a well-known Jewish columnist who
supported a bill to make voting easier for troops fighting overseas was called
a “little kike” by a congressman who saw no need for troops to vote. This inspired
Laura Z. Hobson to write her best-selling 1947 <i>Gentleman’s Agreement, </i>in
which a gentile becomes a Jew to learn about antisemitism and finds more perhaps
than he bargained for. This was arguably the most important of the postwar
anti-antisemitic novels and became a film that won several Oscars including
best picture. This paper also explores the antisemitism of the era as well as
the fears of those Jews who remained stateside during World War II and the
expectations of those who served overseas who believed that their service
earned them a right to become an equal part of American society. It will
explore the reluctance of many Jews in the 1940s to address antisemitism for
fear of making it worse. It will even ask whether, given the times in which she
lived and the antisemitism she experienced, Hobson herself may have been uneasy
with her ethnicity. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">THE SOLDIERS’ VOTE BILL AND THE <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">INSPIRATION FOR <i>GENTLEMAN’S
AGREEMENT</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Fewer than two percent of 5.5
million armed services personnel were able to vote in the 1942 midterm
elections. In order to make it easier for those fighting for such things as the
right to vote, a bill to authorize a “war ballot” to enable troops to vote in the
1944 presidential election was anticipated. While this goal had broad support,
the devil would be in the details. On January 4, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
in a special message to Congress, urged the passage of one of two bills then
being considered by Congress. Republicans and states’ rights Democrats were
opposed; the latter, at least in part, by the fact Black soldiers would be able
to vote unimpeded. Eventually a watered-down bill was passed.<sup>1 </sup>As a
result, only 85,000 of the 11 million soldiers serving overseas on election day
had the opportunity to vote.<sup>2 </sup><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">One of those most vehemently
opposed to making voting easier for soldiers was the notoriously racist and
antisemitic Mississippi Representative John Rankin (1882-1960). Edward S.
Shapiro elaborates on Rankin’s antisemitism, saying Rankin was a self-proclaimed
savior of “old-line Americans, Anglo-Saxon people who have been here 200
years.” Rankin blamed Jews for the economic plight of rural America, the
triumph of communism in Russia, the starvation of millions of Christian farmers
in the Ukraine, sit-down strikes in the American Midwest, urban crime, and
racial agitation in the South. In 1939 he warned “a certain international
element that has no sympathy for Christianity was spending money by the barrel”
to bring the United States into the war. On June 4, 1941, after one of Rankin’s
more vehement diatribes in which he falsely accused Jews of organizing a rally
to support American intervention in the war, a furious M. Michael Edelstein,
who represented New York’s Lower East Side in Congress responded to Rankin,
charging him with fanning hatred, pointing out that Jews had nothing to do with
the rally, that few bankers were Jewish, and that Jews were being used as scapegoats.
As Edelstein walked back to his seat he had a fatal heart attack.<sup>3</sup> Rankin is described as a “racist and a thug”
with power by Edward Humes in his 2006 <i>Over Here: How the G.I. Bill
Transformed the American Dream. </i>Rankin would sabotage the G.I. Bill by
insisting on local control over who was able to use benefits. As a result, of
over 3,000 VA loans issued in Mississippi, a state where 50% of the population
was Black, in the summer of 1947 only two went to Black applicants. Rankin
would burnish his reputation as an antisemite by defending the honor of Nazi
war criminals during the Nuremburg trials and assailing attempts to bring death
camp creators to justce.<sup>4</sup><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> It is probably no coincidence that
Franz Kindler, the sinister SS villain who escapes after the war and forges a
new life as a college professor in a New England town in Orson Welles’ 1946
film, <i>The Stranger,</i> assumes the name Charles Rankin.<sup>5 <o:p></o:p></sup></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> In February 1944, while the
soldiers’ vote bill was being debated, Rep. Rankin, as reported in the February
14, 1944 <i>Time </i>article, “Will Soldiers Vote?” rose to object to the bill,
and registering faux outrage over a statement by columnist Walter Winchell,
launched an <i>ad hominem </i>attack on those who supported the bill:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> “Now who is behind this bill? Who is
the chief sponsor of it? The chief publicist is <i>PM, </i>the uptown edition
of the <i>Communist Daily Worker </i>that is being financed by the tax-escaping
fortune of Marshall Field III, and the chief broadcaster for it is Walter Winchell—alias
no telling what,” to which a Republican congressman replied, “Who is he?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Rankin replied, “The little kike I
was telling you about the other day, who called this body the ‘House of
Reprehensibles.’”<sup> </sup> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Rankin’s speech went on, and not
only did not one Representative object, at its conclusion, “[T]he House rose
and gave him prolonged applause.”<sup>6 </sup><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> When I read this in <i>Gentleman’s
Agreement, </i>I thought Hobson must have been taking liberties with Rankin’s
speech. After all, the country was at war. Soldiers, many of whom were Jewish, were
being denied the opportunity to vote while they were fighting and dying for
their country, and the fact, if not the magnitude, of what we now call the
Holocaust was known, which is the reason I looked up the original article for
verification. In her autobiography, Hobson says this is what inspired her to
write the novel.</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">“THIS WAS HOW THINGS WERE”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Hobson had worked for <i>Time, </i>and
Ralph Ingersoll (1900-1985), with whom Hobson had a long-term relationship, was
the founder of <i>PM, </i>a liberal daily publication. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Laura Zametkin Hobson (1900-86) was
born to Michael Zametkin and Adella Kean Zametkin. Both were writers and
teachers; her father was also one of the founders of <i>The Jewish Daily
Forward </i>as well as a lecturer. Both were agnostic as was Hobson and most of
the characters in<i> Gentleman’s Agreement. </i>Hobson’s experiences with
antisemitism included a Greek language professor at Cornell who could never get
her name right, to whom she finally responded that if she were to learn to
pronounce Greek correctly, could he at least learn to pronounce her name? He
did, but he also, in spite of her stellar grades, denied her entrance into Phi
Beta Kappa. She worked for <i>Time </i>until 1940. While there she encountered
antisemitism in reporting that included Leon Blum, the Prime Minister of
France, being referred to in the magazine as “Jew Blum.” She wrote short
stories and eventually novels. Her first, <i>The Trespassers,</i> was based on the
experiences she encountered navigating the State Department’s “paper wall” in
order to secure visas for those fleeing Hitler. <i>The Trespassers</i> was
published in 1943. <i>Gentleman’s Agreement</i> followed in 1947.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> While I had been aware that
antisemitism was rampant in America before World War II, I envisioned it to be
something of a fringe movement. I found a box of Father Charles Coughlin’s <i>Social
Justice </i>at an estate sale once, so I knew how nasty he was. And he wasn’t
alone. In the 1930s more than one hundred antisemitic organizations emerged in
the United States; the largest was the German-American Bund.<sup>7</sup> What
surprised me when I read Hobson’s autobiography was that it was such an
everyday event. Imagine a reader reading about the Prime Minister of France in <i>Time
</i>only to see him referred to as “Jew Blum.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> In 1935 Margaret Halsey (1910-1997),
who wrote <i>Some of My Best Friends Are Soldiers, </i>married Henry Simon, the
brother of Richard Simon, who would publish both Halsey’s novel and <i>Gentleman’s
Agreement,</i> writes in her autobiography that, “In marrying Henry I
discovered something that, as a sheltered South Yonkers WASP, I had no
suspicion of—which was that in those days very few New York apartment buildings
would rent to Jews.”<sup>8<o:p></o:p></sup></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> In her novel, she uses this
experience to respond to the accusation that Jews are “clannish:”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Nobody knows whether Jews are clannish… Not
even the Jews themselves. I have a friend—a Gentile—who lives in one of those
beautiful, elm-shaded, New England villages. Some years ago she wanted me to
rent a house there for the summer. I told her what it would be like, but she
didn’t believe me. She tried to rent a house for me, and she found out.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> The village goes back to Revolutionary times.
If one had a criticism to make of it, it would be that the town is almost too
much infatuated with its own Americanism. But my friend discovered that the
village has a motto. It isn’t carved in marble over the town hall. Only the
Jews and the selectmen know it. The motto is ‘Keep the Jews out of the
borough.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> I can’t rent a house in that village. I can’t
buy a house there. I can’t even stay overnight in the town’s only hotel. It
doesn’t take Jews.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> My brother has a house in one of the few
small towns in that state where Jews are allowed to buy or rent property. So I
go there in the summer. The selectmen in my friend’s town look at each other
and say, “You see. They’re clannish. You let one in and they all come in.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> That’s how it is.”<sup>9</sup> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Rachel Gordan writes:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Ironically,
antisemitism during the first half of the twentieth century, particularly the
1920s through the early 1940s was so ongoing and pervasive as to be naturalized
as part of the American milieu, neither worthy of discussion nor a topic fit
for polite conversation. Today we talk about antisemitic <i>incidents.</i> But
for the typical American Jew during the 1920s and 1930s, antisemitism affected
every aspect of life: housing, college, profession, recreational activities,
social clubs, and friends. Antisemitism shaped an individual’s aspirations and
dreams, often determining what a young Jew believed was possible in life. It
was part of the air Jews breathed—taken for granted; not just accepted, but
expected as a fact of life. Historian Deborah Lipstadt recalls the way
antisemitism permeated and organized her midcentury youth: “I had heard my
friends’ older siblings say, that despite their outstanding grades and academic
records, they would not get into a particular Ivy League school because the
Jewish quota was filled. Already in the eighth grade we knew not to consider
certain colleges because it was exceptionally difficult for a Jewish student …
to gain admittance. Rather than being shocked by this, we accepted it, I am
embarrassed to say, as a fact of life. This was how things were.”<sup>10</sup></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-bidi-language: HE; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> During World War II, 550,000 Jewish
men and women served in the armed forces. While Jews comprised less than 2% of
the nation’s population, 4.23% of Jews served. In fact, Jewish participation in
the war may well have been higher since m</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">any
Jewish soldiers opted to be designated as Christian for various reasons
including fitting in with their fellow soldiers and fear of being captured by
Germans.<sup>11</sup> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> The dropping of
the atomic bomb ended the war with Japan in August 1945, much sooner than
anyone had thought possible. Troops were rapidly demobilized and returned to
the United States, where few homes had been built during the four years of war.
There was a severe housing shortage. A marine
captain who served with the Office of Strategic Services in Asia said it was
easier to find a sniper in China than an apartment in New York.<sup>12</sup> And,
as Margaret Halsey pointed out in her autobiography, it was even more
challenging for Jews such as Hobson’s character, Dave Goldman, who was looking
for a place in New York to move his family so he could accept a lucrative job
offer. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">COMING
HOME<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">At a prewar rally at Des Moines,
Iowa, Charles A. Lindbergh had warned, “[t]he Jewish groups in this country
should be opposing [war] in every possible way, for they will be among the
first to feel its consequences.” It appears that many Jews were afraid that
when the war ended, they would be blamed, and things could get violent. In the
1947 Dore Schary film <i>Crossfire, </i>Samuels,<i> </i>the Jewish victim played
by Sam Levene, tells a troubled soldier, “I think it’s suddenly not having a
lot of enemies to hate any more. Maybe it’s because for four years now we’ve
been focusing on one little peanut. The win the war peanut. That was all. Get
it over. Eat that peanut. All at once, no peanut. Now we start looking at each
other again. We don’t know what we’re supposed to do. We don’t know what’s
supposed to happen. We’re too used to fighting. But we just don’t know what to
fight. You can feel the tension in the air—a whole lot of fight and hate that
doesn’t know where to go.”<sup>13</sup> <i>Crossfire </i>was a Warner Brothers
B-movie hurriedly adapted from Richard Brooks’ 1945 novel <i>The Brick Foxhole </i>in
which the victim was gay. In a 1984 introduction to an edition of his 1945 <i>Focus,
</i>Arthur Miller writes, “It is no longer possible to decide whether it was my
own Hitler-begotten sensitivity or the anti-Semitism itself that so often made
me wonder whether, when peace came, we were to be launched into a raw politics
of race and religion, and not in the South but in New York.” <i>Focus </i>is
the story of Lawrence Newman, who, like so many in his time, had successfully
hidden his ethnicity and lived peacefully among his neighbors in Brooklyn and
worked amicably among his peers. He is undone by his failing vision and his
need for glasses. Even his mother comments he now looks Jewish. His neighbors turn
against him, and his employer sidelines him and keeps him out of sight. Things
turn brutal when Finklestein, a Jewish man, moves in and opens a candy shop in
his neighborhood. The war has not ended yet, but a group calling itself the
Christian Front, possibly a rebirth or continuation of Father Coughlin’s cult,
has decided that after the war ends, they will be going after Jews. The local
leader of the front is Newman’s neighbor. Newman decides he will fight the
Front with Finklestein.<sup>14</sup> In 1947 the House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC), of which John Rankin was a member, decided to take a look at
social message films. As a result several films that had been planned, including
one based on <i>Focus, </i>were dropped.<sup>15</sup> A film was eventually
made in 2001. Miller worked at the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard during the war where
he witnessed an “acute level of hostility to Jews.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">The experience of Jews who served
overseas was different. As Deborah Dash Moore writes, many experienced
antisemitism in basic training, especially from those who had no prior
encounters with Jews. Once Jews proved themselves, however, often they were
accepted as one of the guys. Sometimes, though, accepting Jews as equals took
some convincing. Moore writes that Paul Steinfeld had to awaken a known
antisemite for guard duty and was met with a string of antisemitic profanities
to which he responded physically. Mission accomplished. Another, an orthodox
Jew, went through the war performing his daily prayers with his <i>tefillin.</i>
His bunkmates got used to it, joking that he was taking his religious blood
pressure. The only criticism came from a Jewish Corporal, who was overruled.<sup>16</sup>
Moore writes that it became common practice for Jewish soldiers to volunteer to
fill in for Christians during Christian holidays, most notably Christmas, and
for Christians to reciprocate.<sup>17</sup> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">The armed forces had paved the way
to an extent for the acceptance of Jewish soldiers as equals with the
development of the Judeo-Christian Tradition, although even this met with some
resistance. Moore writes that Congressman John Flanagan of West Virginia
“insisted on the House floor that he did not want ‘any Ginsberg’ to lead his
son in battle.”<sup>18</sup> John Rankin was not the only vocal antisemite in
Congress. Nevertheless, the campaign for the new tradition proceeded. Jewish
chaplains joined Catholic and Protestant chaplains, most famously in the case
of the <i>U.S.S. Dorchester,</i> which sank in 1943, claiming the lives of four
chaplains, including one rabbi, who had given up their life jackets and, in the
case of the rabbi, his eyeglasses.<sup>19</sup> Popular songs, including <i>When
Those Little Yellow Bellies Meet the Cohens and the Kellys, </i>emphasized on
all fronts that Jews were fighting alongside everyone else.<sup>20</sup> Moore
writes that shortly after the war ended, Harry Essrig, who had served mostly in
Europe as a chaplain for the Ninth Air Force, credited “the status and prestige
which was accorded our faith in the armed forces” for changing Jewish
self-perceptions and encouraging Jews to feel equal to other Americans.<sup>21</sup> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">As the war continued and the death
camps were liberated, the ghastly results of virulent antisemitism became
clear. The irrefutable evidence of gas chambers and crematoria, along with the
thousands of unburied dead and those walking skeletons that survived to be
liberated shocked the world.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">Prior to World War II, Jews in the
United States had primarily lived among themselves in urban areas. Moore writes
that close to half of American Jews, more than two million, lived in New York.<sup>22</sup>
Basic training sent them to parts of the country they’d never seen, and where
the locals in turn had seen few Jews.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">The fear that Jews would come home
to a country that refused to accept them and might even be violent toward them
were overblown. In her novel, Hobson, speaking through Phil’s editor, cites a <i>Fortune</i>
survey that showed “only” nine percent of the country admits any prejudice, and
that, “[t]he biggest incidence of antisemitism comes from the top-income
bracket now.” When his niece expresses surprise and asks about the “real
bigots,” meaning the followers of Gerald L. K. Smith and the like, the editor
continues, that, no, “[i]t’s the very people who set the styles for the country
in clothes and cars and salads—and mores… . The middle-aged stuffy ones in the
bracket more than the young ones.” In other words, mine not Hobson’s, it was
the people who had not served in the war and who had no contact with Jews that
were most antisemitic.<sup>23</sup><o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">Regarding the progress that had
been made in the United States since World War II, In 1984 Arthur Miller wrote,
“When one is tempted to say that everything in the world has gotten worse, here
is one shining exception.”<sup>24<u><o:p></o:p></u></sup></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">Hobson, writing for the
twenty-fifth anniversary issue of <i>Perspectives,</i> a magazine published by
the United States Commission on Civil Rights in 1982, acknowledges the progress
made against antisemitism and says that if she were writing <i>Gentleman’s
Agreement</i> at that time, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">…I
would not be writing about a young student wondering whether he could get into
a good medical school because he’s Jewish; I would not be writing about a
landlord or real estate broker asking a direct question like, “Are you of the
Hebrew persuasion? …<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">No,
I couldn’t write about those scenes now in 1982. But what if Phil were black or
Puerto Rican or Mexican-American and trying to rent or buy a house in certain
neighborhoods? What about his getting into those good medical schools or
renting an apartment or finding a job if he was known to be gay and refusing to
remain a closet gay?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">Alas,
if I were writing that book this very minute, and merely changed the word Jew
to black or Puerto Rican or gay or Mexican-American, I could leave most of the
scenes intact, marked for the printer, <i>stet except for corrections.</i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">And…
what about the discrimination and prejudice—and unacknowledged, of course, as most
prejudice is—what about if you’re a woman? …It is hard for me to believe that
there exist today men and women warped enough in their conception of justice to
make them fight against making our constitution guarantee equal rights to
women, not just voting rights, but equal rights to all areas of working and
living.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">But
equal rights to everybody cannot be denied, even by the warped. They will
eventually come for all people whose skin is different from the majority’s, or
whose political beliefs are different from the majority’s. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">Yes,
I still hope. Despite all the recent setbacks we talk about so glumly—and so
realistically—I am still a believer in decency and change. Like the ebb and
flow of the tides, every setback seems to engender a new surge forward. But I
confess I am impatient for that return tide of strength in the wide-sweeping
ocean of civil rights.<sup>25<o:p></o:p></sup></p>
<p style="background: white; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><sup><o:p> </o:p></sup></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">Vivian Gornick writes in her
introduction to the 1987 edition of Jo Sinclair’s 1946 <i>Wasteland:</i><o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">For
those of us in America who had gone into the Second World War as children of
intimidated inner-city Jews, 1945 signified an astonishing change in the
atmosphere. The end of the war brought frozen food and nuclear fission,
laundromats and anti-Communists, Levittown and the breakup of the college quota
system. We were about to enter the new world as our parents had never imagined
entering it. That was the big difference between us and them. We could imagine
ourselves out there.<sup>26</sup> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">Some not only imagined, but took
action. Moore says Jewish servicemen in Miami dressed in their uniforms and
went from restricted hotel to restricted hotel to say, “We’re Jews. You should
not discriminate. We served.”<sup>27</sup> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">After the war some Jewish service
people supported a Jewish homeland in Israel. Some smuggled arms to Palestine
and helped refugees immigrate to Israel, where one-third of all Israeli
citizens in 1948 would be Holocaust survivors. Some joined the Israeli armed
services.<sup>28</sup><o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">Jonathan D. Sarna says, “In the
1950s Judaism really became an American religion. You can’t talk about a
Christian country any more—you have a Judeo-Christian country.” Going forward,
many Jewish ex-GIs would become part of the civil rights movement.<sup>29<o:p></o:p></sup></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">At the end of the war, the U.S. had
five million Jews, which was the largest Jewish community in the world.<sup>30</sup>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">THE
NOVEL<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">As I mentioned above, Hobson got
her inspiration for the novel from John Rankin’s unchallenged antisemitic rant
in Congress. Hobson was an agnostic Jew and moved in social circles that
included gentiles, many of whom expressed similar outrage at Rankin’s rant. As
she writes in her autobiography, some could not have been more alarmed about
what was happening in our own country while we were so busily fighting the
Nazis and even said, “a country never knows what’s happening to it.” This
caused Hobson to wonder just how antisemitic was this country—not just the
known bigots, “but the other people, people who’d never call anybody a kike,
people who said they loathed prejudice?” Hobson had experience with such
people. Often she was the only Jew—or one of a few—at a dinner table and
someone would, after making an antisemitic remark or telling an antisemitic
story, say, “Some of my best friends are Jews,” to which Hobson would respond,
“Some of my best friends are, too—including my mother and my father.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">She began work on the novel in 1944
when the country was still at war, and her main concern was whether a book
written about antisemitism while the country was at war would be perceived as
unpatriotic. She wrote letters to many of her friends about the timing of the
novel. She did not ask whether a novel about antisemitism was a good idea. Not
one person questioned the timing of the novel. As for whether the book was a
good idea, amazingly, with one exception, all her gentile friends advised her
to go for it. The exception was Dorothy Thompson, whose dispatches from Germany
in the 1930s got her expelled from that country and whose conversations with
her friends inspired her then-husband, Sinclair Lewis to write his 1935 <i>It
Can’t Happen Here.</i> Thompson wrote, “anti-antisemitism campaigns are very
dubious means to overcome intolerance. They are (or may be, so it seems to me,)
advertising campaigns for antisemitism.” She concluded that a novel would be
fascinating if it were not a political tract, but “it would take a Dostoevsky
to write it.” I would imagine implying Hobson was not a good enough writer to
pull it off was like waving a red flag in front of a bull!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">What surprised Hobson—and me, to be
honest--was the reaction of her Jewish friends, including her friend and
potential publisher, Richard Simon, who wrote her a four-page single spaced
letter outlining the grief she could experience and implied that Simon and
Schuster might decline to publish the novel.<sup>31</sup> This was not an idle
threat. Simon and Schuster had published Margaret Halsey’s <i>Some of My Best
Friends Are Soldiers</i> in 1944, and even though it was promoted by both First
Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Walter Winchell in their newspaper columns, as
Halsey writes in her autobiography, “Dick Simon characteristically abandoned
both the book and me” when NBC canceled a radio dramatization of the book at
the last minute as “too controversial.”<sup>32</sup><i> </i>Responses from Hobson’s
other Jewish friends were similar. It seems that to Jews at that time
antisemitism was the hate that dare not speak its name. As we know, Hobson
persisted. The war ended before Hobson completed her book, so her concern about
timing was now moot. In the end Richard Simon decided to publish the book. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">THE
RECEPTION<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">Volume one of Hobson’s autobiography
ends with the day her novel came out. It had been serialized in <i>Cosmopolitan
</i>in 1946, which called it “The novel all America will discuss.”
Nevertheless, Simon and Schuster’s first printing was 17,500 copies. As it
turned out, the first printing was on paper that had remained from wartime,
when the type and weight of paper was regulated by the War Production Board.
Those books were placed in a warehouse to be pulped, and a new printing was
ordered. Before the book was published Darryl F. Zanuck announced he would make
a film of it. The evening before publication day Hobson says she was at an
all-night newsstand to get the reviews in both major New York newspapers, which
were enthusiastically positive. The next morning she was at Simon and Schuster
where orders were coming in so fast even Richard Simon was taking them. He told
her he was so desperate for books he was going to have to use the ones he had
planned to pulp. By noon, when the book ends, Simon and Schuster had orders for
ten thousand copies.<sup>33</sup> Sales would eventually exceed 1.6 million.<sup>34</sup>
Incidentally, I suspect my copy of the book, which I bought at an estate sale,
is one of the ones initially destined to be pulped. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> In Miami, Florida, the Jewish
Defense League was so taken with the novel they offered it for $1.75, which was
ten cents less than Hobson’s publisher charged her for copies of her book.<sup>35</sup>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> Not all reviews
were positive. The </span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Chicago
Star</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> found the
book a novel about antisemitism, “the action of which takes place entirely in
gentile circles” and deemed it interesting “but not too well written.”<sup>36</sup><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Diana Trilling, writing in the March
1947 issue of <i>Commentary, </i>notes that Phil Green laments that the only
three books about Jews he had in his library were about “a Jew who was a swine
in the wholesale business, a Jew who was a swine in the movies, and a Jew who
was a swine in bed.” When I read this in Hobson’s book, I recognized the book
about movies was Budd Schulberg’s 1941 <i>What Makes Sammy Run.</i> Thanks to
Rachel Gordan, I now know the book about the wholesaler is Jerome Wiedman’s
1937 <i>I Can Get It for You Wholesale. </i>I’m still at a loss as to which
book is about the swine in bed. At any rate, Trilling notes there are no
swinish Jews in <i>Gentleman’s Agreement. </i>“Indeed there are scarcely any
Jews at all, just two supporting characters—a scientist and a fine, personable
veteran—and three or four minor figures who appear in its pages only long
enough to demonstrate that although noisy Jews are no nosier than noisy Irish
they are noticed more, or that Jews themselves are often ashamed of their
birth. In Mrs. Hobson’s novel about Jews their cause is both explained and
fought for them by Gentiles… .” Later in the review she points out that, “There
are certainly no religious Jews in [Hobson’s] section of American society, and
there are no Jews to whom historical or cultural criteria have any meaning.
Dave Goldman, the Jewish veteran and Phil Green’s friend, is as little Jewish
as Phil himself, except as an accident of birth… . Similarly, there are no
religious Gentiles. The Gentiles in <i>Gentleman’s Agreement </i>who, like Phil
and his editor, are without anti-Jewish emotions, are not thereby more
Christian; they are simply the more decent.” Trilling eventually concedes the
book is commendable, although it is “poor—dull, non-dimensional, without
atmosphere.” Trilling finds the novel sterile and attributes that to “the
nature of Mrs. Hobson’s liberalistic view of life,” and then she veers off into
a critique of cultural pluralism that would not be out of place in some circles
today.<sup>37</sup> I’ll grant that Trilling has good points about religious
Jews not being addressed, but Hobson’s world did not include religious Jews,
and, as Gordan points out, “there are no examples of very religious Jewish protagonists
in the anti-antisemitism literature of the 1940s.”<sup>38</sup> I’ve read the
five she listed in her article, and indeed, the only religious Jews are the
immigrant parents in <i>Earth and High Heaven </i>and <i>Wasteland</i> and
Finklestein in <i>Focus.</i> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Gordan points out several critics
considered the main flaw in the novel to be “it featured the experiences of a
gentile and not a Jew.” In addition, Gordan points out that Phil did “what no
Jew in the 1940s was likely to do: Phil announces, at every opportunity, that he
is Jewish.” Gordan writes that some critics found the emotional experiences of
actual Jews were marginalized and “[i]t was the emotional responses of gentiles
that were prioritized… .” Gordan quotes a <i>Saturday Review</i> editor as
saying, “The inner anxieties of persecuted races cannot be explored by
tourists. They are known only to those who dwell as natives among such slights,
apprehensions, and shameful humiliations.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Gordan then writes that fifty years
after the novel and film appeared, film scholar George Custen reflected, “Having
a lead character who is only pretending to be Jewish is not far from using
blackface instead of black faces to mask white anxieties about the integration
of American popular culture.” Gordan continues, “The problematic quality of
Hobson’s story of passing had only become more apparent over time.”<sup>39</sup>
I vehemently disagree. Hobson’s target audience was gentiles. From what I’ve
learned doing research for this paper, there was not a Jew in America who was
not aware of antisemitism. They would hardly need a novel to point out the
daily indignities they encountered. I think it was a stroke of genius on
Hobson’s part to invent a gentile character who, along with the gentile readers
of her book, could discover just how much degrading antisemitism was going on
under their noses in America a mere two years after the German death camps were
liberated. Given that, as I’ve mentioned above, there were five million Jews in
America at the time, and there were 1.6 million copies of her book sold, it’s
obvious her target audience was the source of those book sales.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> That said, it’s possible Hobson’s
using a gentile protagonist and using her ex-husband’s last name to write a
book that, as Gordan writes, was criticized by some rabbis as showing no marks
of Jewishness, may have contributed to some confusion among her readers as well
as those who saw the film. I’m embarrassed to admit my first assumption after
having seen the film many years after it was released was that she was not
Jewish. I believe it is entirely possible that was Hobson’s intent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Hobson never wrote using a name that
was identifiably Jewish. In her younger days, she added an “e” to her mother’s
maiden name, and wrote as Laura Z. Keane. She then took the name of a man with
whom she had a long-term relationship and wrote as Laura Mount. Finally, she
used the name of her non-Jewish ex-husband. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Hobson’s 1943 <i>The Trespassers</i>,
like <i>Gentleman’s Agreement,</i> intertwines a romance with a serious
issue—this time assisting refugees from Nazism, both of which are drawn from
her life. The refugee family escaped Vienna in 1938, after the Austrian
Anschluss, and Hobson details the myriad roadblocks she and the Austrian
family, who had escaped as far as Switzerland, encountered securing passage to
America. Early in the book she describes her protagonist as follows: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">For
all her regular features and gray eyes, she carried in her face somewhere a
slightly foreign look, the look Magyar or Slav or Central European. It was
there in the deep socketing of the wide-set eyes, in the high cheekbones; it
was in the rather large mouth and the quick mobility of her expression.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: -.4in; margin-right: -.4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in -0.4in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> She then describes her protagonist’s
father as:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: -.4in; margin-right: -.4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in -0.4in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">He
was an American citizen and had been since 1893 or so, yet he still spoke with
a faint accent that betrayed his foreign birth. He had been born in Prague;
originally his name was Marthyunar. He had come to America in 1888, a boy still
in his teens, had come because he believed so in America and loved the idea of
being free to develop as he wanted, instead of being shoved into the army,
doomed later to live the struggling restaurant-keeping life his parents had
always lived.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> We learn he changed his name to
Marriner for ease of spelling, went to night school at the Pratt institute,
became a chemist, and married the teacher who taught him English, whose family
story is as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Before
the nineteenth century her mother’s family had come over from England. Even
then they were all mixed up of a dozen different bloods. There had been some
Irish ancestors, and two Welshmen, and one Spanish Jew, and heaven knew what
besides. Her father’s family had been mostly thrifty Scotch in Europe and once
here had become even thriftier New Englanders. Since then each family had
intertwined with other bloods, so that the mixture grew rich with such
ingredients as Pennsylvania Dutch and New Orleans French and a great deal of plain
Middle West or New England American.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> There’s only one lonely Sephardic
Jew in the bunch.<sup>40 </sup>This discussion of the protagonist’s physical
features and certainly her family’s genealogy adds absolutely nothing to the story.
I also find it significant that the family Hobson’s protagonist is assisting,
as well as the one Hobson assisted in real life, were anti-Nazi, but they were
not Jews. There could be any number of reasons for this ambiguity, including
not wishing <i>The Trespassers</i> to be perceived as special pleading, but another
explanation could be that, given the antisemitism Hobson was subjected to and
witnessed during the first forty-three years of her life, she was
understandably reluctant to reveal her ethnicity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> In Hobson’s 1986 <i>New York Times</i>
obituary Robert D. McFadden wrote, “<span style="background: white; color: #363636;">While
Laura was Jewish, she once told an interviewer: ‘I grew up in an agnostic
broad-minded family. I think of myself as a plain human being who happens to be
an American.’”<sup>41</sup></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #363636; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> While
it appeared to me Hobson was at best ambivalent about her ethnicity, I wanted
to get a more informed opinion on the matter.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #363636; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> I
was able to contact Hobson’s surviving son, who gave my draft a cursory review
and was kind enough to respond to my query about his mother’s relationship with
Judaism as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I think it is a misapprehension. It's one I think also shared by
Rachel Gordan, whom you rely on a bit, and one we never ironed out when Gordan
consulted me fairly extensively about 10 years ago in earlier stages of her
work. I think the root of the misapprehension may be differences in approaching
the assimilationist trend in Jewish life in the 1930s and 1940s. Briefly, to
Jews like my mother, there was no contradiction between being fully American
and also fully Jewish, though in a biographical rather than cultural sense.
That is, she always identified herself as Jewish, and my brother (now deceased)
and I, as children, were fully aware that we were Jews. When asked about the
"Z.," as we frequently were, our answer parroted my mom's, "It's
for my grandparents, who were Russian and Jewish." At the same time, she,
and we, had basically zero Jewish culture. I think understanding that people
who weren't attuned to Jewish culture did identify fully as Jewish is
important. (It was also important to my grandparents, who, to my regret, both
died before I was born. Both of them, emigrating separately from non-Yiddish
speaking areas of the Russian empire, learned Yiddish to function in the Jewish
labor movement in New York and did so for their whole lives.) You're aware
yourself of my mother's responses to people telling anti-Semitic jokes. I'm
sure she dresses this up some, as her stories tended to do, but I'm also sure
she said something like the "including my father and mother" remark,
and frequently. In terms of public statements, her profile in <i>Current
Biography</i> in 1947 quotes her, <span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">from an interview, discussing
the reasons why “I can never simply say, ‘I am an agnostic,’ but must say, ‘I
am Jewish.’” At least in that instance, she seemed entirely comfortable, not
uncomfortable, being identified as Jewish. Spelling out the "Z." as
Zametkin, as she regularly did in her <i>Who's Who</i> entries, also
certainly identifies her as a non-WASP. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #363636; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Regarding my writing that Hobson
never wrote using an identifiably Jewish name, he wrote: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .4in; margin-right: .4in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0.4in;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">On the matter of my mother's writing name, you
question her never using an identifiably Jewish writing name, and specifically
her "us[ing] the name of her non-Jewish ex-husband." I do think this
is a bit ahistorical. Very few divorced women, in the 1930s, resumed using
their "maiden names" and, indeed, the name Hobson was hers, not only
Thayer Hobson's. Gordan, when we were in touch, could never see LZH's
continuing to use "Hobson" as anything other than an attempt to hide
her Jewishness, and I think there's a little of the same sense in your piece.<sup>42</sup></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> It was actually Hobson’s superfluous
description of her protagonist and her protagonist’s family history in <i>The
Trespassers</i> rather than anything Gordan wrote that first caused me to think
Hobson might not have been comfortable with her ethnicity. He certainly has a
point about his mother’s being entitled to use the name Hobson, but even before
she married Thayer Hobson, she wrote using names that were not identifiably
Jewish. I won’t say Hobson was trying to hide her Jewishness, but she certainly
didn’t emphasize it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> For those willing to wade through a
romance gone terribly wrong--hell may have no fury like a woman scorned, but a
novelist has the means to even the score--<i>The Trespassers </i>is an
excellent way to learn how difficult the State Department’s paper wall could
make immigration. In this case, the process took sixteen months and only came to
fruition when Hobson’s protagonist, who was in Europe on business, flew to
Zurich to “encourage” the American embassy staff to move things along. Hobson’s
protagonist and the family she helped were at sea when Germany invaded Poland. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Hobson received a $5,000 advance for
<i>The Trespassers.</i> It sold fewer than 20,000 copies and did not earn her
anything beyond the advance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Coming back to <i>Gentleman’s
Agreement</i>, after Phil Green’s series is a success, a publisher who is a
friend of Phil’s boss is interested in turning it into a book. The publisher
advises Phil to get an agent and advises Phil that it’s better to pick a
publisher (him) rather than risk his agent sending it to “the wrong house.”
Phil asks what he means by the “wrong house.” The publisher elaborates:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> “If one of the Jewish houses put
their imprint on it, people might think it was just special pleading, and of
course it’s not.” Phil responds, “Jewish houses? You mean Jewish publishing
houses?” Of course that’s what the publisher means, and Phil responds, “Mr.
Minify and I have never heard of ‘Christian publishing houses’ and ‘Jewish
publishing houses’ except in the Third Reich. Even firms run by men who are
Jewish—we just call them ‘publishing houses.’ In a way, that’s what the whole
series is about.” When the publisher says it’s just a phrase in the book trade,
Minify responds, “'Jewish bankers’ is just a phrase, too, and ‘Jewish newspaper
owners’ and ‘Jewish communists’—just phrases.” The publisher has blown the
deal.<sup>43</sup><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> In her autobiography, Hobson writes
that her book was selected by the Jewish Book Council for their National Jewish
Book Award as the Best Jewish Novel of the Year. Hobson says her novel was not
a best Jewish novel or any kind of Jewish novel. It was instead a book about an
American problem of special interest to Jewish people, which seems to me to be
splitting hairs. Although in retrospect she admits it was a big mistake, she
declined the award. Perhaps that is one reason, as Gordan points out, Hobson is
not included in the Jewish Publication Society <i>Guide to American Jewish
Literature </i>(2009), and perhaps I shouldn’t feel too embarrassed about not
knowing whether Hobson was Jewish. Gordan writes Vivian Gornick made the same
mistake in a 2008 lecture about post-WWII American Jewish literature at the
Radcliffe Institute.<sup>44</sup> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;"> THE
FILM<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">Although in her autobiography
Hobson writes that everything she tells us is true, and indeed she’s not afraid
to reveal that one of her relationships was with a man who whose liability was
“not so much his being married as his not being very tall,” I can’t help but
believe there’s a certain degree of false naivete when she expresses surprise
at finding out there was a lot of interest in making a film of her novel. According
to Gordan, Hobson was well aware that Sam Goldwyn had paid $100,000 for the
screen rights to Canadian author Gwenthalyn Graham’s 1944 <i>Earth and High
Heaven</i> about a romance between a Jewish attorney and a socialite in Montreal
that had reached number one on <i>The New York Times </i>list of best sellers
and remained on the list for thirty-seven weeks. Indeed, Gordan quotes a letter
Hobson wrote in which Hobson says, “the fact that it is bought for the movies
by Sam Goldwyn for 100 grand knocks me over.”<sup>45</sup> I was not able to
pin down the year Goldwyn bought the rights, but it must have been either 1944
or 1945. The film was never made, which Goldman attributes to the scrutiny the
HUAC was beginning to give to message movies. Goldman quotes our old friend
John Rankin as saying, “They want to spread their un-American propaganda, as
well as their loathsome, lying, immoral, <i>anti-Christian </i>filth before the
eyes of your children in every community in America.”<sup>46 </sup>(italics
mine) Ah, yes. “The children” are always convenient tools for censoring ideas,
books, and today even drag shows. They’ve got to be carefully taught, after
all.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">At any rate, Hobson tells us she
didn’t know what to ask for the film rights--$5,000 maybe? Fortunately, she had
a good agent.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">Darryl F. Zanuck, a Protestant
originally from Nebraska and the only head of a major studio who was not
Jewish, read the galleys of the book while on vacation and immediately offered
$75,000. The reaction to the news that Zanuck was to make a film of the novel
was met with some resistance among other movie moguls, and their reaction made
it into the film in a scene in which <span style="color: #333333;">John
Minify announces to his staff that <em><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Smith’s Weekly Magazine</span></em><em><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span></em>will be
publishing a series on antisemitism and that Phil Green, who has just been
hired by the magazine, will write the series. Minify’s friend, Irving Weismann,
an industrialist and stockholder in the magazine, says, “Do you mind my saying
as an old friend I think this is a very bad idea, John? It’s the worst, most
harmful thing you can do now. You’ll only stir it up more. Let it alone. We’ll
handle it our own way. We’ve been fighting it for years. We know from
experience the less talk there is about it the better.”<sup>47</sup></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">I learned from Hobson’s
autobiography that it makes a difference if the opening credits say the film is
“based on” or says, as did the opening credits in this film, “Laura Hobson’s <i>Gentleman’s
Agreement.”</i> The latter approach protects the author from “wanton change,
invention, or concoction.” Nevertheless, Hobson decided to go to California to
meet Zanuck and Moss Hart, who would write the screenplay. Hart had experience
as a theater and film writer, but this was his first time adapting someone
else’s work, so he was more than happy to have her assistance.<sup>48</sup>
Goldman writes that Hobson was not paid for her work on the script.<sup>48</sup>
Hobson, however, wrote that Zanuck offered to pay her, but she did not want to
be on his payroll so that she “could feel free of constraint about the movie.”<sup>49</sup>
The film is true to the intent of
Hobson’s novel. Sadly, in my opinion, the character of Belle, Phil Green’s
sister who had married a man who had done very well, moved in high society in
Detroit, was quite antisemitic herself, and who could have demonstrated that “some
of one’s best relatives are bigots,” was jettisoned as were premarital
relations between Kathy and Phil and extramarital relations between Dave and
Anne Dettrey, most likely because of the Hays Code. Humorously, a conversation
about “a boycott against Christmas” that would feel at home among today’s “war
on Christmas” folks takes place—“Fact. All the networks and their Jew owners
have ganged up—last two weeks all they’ve carried is <i>White Christmas</i> so
they wouldn’t have to play <i>Silent Night, Adeste Fidelis</i> and things like
that.”<sup>50</sup> Also, the rant by John Rankin that inspired the novel was
reduced to Phil’s facetiously asking his mother how he should start a letter to
Dave—one of his proposed questions was, “How do you feel about Rankin calling
people kikes?” Admittedly, John Rankin was not only still in Congress but on
the HUAC, but that condensation would probably have been barely noticeable in
1947 and would certainly go over the heads of nearly everyone watching the film
today. The last ninety or so pages of the book are compressed into the scene
near the end of the film when Kathy meets Dave at the restaurant and resolves
to rent her cottage in Aryan Darien (apologies to Patrick Dennis) to Dave. According
to Hobson, Hart could not decide how to bridge the gap between the breakup and
reconciliation between Phil and Kathy. In the book, there’s a lot of
introspection on both sides, and introspection doesn’t work well on film.
Hobson moved to a desert cottage and came up with the basis for that scene. She
wrote that she liked it so well she wished it were in one of her books, so she
put it at the end of the second volume of her autobiography. Sadly, she didn’t
live to see the book in print. Her autobiography, which was largely complete
when she died, was posthumously proofed by Prof. Hobson, who emphasizes his
only addition was the Afterword, which is itself worth reading, and captions
for the photos. <i> </i> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">JOHN
RANKIN’S REVENGE<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: 0.5in;">As I mentioned above, Hollywood
came under the scrutiny of the HUAC in the late 1940s. Of concern to the
committee were message films, including <i>Gentleman’s Agreement. </i>Several
people involved with the film were called to testify, including Ann Revere, who
played Phil’s mother, John Garfield, who played Dave Goldman, and Elia Kazan,
who directed the film. Ann Revere refused to name names and was banished from
the film industry for what would turn out to be twenty years; John Garfield,
who was born Jacob Julius Garfinkle, and whose daughter reminds us courageously
took the role of Dave Goldman at a time in the film industry when Jewish actors
were avoiding any role that would identify them as Jews, was called to testify
and told the committee that he would reveal anything about himself they wanted
to know, but he would not discuss anyone else. He was blacklisted, and in 1952 he
died of a massive heart attack at the age of 39. Elia Kazan infamously caved
before the committee.<sup>51</sup> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">EPILOGUE<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #121212; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> John
Rankin was removed from the HUAC in January 1949. It appears he lost his place
on the committee not because he was racist and antisemitic, but because he had supported
Strom Thurmond’s 1948 Dixiecrat challenge to Harry Truman.<sup>52</sup> In 1952
Mississippi lost a seat in Congress as a result of the 1950 census. Rankin’s
district was combined with that of Thomas Abernethy, who, according to the <i>Jewish
Telegraph Agency,</i> shared a voting record on civil rights “exactly the same
as Rankin’s,” but Abernethy was “not generally known to openly express bias
against Jews.” In the race between the two incumbents, Abernethy won.<sup>53</sup><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #121212; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> In
1948 the Supreme Court decided in <i>Shelley v. Kraemer </i>that racially
restrictive housing covenants could not be legally enforced.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> In 1955 a
proposal that the Constitution be amended to declare, “The Nation devoutly
recognizes the authority and law of Jesus Christ, Saviour (sic) and Ruler of
nations through whom are bestowed the blessings of Almighty God” went nowhere,<sup>54</sup>
confirming Jonathan D. Sarna’s claim that by the 1950s the United States had
become a Judeo-Christian country.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">1. Martin,
Boyd A. “The Service Vote in the Elections of 1944.” <i>The American Political
Science</i></span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Review.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> Aug. 1945, Vol. 39, No. 4. pp
726-30.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">2. Humes,
Edward. <i>Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the American Dream.</i>
Harcourt, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Inc. 2006. p. 28</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">3. Shapiro
Edward S. “World War II and American Jewish Identity.” <i>Modern Judaism.</i>
Oxford University Press. Vol. 10 No. 1,
Feb. 1990. p. 65-8.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">4. Humes. <i>Over
Here. </i>pp 27, 222-7</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">5. Baron,
Lawence. “The First Wave of American ‘Holocaust’ Films 1945-1959.” <i>The
American Historical Review.</i> Vol. 115.
No. 1. February 2010. p. 95.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">6. “Will
Soldiers Vote?” <i>Time. </i>February 14, 1944</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">7. <i>GI
Jews: Jewish Americans in World War II. </i>Turquois Films in association with
Thirteen Productions for WNET.
2018. DVD.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">8. Halsey,
Margaret. <i>No Laughing Matter: The Autobiography of a WASP.</i> J.P.
Lippincott Company. 1977. p.
78.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">9. Halsey,
Margaret. <i>Some of My Best Friends Are Soldiers: A Kind of Novel.</i> Simon
and Schuster. 1944. pp. 136-7.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">10. Gordan,
Rachel. “The 1940s as the Decade of the Anti-Antisemitism Novel.” <i>Religion
and American Culture</i>. Vol. 31.
Issue 1. Winter 2021.<i> </i>Cambridge University Press. pp. 37-38</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> 11. Stack, Liam. “Many Jewish World War II
Soldiers Had Christian Burials. That’s Changing.” <i>New York Times. </i>May 24, 2022.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">12. Goulden,
Joseph G. <i>The Best Years: 1945-1950. </i>Athenum. 1976.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">13. <i>Crossfire.</i>
Directed by Edward Dmytryk. Warner Brothers. 1947. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">14.
Miller, Arthur. <i>Focus. </i>Penguin Books. 2001. Intro.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">15.
Goldman, Eric A. <i>The American Jewish Story through Cinema. </i>University of
Texas Press. 2013. p. 74.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">16. Moore,
Deborah Dash. <i>GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation. </i>Belknap
Press of Harvard University
Press. 2004. pp. 157-60, 132-3.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">17. Moore
Deborah Dash. “Jewish GIs and the Creation of the Judeo-Christian Tradition.” <i>Religion and American Culture.</i> Vol.
8 Issue 1. Winter 1998. p. 39.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">18. Ibid.
p. 37.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">19. Moore.
<i>GI Jews.</i> pp. 118-23.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">20.
Shapiro Edward S. “World War II and American Jewish Identity.” <i>Modern
Judaism.</i> Oxford University Press.
Vol. 10 No. 1, Feb. 1990. p. 71.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">21. Moore.
“Jewish GIs.” p. 33.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">22. Moore.
<i>GI Jews. </i>p. 11.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">23. Hobson, Laura Z. <i>Gentleman’s Agreement.</i>
Simon and Schuster. 1947. p. 229.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">24.
Miller. <i>Focus. </i>1984 intro</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">24. Hobson, Laura Z: <i>A Life—Years of Fulfillment</i>. Donald
I. Fine, Inc. 1986. pp. 313-4.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">26.
Sinclair, Jo. <i>Wasteland. </i>The Jewish Publication Society. 1987. Intro.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">27.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> <i>GI Jews. </i>DVD.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">28. Ibid.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">29. Ibid.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">30. Ibid.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">31.
Hobson, Laura Z. <i>Laura Z: A Life. </i>Arbor House. 1983. pp. 354-5.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">32.
Halsey. <i>No Laughing Matter.</i> p. 119</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">33.
Hobson. <i>A Life</i>. pp. 396-402</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">34. Goldman.
<i>Cinema. </i>p. 59</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">35.
“Anti-Semites at Work.” <i>Southern Jewish Weekly.</i> May 9, 1947.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">36. <i>Chicago
Star. </i>April 5, 1947.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">37.
Trilling, Diana. “Americans without Distinction: <i>Gentleman’s Agreement</i>,
by Laura Z. Hobson.” <i>Commentary.
</i>March 1947.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">38. Gordan. “Decade” p. 46.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">39. Ibid.
pp. 33-4</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">40.
Hobson, Laura Z. <i>The Trespassers.</i> Avon Books. 1968. Pp. 22, 26-7.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">41.
McFadden, Robert. D. “Laura Z. Hobson, Author, Dies at 85.” <i>New York Times.</i>
March 2, 1986. Section 1, p. 40.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">42. **********.
“Re: Question about Laura Z. Hobson.” Received by Larry Roth, April 8, 2023. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">43.
Hobson. <i>Gentleman’s Agreement. </i>pp. 253-5.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">44. Gordan,
Rachel. “Laura Z. Hobson and the Making of <i>Gentleman’s Agreement.”</i> <i>Studies
in American Jewish Literature.</i> Vol.
43, No. 2. 2015 p. 242.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">45. Gordan.
“Decade.” p. 56</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">46.
Goldman. <i>Cinema</i>. p. 73-4.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">47. Ibid.
P. 64.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">48. Ibid.
p. 71</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">49.
Hobson. <i>Fulfillment. </i>p. 39</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">50.
Hobson. <i>Gentleman’s Agreement.</i> p. 157.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">51. Simone, Daniel. <i>Gentleman’s Agreement--Anti-Semitism
Documentary.</i> Hollywood Backstory.
IMDbPro. 2001.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">52.
“THE CONGRESS: Rankin’s Revenge.” <i>Time.</i> Feb. 28, 1949. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<h1 style="background: white; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 7.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">53.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"> “</span><span style="color: #121212; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">Rep. Rankin Loses
Seat in Congress; Was Strongly Anti-jewish (sic).” Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Aug. 28, 1952. <o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">54.
“Movement for ‘christian’ (sic) Amendment of Constitution Revived.” Jewish
Telegraphic Agency, May 20, 1955</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><br /></span></p>Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-88035654633315758212022-12-28T12:42:00.000-08:002022-12-28T12:42:36.358-08:00Teaching White Supremacy: A Review<p> </p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A Review of Donald Yacavone’s <i>Teaching
White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National
Identity<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj0HrqHMwINgdTryuE4d2u0a-dRKnIRe8qjpZ7egkhXu2cOV5NkyegwoGEdsylxbKBTdTgMA6Qpm6vtnO9P85uzJrYuYaaleOMVWfqJLgcemw8wd8o7oMTbN41r_miWPAE1J5stV8QmYoiR6HLc4ir7L-HzL7hUyDFFf3N7lGj8Q93DPWJKWiNX4qg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="629" data-original-width="426" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj0HrqHMwINgdTryuE4d2u0a-dRKnIRe8qjpZ7egkhXu2cOV5NkyegwoGEdsylxbKBTdTgMA6Qpm6vtnO9P85uzJrYuYaaleOMVWfqJLgcemw8wd8o7oMTbN41r_miWPAE1J5stV8QmYoiR6HLc4ir7L-HzL7hUyDFFf3N7lGj8Q93DPWJKWiNX4qg" width="163" /></a></span></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For many years I’ve been looking for
an excuse to write about my observations of race relations in the North and the
South, and now I have my excuse. But first, my observations.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I grew up in Oklahoma City when it
was segregated, first by law, and then for several years in spite of the 1954 <i>Brown
v. Board of Education </i>decision. My high school was segregated when I
graduated in 1966. The first very few Black students would integrate the school
in 1968. Other than the week each summer that I went to church camp, my first
encounter with Black people was when I went to college in 1966. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In 1970 a rumor went through my
parents’ neighborhood that a Black family would be moving in. One of their
neighbors was adamant that would not happen. My parents had built their house
in 1958 and had just paid off their mortgage. I should mention here my father
was not virulent, but he was a racist in the Southern sense. He did not like
Black people in general, but he did on occasion meet individual Black people he
liked or at least tolerated. I would compare him to Senator Bird in Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Uncle Tom’s Cabin, </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">who was a full-throated supporter of
the Fugitive Slave Act in the Ohio senate, but when faced with Eliza and her
son in his own kitchen, helps them escape further into the underground
railroad. I asked my father what he would do if a Black family moved in, and he
said, “No one who can afford to buy in this neighborhood is going to let their
property go down, and that’s all I’m interested in.” As it turned out, there
was no Black family moving in.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I’m going to skip ahead a few years
to a visit I made at Christmas in the 1980s. I was out with my sister, and we
passed a house in the neighborhood. My sister said, “Now don’t tell Daddy, but
a Black man lives there.”</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Another time I
was out with my brother, who said, “There’s a Black man who lives in that house,
but we don’t want Daddy to know.” Eventually, I was out with my father, who
said, “I think there’s a Black man who lives in that house. He’s a cop, and he
takes really good care of his yard.” And the neighborhood was integrated. It
soon became multicultural When we sold the house in 2013, we had competing
offers from a Hispanic family and a Vietnamese family.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I finished my degree in 1970. That
summer I took a graduate course taught by Dr. Jere Roberson at what is now the
University of Central Oklahoma. If memory serves, he had just moved to UCO from
Georgia. We were all steeped in the belief that the South was racist while the
North was not. Donald Yacavone and others describe this as the North’s sacred
“treasury of virtue” for having fought the Civil War and freed the slaves.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">It would not be long before I saw
cracks in this sacred “treasury of virtue.” In 1971 I moved to Columbus, Ohio
for a job. I had only been there a few days when one of my coworkers told me
she and her husband were going to buy a home in a new development, but she’d
found out some Black people were also buying there, so she and hubby backed out
of the deal. I guess she thought I, being from Oklahoma and all that, would
understand. But I didn’t. I gradually learned that Columbus was quite
segregated. My real shock came when I moved to Long Island in 1974. I met the
most racist people on Long Island I have ever met. Bar none. We had one Black
secretary where I worked, and I don’t know how she did it. People were rude and
condescending.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">One incident stands out in my
memory. A white family sold their house in Rosedale, Queens to a Black family
who moved from London in 1975. The white family’s former neighbors picketed
their new home in Westbury. And then, in January 1975, the Black family’s new
home in Queens was bombed. As the owner of that home said, “</span><span style="background: white; color: #363636; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In England, you hear about this
happening in the South, but you just don't think it happens in New York City.”
So much for that sacred “treasury of virtue.”</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: #363636; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Lest you think that was nearly fifty years ago and things are
surely different now, I’ll direct you to a 41-minute 2021 Newsday documentary
titled “Long Island Divided: How Real Estate Agents Treated Undercover Clients
on Long Island,” which resulted from a three-year investigation.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #363636; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">(https://www.google.com/search?q=newsday+unequal+treatment&oq=news&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0i512j0i131i433i512j0i131i433j69i61j69i60l2.3574j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:2018caa4,vid:wqN-D3f49fE)
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">OK, so now the book. I read a review
of </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Teaching White Supremacy </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and didn’t know what to expect. I found the
cover, which, as you can see, is an 1873 print celebrating westward expansion,
railroads, the telegraph, overland mail delivery, and features a woman floating
in the air carrying a school book while holding one end of a telegraph line,
off-putting. Other than (possibly) the school book, what does any of this have
to do with teaching? Fortunately, I started reading the book anyway, and oh,
my. The more history I read the less I find I know.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">If a high school student today is
taught about slavery and the Civil War at all, they’re taught the North was
against slavery and the South was not, which is far from the truth. For one
thing, the textile mills in New England, which employed people, including
children, in deplorable conditions which were often worse than slavery, relied
on cheap cotton, and cheap cotton depended on slavery. And that’s just one
example of how the North was just as reliant on slavery as the South. As
Yacavone points out, some of the earliest history textbooks, most of which were
published in the North, portrayed slavery in a favorable light, and almost
every one of them described slaves as having been lucky to have been “rescued”
from the wilds of Africa and brought to Our Christian Nation. Slaves were
almost universally portrayed as ignorant and of a species somewhat below that
of the white race. Even abolitionists bought into that, hating slavery but
having no use for the people who were slaves. Even Harriet Beecher Stowe sent
most of her escaped slaves off to Africa in the end. In a </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">New York Review of
Books </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">review of Kris Manjapra’s </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of
Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Sean Wilentz points out white
abolitionist societies were not integrated. In short, at the end of the Civil
War, a fully integrated society does not seem to have been the goal of anyone.
And there were those who wanted to make damn sure it never happened.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">After
slavery ended, the goal of many writers of history was to emphasize how well
slavery had worked, with happy slaves, kind masters, and all that. One of the
ones Yacavone discusses is John H. Van Evrie (1814?-96), who wrote from the
1850s to 1879 and blamed the Civil War on northerners and abolitionists
cooperating with British agents in Canada. In one of the more amusing passages
in Van Evrie’s work, published under his partner’s name, Van Evrie wrote that
after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, the North sent an “abolition
army” into the South to compel “negroes” to be free to do as they pleased, go
where they pleased, and be as lazy and useless as they pleased. Alas, it seems
the slave population remained entirely loyal to their masters and refused to
leave their plantations. The “invading army” found “the negroes” so devoted to
their white masters that Yankee soldiers had to tie them up and threaten to
“bayonet them” to force them out of their homes.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgaUqX8Yn7Ia29O3zpD5lEsGFm10t6qQsVIheL-llRy5XX-m6Hw4LPofqQj0ITSM15lsFPDXbRnoOcSgty_98jtjCvtFocJV-wn-Z22aq2pNCqR4YonTa1Kjg2YV2j5cZuMxTlXe7aDU02WRNQEvMgNKSvWucmEaYdiSb-4uIV9clnLINjyqTtzpgE" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><img alt="" data-original-height="625" data-original-width="929" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgaUqX8Yn7Ia29O3zpD5lEsGFm10t6qQsVIheL-llRy5XX-m6Hw4LPofqQj0ITSM15lsFPDXbRnoOcSgty_98jtjCvtFocJV-wn-Z22aq2pNCqR4YonTa1Kjg2YV2j5cZuMxTlXe7aDU02WRNQEvMgNKSvWucmEaYdiSb-4uIV9clnLINjyqTtzpgE" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Yacavone takes us through several
cycles of teaching white supremacy including the emancipationist challenge,
1867-1883, roughly coinciding with Reconstruction, what he calls “causes lost
and found,” 1883-1919 in which he describes the ascendancy of the Dunning
School (which was still being taught when I was in high school and an
undergrad), “Eugenocide,” the 1920s in which the “science” of eugenics was
added to the white supremacist formula, the Lost Cause victorious, 1920-1964
during which Robert E. Lee morphed into a national hero meriting statues North
and South and it would have been blasphemy to say anything good about
Reconstruction, and finally renewing the challenge, which discusses the impact
of the new school of historians, who have actually gone back and reviewed
primary documents rather than merely building on the bad history written by
previous historians. I was exposed to some of the new thought in grad school at
The Ohio State University in the 1970s.</span></span></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The book
mentions so many texts and writers it is hard to keep them straight. There are
many villains, but there are also heroes, among them Albert Bushnell Hart
(1854-1943), a Harvard historian who set aside his own prejudice to mentor some
of the country’s most influential Black scholars, including W.E.B. Du Bois.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I do have
a couple of minor nits to pick with Mr. Yacavone, both of which appear on page
278. The first is the wall that was constructed in Detroit in the 1930s to
secure FHA financing for a housing development was in the Eight-Mile area and
was a half mile long. It was not, as Yacavone writes, eight miles long. Second,
he says that from 1865 to 1934 the federal government distributed 246 million
acres of Western lands to 1.5 million white families. The land was available to
Black families as well. My grandparents homesteaded in Colorado, and one of
their neighbors was Black. As I said, these are minor, but this country’s
treatment of Blacks is bad enough. There’s no need to embellish!</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">As I was
finishing the book the thought occurred to me that perspectives on the Civil
War, slavery, and Reconstruction have gone through several iterations, and who
is to say they won’t revert back to Dunning or even Van Evrie? As if reading my
mind, Yacavone in his epilogue discuses the January 6, 2021 assault on the
Capitol and notes the many Confederate flags that showed up that day. He notes
the history wars, the fact that high school history, when it is taught at all,
is often taught by coaches who have no training in the subject. As a result a
majority of students with a diploma are ignorant of the basic facts of American
history and are at risk of being led to believe just about anything about our
past. I find that scary. How about you?</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The book
is excellent. I get most of the books I read from the library, and there are
very few that I like well enough that I want to own for future reference. This
is one of those books. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></span></p>Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-87742989533287904612022-11-27T11:11:00.000-08:002022-11-27T11:11:34.869-08:00<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>AMERICAN MIDNIGHT,</i> A REVIEW OF ADAM HOCHSCHILD'S NEW BOOK</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><h1 style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjMb00sn1dWwQU3NCbWdNfbctBw5mJHaXsNQGL03XUfpyuS1RuR2nhSQo1zNovQnf67Pk6xdIkZRbR2M15PZowjnCrkv8zLTYs9OZ_5WTi1Tv7d9RFj1U2axImdRQe0dW20QkVYOKDXp81i2tugePNDxQQMwQCeODODlQH5Phd14PPYguvWECHLmnM" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="350" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjMb00sn1dWwQU3NCbWdNfbctBw5mJHaXsNQGL03XUfpyuS1RuR2nhSQo1zNovQnf67Pk6xdIkZRbR2M15PZowjnCrkv8zLTYs9OZ_5WTi1Tv7d9RFj1U2axImdRQe0dW20QkVYOKDXp81i2tugePNDxQQMwQCeODODlQH5Phd14PPYguvWECHLmnM" width="160" /></a></h1><br /> <p></p><h1 style="line-height: 18.75pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f">
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</v:imagedata></v:shape><span style="color: #464646; font-family: Oxygen; font-size: 15.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></h1><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but that’s because I’ve
been busy, and I’ve not had much to say. A few weeks ago I had a knee replaced,
so I had to slow down for a while, which means I had some time to read. For
mystery lovers, I recommend Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series. There
are three books in the series, of which I’ve read the first two. The book I’m
going to discuss today, though, is a history book, Adam Hochschild’s <i>American
Midnight: The Great War, A Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis.</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">For me, one comforting thing about being a student of
American history is knowing just how much this country has endured and survived
gives me hope we’ll get through whatever crisis we’re in at the moment. For
example, when I hear someone say they’ll make America great again—or, as I
recently heard from a past president, make America great and glorious again, I
wonder what they have in mind. After all, it seems to me this country is pretty
damn great—and even glorious—already. And I wonder exactly what changes these
folks have in mind. And into this breach comes Adam Hochschild to remind me
that we’ve been here before. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">In 1917 Woodrow Wilson dragged us into World War I. As
Hochschild points out, Wilson claimed he wanted to make the world safe for
democracy. Unfortunately, the cost of making the world safe for democracy
involved curtailing democracy significantly at home. Laws went into effect stifling freedom of speech. Any criticism of the war could land a person in jail. To
enforce these draconian laws, the government effectively deputized civilian men
(mostly) on the street, who, as you can imagine, became malevolent Barney Fifes—in one case
bugging the barbershop of a German immigrant, who, with several of his customers,
wound up in jail for their barbershop discussions. In a few cases, immigrants
were lynched for… being immigrants. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Labor unions were targeted as well. Any time the country
goes to war, a lot of money is going to be spent, and, oh my, Hochschild shows
how defense contractors took advantage of the situation. But when labor decided
it wanted a bigger piece of the pie, business and government turned against
them. Violently.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then, as now, immigration became an issue. Albert Johnson,
who would later become notorious for the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act severely
limiting immigration, is given a great deal of coverage in this book. Johnson,
who attended schools in Atchison and Hiawatha, Kansas, would later move to the
Pacific Northwest and become anti-labor and virulently anti-immigrant. Leonard
Wood, who had gained some fame in America’s adventures in the Philippines,
found himself stuck in Camp Funston at Fort Riley, Kansas rather than being
allowed to fight overseas. He decided to make a run for the Republican
nomination in 1920 opposing birthright citizenship. Almost a hundred years
later, Ted Cruz, a child of immigrants who was born in Canada, would do the
same.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Hochschild covers the early career of J. Edgar Hoover and
the rise and fall of A. Mitchell Palmer, who would round up aliens and, if at
all possible, deport them, preferably to the USSR. Palmer, who saw himself as
just what the country needed, was grooming himself to be the Democratic
candidate for president in 1920. He issued all sorts of warnings about imminent
attacks to occur on May Day 1919. One thing about making predictions that
specific is that, if nothing happens, you wind up looking like an idiot. After
National Guards, deputized civilians, etc. had been called to protect the
streets of America on the fateful day, nothing happened, and the “Fighting
Quaker,” as Palmer had been called, wound up being laughed out of any political
future and renamed the Quaking Fighter.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">The book is 358 pages long, excluding notes,
acknowledgements, etc. Hochschild is an excellent writer, although a couple of
paragraphs about Wilson’s post-stroke condition appear out of place. As
Hochschild points out in his introduction, history books in general skip
immediately from the end of World War I to the Roaring Twenties. The eventful
years 1917-1921 deserve more coverage. This book is a great place to learn
about those dark years.</span> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-49645039445539777742021-08-23T18:48:00.002-07:002021-08-23T18:48:50.046-07:00<p style="text-align: center;"> <b style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">MURDER OR SUICIDE?</span></b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">A Review of Kenneth Whyte’s <i>The
Sack of Detroit</i></span></b></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"></span></i></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><i><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-DdDz2X61bio/YSRGiTuqZuI/AAAAAAAAAEA/UDrn5CIFV54nDhQXIctth0bxcDHbpOc3QCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-DdDz2X61bio/YSRGiTuqZuI/AAAAAAAAAEA/UDrn5CIFV54nDhQXIctth0bxcDHbpOc3QCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="320" /></a></i></b></div><b><i><br /> </i></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: left;">I read a review of Kenneth Whyte’s </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: left;">The
Sack of Detroit: General Motors and the End of American Enterprise</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: left;"> in </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: left;">The
Wall Street Journal. </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: left;">Barbara Spindel, the reviewer, found the book
provocative and vigorous. I was intrigued. My family and I owned many GM
products over the years, so I was familiar with what GM offered the public. In
fact, in Christopher Buckley’s 2007 </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: left;">Boomsday,</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: left;"> a character commits
suicide by driving a 1957 Cadillac over a cliff. In trying to make the suicide
look like an accident, the case is made that the gearshift fell out of Park and
into Drive. When it was pointed out that the gearshift would have gone from
Park to Reverse instead, all that was said was, “You would have thought so.” I
knew that in 1957 the GM shift sequence was Park, Neutral, Drive, and Reverse, so
a fall out of Park to Drive was plausible. I wrote the author, who said no one
else had caught that. By the way, Christopher Buckley is, in my opinion, a hell
of a lot better at writing than his father was. At any rate, we’ll get back to
my and my family’s experience with GM later, but know in advance not one of us
currently owns a GM product.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Whyte starts off by saying, “This is
a book about America in the 1960s, a notoriously hectic time, and it felt that
way in the living.” Whyte was born in August of 1960, so it’s not clear how he
knows the 1960s “felt” hectic. I lived through them, and while a lot happened during
that decade, a lot happens in every decade. The 1940s, for example, involved
World War II, which could also have been categorized as “notoriously hectic,”
especially for those involved in the fighting. The 1960s have been romanticized
by the aging activists of that era, some of whom now teach college courses
about the 1960s, but newsflash! every decade had its activists. I think the
1950s have been shortchanged, but that’s just my gripe, and I’ll save that for
another time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> The reader really doesn’t learn much
about Whyte from the very brief writeup about him on the dustjacket, but a
Google search reveals he’s something of a conservative writer and activist in
Canada. I’d guess he’s something of an Amity Schlaes, attempting to resuscitate
reputations of presidents who are generally considered failures (Coolidge for
Ms. Schlaes; Hoover for Mr. Whyte) and revise history rightward. Had I known
that in advance I probably would not have read the book, but once I started the
book it was like a bad accident. I couldn’t avoid looking to see just how bad
it was going to get. And it got pretty bad!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> While Whyte starts out on an
enjoyable trip down memory lane, discussing how the automobile was resisted
before becoming a necessity, he soon veers into victim territory. By the time
he gets to the 1950s, it seems there are barbarian worms assailing the perfect
apple that was GM. People are actually becoming concerned about automobile
safety. Until then the industry had successfully blamed accidents primarily on
speeding and drunk driving. But some studies were showing that car occupants
were killed or seriously injured when they were thrown into steering wheels and
dashboard controls and even out of the cars. Personal injury lawsuits were
being filed, and some were being won. What’s an industry to do? Additionally,
cars were becoming so large in the 1950s that some people wanted something more
manageable and were buying imports—most notably VWs. To get to the meat of the
book, GM decided to make a car to compete with VW, and the Corvair was the
result. Whyte is convinced the Corvair was a good product (and he cites <u>one</u>
case, decided by <u>one</u> judge, as evidence), but as we know, Ralph Nader wrote
<i>Unsafe at Any Speed</i> in 1965 (when Whyte was five years old), and things
went downhill from there. GM might have been able to come out undamaged by the
investigation of the Corvair, but they made the mistake of investigating Nader
in search of mud. GM wasn’t successful in finding mud, although Whyte is
convinced there was some, but it just wasn’t found. At any rate, at that time
the American public had a strange belief that private lives should for the most
part be private. (I know. How quaint!) GM’s investigating Nader did not go over
well and resulted in GM’s paying Nader $425,000 (equivalent to more than $3.5
million today) for damages. Whyte isn’t sure, but he says the death of Alfred
P. Sloane, a former president and CEO of GM, at the age of 90 in 1966 could
have been caused by Ralph Nader! Additionally, some people were beginning to
question industry practices in general, and—horrors!—writing books. Whyte
credits or blames such offerings as Rachael Carson’s <i>Silent Spring,</i>
Jessica Mitford’s <i>The American Way of Death,</i> Betty Freidan’s <i>The
Feminine Mystique,</i> Michael Harrington’s <i>The Other America,</i> and Jane
Jacobs’ <i>The Death and Life of Great American Cities</i> as examples.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> By the time I got to this part of
the book, I wondered why Whyte wrote this book. After all, he doesn’t even seem
sure of what cars GM made. He lists Plymouth as a GM product more than once
(when he discusses safety improvements in a 1937 Plymouth, I don’t know whether
he means Plymouth or an actual GM product), and never mentions the LaSalle,
positioned between Buick and Cadillac between 1927 and 1940. But I trudged on. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> GM was damaged by Nader, but “fiscal
excesses” of the Johnson administration also damaged GM, causing it to pursue a
new product, which would “have to be produced on the cheap, with smaller
amounts of cheaper materials, less distinctiveness in design, more sharing of
designs and parts with other cars, and more efficiency rather than greater care
in assembly.” The Vega was the result. Cheap does not always save money. There
were massive recalls for all sorts of problems, and the car’s aluminum engine
was notoriously awful. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Whyte dismisses the benefits of
safety legislation passed in 1966, and perhaps he has a point that regulators
concentrated on passive restraints (air bags, etc.) rather than on seat belts,
but to say, as he does, that “The fact is Ralph Nader and the federal
government harmed the cause of safety” is, I think, a bit of a stretch. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> The answer to the question I asked
myself several times while reading this disaster finally comes in the Epilogue,
titled “The End of American Enterprise,” in which Whyte compares the evils
committed against GM to what he perceives as overkill regarding regulating
Purdue and other pharmaceutical companies. How penalizing Purdue for
overselling opioids and understating their dangers is a bit of a reach, as is
claiming such actions mean “the end of American enterprise” is a bit of a
stretch given we live in a country that has in the not too distant past given
us Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and a host of other successful companies. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> Now, as promised, a brief history of
my and my family’s experiences with GM.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8gVE1TA_MCo/YSRHF2E47DI/AAAAAAAAAEI/1Mzr-UWz_t8kcnyOyWCa69RYmfs3BHkvwCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="213" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8gVE1TA_MCo/YSRHF2E47DI/AAAAAAAAAEI/1Mzr-UWz_t8kcnyOyWCa69RYmfs3BHkvwCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> After war was declared in Europe my
father bought a 1939 Chevrolet coupe. He was hired by the US Army Corps of
Engineers to work on a project that took him first to St. Louis, where he met
my mother, then to New York followed by Santa Fe and Oak Ridge, Tennessee and
finally back to St. Louis after the project brought an end to the war, which
also meant an end for their jobs. The Chevy had served them well, but they
wanted a newer car, so my father signed up for a 1946 Buick. As it turned out
cars were in high demand at the time—none had been built in the past four
years, and it was um, expected, that in spite of price controls, some money
would be passed under the table in order to insure delivery. My father didn’t
know that, and as a result he spent the rest of his life joking that he just
knew one day GM would call and tell him that Buick was ready. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7ED9vy9s8kU/YSRHaY47O5I/AAAAAAAAAEQ/l6jtzSonSwgyzZeDfxOg4MOvG86ZTkVBQCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="665" data-original-width="1000" height="213" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7ED9vy9s8kU/YSRHaY47O5I/AAAAAAAAAEQ/l6jtzSonSwgyzZeDfxOg4MOvG86ZTkVBQCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">What my father wanted</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-m5M-YQe1NVs/YSRH2cCTwLI/AAAAAAAAAEY/ZbW5ChZJISsBpd6KW0_qI9JrIh-RrMmKACLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-m5M-YQe1NVs/YSRH2cCTwLI/AAAAAAAAAEY/ZbW5ChZJISsBpd6KW0_qI9JrIh-RrMmKACLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />What we wound up with<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> I came along, followed by the older
of my sisters, and we outgrew the coupe, so in 1950 my parents bought a 1948
Plymouth, which, contrary to what Whyte thinks, was not a GM car. Three years
later they bought a 1953 Pontiac, which was one of my favorite cars.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ycTUzAWLhcY/YSRIPMGFMbI/AAAAAAAAAEg/U58ilYYsenEPxi74KjYRRBWBAijjrjM2ACLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="206" data-original-width="450" height="146" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ycTUzAWLhcY/YSRIPMGFMbI/AAAAAAAAAEg/U58ilYYsenEPxi74KjYRRBWBAijjrjM2ACLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Just about my favorite of the cars we owned</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-c0QeMnKDXTk/YSRJQG9z0KI/AAAAAAAAAEo/LqaRMln0rBweeKaIvsi3szUkRQrqkxo3wCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-c0QeMnKDXTk/YSRJQG9z0KI/AAAAAAAAAEo/LqaRMln0rBweeKaIvsi3szUkRQrqkxo3wCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />Probably the worst car we ever owned<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span> </span>A couple
of years later we became a two-car family when my father got a deal on a 1951
Buick from a cousin. It turned out not to be a great deal after all. In 1958 we
moved into a newly built house with a two-car garage and wound up with a 1957
Oldsmobile in one side and the old reliable Pontiac in the other. The
Oldsmobile was one of the worst cars we ever owned, and in a triumph of hope
over experience, it was followed by a 1961 Oldsmobile, which was an
improvement, but considering the 1957, that’s not saying much. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-i_-QEcN6QGo/YSRJ3A_RI1I/AAAAAAAAAEw/KGd7uRU3D4Y7hLZihGmCq6Fui5a97RyBACLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-i_-QEcN6QGo/YSRJ3A_RI1I/AAAAAAAAAEw/KGd7uRU3D4Y7hLZihGmCq6Fui5a97RyBACLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />Something of an improvement.<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">My father’s
company let him drive a 1962 Ford, which he eventually bought. The Pontiac was
parked at my grandmother’s house supposedly for me when I was old enough to
drive, although when a friend of mine and I started fixing it up to get it
running a few years later, my parents promptly sold it for $50, and the Ford
was foisted on me. No, it wasn’t given to me. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8hzqVIS4zko/YSRKlCXntAI/AAAAAAAAAE4/CUUsGSvVIPwofTnnxFjI9rpl0qG_uczOACLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="901" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8hzqVIS4zko/YSRKlCXntAI/AAAAAAAAAE4/CUUsGSvVIPwofTnnxFjI9rpl0qG_uczOACLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />What I wanted to buy (with my own money, by the way)<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-nh1sdlfJNDU/YSRLc22UYOI/AAAAAAAAAFA/s8iA5kuJLXwPNmuMynG7dHkGIMYQF89rACLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="969" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-nh1sdlfJNDU/YSRLc22UYOI/AAAAAAAAAFA/s8iA5kuJLXwPNmuMynG7dHkGIMYQF89rACLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="227" /></a></div><br />What I wound up with<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">I’d found a 1954 Pontiac I wanted
to buy, but I wasn’t 21, so I couldn’t buy a car on my own. My folks wanted a
new car, so my choice was if I wanted to buy a car, I could buy the Ford. Or
nothing. (I had several paper routes, so I was earning and saving money.) The
Ford didn’t last long. I had a few junkers after that, but when I was finally
old enough to buy a real car on my own, I bought the first of two VWs. A few
years later, the first gas crisis hit. People remember those times as awful,
and for a while there was a gas shortage, gas lines, odd and even fill up days
and so on, but the price of gas went from about 32¢ a gallon to 57¢ a gallon,
which in the overall scheme of things was manageable, at least for me. Large
cars were cheap, and I bought a one-year-old Buick Electra which I took with me
to New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and San Jose, where I sold it and bought a
Honda Accord, which I hated and sold for a profit and bought a 1974 Pontiac,
which I brought with me to Kansas City the first time I moved here. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8pj9QxovETQ/YSRL27rkIQI/AAAAAAAAAFI/geeQ3CI03u0WwdNt6oDRdcB5rSh24jq9ACLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="258" data-original-width="512" height="161" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8pj9QxovETQ/YSRL27rkIQI/AAAAAAAAAFI/geeQ3CI03u0WwdNt6oDRdcB5rSh24jq9ACLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />The deuce and a quarter.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> The job I had at that time required
me to travel, and I was impressed with the Buick Regals and Oldsmobile
Cutlasses I rented, so I bought a new Regal in 1980. It had a V6, and it was
basically a good car. I took it back to the dealer several times because parts
of the car didn’t quite fit together well, and the carpet in the trunk didn’t
really fit. I kept taking it back until one day I noticed it sitting in the
parking lot of a local fast food joint where I’d gone to get coffee while I
waited for the car. When the car left I walked back to the dealership, and the
customer service manager said it was all fixed. When I asked how that was
possible, given I’d just seen it in the fast food joint’s parking lot, he said,
“Look. You didn’t pay for a perfect car.” This was news to me, but it did make
me wonder what the purpose of buying a new car was if it weren’t going to be
perfect when it came off the showroom. That car was totaled in Austin, Texas
when another driver ran a red light. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-zkGIktzLEuE/YSRNVrASHaI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/y7DjIWbUVAgl81QCBikoQByL-h4ixF3ngCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="158" data-original-width="319" height="158" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-zkGIktzLEuE/YSRNVrASHaI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/y7DjIWbUVAgl81QCBikoQByL-h4ixF3ngCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">"You didn't pay for a perfect car"</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span> </span><span> </span>I went through a couple of junkers and
finally bought a 1986 Oldsmobile after a move back to San Jose. That car was
OK, although it did have computer problems. I brought it back with me to Kansas
City and after 9/11, when car makers were offering no down and no interest loans,
I saw a 1990 Buick station wagon on a dealer’s lot. When I expressed an
interest, the dealer said, “Oh, no one will make a loan on a car that old.”
After talking to the car’s previous owners, a wealthy couple who said they’d
only used the car to go to their place in Florida in the winter and their
vacation home in Michigan in the summer, I decided to make a lowball offer,
which was accepted. My mother died unexpectedly in 2003, and I made biweekly
trips to my father’s home in Oklahoma City for some time afterwards. The car’s
air conditioner stopped working, and I took the car in to have it fixed. I will
never forget how frustrating this experience was. Actually, the air conditioner
was fine, but the car had a touch sensor that failed. Now, this was a sensor
that had been used on Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, and Buick station wagons, and GM
no longer stocked the part! Because of that, the air conditioner could not be
fixed. I even asked my parent’s trusted mechanic if he could find a used part.
He couldn’t. When I expressed my frustration to the dealer, he said, “Well,
that car is 13 years old.” GM was admitting, I suppose, they didn’t plan on
their cars lasting 13 years. At any rate, I told myself people had survived
without air conditioned cars for years, and I could, too, but the summers here
and in Oklahoma can be brutal! <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-z4NtlllOhQU/YSRNtCTz55I/AAAAAAAAAFY/ohjSPQLxGAYHpb6Wk--ldm3kkdBgbDQYwCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="400" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-z4NtlllOhQU/YSRNtCTz55I/AAAAAAAAAFY/ohjSPQLxGAYHpb6Wk--ldm3kkdBgbDQYwCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />"Well, that car is 13 years old."<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> My father died in 2005, and I
inherited the 1989 Oldsmobile he’d bought after seeing my 1986. I also bought
another 1989 Oldsmobile from a friend who was relocating. Eventually the second
one pretty much fell apart, and I sold the first one and the station wagon and
bought a 1996 Oldsmobile, which was one of the worst cars I’ve ever owned. When
the brakes failed the second time, I decided that was it. I’d taken a look a
Kia Souls and liked how relatively easy they were to get into and out of. The
day after I had the brakes on the Oldsmobile fixed, I drove it to a Kia
dealership and bought a Soul. That was more than seven years ago, and other
than routine oil changes, tire rotations, etc., the only thing I’ve done to
that car is replace the battery, and I did that just because it was seven years
old, and it gets cold here in the winter. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-H74dS0gHe9k/YSROR9dfC6I/AAAAAAAAAFg/ntkmwrhdLhcPl-fISJeVw97GVNoixVMFwCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="259" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-H74dS0gHe9k/YSROR9dfC6I/AAAAAAAAAFg/ntkmwrhdLhcPl-fISJeVw97GVNoixVMFwCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="320" /></a></div>I think this is the best car I've ever owned. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> My younger sister was for a while
the lone holdout, saying she would always buy only GM products, since that’s
what our parents did, but she now has a Toyota Rav4. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> I think it’s safe to say I and my
family gave GM more chances than we should have in order to stay loyal, but in
the end, GM just didn’t stand up to competition that was more comfortable, more
reliable, and more affordable, especially when taking into account maintenance
and repairs. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"> Mr. Whyte can make the case that GM was a victim of bad
faith all he wants, but in my book, GM’s downfall was self-inflicted. It wasn’t
murder, it was suicide.</span><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">A note to my readers. This is a post I've been working on for a while, and I'm having some trouble with Blogger.com on getting the spacing and alignment right. Alas, classes started up today, and I've got to get to work on those, so I'm going to pot this as is. Enjoy!</span></div>Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-45980904601808357902021-07-31T18:51:00.000-07:002021-07-31T18:51:33.798-07:00<p> </p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-I-w0zdG7gDM/YQX9EwnjqvI/AAAAAAAAADg/4suDEVBKK9gatR1zG9HMs6mL2lgVaPc3QCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="455" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-I-w0zdG7gDM/YQX9EwnjqvI/AAAAAAAAADg/4suDEVBKK9gatR1zG9HMs6mL2lgVaPc3QCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="303" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p> The Wyatt Slaughter House</o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">A
few years ago, I read the home of Wyatt and Edna Slaughter in Oklahoma City had
been restored and had become a Bed and Breakfast. Man, did that bring back
memories! My 55-year high school reunion is coming up at the end of September,
and I thought it would be great to stay in the house I used to visit and that
porch that was one of our favorite hangouts in the summer. Alas, the house is
now an airbnb and offers more space than Dan and I need at a price beyond my
budget. The new owner, Doris Youngblood, said if the property is not in use
when we’re in town she will show us around. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When I say the front porch was one
of “our” favorite hangouts, I mean Joe Baumhaft, Howard Thompson, and me. Joe,
who died suddenly a few weeks ago (it’s a hazard of getting old), is a story in
himself and may be the topic of a future post, but Howard was how I got to know
Mrs. Slaughter and the Slaughter house.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When I went to college in the fall
of 1966, I left a segregated life. My high school, Northwest Classen, would not
be integrated until 1968. The home my parents built in 1958 was in a segregated
subdivision. In 1970 a rumor went through the neighborhood that a Black family
was going to move in. The daughter of our next-door neighbors went through the
neighborhood performing what she must have thought was a reprise of Paul
Revere, although it was not the British that were coming. I tried to talk her
down to no avail. My parents had just paid off their house, and I asked my
father what he planned to do. He was no liberal, but to his credit, he said,
“No one who can afford to buy a house here will just let it go to pot.” Then he
simply went back inside leaving the neighborhood Paul Revere with her mouth
hanging open. And that was the end of that. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My whole life was segregated except
for the one week a year I went to church camp, where I came into contact with
the children of middle-class Black people and occasionally their parents if
they were counselors. One of the parents, Don, was extremely patient with me
when I asked him questions about his family and his life, although I’m sure he
was rolling his eyes internally. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At any rate, Howard was different. He
was older, had been in the Army, and he was from Boston and had the Brahmin
accent. I did not know then, and I do not know now what his relationship to the
Slaughters was, but for a good part of the time I knew him, he lived in the
house with Mrs. Slaughter.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Although Joe and I were white, since
we were friends of Howard’s, Mrs. Slaughter tolerated us and even brought us
iced tea when we were hanging out on her porch. I had no idea until a few years
ago how rich and how important in Oklahoma history the Slaughters were. When
you’re young, you just accept things without examining them too closely. Of
course I knew the house was huge and was on many acres. What I didn’t know was
Mrs. Slaughter’s husband, Dr. Wyatt Slaughter, had come to Oklahoma Territory
in 1903 and began buying land. He eventually owned more land than any other
Black person in the state. In his segregated times, he was a doctor with many
patients. In his 2007 <i>Ralph Ellison: A Biography,</i> Stanford University
professor Arnold Rampersad writes that Ellison’s mother lived in a boarding
house owned by Mrs. Slaughter’s parents, Jefferson Davis and Uretta Randolph,
and Dr. Slaughter delivered Ralph Ellison, who remained close to the Slaughter
family and flew to Oklahoma City for Mrs. Slaughter’s funeral when she died
unexpectedly. Dr. Slaughter owned a great deal of land in downtown Oklahoma
City and built several large office buildings. He died in 1952, long before I
came on the scene. When I knew the Slaughters, his son, Wyatt, Jr., ran the
business. I’ve written about status deprivation in the past, and the
Slaughters, possibly concerned about reprisals for having done too well, kept a
very low profile. If you were to meet Wyatt, Jr. on the street, you wouldn’t
have known he had two nickels to rub together. Mrs. Slaughter drove a
well-maintained 1956 Mercury 2-door until she died in 1969. When I first met
Howard, he had a dark green 1964 Mustang. It had six cylinders, and he wanted
to upgrade. I was there once when he told Mrs. Slaughter he was thinking about
buying a Cadillac, and her face registered horror. I’m sure when they were
alone, she elaborated, but all she said in front of us was, “Howard, we don’t
do that.” Well, he didn’t buy a Cadillac, but he did buy a Jaguar like the one
that was in <i>Mad Men,</i> and it proved just as reliable as the one on the TV
series. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Howard could be very persuasive. In
1968 he talked me into going to a George Wallace rally with him at the Oklahoma
City fairgrounds because--surprise!—he was concerned about being a Black man
alone in that crowd. It was an experience. I still have the handouts from that
rally. As we were leaving, Wallace told Howard he looked like an intelligent
young man. He looked at me like I was crazy. I don’t think I ever told my
parents about that adventure. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My grandmother went to spend much of
the winter of 1969-70 in Phoenix with one of her nieces, so I was staying at
her house when one night Howard called in tears. Mrs. Slaughter had died at a
party she’d gone to with friends. He was distraught. I’m not sure when Howard
moved from the Slaughter house, but it was some years later. I moved to
Columbus in 1971, and when I came to visit my family, he was there. As I
recall, he closed off her bedroom area, so I never saw that part of the house.
My life became peripatetic with stops in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, San
Jose, Austin, and Kansas City. Howard and I lost touch. I understand he moved
back to Boston, but I’m not sure when or where in Boston he moved. It happens. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What I remember about the house is
it had murals in the dining room. The house was built in 1937, and the story I
heard was the murals were painted by out-of-work, possibly WPA, artists. I also
remember the house stayed cool in the summer even though it was not air
conditioned. It was built on high ground and caught the breeze.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Slaughter house is at </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: center;">3101
NE 50th St., </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: center;">Oklahoma
City, OK 73121. It </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">is now known as
The Mansion and is on the National Register of Historic Places.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-18962116308780898042021-07-19T18:57:00.000-07:002021-07-19T18:57:25.084-07:00<p> <span style="font-family: times;"><span> </span><span>It’s been a while since I posted. I
took a class last semester titled “Race and Violence in 19</span><sup>th</sup><span> Century
Literature.” It was the most difficult class I’ve ever taken (and that covers a
lot of years) both in terms of the amount of work involved and the
psychological effect of the violence involved. I was in a group that took on
Rape and Lynching. Among other things, we had to go back to primary sources,
including newspapers of the day, for coverage of the lynchings. The final
product was a PowerPoint presentation. I’d never used PowerPoint, but I managed
to learn, so that was a good thing. As for the amount of work involved, that
was not really a problem. With Covid restrictions, there wasn’t much going on
anyway. But the violence! I knew Blacks had been lynched. But I didn’t have a
concept of what that involved. In many cases the lynchings happened without a
trial, without any evidence, were announced in advance, special trains were run
to the events, spectators often numbered in the thousands, and most horrifying
to me, souvenirs of the event were sold to those attending. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Hjb9epdXbNs/YO-avc4pLCI/AAAAAAAAACQ/lST-0ciae1c1D0NLfGeVfmjplwuFX2Y3wCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times;"><img alt="" data-original-height="211" data-original-width="239" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Hjb9epdXbNs/YO-avc4pLCI/AAAAAAAAACQ/lST-0ciae1c1D0NLfGeVfmjplwuFX2Y3wCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="272" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: times;"> </span><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span> </span><span>In the case of San Hose it was proudly reported that before his lynching by fire, </span><span>Hose was “deprived of his ears, nose, and other portions of his anatomy.” After the lynching, “Before the body was cool, it was cut to pieces, the bones were crushed into small bits, and even the tree on which the wretch met his fate was torn up and disposed as souvenirs. The negro’s heart was cut in several pieces, as was also his liver.” “Small pieces of bone went for 25 cents, and a bit of liver, crisply cooked, sold for 10 cents.” Two thousand people attended. After the lynching it was discovered that Hose had not committed the rape he was accused of, but a good time was had by all.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-EHzbb-VMIrQ/YPYkby25wtI/AAAAAAAAADQ/UeNzqihbNEo5awp_XPH9R4NxO8LE8SAEwCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="242" data-original-width="208" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-EHzbb-VMIrQ/YPYkby25wtI/AAAAAAAAADQ/UeNzqihbNEo5awp_XPH9R4NxO8LE8SAEwCLcBGAsYHQ/image.png" width="206" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times;"> At the end of the semester, I
resolved to read some mindless brain candy to get this and other images out of
my mind. I highly recommend Carl Hiaasen's <i>Squeeze Me</i> if you're in need of some really good satire. In the class I was introduced to Albion Tourgee, a white carpetbagger
who settled in North Carolina and witnessed Reconstruction first-hand. He
definitely deserves to be read today when the Reconstruction era is being
revised to suit whatever biases non-historians want taught in public schools.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times;"> At any rate, the following is my
term paper. Enjoy.</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: times;">Status Deprivation and Violence</span></b></p></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"> Colonel Comfort Servosse: Sir,--You hev got to leeve this county, and the quicker you do it the better fer you ain't safe here, nor any other miserable Yankee! You come here to put n- over white folks, sayin as how they should vote and set on juries and sware away white folks rites as much as they damn please. You are backin up this notion by sellin of em land and horses and mules, till they are gittin so big in their boots they cant rest. You've been warned that sech things wont be born but you jes go on ez if thar want nobody else on arth. Now, we've jes made up our minds not to stan it enny longer. <b>We'be been and larned yer damn n- better manners that to be a ridin hossback when white folks is walkin. </b>The regulators here met, and decided thet no n- shant be allowed to own no hoss nor run no crop on his own account herearter. And no n- worshippin Yankee spy thet encourages them in their insolense shel live in the county. Now, sir, we gives you three days to git away. Ef you're here when that time's over, the buzzards will hev a bait thats been right scarce since the war was over. You may think wes foolin. Other people hez made thet mistake to ther sorrer. Ef you don't want to size a coffin jest yet you better git a ticket thet will take you towards the North Star jes ez far ez the roads been cut out. </span></p></blockquote></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="text-align: center;"></span><span style="text-align: center;"> By
order of</span></span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times;"> The Capting of the Regulators</span><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> This was the anonymous note Albion
W. Tourgee’s protagonist, Comfort Servosse, found on his doorknob the morning
after some “disguised ruffians” had invaded the freedmen’s settlement Servosse
had established on some surplus property. The freedmen had proven themselves
capable of planting and harvesting crops, making a profit, buying horses,
mules, and paying off their houses. They were becoming self-sufficient, and
that was an outrage to those who considered Black people good only for menial
work. The ruffians had beaten and outraged some of the residents, stolen two
horses, and cut and mangled other horses.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> Black people prospering, and
especially Black people becoming more prosperous than white people was not
going to be tolerated. No Black person was to ride a horse when there were
white men walking.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> In his 1944 <i>An American Dilemma,</i>
Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal wrote, “The South gives indication of being
afraid of the Negro. I do not mean physical fear. It is not a matter of
cowardice or bravery; it is something deeper and more fundamental. It is a fear
of losing grip upon the world. It is an unconscious fear of changing status.” Anxiety
about changing status, sometimes voiced today as “the great replacement,” is
still being experienced and is by no means limited to the South. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> I’m going to focus on that anxiety
and the violence that results when a formerly dominant segment of society anticipates
threats to its cultural entitlement and fears a loss of power and rank, or what
William Tuttle called “status deprivation” in his 1970 <i>Race Riot: Chicago in
the Red Summer of 1919.</i> Status deprivation is the perception that a person
or a class, race, or group of people has moved above its station, or done
better than the aggrieved party believes that person or group has a “right” to.
Those who see people they consider inferior doing better than their
self-appointed betters become resentful. I’ll come back to <i>A Fool’s Errand</i>,
which is full of status deprivation, later, but first I want to look at an example
from antebellum literature. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s <i>Uncle
Tom’s Cabin,</i> when George Harris’ master learns that George has invented a
hemp cleaning machine and is held in high regard by the man George is hired out
to, he takes George home and gives him the dirtiest and most menial jobs he can
find. The master and his son drown George’s dog. George’s offense was he was
intelligent and appreciated, and George’s master resents the high regard George
has earned in his employment. He’s determined to keep George “in his place.”
Further, George’s master only sees that he has invented a machine that will save
work. “O yes! –a machine for saving work, is it? He’d invent that, I’ll be
bound; let a n- alone for that any time. They are all labor saving machines
themselves, every one of ‘em.” George’s master has no appreciation for making
work easier—he does not work and has little regard for those who do.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> Jeffrey Glossner, a Ph.D. candidate
at the University of Mississippi, writes on the Humanities and Social Sciences
Online website “Elite southerners justified slavery as a social system that
elevated all whites above black enslaved laborers. Therefore, the presence of a
large class of poor white people in the South created a fundamental problem for
the southern ruling class as it sought to shore up slavery in the face of
antislavery attacks.” As <i>Clotel </i>author William Wells Brown’s character
Rev. Snyder explains to Carlton, the visitor from the North, poor whites lived
in squalor because “no white man is respectable in these slave states who works
for a living.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> This aversion to work among many in
the old guard carried over even after the Civil War and Reconstruction. Edward
L. Ayers, a professor of history at the University of Virginia, writes in his
1992 <i>The Promise of the New South</i> that the older generation looked on
any sign of industriousness in the youth of the day with alarm. Ayers quotes
Henry Waring Ball of Mississippi saying his nephew had “gone to work” after
asking his mother to let him help a friend deliver newspapers. “We laugh over
it, but if it is an indication of his character, it is not a laughing matter.
Few boys at 7 years old would voluntarily hunt up work and become money
makers—even at 25 cents a week. I know it would horrify either one of his
grandfathers, beyond all measures, but times change and we with them, alas!” (Kids
these days!)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> The younger generation was equally
frustrated with their elders. S. D. Boyd, Jr., of Virginia complained in his
diary, “’Come day, go day, God send Sunday’ is more the motto of the free and
go easy life of the Boyds.” His parents had not been “reared up to hard work.
They had their slaves, their servants, etc., were not accustomed to it in their
youth, and hence cannot understand hard business. They take things easy, love <i>to
talk, to eat </i>and <i>to sleep</i> but it does not come natural to them to
come down to hard work.” They were “a Procrastinating People… a people who do
not feel altogether the great <i>business importance of keeping an engagement.”</i>
We see this generation gap in <i>A Fool’s Errand</i> when, in Chapter 15, Squire
Hyman visits the Servosse home and tells Mrs. Servosse that Jesse, the squire’s
son, “is going in to work as if he’d been raised to it all his life.” Jesse
came home from the war, and unlike many Southerners, accepted the South’s loss
and got on with life. He hired his father’s former slaves and worked beside
them in the fields. He was bringing in “two as good crops as we’ve had on the
plantation in a long time.” He was working and paying the family’s former
slaves a fair wage. The Ku Klux Klan disapproves and whips him, causing him to
flee to Indiana. His voting the wrong way was the final straw, but I believe
his industriousness and treating his Black employees well were also factors. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> Tom Delamere in <i>The Marrow of
Tradition</i> is yet another example. He’s given an allowance by his
grandfather and runs up dinking and gambling debts. Although he looks down on
Lee Ellis, Major Carteret’s editor, he hits him up for small loans, which he
forgets to repay. He even borrows from Sandy Campbell, his father’s trusted
servant. Eventually he’s hopelessly over his head in debt; even then the
thought of getting a job never enters his mind. Instead, he decides to rob
Peggy Ochiltree, his intended’s aunt, and frames Sandy Campbell for the crime.
Peggy Ochiltree dies during the robbery, and Sandy is very nearly lynched. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> Returning to <i>A Fool’s Errand,</i>
we see numerous examples of status deprivation. In Chapter 27 we meet Bob
Martin, “an industrious and thrifty blacksmith,” who has more business than he
can handle and understandably declines more business from Michael Anson and his
son because they don’t pay their bills. After all, when he can do work that
pays, why do business with people who won’t pay? Bob Martin has done very well,
and bought a house and a lot. The Ansons evidently resent having to pay a Black
man for work they could in the not-too-distant past have had slaves perform.
The Ansons rounded up some Ku Klux Klan help and whipped Bob Martin for being
“too dam smart!” In Chapter 28 we find “three colored men” who were “whipped by
the KKK… they had been sassy: the true reason is believed to be they were
acquiring property, and becoming independent.” In another case, “two colored
men were hanged. They were accused of arson; but there was not a particle of
evidence of their guilt: indeed, quite the contrary; they were men of good
character, industrious, and respectful.” Another, “James Leroy was hanged by
the Ku-Klux on Tuesday night… . He was <i>accused</i> of having slandered a
white woman. The truth is he was an independent colored man, who could read and
write, and was consequently troublesome on election day, by preventing fraud
upon his fellows.” In short, these Black men were punished as examples for
those who might pose a threat to white supremacy. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> Ida B. Wells’ <i>Southern Horrors:
Lynch Law in All Its Phases</i> and <i>The Red Record</i> are also stuffed with
examples of violence precipitated by status deprivation. I’m also going to draw
on <i>Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice,</i> a 1989 documentary available on
Kanopy. Eric Foner was one of many participants in the documentary’s production.
In 1889 Will Stewart, Calvin McDowell, and Thomas Moss, all of whom were
friends of Wells, opened a grocery store near a white grocer in Memphis. The
store did well, especially with black shoppers. In 1892 the three grocers were
lynched. The white grocer complained he had lost many black customers to the
new store. How dare those Blacks be successful a mere 24 years after having
been slaves? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> The Black community of Memphis was
stunned. In <i>Southern Horrors,</i> Wells urges economic action, saying, “The
appeal to the white man’s pocket has ever been more effectual than all the
appeals ever made to his conscience.” She told the Black people of Memphis they
did not have to put up with lynchings and suggested they move to areas such as
Kansas and the newly-opened Oklahoma Territory. Six thousand of them did, which
hurt many white businesses. Many ministers took their entire congregations with
them. All-Black towns were sprouting up in Kansas and the Oklahoma Territory.
Sadly, when Oklahoma became a state in 1907, Jim Crow laws were adopted. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> Wells also urged Black people in
Memphis to boycott the newly-installed trolley system. Six months after the
lynchings, the secretary and treasurer of the city railroad company came to
Wells at her paper, <i>The Free Press</i> to ask for help getting Blacks to use
the system. They believed Blacks were avoiding the trolley because they were afraid
of electricity. Evidently the possibility that Blacks would actually take any
action in response to these murders was beyond white comprehension. Wells
advised her readers to keep up the pressure. Shortly after this, while Wells
was in Philadelphia, the offices of the <i>Free </i>Press were destroyed and
she was advised not to return to Memphis. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> In “An Indiana Case,” Wells writes
of Allen Butler, a wealthy Black man, who was lynched because the mob could not
reach his jailed son, who had been in a consensual relationship with a white
servant employed by Butler. Here we have a man who triggered status deprivation
by being wealthy and having a white servant. I hate to dwell on the obvious,
but if a white man’s son had been involved with a Black servant, consensual or
otherwise, that would have been considered par for the course.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> The entire Wilmington massacre,
which inspired Charles W. Chesnutt’s <i>Marrow of Tradition,</i> was the result
of status deprivation. Many books have been written about the populist movement
in the 1890s, among them Lawrence Goodwyn’s 1978 <i>The Populist Moment</i> and
Michael Kazin’s 1995 <i>The Populist Persuasion,</i> which was revised and
updated in 2017 to reflect recent events. It’s difficult to describe that
movement adequately in a short paper, but I’m going to attempt a coherent
summary. After the Civil War a period of industrialization began, which
concentrated wealth and economic power. Those with this increasingly
concentrated power used it to drive commodity prices down and costs, including
the costs of shipping goods by rail, up. The only way for farmers to keep
farming was to borrow money. The era was one of deflation, so the value of
money was also going up. Farmers were repaying loans, plus interest, in dollars
that were increasingly worth more than those they had borrowed. It was becoming
impossible for farmers to break even, much less have money to live on. Farmers
were trapped in a cycle of borrowing from which many could not recover. Thomas
E. <span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45;">Watson, a populist politician, in
his 1892 <i>The Negro Question in the South</i> points out that both black and
poor whites were suffering and suggested that they unite politically in order
to further their mutual interests. Although Watson emphatically does not
advocate social equality between the races, he gives us a realistic snapshot of
the times when he describes how Northern leaders could cry “Southern outrage”
and win the “unanimous vote from the colored people” and Southern politicians
could cry “Negro domination” and “drive into solid phalanx every white man in
all the Southern states” in order to keep people voting against their
interests. He says both parties “have constructed as perfect a ‘slot machine’
as the world ever saw. Drop the old, worn nickel of the party slogan into the
slot, and the machine does the rest.” He proposed a new party—the People’s
Party—to represent the interests of the poor and the farmers. As a result of
the times, a Fusionist movement formed and was most successful in North
Carolina. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45;"><span style="font-family: times;"> According
to David Zucchino in his 2020 <i>Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898
and the Rise of White Supremacy,</i> by 1898 the Fusionist ticket in Wilmington
had resulted in three (of ten) black aldermen, ten (of twenty-six) policemen,
black health inspectors, a black superintendent of streets, and many black
postmasters and magistrates. That same year a field representative for the
American Baptist Publication Society called Wilmington “the freest town for a
negro in the country.” Moving on to Wellington, Chesnutt’s fictional
Wilmington, Dr. Miller, the town’s black doctor, expresses his pride in his
city when he says to his former professor, “If our race had made as much
progress everywhere as they have made in Wellington, the problem would be well
on the way toward solution.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45;"><span style="font-family: times;"> In
some circles Wellington’s progress was a problem. I suspect because he feared
being sued for libel, Chesnutt disguised the identities of the “Big Three” who
decided Wellington’s black citizens were doing far too well. According to the
Norton Critical Edition of Chesnutt’s book, Major Carteret is a representation
of Josephus Daniels (1862-1948), General Belmont is inspired by Alfred Moore
Waddell (1834-1912), who became mayor as a result of the coup, and Captain
McBane was drawn after Mike Dowling, who organized the Red Shirts, who
terrorized the black populace during the riots. I could not find Dowling’s
birth and death dates. All three of Chesnutt’s “Big Three” suffer from status
deprivation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45;"><span style="font-family: times;"> Carteret,
whose family once owned 90,000 acres and six thousand slaves, came home from
the Civil War to an impoverished estate that was lost in foreclosure. He is now
wealthy only because he married into wealth. Sadly, it appears he’ll be losing
his wife’s money as well, since he is moving money invested in a cotton mill
paying a “beggarly” ten percent into a get-rich-quick investment he doesn’t
understand. (We learn later that this investment has tied up so much of his
wife’s money they’d be hard-pressed to come up with $10,000.) Little Dodie’s health
issues aren’t the only problems he’ll be facing. To rub salt into Carteret’s
wounds, his family’s old house is now owned by Dr. Miller. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45;"><span style="font-family: times;"> General
Belmont is a “man of good family,” a lawyer and politician, “aristocratic by
birth and instinct,” and a former slaveowner. Chesnutt says that while
Carteret, in serious affairs, desired the approval of his conscience, “even if
he had to trick that docile organ into acquiescence,” Belmont permitted no fine
scruples to stand in the way of success, although he “was not without a
gentleman’s taste for meanness.” In short, Belmont disguised a Machiavellian personality
with a civilized façade. I believe Chesnutt incorporated some aspects of John
Hill Wheeler (1806-1882), who was known for underhanded dealings as minister to
Nicaragua, into the character of Belmont. The Bedford Critical Edition has a
footnote referencing an 1893 Nicaraguan coup, but there was no U.S.
intervention in that coup, so I like my theory better. Belmont is uneasy with
so many of the town’s Black population having positions of authority and wants
to return to the days of unquestioned white supremacy. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45;"><span style="font-family: times;"> “Captain”
McCabe is from the poor white class, the son of an overseer, and until recently
the holder of contracts with the state for its convict labor. Just a quick
historical note here. The Thirteenth Amendment’s wording is as follows:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United
States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The exception has been
called the amendment’s “fig leaf” and has been used to maintain <i>de facto</i>
slavery. Convict a vagrant, and <i>voila!</i> you have a slave. McCabe has
accumulated a great deal of money but has discovered money alone won’t buy him
status. He resents losing his contracts as a result of the Fusion government,
and he resents any progress by Blacks, especially those who do well, like Dr.
Miller.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45;"><span style="font-family: times;"> The
“Big Three” decide to take things into their own hands. Carteret can use the
press to influence public opinion, Belmont can use his political network to
generate support, and McCabe can organize a band of lowlifes to terrorize
Wellington’s Black population. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45;"><span style="font-family: times;"> Carteret
begins publishing incendiary editorials that don’t generate much interest among
the populace. Meeting six months after the campaign started, the “Big Three”
are having little impact on public opinion. Evidently Wellingtonians are not dissatisfied
with their Fusionist government. But that would change. In the summer of 1898
Rebecca Latimer Felton, a prominent Georgia gadfly, gave a widely-disseminated speech
in response to a series of alleged black-on-white rapes on Georgia farms. In
this speech she advocated lynching—"a thousand times a week if necessary”—as
a solution to the problem. When Alex Manly, the editor of Wilmington’s black
readership <i>Daily Record,</i> read of Felton’s speech, he published a
response that gave the historical instigators of the Wilmington riot the match
they needed to light the fuel. Josephus Daniels had 300,000 copies printed and
distributed throughout the state. In Chesnutt’s Wellington, the “Big Three” sit
on Barber’s (the fictional Manley’s) editorial, and when the time is right,
they release it. Tom Watson’s “old, worn nickel” was in the slot, and the riot
began.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45;"><span style="font-family: times;"> As
the “Big Three” are preparing for the riot, they discuss the various people
they want to run out of town. Carteret has said he will not condone murder, so
exile is the next best thing. Belmont wants Watson, the black lawyer, run out
of town because he’s taking business from white lawyers. McBane wants a Black
real estate agent on the list because he’s doing so well he’s driving Billy
Kitchen, a white real estate agent, to the poorhouse. Barber, the editor who
wrote the offending editorial, will have to go, as will all the Republican
politicians in office. They discuss Dr. Miller. McBane wants him gone; Belmont
says he thinks Miller should stay, and while Carteret would like to see Miller
leave, he admits personal reasons are behind that desire. The “Big Three,”
while preparing for a coup, are using that coup to rid Wellington of Blacks who
have risen above their station and are making life difficult for their white
competitors.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: times;"> As Nancy Bentley and Sandra Gunning
write in the Bedford Cultural Edition of <i>The Marrow of Tradition, </i>“many
historians believe that it was the accumulation of property and civic influence
by Wilmington’s African Americans that sparked the greatest anger in the white
rioters.” <span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45;"><span style="font-family: times;"> During
the riot, McBane takes an active part, leading his mob against unarmed Blacks.
Belmont slinks off to his lair while Carteret witnesses the increasing violence
of the mob. Realizing things have gotten out of hand, he tries to stop the riot
but is unsuccessful. He realizes too late an avalanche is not as easy to stop
as it is to start. As Chesnutt writes, and as the January Capitol insurrection
reminds us today, “our boasted civilization is but a thin veneer, which cracks
and scales off at the first impact of primal passions.” Frustrated, he washes
his hands of the matter and tells himself he is not to blame. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45;"><span style="font-family: times;"> As
Ray Stannard Baker wrote about the 1906 Atlanta race riot, “The riot is not
over when the shooting stops.” Carteret makes his way home to a new world of
his own making. His wife’s beloved Mammy Jane is dead; his servants have
deserted his house, leaving little Dodie in a draft, which results in Dodie’s
becoming gravely ill. Carteret winds up begging Dr. Miller, whose own child was
killed in the riot, to attend to his son. When Miller refuses, Mrs. Carteret
begs him, and Miller’s wife tells him he must save the Carteret baby if he can.
In keeping with the custom of the times, the ending gives an unconvincing glimmer
of hope for a happy ending.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45;"><span style="font-family: times;"> According
to Zucchino, twenty-one hundred Black residents fled Wilmington after the riot,
and twenty-one citizens, including seven whites, were banished. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45;"><span style="font-family: times;"> In
his later years, as Zucchino writes, Josephus Daniels admitted his paper, as
the “militant voice of White Supremacy,” was guilty of “sometimes going to
extremes in its partisanship” and was “never very careful about winnowing out
the stories or running them down.” Nevertheless, he remained proud of his work,
boasting that white supremacists had crushed “Negro domination.” He glorified
Red Shirt attacks on Black neighborhoods and praised white gunmen for creating
a “reign of terror” among Blacks in Wilmington. Chesnutt could not know it in
1901, but Daniels would serve as Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was his assistant secretary and would appoint him
ambassador to Mexico in 1933, where he served until 1941.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: times;">Bentley
and Gunning write in their introduction to the Bedford Cultural Edition of <i>The
Marrow of Tradition,</i> that well-meaning but misguided white antilynching
commentators (including Ray Stannard Baker, quoted above) believed “the
brutality exercised by a white mob could only mean that rioters were from the
working classes,” but in fact the public declaration issued by the Wilmington
rioters makes clear the mob included wealthy and prominent middle-class men.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: times;">I
had been of the opinion people who participated in these violent events were, for
lack of a better term, the dregs of society. Carteret and Belmont incited the
violence, but did not take part in it. McCabe relished participating, but in
spite of his money, he was white trash. But it seems people of all classes are capable
of mob violence, and that brings me to the present day.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: times;">When
I watched the insurrection on television January 6, I assumed the people
involved were people on the margins of society. Jacob Chansley, the shirtless
“QAnon Shaman” with the painted face, fur hat, and horns (in my mind the
epitome of NOCD) certainly reinforced that opinion. But in an article titled
“Fears of White People Losing Out Permeate Capitol Rioters’ Towns, Study Finds”
in the April 6, 2021 <i>New York Times,</i> Alan Feuer discusses a study of the
rioters conducted by political scientist Robert Pape. Pape found that only ten
percent of the rioters were members of established far-right organizations like
the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys. The rest were “mainly middle-class to
upper-middle-class whites who are worried that, as social changes occur around
them, they will see a change in their status in the future.” Many of these
people traveled great distances to attend the rally that turned into the mob. He
says counties with the most declines in the non-Hispanic white population are
most likely to produce insurrectionists. Pape says the current situation has
ties back to before the Civil War when the “Know Nothings” formed in response
to largely Irish Catholic immigration to the country. He noted also that after
the First World War the Ku Klux Klan had a revival prompted in part by the
arrival of Italians and the first stirrings of the Great Migration. Pape warns
that the 90 percent of the “ordinary” rioters are “part of a still congealing
mass movement on the right that has shown itself willing to put ‘violence at
its core.’” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: times;">Gerald
F. Seib, executive Washington editor for the <i>Wall Street Journal,</i> writes
in the May 4, 2021 edition, “Americans are moving into a future in a much
different country, one that will become majority-minority in about 2045. That
will be uncomfortable for many.” Indeed.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: times;">In
the words of Margo Channing <i>(All About Eve</i>), fasten your seat belts.
It’s going to be a bumpy ride. </span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">
</p><p style="line-height: 150%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p><br /><p></p></blockquote>Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-3619285813155058682021-01-09T18:39:00.000-08:002021-01-09T18:39:26.014-08:00Status Deprivation, Violence, and the Epiphany Insurrection<p></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This is the term paper I wrote for
my fall class in African American Literature I, which covered books and poetry
written by black writers from pre-revolutionary times to 1912.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I hadn’t planned on making it a
post, but since the insurrection in the Capitol on January 6, it seems to have
become relevant in that many in the Republican opposition seem to believe the
BLM protests of last summer were somehow equivalent to or possibly worse than
the nightmare we all watched on Epiphany.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in;"><span style="background: white; color: #202020;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
BLM protests were in response to perceived police violence. I don't know of
ANYONE who condoned the violence and the self-serving looting that followed
(and it should be noted much of that violence was carried out by Proud Boys and
their followers, like Kyle Rittenhouse). The January 6 riot was instigated by a
Huey Long-like demagogue who is upset with the fact that a majority of
Americans rejected him. Note here--voters rejected HIM, not his party. He has
fabricated lies that support his position, sold those lies like he sold Trump
steaks and Trump College degrees to the gullible and the deranged. He played
with matches around dynamite, and he got an explosion.</span><span style="color: #202020;"><br />
<span style="background: white;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
never thought Donald Trump was too bright, but I certainly thought he was
smarter than this. He could have played his victimhood into a movement that
would have had influence for years. Instead, he's shot his wad. As far as 2024
goes, yeah, he "coulda been a contendah," but now he's just an old
has-been who may survive until Inauguration Day without being impeached and
removed or declared incompetent under the 25th Amendment, but none of the
previous presidents will ever invite him to participate in any reindeer games.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in;"><span style="background: white; color: #202020;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
as he and his family attempt a re-entry into polite society, they will learn
quickly the meaning of NOCD. </span><span style="color: #202020;"><br />
<span style="background: white;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
will be very interesting to see how his obituary reads, and how he's treated in
history books will be fascinating.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 200%; margin: 0in;"><span style="background: white; color: #202020;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
the meantime, here’s my term paper, but first a note on B. C. Franklin’s
autobiography. B. C. Franklin, the father of famed historian John Hope
Franklin, became a prominent attorney in Tulsa. During his lifetime a park was
named for him. He moved in both black and white circles. He may have pulled
some punches when describing the Greenwood riot of 1921. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">Status Deprivation and Violence<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The idea for this paper came to me
as I was reading an opinion piece by Leonard Pitts in the October 15, 2020 <i>Kansas
City Star.</i> In that piece Pitts discusses Joseph Morrison, one of the men
recently arrested for plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Pitts is responding to a <i>Huffington Post</i> article that includes a photo
of Morrison’s ramshackle yard strewn with junk and on which are parked two
trucks which “appear drivable,” although one has damage to a side panel. The
ambience is further enhanced by two flags, one of which is the Confederate
flag, drooping from poles. The <i>Huffington Post</i> article asks the
question, “Can we acknowledge that maybe economic circumstances play a role in
radicalizing people?” and concludes that, in the face of skyrocketing job
losses, “of course we’re going to see violence.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The author of the <i>Huffington Post</i>
article, Walker Bragman, also points out that while people are willing to point
to economic conditions as a driving factor when it comes to violence in the
inner city, “when it comes to militancy in rural America, they refuse to
entertain a similar explanation.” Pitts replies that inner city violence
results from having too little, living too close, and enduring too much, and it
almost always stems from arguments, drug trade disputes, and small-time street
crime and asks, “But when have you ever seen an inner-city gang conspire to
overthrow a government?” Pitts contrasts urban violence, often a violence of
survival, often a violence of tragic stupidity, with Morrison’s violence, which
Pitts says is a violence of cultural entitlement, of the perceived loss of
power and rank. He then goes on to say, “One of the things white people do not
understand about white people is how deep that resentment, that fear of
demotion, go.” He goes on to say, “But poverty did not cause the bitterness or
the violence. Rather, they stem from a conviction that, by dint of color or
culture, one deserves the final and decisive word.” Pitts’ point is we
frequently give the white poor sympathy they don’t deserve. I’m going to focus
on the cultural entitlement and perceived loss of power and rank, or what William
Tuttle expressed as “status deprivation” in his 1970 <i>Race Riot: Chicago in
the Red Summer of 1919.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Leading up to World War I a labor
shortage drew an estimated 450,000 southern blacks north. The war ended in
1918; in 1919 the country went through one its periodic paranoid episodes, the
main target being communists that time, but blacks became collateral damage. As
Tuttle writes, “the most highly susceptible objects of prejudice in America
were its black men and women, not because they were radicals, but because they
threatened the accommodative race system of white superordination and black
subordination.” During the war, blacks competed with whites for jobs and
housing, among other things. “The employment of a new black worker in a shop or
the arrival of a black family on a block only heightened anxieties of status
deprivation.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The desire of blacks to
get ahead clashed with whites’ determination to “reaffirm the black people’s
prewar status on the bottom rung of the nation’s racial and economic ladder.”
Lynchings and race riots were a big part of the summer of 1919, and one of the
worst of the race riots that summer was in Chicago, but I’m going to leave 1919
because I want to look at status deprivation and the violence that resulted
from it in much of the literature we’ve read this semester. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I define status deprivation as the perception
that a person or a class, race, or group of people has moved above its station,
or done better than the aggrieved party believes that person or group has a
“right” to. Those who see people they consider inferior doing better than their
self-appointed betters become resentful. (For example, expect a major outbreak
of status deprivation should Kamala Harris ever become president.) <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In our readings for this class, it’s
possible we could attribute the actions of Mr. Trappe in Hannah Crafts’ <i>The
Bondwoman’s Narrative</i> to status deprivation, but I believe he is more
interested in making money, and his making sure no one escapes their status as
a slave is a byproduct. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The first definite examples of
status deprivation we encounter are in Ida B. Wells’ <i>Southern Horrors: Lynch
Law in All Its Phases</i> and <i>The Red Record.</i> I’m also going to draw on <i>Ida
B. Wells: A Passion for Justice,</i> a 1989 documentary available on Kanopy. Eric
Foner was one of many participants in the documentary’s production. In 1889
Will Stewart, Calvin McDowell, and Thomas Moss, all of whom were friends of
Wells, opened a grocery store near a white grocer in Memphis. The store did
well, especially with black shoppers. In 1892 the three grocers were lynched.
The white grocer complained he had lost many black customers to the new store.
How dare those blacks be successful a mere 24 years after having been slaves? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The black community of Memphis was
stunned. In <i>Southern Horrors,</i> Wells urges economic action, saying, “The
appeal to the white man’s pocket has ever been more effectual than all the
appeals ever made to his conscience.” She told the black people of Memphis they
did not have to put up with lynchings and suggested they move to areas such as
Kansas and the newly-opened Oklahoma Territory. Six thousand of them did, which
hurt many white businesses. Many ministers took their entire congregations with
them. All-black towns were sprouting up in Kansas and the Oklahoma Territory,
one of which was Rentiesville, where, for a while, Buck Colbert (B.C.) Franklin
lived and where his son, John Hope Franklin, was born. I’ll come back to B.C. Franklin
later. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Wells also urged black people in
Memphis to boycott the newly-installed trolley system. Six months after the
lynchings, the secretary and treasurer of the city railroad company came to
Wells at her paper, <i>The Free Press</i> to ask for help getting blacks to use
the system. They believed blacks were avoiding the trolley because they were afraid
of electricity. Evidently the possibility that blacks would actually take any
action in response to these murders was beyond white comprehension. Wells
advised her readers to keep up the pressure. Shortly after this, while Wells
was in Philadelphia, the offices of the <i>Free </i>Press were destroyed and
she was advised not to return to Memphis. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Another example of status
deprivation-inspired violence Wells gives is “An Indiana Case,” in which Allen
Butler, a wealthy black man, was lynched because the mob could not reach his
jailed son, who had been in a consensual relationship with a white servant
employed by Butler. Here we have a man who triggered status deprivation by
being wealthy and having a white servant. I hate to dwell on the obvious, but
if a white man’s son had been involved with a black servant, consensual or
otherwise, that would have been considered par for the course.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In Pauline E. Hopkins’ <i>Contending
Forces,</i> we encounter Charles and Grace Montfort, who, in response to Great
Britain’s impending abolition of slavery, leave Bermuda for South Carolina,
bringing with them their wealth, seven hundred slaves, and two sons. Bill
Sampson, talking to Hank Davis, says upon first seeing Grace Montfort, “thet ar
female’s got a black streak in her somewhar.” Hank Davis is rebuffed when he applies
to be Charles Montfort’s overseer and vows revenge. Anson Pollock befriends
Charles Montfort, who purchased his plantation from Pollock. Grace rebuffs
Pollock’s advances, which infuriates him, especially because of the rumors of
her “black blood.” When Pollock sees the Montforts’ sons building play houses
with golden eagle coins and it becomes known that Montfort plans to free his
slaves, Pollock gets Bill to round up a “committee” with the intent to, as Bill
Sampson tells Hank Davis, “git all thet money, all them purty trinkets, and
fine furniture,” not to mention the seven hundred slaves. Anson Pollock wants
only Grace Montfort and her two children. The deed is done. Grace commits
suicide after being whipped and raped. The two children become slaves. At least
part of the justification for the committee’s action was Grace’s rumored “black
blood.” She and her family had risen above their station.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><a name="_Hlk54619107">Later in <i>Contending
Forces</i> we are introduced to the American Colored League, which is debating
what action, if any, to take after yet another lynching is reported in the
South. Hopkins’ character, the Hon. Herbert Clapp, is, as Hopkins writes in her
preface, modeled on William J. Northen, a former governor of Georgia and a
white supremacist, and Clapp’s speech is based on what Northen actually said at
the Congregational Club at Tremont Temple in Boston on May 22, 1899. Clapp
advises no action on the lynching, and he states that blacks who stay out of
politics in the south have no trouble there. Clapp gives an example of “the
death of a highly respected Negro in Georgia” who never dabbled in politics and
whose “death was deplored by white and black alike.” Dr. Arthur Lewis,
representing the views of Booker T. Washington, agrees with Clapp and advises
things will get better with southerners “if we give them time and do not hurry
them.”<o:p></o:p></a></span></p>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk54619107;"></span>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After hearing these assurances that
as long as blacks steer clear of politics and wait for their rights they will
be just fine in the South, Luke Sawyer arises and tells the story of his
father, who kept a large store in a little town in Louisiana. His father did
well in business and steered clear of politics because he feared meddling in
politics might be “an excuse for his destruction.” When Luke was ten years old,
a white man opened a business like his father’s on the same street. Luke’s
father’s business continued to prosper while the white man’s business was on
the brink of failure. Luke’s father began receiving threats, and he was trying
to gather his property to leave town, but evidently not quickly enough. One
night a gang broke into the Sawyer house, lynched his father, fatally raped his
mother and sister, and murdered his baby brothers. He survived only by running
to the woods, where he was rescued by a black planter named Beaubean. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>While this story may have been
lifted from Ida B. Wells’ story of her friends’ grocery store in <i>Southern
Horrors,</i> it does serve the purpose of demonstrating that any progress made
by blacks would likely stoke status deprivation in whites, even if blacks were
to abstain from political activity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The entire Wilmington massacre,
which inspired Charles W. Chesnutt’s <i>Marrow of Tradition,</i> was the result
of status deprivation. Many books have been written about the populist movement
in the 1890s, among them Lawrence Goodwyn’s 1978 <i>The Populist Moment</i> and
Michael Kazin’s 1995 <i>The Populist Persuasion,</i> which was revised and
updated in 2017 to reflect recent events. It’s difficult to describe that
movement adequately in a short paper, but I’m going to attempt a coherent
summary. After the Civil War a period of industrialization began, which
concentrated wealth and economic power. Those with this increasingly
concentrated power used it to drive commodity prices down and costs, including
the costs of shipping goods by rail, up. The only way for farmers to keep
farming was to borrow money. The era was one of deflation, so the value of
money was also going up. Farmers were repaying loans, plus interest, in dollars
that were increasingly worth more than those they had borrowed. It was becoming
impossible for farmers to break even, much less have money to live on. Farmers
were trapped in a cycle of borrowing from which many could not recover. Thomas
E. <span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45;">Watson, a populist politician, in
his 1892 <i>The Negro Question in the South</i> points out that both black and
poor whites were suffering and suggested that they unite politically in order
to further their mutual interests. Although Watson emphatically does not
advocate social equality between the races, he gives us a realistic snapshot of
the times when he describes how Northern leaders could cry “Southern outrage”
and win the “unanimous vote from the colored people” and Southern politicians
could cry “Negro domination” and “drive into solid phalanx every white man in
all the Southern states” in order to keep people voting against their
interests. He says both parties “have constructed as perfect a ‘slot machine’
as the world ever saw. Drop the old, worn nickel of the party slogan into the
slot, and the machine does the rest.” He proposed a new party—the People’s
Party—to represent the interests of the poor and the farmers. As a result of
the times, a Fusionist movement formed and was most successful in North
Carolina. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>According
to David Zucchino in his 2020 <i>Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898
and the Rise of White Supremacy,</i> by 1898 the Fusionist ticket in Wilmington
had resulted in three (of ten) black aldermen, ten (of twenty-six) policemen,
black health inspectors, a black superintendent of streets, and many black postmasters
and magistrates. That same year a field representative for the American Baptist
Publication Society called Wilmington “the freest town for a negro in the
country.” Moving on to Wellington, Chesnutt’s fictional Wilmington, Dr. Miller,
the town’s black doctor, expresses his pride in his city when he says to his former
professor, “If our race had made as much progress everywhere as they have made
in Wellington, the problem would be well on the way toward solution.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
some circles, Wellington’s progress was a problem. I suspect because he feared
being sued for libel, Chesnutt disguised the identities of the “big three” who
decided Wellington’s black citizens were doing far too well. According to the
Norton Critical Edition of Chesnutt’s book, Major Carteret is a representation
of Josephus Daniels (1862-1948), General Belmont is inspired by Alfred Moore
Waddell (1834-1912), who became mayor as a result of the coup, and Captain
McBane was drawn after Mike Dowling, who organized the Red Shirts, who terrorized
the black populace during the riots. I could not find Dowling’s birth and death
dates. All three of Chesnutt’s “big three” suffer from status deprivation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Carteret,
whose family once owned 90,000 acres and six thousand slaves, came home from
the Civil War to an impoverished estate that was lost in foreclosure. He is now
wealthy only because he married into wealth. Sadly, it appears he’ll be losing
his wife’s money as well, since he is moving money invested in a cotton mill
paying a “beggarly” ten percent into a get-rich-quick investment he doesn’t
understand. (We learn later that this investment has tied up so much of his
wife’s money they’d be hard-pressed to come up with $10,000.) Little Dodie’
health issues aren’t the only problems he’ll be facing. To rub salt into
Carteret’s wounds, his family’s old house is now owned by Dr. Miller. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>General
Belmont is a “man of good family,” a lawyer and politician, “aristocratic by
birth and instinct,” and a former slaveowner. Chesnutt says that while
Carteret, in serious affairs, desired the approval of his conscience, “even if
he had to trick that docile organ into acquiescence,” Belmont permitted no fine
scruples to stand in the way of success, although he “was not without a
gentleman’s taste for meanness.” In short, Belmont disguised a Machiavellian personality
with a civilized façade. I believe Chesnutt incorporated some aspects of John
Hill Wheeler (1806-1882), who was known for underhanded dealings as minister to
Nicaragua, into the character of Belmont. The Bedford Critical Edition has a
footnote referencing an 1893 Nicaraguan coup, but there was no U.S.
intervention in that coup, so I like my theory better. Belmont is uneasy with
so many of the town’s black population having positions of authority and wants
to return to the days of unquestioned white supremacy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Captain”
McCabe is from the poor white class, the son of an overseer, and until recently
the holder of contracts with the state for its convict labor. Just a quick
historical note here. The Thirteenth Amendment’s wording is as follows:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United
States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The exception has been
called the amendment’s “fig leaf” and has been used to maintain <i>de facto</i>
slavery. Convict a vagrant, and <i>voila!</i> you have a slave. McCabe has
accumulated a great deal of money but has discovered money alone won’t buy him
status. He resents losing his contracts as a result of the Fusion government,
and he resents any progress by blacks, especially those who do well, like Dr.
Miller.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
“big three” decide to take things into their own hands. Carteret can use the
press to influence public opinion, Belmont can use his political network to
generate support, and McCabe can organize a band of lowlifes to terrorize
Wellington’s black population. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Carteret
begins publishing incendiary editorials that don’t generate much interest among
the populace. Meeting six months after the campaign started, the “big three”
are having little impact on public opinion. Evidently Wellingtonians are not dissatisfied
with their Fusionist government. But that would change. In the summer of 1897
Rebecca Latimer Felton, a prominent Georgia gadfly, gave a widely-disseminated speech
in response to a series of alleged black-on-white rapes on Georgia farms. In
this speech she advocated lynching—"a thousand times a week if necessary”—as
a solution to the problem. When Alex Manly, the editor of Wilmington’s black
readership <i>Daily Record,</i> read of Felton’s speech, he published a
response that gave the historical instigators of the Wilmington riot the match
they needed to light the fuel. Josephus Daniels had 300,000 copies printed and
distributed throughout the state. In Chesnutt’s Wellington, the “big three” sit
on Barber’s (the fictional Manley’s) editorial, and when the time is right,
they release it. Tom Watson’s “old, worn nickel” was in the slot, and the riot
began.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As
the “big three” are preparing for the riot, they discuss the various people
they want to run out of town. Carteret has said he will not condone murder, so
exile is the next best thing. Belmont wants Watson, the black lawyer, run out
of town because he’s taking business from white lawyers. McBane wants a black
real estate agent on the list because he’s doing so well he’s driving Billy
Kitchen, a white real estate agent, to the poorhouse. Barber, the editor who
wrote the offending editorial, will have to go, as will all the Republican
politicians in office. They discuss Dr. Miller. McBane wants him gone; Belmont
says he thinks Miller should stay, and while Carteret would like to see Miller
leave, he admits personal reasons are behind that desire. The “big three,”
while preparing for a coup, are using that coup to rid Wellington of blacks who
have risen above their station and are making life difficult for their white
competitors. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>During
the riot, McBane takes an active part, leading his mob against unarmed blacks.
Belmont slinks off to his lair while Carteret witnesses the increasing violence
of the mob. Realizing things have gotten out of hand, he tries to stop the riot
but is unsuccessful. He realizes an avalanche is not as easy to stop as it is
to start. As Chesnutt writes, and as we learn still today, “our boasted
civilization is but a thin veneer, which cracks and scales off at the first
impact of primal passions.” Frustrated, he washes his hands of the matter and
tells himself he is not to blame. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As
Ray Stannard Baker wrote about the 1906 Atlanta race riot, “The riot is not
over when the shooting stops.” Carteret makes his way home to a new world of
his own making. His wife’s beloved Mammy Jane is dead, his servants have
deserted his house, leaving little Dodie in a draft, which results in his
becoming gravely ill. Carteret winds up begging Dr. Miller, whose own child was
killed in the riot, to attend to his son. When Miller refuses, Mrs. Carteret begs
him, and Miller’s wife tells him he must save the Carteret baby if he can. In
keeping with the custom of the times, the ending gives an unconvincing glimmer
of hope for a happy ending.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>According
to Zucchino, twenty-one hundred black residents fled Wilmington after the riot,
and twenty-one citizens, including seven whites, were banished. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
his later years, as Zucchino writes, Josephus Daniels admitted his paper, as
the “militant voice of White Supremacy,” was guilty of “sometimes going to
extremes in its partisanship” and was “never very careful about winnowing out
the stories or running them down.” Nevertheless, he remained proud of his work,
boasting that white supremacists had crushed “Negro domination.” He glorified
Red Shirt attacks on black neighborhoods and praised white gunmen for creating
a “reign of terror” among blacks in Wilmington. Chesnutt could not know it in
1901, but Daniels would serve as Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was his assistant secretary and would appoint him
ambassador to Mexico in 1933, where he served until 1941.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #2d3b45; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>James
Weldon Johnson, in his <i>Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man,</i> touches on
status deprivation when he observes that black people who strive to better
their physical and social surroundings in accordance with their financial and
intellectual progress annoy whites who see these efforts somehow as black’s doing
these things for the sole purpose of “spiting the white folks,” which should be
counterintuitive but sadly is not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;">For my final example I’m going to stray from our class’
readings and move forward a decade or so. In 1896 the Supreme Court ruled in <i>Plessy
v. Ferguson </i>that races could be kept separate “but equal.” This translated
into housing discrimination. Because of this discrimination black areas became
self-contained and to a degree self-sustaining. Ministers, undertakers,
bankers, barbers and in time lawyers and doctors had a ready-made client base.
Some of these areas became quite successful and attracted the envy of less
successful white neighbors. One example of this was the Tulsa, Oklahoma
district of Greenwood, which in 1921 was destroyed by a white mob on the
pretext that a white woman had been molested by a black man. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;">I’ve chosen to spend some time on the Greenwood riot
because while I was researching John Hope Franklin, I discovered his father, B.
C. Franklin (1879-1960), defended victims of the riot when the city of Tulsa
attempted to prevent their replacing their homes and businesses. That led me to
Franklin’s autobiography, <i>My Life and an Era, </i>which was edited by his
son, John Hope Franklin and John Hope’s son, John Whittington Franklin and
published by the Louisiana State University Press in 1997. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;">Franklin was born in Indian Territory (his father was a
Chickasaw freedman and his mother was one-quarter Cherokee and had grown up as
Cherokee) and was in Tulsa at the time of the riot. Many sources claim
Greenwood was the wealthiest or one of the wealthiest black areas in the
country. Franklin doesn’t go there, but he does say that at one time Tulsa had
been integrated, but by 1921 Tulsa was one of the most segregated cities in
America. He blames two very wealthy black real estate developers who came to
Tulsa “a few years before statehood” and bought thirty or forty acres of land,
plotted and surveyed it, and “put [it] upon the market to be sold to Negroes
only.” He says developers of “other races” purchased adjoining land and
followed suit. Oklahoma became a state in 1907, so exactly when this happened
is difficult to establish, but Greenwood would have been an area of homes and
businesses no more than twenty years old. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;">Franklin was in Tulsa to establish his law business in
preparation for a move from Rentiesville, Oklahoma, the all-black community I
mentioned above, which is not far from Tulsa. The day the riot started, May 31,
1921, he was in the courthouse and overheard some conversations but didn’t
think much of them. When he got to his lodgings his landlady told him she’d
heard some rumors of trouble brewing. He went into the streets and saw one white
man and one black man, both of whom claimed to have fought in the recent war,
telling people they needed to burn some houses in the white areas of town to
disburse the riot and get the state to call in troops to control the violence.
Franklin says he (Franklin) addressed the crowd and got them to disburse. He
says the white man told him, “This sort of battle is as much mine as it is
yours. A great mob is forming, and you are at a disadvantage you can never
overcome in an open fight.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;">Franklin tried to call the sheriff, but telephone wires had
been cut. He tried to get to the sheriff’s office, but he was immediately
arrested and taken to a detention camp. He says homes were being looted and
planes were flying overhead dropping explosives on the buildings. The book has
before and after photos of the area, and they resemble before and after photos
of Dresden in 1945 on a smaller scale. He writes “only two” prominent black men
were killed. Subsequent estimates put the number of blacks killed as high as 300,
and possible sites of mass graves are now being explored. One site containing
eleven bodies has recently been unearthed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;">According to an article about the riot in the October 5,
2018 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times,</i> a black man most
likely tripped and accidentally stepped on the woman’s foot in a crowded
elevator; charges against him were later dropped. Franklin’s story is
essentially the same (and was possibly the unattributed source for the <i>Times</i>
article). He says the woman slapped the man, and a reporter looking for a scoop
was on the elevator. <i>Voila!</i> Fake news.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;">As if the destruction of their community and the loss of
everything were not enough (Franklin’s savings, clothing, and law books were
incinerated along with his rooming house), insurance companies, citing clauses
in their contracts denying payment for losses incurred in “riots, civil
commotion and the like” refused payment. In addition, the city attempted to
impose a requirement that replacement buildings be fireproof. Franklin formed a
partnership with some other attorneys and successfully argued against this
requirement, citing the due process clause. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;">Franklin writes that no “responsible white resident of the
city” was involved, meaning, I suppose, the riot was carried out by poor
whites. Which I suppose is possible. Franklin was there; I wasn’t even born at
the time, but it’s difficult for me to envision poor whites having access to
airplanes, and “responsible whites” were certainly involved in making it
difficult to rebuild.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;">As we can see from these examples, when black people do
well, they threaten the status of whites who have not done as well. I think we
can, without too much of a stretch of the imagination, see examples of this in
recent history. In 2009, a mere ninety years after Red Summer, Barak Obama
became president of the United States. Many of us were elated and congratulated
ourselves on how far the country had evolved. Yet there was an undercurrent of
status deprivation that Donald Trump was able to tap into. Obama did not
deserve to be president. He was not born in the United States. He is Muslim. He
is the “other.” And Trump convinced enough of those who believe, as Leonard
Pitts says, “</span>by dint of color or culture, one deserves the final and
decisive word” to cobble together an Electoral College victory in 2016, and he
came very close to pulling it off again this year.<o:p></o:p></p><br /><p></p>Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-85390904384234319532020-12-03T10:12:00.001-08:002020-12-03T10:18:14.998-08:00Thoughts from a Pandemic Thanksgiving<p> </p><p style="line-height: 200%;">For many years Dan and I have had Thanksgiving
dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant. This year the restaurant is doing
carry-out only, so we called our order in three days ahead of time. When we
went to pick the order up, there was a line of people ahead of us. We got in
the line and exchanged pleasantries with the woman in front of us. All of a
sudden, a man burst through the line waving his phone and said, “I have an
order to pick up.” Ummmm. The dining area was blocked off. The restaurant was
only doing take out. There was a line. I wondered if he thought the rest of us
had come there to stand in line six feet apart because we didn’t have anything
better to do that day. Everyone, including the woman at the counter just looked
at him. He got the message, but rather than getting in line, he stood near the
counter until it was his turn.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> I
don’t usually talk about it because it was an experience I don’t like to
revisit, but I lived in San Jose when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck in
1989. I had just gotten home from my job in Palo Alto. I had a class that
night, and I was rushing around getting ready for the class. I had just fixed a
quick meal and sat down to watch the news when I heard it coming. People tell
me that’s not the way it works, but I heard the rumble before the house started
shaking. And I was there. I got into a doorway like I was supposed to and
grabbed on to it with both hands. The power went out. After the shaking stopped,
I called my parents to let them know I was OK. (Back then landlines worked even
when the power was out.) Our minds have trouble absorbing the new reality when
the totally unexpected happens. My immediate concern was getting to my class.
The power was still out. How was I going to get my car out of the garage? As reports
from the neighbors trickled in about the severity of the quake (the Oakland-Bay
Bridge had a partial collapse), it suddenly dawned on me. This was not
something that happened only to me. The odds were that getting to that class,
which would in all probability be the last thing on the minds of the teacher as
well as the other students that night, was the least of the things I should be
thinking about. I think the time it took me to realize it was not all about me
and I was not the only one affected was less than ten minutes. The shutdown, at
least in Kansas City, has lasted eight months and counting, and some people,
like Mr. Cellphone guy, have yet to figure out this pandemic is affecting
everyone, and it’s not all about them. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Like
most people, I was less than thrilled with most of the changes in my life the
pandemic caused, and I resisted. The spring semester at UMKC went online in
mid-March. I finished that semester, but I sat out the summer session because I
figured things would be back to normal in the fall. They weren’t. There was a
class I really wanted to take, and I had a choice. I could pout for a semester because
things weren’t the way I wanted or I could bite the bullet and take the class
online. I signed up for the class, and you know what? I adapted, and actually I
like it online. It’s asynchronous, meaning the lectures, assignments, tests,
etc. are all online, and as long as I meet the due dates, I can do them from
home and on my schedule. I find that happens a lot with me. I hate change. I
make changes only when I have to. (I ordered a new laptop, primarily to use in
Zoom meetings, for example, and I’m not looking forward to its arrival.) And
usually I wind up wondering why I hadn’t made the change before (maybe I’ll
like the new laptop, after all), which brings me back briefly to our take-out
Thanksgiving dinner. Dan especially missed the ambience of the restaurant, but
when we got the meal home, it was already in containers, so I didn’t feel the
urge to overeat in order to minimize the amount of leftovers the servers had to
pack up for us to take home. (Notice how I just justified my overeating as an
act of altruism!) We just ate what we
felt like eating and put the rest in the refrigerator. For the first time in my
life I did not gain Thanksgiving weight, and we got almost two meals out of the
leftovers. I won’t say this will be our new Thanksgiving normal, but who knows?
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> I
think a lot of us are discovering that some of the changes the pandemic has
forced on us are not that bad, and I don’t think the new normal will return to
the old normal even when the pandemic is over. Many people can work from home,
and it will be a tough sell to get them back in the office when the time comes.
After all, in many cases employees have seen they can do their jobs from home
just fine, and employers who are intransigent about going back to the old ways
may find themselves in search of new employees. It’s a modern version of “How
you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?” As far as
employers are concerned, they should be able to see that without needing room
for so many employees, they can downsize the amount of office space they need
to pay for. People may be free to move to areas they prefer without having to
give up their jobs. I may have stayed with Company L had I not had to put up
with the expense, commute, and general hassle of life in Silicon Valley as well
as suffering the insufferable personalities I worked for. But <i><span style="background: white; color: #202124;">non, je ne regrette rien.</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #202124;"> Things have worked out very well these
nearly twenty-six years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124;"> There seems to be light at the end
of the tunnel in the form of a vaccine, so know the pandemic won’t last
forever. The 1918 flu pandemic burned itself out in a couple of years without a
vaccine, and the Roaring Twenties began. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="background: white; color: #202124;"> I realize there are many people who
are really suffering during these times, and there are those who don’t have the
choice to do their work from home, like the staff at our favorite Chinese
restaurant, those who work at grocery stores, and most of all, those health
care workers who bravely soldier on. For the rest of us, rather than obsess
over what we’ve had to sacrifice these past months, let’s be thankful for what
almost has to be better times ahead.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></p><p><span style="background: white; color: #202124; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;"> Here’s looking forward to the rest
of the 2020s!</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span> </span> </p><p style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></p>Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-73810784925489177882020-11-12T18:39:00.000-08:002020-11-12T18:39:26.373-08:00Donald Trump: With 71 Million Supporters, He's Not Going Away<p> <b> </b>On
November 7, 2020 Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential
election. Donald Trump, who has ignored or violated nearly every norm
established by the previous forty-four presidents, has refused to concede,
claiming the election was fraudulent, stolen, and that the votes cast in favor
of Biden were “illegal.” Those Americans who are not appalled or embarrassed
are amused at the buffoonery we’ve become accustomed to over the past four years.
I have a message for y’all. Wipe that smirk off your faces. Trump may end up
leaving the White House, but he’s not going anywhere.</p><p style="line-height: 150%;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Remember,
he built a political movement based on lies. The first one was that Barak Obama
was not born in the United States and was a Muslim. Trump attracted a following
of those who were economically and socially disaffected and were dismayed that
a black man was the leader of the free world. He tapped into a vein in American
society that appealed to those who believe life has been unfair to them, that
it’s not their fault that things have not worked out well for them, that somehow,
someway, someone has cheated them, and now that unspecified someone has to pay.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> In
the election Biden received roughly 75 million votes, more than any
presidential candidate has ever received. Trump received roughly 71 million
votes—the second highest number of votes any presidential candidate has ever
received. If you think Trump, the ultimate con man and sleazebag grifter, is
not going to take advantage of that support, I have a bridge to sell you. Trump
is now playing to that base. The election has been stolen. The votes were
rigged. The media are against him. His failure, like the failures of those who
are in his camp, is not his fault. It’s the system that’s against him, and the
only reason the truth is not revealed is fake news—you know, the media that
don’t report Hillary Clinton’s, George Soros’, Tom Hanks’, Bill Gates’, and
(fill in the blank’s) gatherings in the basements of pizza shops nationwide to
drain the blood of infants and sexually abuse children. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Trump
will not concede. I suspect he will, as Joe Biden posited, have to be escorted
out of the White House as a trespasser. This will make Trump appear even more
like a victim to his cult. The more of a victim he can make himself out to be,
the more sympathy his followers will feel for him. The poor man is being
evicted from his home. Never mind that he has gold plated abominations in at
least two states he can return to, he’s still a victim of a system that’s
rigged against him. He’ll keep his admirers, and he may even pick up a few
more. He may, like Grover Cleveland, have an interrupted presidency, but I
suspect his goal is to create a third party that will carry on his disruptive
activities. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> He
won’t follow any playbook, but I highly recommend we all familiarize ourselves
with what has happened in the past. We can look to Huey Long, Father Charles
Coughlin, Robert Welch, and others that are now footnotes in fascism, and we
can read books such as <i>All the King’s Men</i> and <i>It Can’t Happen Here</i>
to prepare ourselves for what increasingly CAN happen here.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Let’s
just take a brief look at Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel <i>It Can’t Happen Here.</i>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> The
story focuses on Doremus Jessup, owner and editor of a small New England
newspaper and begins in 1936 with a presidential campaign in which Buzz
Windrip, a Huey Long-like front man, is put forth as a man of the people and
promises everyone $5,000 (more than $94,000 in 2020 dollars) if he’s elected,
which he is. The brains behind the campaign, as well as the author of Windrip’s
autobiography, is Lee Sarason, who runs things while Windrip plays poker,
accumulates graft, etc. Donald Trump, who is not known as a reader, has also
hired ghost writers to write his many and conflicting autobiographies. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> During
the campaign, Sarason has hired “volunteer” thugs, who are called “Minute Men,”
and who, like Hitler’s Brown Shirts, beat up those who speak against the
“Chief.” Donald Trump has not, as far as we know, hired the Proud Boys and
other various white supremacists and malcontents, but we’ve seen some of his
self-defined enforcers in action. Spy networks are set up, concentration camps
are established, an emergency is declared, and martial law takes effect.
Doremus’ resentful former handyman, Shad Ledue, winds up in a position of
power. Without too much imagination we can see Rudy Giuliani in the role of
Shad. After Doremus prints an article critical of the Chief, Doremus’ paper is
taken over by the state, but he’s required to remain on the paper writing
drivel. We can certainly envision Trump declaring unfriendly media “enemies of
the people” (oh, wait—he’s already done that) and taking similar action.
Doremus winds up working for an underground network, is caught, and is sentenced
to a concentration camp. When his son-in-law protests, the son-in-law is
summarily executed.</p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> As
would be expected, those in favor do well under Windrip. The Minute Men grow in
numbers, those in positions of power engage in graft. Shad Ledue gets caught
with his hand in the till and winds up in the concentration camp with Doremus
and others he’s abused. Shad does not survive. As time goes by, some people
become disenchanted with Windrip, who not only does not produce the promised
$5,000, but makes conditions worse for most people. We can certainly see Trump
promising the moon and delivering something considerably less. Sarason
engineers a coup, and Windrip is allowed to escape overseas, where he consoles
himself with the $4 million (about $80 million today) he managed to deposit
offshore. Sarason appoints his many boyfriends to various positions and uses
the redecorated White House for his orgies, which offends the straight-laced Secretary
of War, Col. Dewey Hait, who breaks into the White House with troops and shoots
Sarason and his fellow partiers. Hait imposes a stricter regime, a war with
Mexico is invented (we can envision the same thing happening with Iran or some
other easily-demonized country), and parts of the country begin to rebel.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Doremus
is allowed to escape and joins a resistance effort. The ending of the book, “a
Doremus Jessup can never die,” reminds me of the end of the 1940 film, <i>The
Grapes of Wrath.</i> (I’ve never read the book.) A glimmer of hope pasted on to
a dismal tale.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> In
1928 Lewis married Dorothy Thompson, a renowned journalist who in 1932
interviewed Hitler and dismissed fears of him as overhyped. Before the election
of 2016 we’d seen Trump dismissed as a buffoon, and, like Hitler, look what
happened. Two years later Thompson returned to Germany and was expelled. Lewis
listened to Thompson and her friends, who were familiar with Hitler’s
increasingly restrictive, punitive, and antisemitic actions. After Germany
invaded Poland, Thompson became an avid interventionist.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Hopefully
people will wise up and Trump will go away or the effects of all those
cheeseburgers and milkshakes will take their toll, and he won’t be around. Huey
Long’s movement fell apart after his death (and I am emphatically NOT
advocating assassination—this country does not need Trump the Martyr). We do need to take a look at the movement
behind the movement.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Trump
has never revealed his wealth or lack of it, but I doubt he has enough money to
sustain a movement like he has in mind, so who is financing him? That is the
question. I don’t have an answer, but who would gain by a weakened and
disunited United States? Who would gain if the world’s greatest democracy were
to become a thing of the past? Russia? China? Someone closer to home?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> I’m
open to suggestions, but someone is spending big bucks to keep the pot stirred.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> While
we’re pondering Trump’s next moves, it’s time Trump’s opposition makes some
moves of its own. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> First,
we must acknowledge that disaffected Trump supporters have some valid
complaints. Some time ago I reviewed Thomas Frank’s new book, <i>The People:
NO!</i> and described Frank as a Cassandra--cursed to utter prophecies that
were always true but which would never be believed. In his 2016 <i>Listen,
Liberal, Or Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?</i> he warned
Democrats that they were alienating the working class by concentrating on
wealth and technology and ignoring the tragic loss of manufacturing jobs and
those hit hard by the economic crisis and housing depression. Even worse,
Democrats were telling people the situation they found themselves in was their
own fault because they lacked education and nothing could be done about it. In
other words, to borrow a phrase from 1970s New York: Democrats to working
class: Drop Dead. Frank was ignored, and we wound up with an orange buffoon in
charge of the country for four years. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> This
year he restated his message in <i>The People: NO! </i>He says that beginning
in the 1970s, Democrats began turning away from the working class. The late
1960s had seen the working class begin a migration to Republicans. In 1970
construction workers in New York rioted in support of the Nixon administration.
Increasingly educated Democrats turned more toward elitism and less contact
with the working class. They turned away from unions, and especially union
leaders, who had increasingly become conservative and often were, or were
perceived to be, corrupt. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Frank
takes us through the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, who tried to govern as a
centrist Democrat, concentrating on technical competence, alienating further
the working class, and opening the door for the Reagan “revolution.” The next
nominal Democrat to win office, Bill Clinton, concentrated further on trade,
giving us NAFTA, CAFTA, and several other programs favored by Republicans. In
2008 Barak Obama was elected and proceeded to name Republicans to his cabinet
hoping for bipartisanship. He wound up rescuing banks and Wall Street while
leaving homeowners, the victims of banks and Wall Street, to deal with their
situation on their own. Even Obamacare, his signature achievement, did not
“inconvenience Big Pharma or private insurance companies.” Yet another step
away from the people Democrats depend on. Cue 2016, and Hillary Clinton does
little to repair the frayed relationship with the former base of her party.
Nevertheless, she wins a majority of voters, but not enough of a majority. Trump,
appealing to the disaffected, became president, and he came very close to
winning a second term this year. Frank argues Trump voters could just as easily
have been supporters of Democrats had they not been ignored and increasingly
vilified. Democrats, not Trump voters, are the problem. By offering nothing to
their historic base, they have lost that base. And even worse, liberal
Democrats are ensuring future defeat not only by not pursuing their former
base, but by vilifying them. Instead of being the voice of the working class,
Frank says, the Democratic party sees itself as a “sort of coming together of
the learned and the virtuous.” The former party of the people became
anti-populist. They want “no part of any systemic criticism of big business or
monopoly or the financial industry. They shied away from supporting mass
movements. The idea of putting together a coalition of working-class people was
one they came to regard with deep distaste.” They became the party of the
white-collar elite, the “smart and rich, the ‘better-educated upscale voters’
who wanted private retirement accounts but weren’t so keen on public schools.”
Frank writes that in 1992 journalist and author Mickey Kaus advised Democrats
to abandon their concern for economic equality; Democrats had to stop listening
to labor unions and sever their ties with the black “underclass.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Frank
refers to Lawrence Goodwyn, a 1970s-era scholar of populism, who wrote that in
order to build a movement like the People’s Party of the 1890s or the labor
movement of the 1930s, one must “connect with people as they <i>are in society</i>,
that is to say, in a state that sophisticated modern observers are inclined to
regard as one of ‘inadequate consciousness.’” Goodwyn warned against a politics
of “individual righteousness” or celebrating the purity of one’s radicalism. In
order to reform the country’s economic structure, we must practice “ideological
patience,” a suspension of moral judgement of ordinary Americans. Only then can
we start to build a movement that is hopeful and powerful and that changes
society.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Another
point Frank makes is the modern Democratic Party seems totally uninterested in
labor except to ask for its endorsement every few years. Frank tells the story
of a group of affluent progressive teens whose opinions were sought on the
importance of various issues. Racism, sexism, LGBTQ rights, and gun control all
had significant support. Labor, when it was mentioned, had no support. Zero.
Frank points out that the yard signs the affluent are placing in their yards to
show their support of inclusiveness, you know the ones that say:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> In
this house, we believe<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Black
lives matter<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Women’s
rights are human rights<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> No
human is illegal<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Science
is real<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> And
kindness is everything,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;">don’t say a word about the right to organize or
earn a living wage.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Frank
says there are many examples of labor’s omission in today’s wokeness. He names
“A Century of Protest,” a 2018 video feature produced by the <i>New Yorker</i>
that included protests throughout American history, which began with an ad for
Prada, and included fifty-eight clips of historical footage covering everything
from suffragette marches in 1913 to the ACT-UP protests. There was plenty of
civil rights footage, and Communists and even the KKK were represented, but
nothing on labor. Nada. And heaven knows, there is plenty of footage available
on labor protests, including the 1936 GM strike and the UAW strike of 1945-6.
Besides being ignored, labor is being airbrushed out of history. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Now
that Democrats have alienated their former base (let’s hope temporarily), they
seem to be going out of their way to keep them alienated. Rather than
addressing the issues that drove so many to vote for a con man, liberals seem to
be relishing any misfortune that has come to Trump voters, and woe be it to
anyone who suggests that we show empathy with those who supported the buffoon.
Frank writes that <i>New York Times </i>opinion writer Nicholas Kristoff
reports nothing he has written recently generates the outpouring of rage he
receives when he makes periodic assertions that Trump voters are human, too. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> In
my review of Max Skidmore’s <i>Common Sense Manifesto </i>I wrote about a
recent opinion piece in the <i>Wall Street Journal </i>by Portland, Oregon
restaurateur Kurt Huffman complaining about the $600 unemployment insurance
enhancement and bemoaning the fact that his slaves, er, I mean employees
weren’t champing at the bit to return to work for $15 an hour and tips totaling
as much as an additional $1 an hour (his words, not mine). How dare his
employees inconvenience him? Oh, the humanity! As a quick Google search
revealed, Mr. Huffman is Portland’s leading restaurateur whose favorite
restaurant in is London. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Just
to show that some things never change, Frank writes about a vice president at
DuPont, who in 1934 wrote a letter to the chairman of General Motors to
complain about the New Deal. Here is how, as Frank says, it ruined his life:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> “Five
Negroes on my place in South Carolina refused work this Spring, after I had
taken care of them and given them house [sic] rent free and work for three
years during bad times, saying they had easy jobs with the government… .<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> “A
cook on my houseboat at Fort Myers quit because the government was paying him a
dollar an hour as a painter when he never knew a thing about painting before.” <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> In
1934 the Democratic Party’s emphasis was on helping labor. I wonder where the
party stands with regards to Mr. Huffman’s employees. That I even have to ask
says a lot about how far the party has traveled from FDR and the New Deal. I’ve
often imagined that Lincoln would be appalled at what has become of his party.
I suspect the same could be said of FDR.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 150%;"> Farmers
and labor went for Trump this year. Those are two of the groups that were the
heart of Democratic support when FDR was president. Democrats have turned their
backs on farmers and labor. Is it surprising that farmers and labor have turned
their backs on Democrats?<o:p></o:p></p>
<span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> Democrats need to go back to their
base—the working class. In an America as divided as we are, that’s about the
only way to avoid Trump 2024. </span>Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-15458610894614591152020-11-11T08:13:00.001-08:002020-11-11T08:13:24.690-08:00The Best Years of Our Lives: or, How I Got Through Election Night<p> I’ve
had this piece in mind for more than a week, and it’s fitting that it’s
Veterans’ Day, and I’m finally sitting down to write it.</p><p style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> I
knew the night of the election was going to be a long one, so I decided to
watch <i>The Best Years of Our Lives,</i> one of my favorite movies, which just
became available on Kanopy, the library’s free streaming channel. I’ve written
about it before, and I will reiterate what I’ve said in the past: If you can
watch this film with dry eyes, you have my nomination for hardass of the year.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> The
movie is nearly three hours long, and it follows three returning World War II
veterans. It was made in 1946, one year after the war ended, and it is a
snapshot of America at a turning point. Unknown at the time the film was made
was—what would that turning point be like?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Harold
Russell, who lost both hands in the war, plays Homer, who returns home to a
family that pities him and Wilma, the girl next door, who loves him enough to
overcome Homer’s doubts that she will ever be happy with him as he now is. Within
days of Homer’s return, a relative is bloviating about how there will be a new
depression coming, and Homer had better get a job—and fast. In truth, many
people did see a depression on the way. The economy was shifting from wartime
to peacetime, and millions of veterans were coming home. What was not known in
1946 was there was a tremendous pent up demand for housing and cars that had
not been available during the war, and the GI Bill of Rights would stimulate
the economy in ways that could not be foreseen.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Fred,
an airman, returns home to find his wife, whom he married after twenty days of
knowing her, has an apartment of her own and a job in a nightclub. They quickly
exhaust Fred’s savings, and the best job Fred can find is as a soda jerk in the
drug store where he worked before the war. He loses that job when he defends
Homer in an altercation instigated by a customer who tells Homer he had fought
on the wrong side. The customer has a newspaper about a senator warning of
danger. The film was released in November 1946, so that may have been a
reflection of some of the senatorial campaigns in which red-baiting became
popular. 1946 saw Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon, among others, win seats in
the Senate. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Fred
is without a job. His wife, who has taken up with another man, tells him she’s
getting a divorce, and a romance with Al’s daughter seems off the table (more
on that later), so he decides to leave. As he’s waiting for his flight, Fred
walks through the airfield where combat aircraft are being dissembled. There
are hundreds, if not thousands, of planes in pieces. He sees one like he flew
and pulls himself into the nose window, which is where he spent a lot of time
during the war. He’s spotted and asked what he’s doing. He tells the guy who’s
questioning him he spent a lot of time in one of those and says something about
all these planes being scrapped. To me the implication is the planes, like the
returning veterans, are being piled on the scrap heap. The guy, who turns out
to be a building supervisor, tells him the planes are not being scrapped.
They’re being dissembled and will be used to build houses. He hires Fred. The
planes are being put to new use. Maybe there’s hope for Fred. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> As
I mentioned above, there was an incredible housing shortage at the end of the
war. My father, who rushed to enlist after Pearl Harbor, was very disappointed
to be declared 4-F. (The same thing, by the way, happened to me during Vietnam
except for the rush to enlist and the disappointment.) He (and my mother) wound
up working on the Manhattan Project, first in New York, then Santa Fe, and
finally Oak Ridge. After the war, they were transferred to St. Louis and let
go. They moved in with my father’s parents, who treated them like children,
even though they’d been on their own for a few years. That didn’t work out, and
there’s quite a story there, but I’ll save that one for another time.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> There
were companies that made homes of metal. One was Lustron, which was based in
Columbus, Ohio. The Navy owned an aircraft plant next to the airport. After the
war, the Navy rented the plant to Lustron, but because of the Cold War, the
Navy decided to take the facility back, and North American Rockwell moved in.
My first job with the Navy was in that facility. There are a few Lustron homes
still around, including a few in Santa Fe Hills in Kansas City. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Anyway,
back to the movie. Al, who is a prosperous banker, comes home to a boss who
wants him to get back to work immediately. He intends for Al, a veteran, to
handle the new business coming in because of the GI Bill. The problem is the GI
Bill is designed for veterans who don’t have much money, and Al’s boss wants Al
to abide by the old rules. Al, who is very much into alcohol and, if the film
were made today would probably be the subject of an intervention, gets
plastered at a dinner honoring him and argues for the loans to be made as
intended. It looks like he’ll get his way, but it’s 1946, and no one knows for
sure how this is going to work out.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Fred
falls in love with Peggy, Al’s daughter, and vice versa. They reunite at Homer
and Wilma’s wedding. Fred now has a job and an uncertain future and is
divorced. He tells Peggy he doesn’t know how things will turn out, but he’ll
really try, which is good enough for her. We can only guess how things worked
out for the characters in the film, and audiences in 1946 were in the same
boat. Who knew what the future would bring? As it turned out, there were
challenges—including the coming of us Baby Boomers—that could not be imagined
at the time, but there were also blessings, including the postwar boom and all
it brought with it. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> After
the movie ended, I checked the election returns. In spite of polls predicting a
blue tsunami, it looked to me to be a replay of 2016. I went to bed thinking it
looks like we’ll have four more years of Trump. I thought to myself, “We made
it through the first four. I guess we’ll make it through the next four.” I
consoled myself with the thought that the country had survived tough times
before and come out all right as I’d just seen in <i>The Best Years of Our
Lives,</i> and we could do it again. As we now know, Biden won. I told Dan it
was so narrow, and I used an obscene expression one of my favorite bosses used,
and Dan told me never to say that again—ever, so I won’t.<o:p></o:p></p>
<span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> There was hardly a blue tsunami—or
even a blue ripple. It seems Americans didn’t reject Republicans, but they did
reject Trump for now. But stay tuned. I’ll be writing my next piece on what I
think Trump has planned for our future, and it ain’t pretty, folks.</span>Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-87715087045807567012020-09-27T13:12:00.001-07:002020-09-27T13:12:30.976-07:00On Amy Coney Barrett's Nomination to the Supreme Court<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Get a Grip, Folks. Amy Coney Barrett
will be confirmed for the Supreme Court, probably before the election, and
there is not a thing anyone can do to prevent that. I’m as appalled as anyone
else that Moscow Mitch and his minions, with brazen hypocrisy, have taken the
opposite position to the one they took in 2016 when they refused even to
schedule confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland, Barack Obama’s Supreme Court
nominee. All we can do is hope for the best.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> Many previous Supreme Court justices
have proven to be surprises. Probably the one who proved most disappointing to
the president who nominated him, Dwight Eisenhower, was Earl Warren, who
ruled in favor of desegregating schools and against school prayer. If you’re
old enough, you’ll remember all the “Impeach Earl Warren” billboards and bumper
stickers we used to see on the highways and byways of America. David Souter,
appointed by George H. W. Bush, proved to be surprisingly liberal. Even John
Roberts voted in favor of Obamacare and has honored <i>stare decisis</i> over
his personal beliefs with regard to abortion clinics. Neil Gorsuch was an
unexpected surprise on LGBTQ rights in the workplace. Often justices don’t live
up to our worst fears. They grow into the jobs. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> It will do the Democratic Party more
harm than good to attack Barrett for her religious beliefs, which are protected
by the First Amendment to the Constitution she will be pledged to uphold; the
damage she might do to the Affordable Care Act, on which many Americans have
come to rely, is fair game, especially given the pandemic, but if she rules
that act unconstitutional, perhaps Congress will go back to the drawing board
and enact truly universal health care, like those evil socialist countries
Denmark, Sweden, and Germany have, or perhaps even Medicare for All. Congress
has been asleep at the switch lately. Perhaps our elected “representatives”
will actually start representing us again. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> In short, Barrett’s appointment might
be good in the long run. Let’s hope for the best and fight our battles where we
can win—like get our butts out and vote, whether by mail, absentee, or in
person. Remember, Trump did not win the popular vote last time, and his margins
in the states that pushed him over in the Electoral College were small. Let’s
not let that happen again!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span> </span><span> </span>And remember, as Max Skidmore explained in his <i>Common Sense
Manifesto,</i> which I reviewed a</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> few </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">months ago, only one of the two major
parties has a chance of winning, so skip voting for a third party</span></p>Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-27171324130562343082020-08-09T10:49:00.001-07:002020-08-09T10:51:51.351-07:00The People, No! A Brief History of Anti-Populism. A Review of Thomas Frank's New Book.<p style="line-height: 200%;"> I
know I said I wouldn’t be posting for a while, but I came across a mention of
Thomas Frank’s <i>The People, NO!: A Brief History of Populism </i>and was able
to get a copy from the library. At 256 pages (excluding notes), it’s a quick
read and very much worth reading.<o:p></o:p></p><p style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> While
I was reading the book, I was transported to New York in the 1970s. My friend
Mike, whom I’d met in Oklahoma, where he was a VISTA volunteer, and I were on a
crosstown bus going from his mother’s beautiful pre-war rent-controlled Upper West
Side apartment (which was larger than my parents’ house) to an Italian
restaurant we liked in Yorkville. On the way to the bus stop a man was handing
out political flyers, and I took one. At the time New York was probably at its
worst in recent memory. The country was in the grips of stagflation, Gerald
Ford had recently become president and had pardoned Richard Nixon, which was
not a popular move in New York. Add to that the city was close to bankruptcy,
and Consolidated Edison, on which Mike’s mother relied for a good deal of
income, was in a serious financial crisis. It says a lot about the long-term optimism
of those living in that time that people were handing out flyers instead of
throwing Molotov cocktails. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> On
the bus I glanced at the flyer, which was about how the working class was
getting shafted. Mike, who had refused to take a pamphlet, asked me why I would
be interested in what it said. I told him I wanted to know what was going on,
and besides, the pamphlet had some really good points. He gave me that
condescending look only a native Manhattanite knows how to give, and said, “Do
you consider yourself working class?” I hadn’t really given it much thought,
but I said, “I work, so I must be working class.” He started in on all the
reasons we were not working class. (Mike was a reporter for a neighborhood
newspaper, so he worked, too.) I couldn’t believe what I was hearing (and from
a former VISTA volunteer at that). All I could say was, “It sounds to me like
you just don’t want to be considered working class,” which elicited a loud
snicker from another passenger and a request from Mike that we change the
subject.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Mike
did very well, married an attorney, and lives in a beautiful condo in Riverdale
that overlooks the Hudson River. He is one of the people who told me I needed
to get my butt in gear and get back to writing, so he gets some credit (or
blame) for this blog.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Thomas
Frank must feel like Cassandra, who was cursed to utter prophecies that were
always true but which would never be believed. In his 2016 <i>Listen, Liberal,
Or Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?</i> Frank warned Democrats
that they were alienating the working class by concentrating on wealth and
technology and ignoring the tragic loss of manufacturing jobs and those hit
hard by the economic crisis and housing depression. Even worse, Democrats were
telling people the situation they found themselves in was their own fault
because they lacked education and nothing could be done about it. In other
words, to borrow a phrase from 1970s New York: Democrats to working class: Drop
Dead. Frank was ignored, and we wound up with an orange buffoon in charge of
the country. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Frank
is restating and enhancing his message in <i>The People: NO! </i>and he’s
giving us a much-needed history of populism, which he says is a word that has
taken on undeserved negative connotations. Populists, historically, were not
ignorant racist hayseeds. In fact, many, including tramps, dirt farmers, and
the working poor, were extremely well-read, especially compared to today, when
we have more television available than we can possibly consume. He tells the
story of Emmanuel and Marcet Haldeman-Julius, who in Girard, Kansas began
publishing the “Little Blue Books,” which included classics as well as
political pamphlets (probably like the one I took in New York). Many were about
racism and anti-lynching. The books were five for a dollar and were sold
everywhere including railroad stations. They were even offered in vending
machines. By 1951, when Julius died, there were 2,500 titles offered, and some
500 million Little Blue Books had been sold.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Historically,
even though populists were not ignorant hayseeds, the elite have inevitably
sought to portray them as such. Beginning in 1896 supporters of William
Jennings Bryan were portrayed as monstrous cretins bent on raping polite
society. In 1936 supporters of FDR were portrayed the same way, albeit not with
much success, since populist policies, if not actual populists, had won the day
in many cases, and FDR’s efforts to fight the Depression were making people’s
lives better—especially the lives of the working class, who became the backbone
of the Democratic party. Until about the time Mike and I took that bus ride. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Frank
says that beginning in the 1970s, Democrats began turning away from the working
class. The late 1960s had seen the working class begin a migration to
Republicans. In 1970 construction workers in New York rioted in support of the
Nixon administration. Increasingly educated Democrats turned more toward
elitism and less contact with the working class. They turned away from unions,
and especially union leaders, who had increasingly become conservative and
often were, or were perceived to be, corrupt. Frank quotes from Charles Reich’s
1970 <i>The Greening of America </i>to make his point about the pitiable
blue-collar character, whose life is really quite sad: “He has very little of
love, or poetry, or music, or nature, or joy. He has been dominated by fear. He
has been condemned by narrow-minded prejudice, to a self-defeating materialism,
to a lonely suspicion of his fellow man. He is angry, envious, bitter,
self-hating. He ravages his own environment. He has fled all his life from
consciousness and responsibility. He is turned against his own nature.” I
should note here that I read <i>The Greening of America </i>when it came out,
and I found it long on describing problems (a major one in Reich’s world being
hydrogenated peanut butter) but woefully short on recommending solutions. It
has that in common with <i>Kids Today, </i>the 2017 complainathon by Malcolm
Harris b. 1988, but that was another review.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Frank
takes us through the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, who tried to govern as a
centrist Democrat, concentrating on technical competence, alienating further
the working class, and opening the door for the Reagan “revolution.” Since
we’re concentrating on the Democratic party, I won’t dwell on Reagan (and you
know I can). The next nominal Democrat to win office, Bill Clinton,
concentrated further on trade, giving us NAFTA, CAFTA, and several other
programs favored by Republicans, who repaid him by impeding as much of his progress
as possible and ultimately impeaching him for alleged sexual misconduct, of
which, truth be told, many of them were as guilty, if not more so, than he. Under
Clinton, the working class receded further from Democrat’s agenda. In 2008
Barak Obama was elected and proceeded to name Republicans to his cabinet hoping
for bipartisanship. He wound up rescuing banks and Wall Street while leaving
homeowners, the victims of banks and Wall Street, to deal with their situation
on their own. Even Obamacare, his signature achievement, did not “inconvenience
Big Pharma or private insurance companies.” Yet another step away from the
people Democrats depend on. Cue 2016, and Hillary Clinton does little to repair
the frayed relationship with the former base of her party. Nevertheless, she
wins a majority of voters, but not enough of a majority. And we have Trump.
Even though he is The. Worst. President. Ever, this book is not about Trump.
It’s about Democrats, and their reaction to Trump voters, who, Frank argues,
could just as easily have been supporters of Democrats had they not been
ignored and increasingly vilified. Read: Deplorables. And that gets us to the
crux of the problem. According to Frank, Democrats, not Trump voters, are the
problem. By offering nothing to their historic base, they have lost that base.
And even worse, liberal Democrats are ensuring future defeat not only by not
pursuing their former base, but by vilifying them. Instead of being the voice
of the working class, Frank says, the Democratic party sees itself as a “sort
of coming together of the learned and the virtuous.” The former party of the
people became anti-populist. They want “no part of any systemic criticism of
big business or monopoly or the financial industry. They shied away from supporting
mass movements. The idea of putting together a coalition of working-class
people was one they came to regard with deep distaste.” They became the party
of the white-collar elite, the “smart and rich, the ‘better-educated upscale
voters’ who wanted private retirement accounts but weren’t so keen on public
schools.” Frank writes that in 1992 journalist and author Mickey Kaus advised
Democrats to abandon their concern for economic equality; Democrats had to stop
listening to labor unions and sever their ties with the black “underclass.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Frank
refers to Lawrence Goodwyn, a 1970s-era scholar of populism, who wrote that in
order to build a movement like the People’s Party of the 1890s or the labor
movement of the 1930s, one must “connect with people as they <i>are in society</i>,
that is to say, in a state that sophisticated modern observers are inclined to
regard as one of ‘inadequate consciousness.’” Goodwyn warned against a politics
of “individual righteousness” or celebrating the purity of one’s radicalism. In
order to reform the country’s economic structure, we must practice “ideological
patience,” a suspension of moral judgement of ordinary Americans. Only then can
we start to build a movement that is hopeful and powerful and that changes
society.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Frank
says that if liberals are not interested in democratizing the country’s
economic structure, individual righteousness is the way to go. Ordinary
citizens are judged, purged, canceled, and scolded. This is not building; it is
subtraction. Its goal is to “bring the corps of the righteous into a tight
orbit around the most righteous one of all.” And he has a point. It seems many
are more concerned with ideological conformity than with achieving objectives.
Take, for example, the purging of pro-life Democrats. Let’s face it, most
people wish there were fewer, or better, no abortions, and if that’s their
position, fine, and as long as they don’t take any action to force their
viewpoint on others, they should be welcome to express those views. Persuasion,
yes; forceful intervention, no.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Another
point Frank makes is the modern Democratic Party seems totally uninterested in
labor except to ask for its endorsement every few years. Frank tells the story
of a group of affluent progressive teens whose opinions were sought on the
importance of various issues. Racism, sexism, LGBTQ rights, and gun control all
had significant support. Labor, when it was mentioned, had no support. Zero. Frank
points out that the yard signs the affluent are placing in their yards to show
their support of inclusiveness, you know the ones that say:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> In
this house, we believe<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Black
lives matter<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Women’s
rights are human rights<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> No
human is illegal<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Science
is real<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> And
kindness is everything,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;">don’t say a word about the right to organize or
earn a living wage.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Frank
says there are many examples of labor’s omission in today’s wokeness. He names
“A Century of Protest,” a 2018 video feature produced by the <i>New Yorker</i>
that included protests throughout American history, which began with an ad for
Prada, and included fifty-eight clips of historical footage covering everything
from suffragette marches in 1913 to the ACT-UP protests. There was plenty of
civil rights footage, and Communists and even the KKK were represented, but
nothing on labor. Nada. And heaven knows, there is plenty of footage available
on labor protests, including the 1936 GM strike and the UAW strike of 1945-6.
Besides being ignored, labor is being airbrushed out of history. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Now
that Democrats have alienated their former base (let’s hope temporarily), they
seem to be going out of their way to keep them alienated. Rather than
addressing the issues that drove so many to vote for a con man, liberals seem
to be relishing any misfortune that has come to Trump voters, and woe be it to
anyone who suggests that we show empathy with those who supported the buffoon.
Frank writes that <i>New York Times </i>opinion writer Nicholas Kristoff
reports nothing he has written recently generates the outpouring of rage he
receives when he makes periodic assertions that Trump voters are human, too. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> “Karen”
has become a generic term for a (usually) upper middle-class white woman who
takes action to embarrass, publicly if possible and ideally on Twitter, those
who are guilty of infractions of various perceived misdeeds. (Think of a 21<sup>st</sup>
Century Hyacinth Bucket—that’s bu-kay—or the title character of John Waters’ <i>Serial
Mom.</i>) While not using the term, Frank admonishes Karens to cool it. If you
see something, say something to the individual. The world does not need to
know.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> Frank
points out Populism was and is relentlessly optimistic. The current
anti-populist liberals are all about despair. He discusses some of the
literature, including an editorial by Clemson professor Todd May, who questions
whether human extinction might not be a bad idea. Now, isn’t that a day
brightener? Who is going to be drawn to a party full of nihilists? Keep this
up, and it’s the Democratic Party that’s going to be extinct!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%;"> In
my review of Max Skidmore’s <i>Common Sense Manifesto </i>I wrote about a
recent opinion piece in the <i>Wall Street Journal </i>by Portland, Oregon
restaurateur Kurt Huffman complaining about the $600 unemployment insurance
enhancement and bemoaning the fact that his slaves, er, I mean employees
weren’t champing at the bit to return to work for $15 an hour and tips totaling
as much as an additional $1 an hour (his words, not mine). How dare his
employees inconvenience him? Oh, the humanity! As a quick Google search
revealed, Mr. Huffman is Portland’s leading restaurateur whose favorite
restaurant in is London. <o:p></o:p></p><p style="line-height: 200%;"> Just
to show that some things never change, Frank writes about a vice president at
DuPont, who in 1934 wrote a letter to the chairman of General Motors to
complain about the New Deal. Here is how, as Frank says, it ruined his life:<o:p></o:p></p><p style="line-height: 200%;"> “Five
Negroes on my place in South Carolina refused work this Spring, after I had
taken care of them and given them house [sic] rent free and work for three
years during bad times, saying they had easy jobs with the government… .<o:p></o:p></p><p style="line-height: 200%;"> “A
cook on my houseboat at Fort Myers quit because the government was paying him a
dollar an hour as a painter when he never knew a thing about painting before.” <o:p></o:p></p><p style="line-height: 200%;"> In
1934 the Democratic Party’s emphasis was on helping labor. I wonder where the
party stands with regards to Mr. Huffman’s employees. That I even have to ask
says a lot about how far the party has traveled from FDR and the New Deal. I’ve
often imagined that Lincoln would be appalled at what has become of his party.
I suspect the same could be said of FDR.<o:p></o:p></p><p style="line-height: 200%;"> As
I was about to post this, I read the <i>New York Times </i>review of the book,
which was written by James Traub, author of <i>What Was Liberalism </i>(which I
have not read) and who is evidently not a fan of Frank, populism, or the
working class. He relies on <i>ad hominem </i>to discredit the populists. Tom
Watson became a virulent racist (which Frank discuses), Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman
became a racist, and William Jennings Bryan became the prosecuting attorney in
the Scopes trial. All true, but the fact that individuals in the Populist
movement were flawed do not negate that movement any more than the fact that
flawed individuals wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
negate what they achieved. Many Populists remained true to their beliefs
including Eugene V. Debs, who would spend time in jail for opposing World War I,
and Oscar Ameringer and his wife Freda, who carried on his work into the 1970s
in Oklahoma City.</p><p style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’ve had the time in retirement to study history at a more leisurely pace (I tell friends the first time I studied for a degree; I now study for an education), and I’ve
come to realize it is a giant mistake to view any group as monolithic.
Southerners were not all virulent racists. Northerners were not all morally
pure abolitionists. Populists did not all become narrow minded anti-Semitic
racists. We need to get over a Manichean view of history. If we’re looking for
a movement made up of people who were perfect and remained so throughout their
lives, we’re going to be looking for a long time. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-33522980608168708892020-07-12T10:59:00.000-07:002020-07-12T10:59:00.239-07:00Stephanie Kelton's "The Deficit Myth" A Review<div style="line-height: 150%;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
is the third of the three reviews I promised, and when I made my promise, I
said I hoped I was up to the task on this book. There’s a lot in it I don’t
understand, but I’ve never let that stop me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As
I’ve mentioned in the previous reviews, Stephanie Kelton taught at the
University of Missouri-Kansas City for many years, and what is now known as
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) was once referred to as the Kansas City School of
Economics. Alas, she got an offer she couldn’t refuse and UMKC was unable or
unwilling to match to move to Stony Brook University on Long Island.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Kelton’s
book, <i>The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s
Economy,</i> was written before the coronavirus pandemic started, although she
inserted a few paragraphs in the introduction advising that we were facing even
larger deficits as a result of it, that we would be facing many issues as a
result of the virus, and we should not pile on additional concerns over our
nation’s fiscal condition. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To
give this book and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) a fair chance, we’re going to
have to ignore the, for the lack of a better term, bullshit we’ve heard all our
lives and pay attention to observable facts. I mentioned in a previous review
that the Manhattan Project went from theory to Hiroshima in about three years.
Our space program went from Sputnik to the moon in twelve years. In neither
case did we pause and ask ourselves if we could afford it. Unfortunately, the
same is true of military adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq and massive tax
cuts for the wealthy enacted every time a Republican gets control of the White
House. Our government has already admitted deficits don’t matter. Except when
the deficits will be incurred to help Americans. Then the Greek chorus kicks in
with predictions of inflation and various and sundry other negative
consequences and assorted moral hazards. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
sounds counterintuitive to say deficits don’t matter. If you’re new to MMT, a
voice in your head will scream, “This can’t be true.” But if we look back just
a few years to the response to the financial crisis of 2008, we can observe
that the government incurred a massive deficit, which in spite of predictions
of doom and gloom, preceded the longest bull market in history. Unfortunately,
that market lifted yachts and left those in rowboats to sink. We can hope the
government has learned its lesson, but as I write this, Senator Lindsay Graham is
railing against the extension of $600 weekly benefits for the unemployed.
According to the senator and his crowd, those people need to get back to work,
and if they can’t find a job, well, let them wait in line in their cars for
donated food. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We
can go back further in history to the aftermath of World War II, when returning
(primarily white) GIs were given free education and no down payment loans on
homes, which led to a historic economic boom, which actually lifted many boats
of all sizes. And, of course, we can look back a little further to the New
Deal, which also gave benefits to the little guy. So we have to ask ourselves
what do we believe—conventional wisdom or observable results?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Kelton
points out that the U.S. and a few other countries enjoy monetary sovereignty--the
ability to issue their own currency. European Union countries (think Greece) do
not have that ability. All the U.S. has to do is hit some keys on a computer,
and—voila—more money. It would be possible to overdo it, but, as Kelton points
out, Japan’s deficit is 245% of GDP, and Japan is still going strong.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She
points out that Alan Greenspan, when questioned by fellow Ayn Randian Paul
Ryan, who asked if Social Security is sustainable (and expected a different
answer), said, “[T]here’s nothing to prevent the federal government from
creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Kelton
argues that deficit reduction has historically led to economic downturns as far
back as 1819. The national debt was completely gone just in time for the Panic
of 1837, and it declined 36% just before the Great Depression. Even Bill
Clinton’s much touted surplus preceded the dot.com recession of 2000. She also
points out that if there were no government debt, there would be no U.S.
Treasuries, and a source of safe income would be eliminated. No less a founding
father than Alexander Hamilton called the national debt a “national treasure.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Kelton
says that it is possible that inflation could result if deficits grow too
large, but she also points out that is unlikely for the U.S. (As I write this,
30-year Treasury Bonds are yielding 1.33%, so the smart money does not
anticipate inflation for the foreseeable future.) In order to fight the
probably nonexistent threat of inflation, the current method is to maintain the
“right” amount of unemployment in the system, which was recommended by Milton
Friedman. In other words, a certain number of people must be unemployed for the
good of society. No one knows how many people that is. At one time it was
believed 7% unemployment is necessary; we’ve seen unemployment well below that
with no inflation. In other words, this is yet another example of conventional
wisdom trumping observable facts. Perhaps there is no “natural” rate of
unemployment. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Kelton
observes that, while we don’t need to worry about fiscal deficits, there are
many deficits we do need to address. One of them is unemployment, for which she
proposes a jobs guarantee. When people lose their jobs, they’d be guaranteed a
job paying no less than $15 an hour plus benefits. I was resistant to this proposal
at first, envisioning a jobs bureaucracy, but then I realized it could be as
simple as working through a service such as Kelly or some other temporary
agency. It could work, but I can see mounds of paperwork no matter which route
it takes. I’d prefer to see a universal basic income.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
Kelton gets into the plight of retirees, it kind of makes me wonder why these
people aren’t out marching with other protesters. As she says, retirement was
once envisioned as a three-legged stool comprised of Social Security, savings,
and pensions. She points out two of these legs have been sawed off. Savings are
hard to accumulate and interest rates are low. Pensions are few, far between,
and not secure. She gives an example of a McDonnell Douglas plant in Tulsa that
was closed because many workers were nearing retirement, and McDonnell Douglas
could walk away from all but a fraction of what they would have paid had
employees been allowed to work until retirement age. And most people don’t have
pensions. They have 401(k) or similar plans that sometimes pay off but other
times wind up being a means to divert employee savings into fund managers’ or
other hands. My partner Dan, for example, is part of a class action suit
against a local employer that mismanaged his 401(k). He lost $12,000. It looks
like he’s going to wind up with about $2,000 of it, but even that’s not
certain. And many employers are using the pandemic as an excuse to discontinue
contributing to these plans. So two of the three legs are gone, and now Social
Security is under attack (again). It seems those in power can’t stand when the
little guy winds up with anything. Kelton says 40% of middle-class Americans
will experience downward mobility in retirement and argues for Social Security
to be larger. After all, it has to take the place of savings and pensions. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Kelton
criticizes Bill Clinton’s welfare reform, and that gives me another chance to
assert my belief that Clinton was a closet Republican, for all the good that
did him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
a chapter titled “The Deficits that Matter,” in addition to the good jobs
benefit I discussed above, Kelton addresses the savings deficit, for which she
suggests we build an economy that will enable people to save. Next is the
health care deficit. We need, and under MMT can afford, universal health care.
Much has become obvious in the months since this book was written and the
pandemic has taken hold, but the most obvious is the flaw of depending on
employers for health care. As I’ve written before, this was an accident. During
World War II wages were frozen. Health care was added as a benefit to get
around frozen wages and compete for employees during a labor shortage. It no
longer makes sense, and a conservative case could certainly be made for
relieving employers of responsibility for health insurance. The education
deficit addresses deficiencies in K-12 and higher education levels. The debt
college students graduate owing detracts not only from their lives but from the
economy, and therefore, from the well being of everyone. College grads are
delaying their lives—getting married, having children, buying homes, and all
the stuff their parents and grandparents took for granted. There’s a good
conservative argument for wiping out student debt—it’s the economy, stupid. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
Kelton gets to the infrastructure deficit, I’m sure she’s preaching to the choir.
Infrastructure is one of those things that, as Will Rogers said about the
weather, everyone talks about but no one ever does anything about. Before the
rescue of banks took priority in 2009, President Obama said several
infrastructure projects were “shovel-ready.” When the orange buffoon took
office, he promised infrastructure repairs. The shovels must still be in good
shape, and as for infrastructure under the buffoon, well… crickets. Kelton goes
on to discuss the climate deficit and the democracy deficit. The latter
requires some action to address income inequality, which is now greater than it
was in the age of the robber barons or the Great Depression. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There
is a great deal to think about in this book. I’ve read two reviews—one in <i>The
Wall Street Journal </i>by John H. Cochrane of the Hoover Institute and Cato
Institute, which was titled “Years of Magical Thinking” and was pretty much
what you’d expect from a reviewer representing these “think tanks.” Frankly I
doubt he read the book. The other was in <i>The Baffler </i>by Dave Denison,
the senior editor, who obviously took the time to read the book and do some
research. He begins by pointing out that Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal
Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, in a March 2020 interview with Scott Pelley on <i>60
Minutes, </i>said there is no end to the Federal Reserve’s ability to flood the
system with money. As Denison concludes, Congress’ greatest con is “We can’t
afford it,” and there is no economic theory that can, for example, justify a
federal response to rescue a banking behemoth but not a group of rural
hospitals. It is simply a matter of priorities.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Remember
that next time you hear that we can’t afford universal health coverage, free
education, or any of a myriad of other social benefits citizens of most first world countries take for granted.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Denison’s
article is at <a href="https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-money-printers-denison">https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-money-printers-denison</a>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’ll
be taking a breather to read some mindless brain candy for a few weeks, and I
plan to enroll in an online literature class that starts next month at UMKC, so
I won’t be posting to this blog for a while unless I see something really
worthy of writing about. Let’s all hope that by the time I get back to you, life
has gotten back to normal.<i> </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-9298151574309566502020-06-24T08:42:00.001-07:002020-06-24T08:48:38.541-07:00Changing Values, Changing History (Revised)<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">This is a revised and expanded version of a previous post. I am now reading Stephanie Kelton's <i>The Deficit Myth,</i> and I will be posting my review of that book as promised. I am posting this revised post now because it has become unexpectedly relevant in this era of monument removal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The final straw that caused me to jump this post ahead of my planned post was a comment about monument removal that showed how extremely naive many Americans remain about the education we're given. A person gasped, "What's next? Revising textbooks?" It was news to me that anyone would, in any era of our history, be under the impression textbooks were or are objective. Perhaps that's how we got to where we are today--with Fox News and MSNBC each being unquestionably accepted as objective by their respective audiences. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Perhaps we should require everyone to take a course in historical and media criticism!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">By the way, I only got a 99 on this paper. </span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">CHANGING VALUES,
CHANGING HISTORY (REVISED)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">INTRODUCTION (AND
CAVEAT)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This
paper builds on the paper I submitted last semester. The additional reading I
have done has taken me down several rabbit holes, and some of those have had
their own rabbit holes. One thing I love about history is I never know where it
will lead. For example, I came across a mention of <i>Fitzgerald v. Allman, </i>an
1880 North Carolina Supreme Court case in which property left to former slaves
by their former master was recovered by his family, and following up on that
case led me to Melissa Milewski’s 2018 <i>Litigating Across the Color Line, </i>which
I write about, and a mention of the fact that many Civil War monuments both in
the North and the South were standardized and were produced for the most part
by a very few companies in (horrors!) the North led me to Sarah Beetham’s
dissertation on Civil War monuments, and why some publisher hasn’t jumped on
the chance to turn that dissertation into a book is a mystery to me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">In a February 6-7, 2020 <i>Wall Street Journal</i> review of Craig
Fehrman’s <i>Author in Chief,</i> about presidential books, Thomas Mallon
writes, “[Fehrman] is forever setting up a story and then racing off in pursuit
of another before returning to the first. This <i>interruptus </i>effect makes
many of his chapters feel like the presidency of Grover Cleveland.” I’m afraid
you’ll find the same is true of this paper. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">THE EMPTY CARTOUCHE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I was
in Egypt last year and was surprised that it was such a police state that those
of us on the tour were encouraged not to go out on our own. We had armed guards
and a police escort, so I guess those precautions were necessary. Add to that
the fact we were forbidden to discuss American politics with our fellow
travelers, and it was a long trip. After all, how interested can one be in
strangers’ pets, children, and so on? At any rate I had time to do a lot of
thinking while away from the good ol’ US of A.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On
many of our stops at Egypt’s temples we were shown walls of hieroglyphs with
blank cartouches. A cartouche is an oval that encloses a group of hieroglyphs
that typically represents the name and title of a monarch (or pharaoh). If a
monarch fell out of favor, that pharaoh’s name was simply chiseled out of the
cartouche. The monarch’s accomplishments are still shown, but the name of the
one who accomplished those feats is typically lost to history.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A few
of these erasures failed because the pharaohs were so notorious. One was <span style="background: white; color: #545454;">Queen </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Hatshepsut who donned a fake beard and ruled as a king over
the wishes of her son, who got the chisels moving when she died. Another was </span><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">Amenhotep IV who attempted to institute
a monotheistic religion much to the chagrin of the priests of the various old gods
whose livelihoods he threatened.</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It occurred to me similar erasures, revisions, and
mythmaking are constantly going on in the modern world. My first inclination
was to consider the removal of statues venerating Confederates, the move to
remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from a building at Princeton because of Wilson’s
racist actions as a president, and so on a form of erasure. These kinds of
erasures seemed to me to be akin to Stalin’s constant revisions and erasures
(both by execution and then by an early form of Photoshopping), but then it
occurred to me more subtle acts of erasures and revisions are constantly going
on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One example is the insistence that the United States was
created as a Christian nation. Although this is demonstrably false, </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">a movement arose in the
1950s to revise history. Kevin M. Kruse says in his 2015 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America</i>
that under President Dwight Eisenhower the first National Prayer Breakfast took
place in 1954, “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance, and “In God
We Trust” was declared the country’s motto and added to paper currency. There
was even a proposal that the Constitution be amended to declare, “The Nation
devoutly recognizes the authority and law of Jesus Christ, Saviour [sic] and
Ruler of nations through whom are bestowed the blessings of Almighty God.” It
turned out that was pushing the envelope a tad far. Another amendment was
proposed to overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling in <i>Engel v. Vitale </i>(1962)
that voluntary prayer in public schools violated the First Amendment
prohibition of a state establishment of religion. Had it not been for </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Rep. Emmanuel Celler, who helped
derail that amendment in the Judiciary committee, this amendment may well have
come to embarrassing fruition<span style="color: black;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>While
that would be an interesting rabbit hole to go down, I’ve decided on another
one: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, “Redemption,”
and some of their legacies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">THE LOST
CAUSE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">Almost immediately after the Civil
War ended, a form of amnesia descended on both the North and the South. An
estimated 3.9 million slaves, or more than 10% of the population of the country
at the time, were freed, and both North and South were at a loss as to how to
deal with the former slaves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In their
1942 <i>Economic History of the United States,</i> Ernest L. Bogart and Donald
L. Kemmerer note that when Russia freed 23 million serfs just four years before
the end of our Civil War each was given a parcel of the land they had tilled. Susan
Nieman in her 2019 <i>Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil </i>writes
that in 1865 </span>at a meeting with twenty former slaves in Savannah attended
by General William T. Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the freedmen
requested enough land to support their families and to live away from white
people. As a result, Special Field Order No. 15 was issued granting families
“not more than 40 acres of tillable ground.” It didn’t last. The plan, which
had also proposed that the freedmen be given the Army’s surplus mules, was
parodied as “40 acres and a mule.” The land that had been distributed was taken
back and given to its former owners. Nieman notes that while this land was
being taken back, the government was giving land in the west to those, many of
whom were immigrants, who would settle it under the Homestead Act.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="color: black;">Bogart and
Kemmerer quote Frederick Douglass as saying, “[Emancipation] left freedmen in a
bad condition. It made him free and henceforth he must make his own way in the
world. Yet he had none of the conditions of self-preservation or self-protection.
He was free from the individual master, but the slave of society. He had
neither money, property, nor friends. He was free from the old plantation, but
he had nothing but the dusty road under his feet… . He was turned loose, naked,
hungry, and destitute to the open sky.”</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Bogart and Kemmerer point out it
was difficult to introduce the wage system in the south because neither the
planters nor the freedmen were accustomed to money-wages services for which
bare subsistence had formerly been given. They further say blacks after
Emancipation considered any form of labor a kind of badge of slavery and
considered idleness the greatest blessing of liberty. Freedmen left the
plantations in large numbers and moved to towns and worked only when they were
in need of money. Bogart and Kemmerer continue to explain and rationalize the
actions of planters desperately in need of labor. They advanced rations,
withheld payments until crops were in, and even then they may not pay the wages
due. “In other cases they tried to restore a kind of servitude by means of
apprenticeship, vagrancy, and poor laws under which wandering Negroes could be
arrested and sentenced to hard labor on a neighboring plantation.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Strangely, this practice was made
possible by the very amendment that freed the slaves, which states: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“Neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been
duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to
their jurisdiction.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Slavery was outlawed, but if
someone could be convicted of a crime, that person could effectively become a
slave.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Neiman writes that convict labor
was not just for plantations. Southern businesses took advantage of convict
labor to depress wages for free workers, break early strikes, and suppress the
drive for unionization in the South. A fictional example of convict labor being
used off the plantation is Scarlett O’Hara’s leasing convicts to work in her
lumber mill in <i>Gone with the Wind </i>(1939)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">According to Eric Foner in his 1988
<i>Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877</i>, Chinese
laborers were being imported to work on the transcontinental railroad. Some
plantation owners considered importing Chinese laborers to do the field work
slaves had done and drive down wages for the former slaves. According to
Elizabeth Wien in an August 25, 2019 <i>New York Times </i>book review, some
planters actually followed through on this until 1882 when Congress passed the
Chinese Exclusion Act. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Bogart and Kemmerer were writing in
1942 as economists and offer no moral judgements, but we can see that the South,
once dependent on a slave economy, refused to give up its dependence on a low
(or no) wage economy. Ira Katznelson writes in his 2005 <i>When Affirmative
Action Was White: The Untold Story of Racial Inequality in Twentieth Century
America</i> that this principle continued into the New Deal era. Kassia St.
Clair writes in her 2018 <i>The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History</i>
that the U.S. is the world’s third-largest producer of cotton (behind India and
China), a great portion of which is harvested by prisoners under what she calls
the “fig leaf” provided by the Thirteenth Amendment. She continues, “With just
over two million people currently incarcerated in America, this makes for a
large, cheap, and racially skewed labor force, a portion of whom care for
cotton crops, almost entirely unremunerated.” Prisoners, she continues, can be
compelled to work uncompensated or for a token amount, and if they refuse, they
can be punished. She says a federal program earned $500 million in sales in
2016 while a California program earned $232 million the same year. To some
extent slavery still exists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the
Constitution were passed between 1865 and 1870, giving black Americans suffrage
and equal protection under the law. Former male slaves could now vote, own
property, receive an education, legally marry, sign contracts, file lawsuits,
and hold political office. By 1868, 700,000 blacks were registered as voters,
fourteen held seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, and many held office
in state legislatures. Blacks formed their own churches, schools, and
organizations. With the help of the Freedman’s bureau, some 200,000 learned to
read. Reconstruction was begun to enforce these amendments and bring the South
back into the union. Under Reconstruction the first Ku Klux Klan was suppressed
in 1871. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">In a July 28, 2018 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New
York Times</i> editorial, Brent Staples says women’s rights advocates were so
focused on women’s right to vote that many opposed the Fifteenth Amendment on
the grounds that passage of the amendment “would only mean degradation for
women at the hands of Negro men.” After the Fifteenth Amendment passed, racism
intensified within the movement, and black suffrage groups were discouraged
from seeking affiliation with white suffrage groups because that might anger
people in the South. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">As with any long war, the country suffered from fatigue.
Once the war ended, even the victors wanted to move on. As early as 1866 an
editor of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chicago Tribune</i> is
quoted by Phillip Leigh in his 2017 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Southern
Reconstruction</i> as having written the following to Illinois Senator Lyman
Trumbull:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">“You all in Washington must remember that the excitement of
the great contest is dying out, and that commercial and industrial enterprises
and pursuits are engaging a large share of public attention…people are more mindful
of themselves than of any philanthropic scheme that looks to making Sambo a
voter, juror and office holder.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As the country’s attention turned to
westward expansion, scandals in the Grant administration, and especially the
economic crisis of 1873, its already limited appetite for reform waned. As part
of the compromise to settle the contested election of 1876, Republicans agreed
to end Reconstruction. Rutherford B. Hayes removed the last troops from the
South in 1877. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">After Reconstruction ended, the South implemented Jim Crow
laws, suppressed voting rights, and many former slaves became sharecroppers,
which gave the former slaves all the disadvantages of slavery without the
upside of being fed and clothed by their former masters. Further, many still had
no education and were at a disadvantage when it came time to calculate their
share of earnings and powerless to do anything about it when they were cheated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">After Reconstruction, Northerners generally forgot about
the former slaves and hoped the problem would go away. It was easy in the
public mind to look back on the antebellum world as a time when things were
simpler, chivalry ruled in the South, and so on. The country was ready for what
became known as the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The myth began very shortly after
the war ended. Caroline E. Janney, a professor of history at the University of
Virginia, writing in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Virginia
Encyclopedia,</i> traces the term to </span>Edward A. Pollard (1832-1872), an
editor of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Richmond Examiner, </i>who
published <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lost Cause: A New Southern
History of the War of the Confederates</i> in 1866. Other southern writers
followed. The myth included six tenets, according to Ms. Janney. These are:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->Secession,
not slavery, caused the war.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->African
Americans were “faithful slaves,” loyal to their masters and the Confederate
cause and unprepared for the responsibilities of freedom.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->The
Confederacy was defeated militarily only because of the Union’s overwhelming
advantages in men and resources.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->Confederate
soldiers were heroic and saintly.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->The
most heroic and saintly of all Confederates was Robert E. Lee.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->Southern
women were loyal to the Confederate cause and sanctified by the sacrifice of
their loved ones.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To those
tenets should be added that the martyred Abraham Lincoln was a saintly man of
the people, and, had he lived, he would never have imposed a harsh
Reconstruction on the defeated South.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I found a
copy of Pollard’s <i>Southern History of the Civil War </i>at a recent estate
sale. The book was written as the war was being fought. I doubt that I will
ever wade through the nearly 1300-page unindexed combination book and doorstop,
but I found his rationale for the South’s having the right to secede
interesting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Pollard
writes that the then-present generation was born in the belief that the union
was destined to be perpetual, and that was a “popular and obstinate delusion”
that was sustained by a “false and ingenious prejudice.” He continues, “It was
busily represented, especially by demagogues in the North, that the Union was
the fruit of the Revolution of 1776, and had been purchased by the blood of our
forefathers.” Pollard continues, “The Revolution achieved our national
independence, and the Union had no connection to it other than consequence in
point of time. It was founded, as any other civil institution, to the
exigencies and necessities of a certain condition of society and had no other
claim to popular reverence and attachment, than what might be found in its own
virtues.” Pollard continues to condemn what he sees as the “independence of
thirteen States” secured by the Revolution turned into a “grand consolidated
government to be under the absolute control of a numerical majority.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Of course,
the Electoral College and counting unenfranchised slaves as three-fifths of a
person for representational purposes makes Pollard’s rationale for secession
questionable at best, but his view of thirteen independent states is consistent
with John C. Calhoun’s (1782-1850) view of the nation as “an assembly of
nations,” as discussed in Nancy S. Love’s <i>Understanding Dogmas & Dreams </i>(2006),
and Calhoun’s abhorrence of majority rule remains popular with many today who
have adopted his rationalizations to justify gerrymandering and voter purges to
limit the ability of people not deemed worthy of having a say in their
government.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i>The
Great Suppression</i> (2016),<i> </i>by Zachary Roth (no relation) is an
examination of how what he calls the “Great Obama Freakout” has led such
conservative writers as Jonah Goldberg to take the position that “voting should
be harder, not easier” and even favor repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.
Nancy MacLean’s 2017 <i>Democracy in Chains </i>shows voter suppression is just
one of the items on conservatives’ agenda and that it precedes Obama. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>New and
improved means of voter suppression include counting only those eligible to
vote for the purposes of state and local representation. As discussed in Ari
Berman’s “Count Me Out” in the January-February 2020 <i>Mother Jones, </i>this
means children would not count when apportioning representation. Groups who
typically have large families would lose representation. As one Texas state
senator says, districts would be either “packed” or “cracked,” meaning lines
would be drawn either to pack as many potentially Democratic voters into a
district as possible, freeing up surrounding districts to go Republican, or the
vote would be diluted by white voters, canceling out minority voters’
influence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 1907, Columbia University
Professor William A. Dunning, who headed a historiographical school of thought
on Reconstruction that came to bear his name, published <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865-1877.</i> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Foner describes the Dunning School
at Columbia (where Foner taught until his 2018 retirement) as a group of young southern
scholars who gathered at Columbia to study the Reconstruction era under the
scholarship of Dunning and John W. Burgess. Blacks, their mentors taught, were
children incapable of appreciating freedom and granting them suffrage was “a
monstrous thing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i>The Dunning School: Historians,
Race, and the Meaning of Reconstruction</i>, edited by John David Smith and J.
Vincent Lowery (2013) (with a forward by Foner), is a nuanced and in my opinion
a much-needed study of the Dunning School and helped me understand a little
better where Dunning and his students were coming from. This is certainly not
to exonerate them, but to put them in context. Smith writes in the introduction
that most writers of the period 1875-1910 were influenced by notions of <i>laissez-faire</i>
capitalism and Anglo-Saxonism and commonly condemned Reconstruction as an evil.
He quotes Vernon L. Wharton (1907-1964) as saying that the school “merely gave
elaborate and expert documentation to a story already generally accepted.” Dunning
and his students, according to Smith, documented and propagated the “tragic”
Reconstruction rather than creating it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Dunning studied under John W.
Burgess, whom Stephen W. McKinley calls the “Godfather” of the Dunning School.
Burgess (1844-1931) was born in Tennessee to a Unionist slaveholder originally
from Rhode Island. He joined the Union Army in 1862. He left the South in 1862
and moved to Amherst, Mass., where he had friends. He was introduced to
Hegelianism at Amherst College and encountered Tacitus’ <i>Germania,</i> which
led to his “subsequent worship of all things German,” to create and justify
national hierarchies. Tacitus would also inspire Hitler, which I’m only throwing
in as a historical note, not an <i>ad hominem</i> attack on Burgess. Burgess
moved to Columbia in 1876 where Dunning studied under him. As Shepherd W.
McKinley says, the two worked closely for more than thirty years, their
relationship evolving from teacher-student to older mentor-younger colleague to
equals and competitors and finally to fading elder-rising star. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Smith cautions that the Dunning
school was not a monolith and that students expressed a variety of ideas. James
Wilford Garner (1871-1938), for example, bluntly stated that the real cause of
the civil war was the perpetuation and extension of slavery. On the other hand,
Walter Lynwood Fleming (1874-1932), whom Dunning termed not “any too much
reconstructed himself,” wrote an 800-page book on Reconstruction in Alabama in
which, among other things, he celebrated the accomplishments of the Klan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>John Grégoire de Roulhac Hamilton (1878-1961)
was a scion of a very wealthy family that remained wealthy, although less so,
after the Civil War. He was also quite racist and gained the nickname “Ransack”
for his habit of traveling the south at his own expense and convincing people
to give him their Civil War primary sources which he used to build the Southern
Historical Society (SHS). Although he remained a racist and expressed disdain
for the intellectual powers of black scholars, he personally saw to it John
Hope Franklin was given access to the SHS archives in defiance of state Jim
Crow laws in effect at the time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Paul Leland Haworth (1876-1936) was
an Indiana Quaker who became something of an outcast among the Dunningites. J.
Vincent Lowery says he is rarely mentioned in connection with the group even
though he completed his dissertation under Dunning in 1906. Haworth had a more
favorable view of Reconstruction and blamed southern whites, not blacks, for
the “Negro problem.” He wrote <i>The Hayes-Tilden Disputed Presidential
Election of 1876</i> (1906) in which he considered that the outcome was
probably the correct one inasmuch as in disputed South Carolina voters were
suppressed and “in an absolutely free and fair election the state would have
gone Republican by from five to fifteen thousand.” His book was generally
ignored, receiving only one disparaging review in the American Historical
Review and a scathing write-up by Henry Watterson of the <i>Louisville
Courier-Journal</i> questioning Hayworth’s objectivity. Watterson had
participated in the Wormley Conference (which settled the election) as an
ardent Tilden supporter, so his own objectivity is certainly open to question. Haworth
taught for a year at Bryn Mawr, became a member of the Progressive party, and
ran unsuccessfully for a state office in 1912. In 1915 he published <i>America
in Ferment</i> offering a Progressive diagnosis of the times. While
sympathizing with the plight of blacks and continuing to attack Jim Crow laws
and the failure of Southerners to uphold the “separate but equal standard,” Haworth
retained the Anglo-Saxon centrist view of the world and advocated immigration
restrictions to prevent “race suicide.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Fred Arthur Bailey’s chapter on
Charles W. Ramsdell (1877-1942) is mostly interesting for its discussion of the
textbook battles in Texas. (Which continue to this day, as I’ll discuss later
and as Eric Foner discusses in a 2010 essay reprinted in <i>Battles for Freedom</i>;
the Texas texts are still whitewashing history in several senses of the word.) Ramsdell
was from the Texas Hill Country near Austin and after Columbia wound up at the
University of Texas, which was notoriously frugal with salaries. Ramsdell needed
to augment his income, so he coauthored a history to compete in the lucrative
Texas textbook market. The book was eventually approved. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>By the 1890s southern aristocrats
had crippled Reconstruction but faced a challenge from a threatening alliance
of small farmers, both white and black, who were discontented with the southern
oligarchy. Southern aristocrats responded by linking class stratification and
white supremacy, emphasizing fears of black domination. Populists were defeated
in the elections of 1896, and legislatures quickly passed laws to avoid a
recurrence. As Rogers and Hammerstein would later term it, Southerners had “to
be carefully taught.” Southern legislatures passed uniform textbook laws with
Texas leading the way in 1897. One Texas leader in 1915 declared, “Strict
censorship is the thing that will bring the honest truth.” When a professor at
Roanoke College in Virginia was found to be using Henry William Elson’s 1904 <i>History
of the United States of America,</i> the professor resigned and the book was
purged from universities throughout the south. Bailey writes offending passages
were said to portray sexual indiscretions of masters with their female slaves,
termed the conflict a slaveholders’ war, and praised Lincoln.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I have a 1912 edition of Elson’s
book. I was only able to find the following about sexual indiscretions:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“One feature of [slavery] that
brought it general condemnation was the miscegenation of the two races. The
northern Abolitionists doubtless had an exaggerated notion of the prevalence of
this evil, nor did they take into account of the fact it was not wholly due to
slavery. It is a racial evil not confined to America nor to modern times. By
the better class of slaveholders it was never considered respectable.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I suspect the real reason for the
objection to this text is Elson’s insistence, repeatedly and in no uncertain
terms, that slavery caused the war. Among his arguments:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Some say the war arose from the
different interpretations of the Constitution on the question of state
sovereignty, miscalled states rights. But what caused this difference of
interpretation? Slavery… . Others say secession caused the war. Very true; but
what caused secession? Slavery.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Elson was simply not buying the
“Lost Cause” myth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>William Watson Davis (1884-1960) was
born in Florida in comfortable circumstances to a family that had been
slaveholders for generations. Unlike most Dunningites, Davis stated unequivocally
slavery was the cause of the Civil War going so far as to say, “The stupidest
man realized the essential point in the great social issue of the war.” Davis
did not minimize the violence against blacks during Reconstruction, but he also
did not condemn it. Somewhat ironically in 1910 this member of the Dunning
School wound up at the University of Kansas in that former bastion of
abolitionism, Lawrence, where he taught until he retired in 1954.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>William Harris Bragg’s chapter on C.
Mildred Thompson (1881-1975) is possibly the most interesting not only because
Thompson was anomalous but because Bragg discusses the Dunning School’s fall
from grace as well as a possible revision to the revisionism. Thompson was a
native of Atlanta who went to Vassar in 1899 and then studied at Columbia
beginning in 1906 at a time when Columbia was not fully coeducational. When
Thompson earned her PhD, she was one of only 543 to hold that degree, and only
10% of those were women. While doing graduate work at Columbia, Thompson was
teaching at Vassar, where she supported integration and where she would remain
until 1948. She became close friends with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and
supported the New Deal. In her 1915 <i>Reconstruction in Georgia</i> Thompson
wrote that Reconstruction brought Georgia a wider democratization of society
and that the “greatest constructive achievement of the Civil War was the
establishment of the negro [sic] in freedom” although the Republicans had
“failed to establish him in permanent equality… either in political rights or
social privileges.” She wrote favorably of some of the black politicians of the
Reconstruction era. She questioned granting black suffrage as having “extended
and intensified the racial antagonism a hundredfold.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Bragg writes that Kenneth Stampp’s
1965 <i>The Era of Reconstruction</i> “probably marked the beginning of the end
of the Dunningites as a respectable school of historiography within the
university.” Stampp conceded the individual Dunningites’ state studies remained
valuable for factual detail, but the conclusions were by and large “anti-Negro
and anti-radical.” With Eric Foner’s 1988 <i>Reconstruction,</i> the academic
repudiation of the Dunningites neared completion. Bragg writes that the 2010 <i>The
Great Task Remaining Before Us: Reconstruction as America’s Continuing Civil
War,</i> a collection of Reconstruction essays edited by Paul A. Cimbala and
Randall M. Miller, neither mentions nor includes any of the work of Dunning or
his students. But there appears to be a revision to the revision. In 2012 Adam
Fairclough, a British historian of the American civil rights movement, wrote a
qualified defense of the Dunning School as well as their assertion that the
“grant of black suffrage” had been a mistake. Bragg, writing in 2013, says, “It
remains to be seen whether Fairclough’s argument represents an interesting
footnote to post-Civil War historiography or the thin edge of a wedge that
might shatter a quarter century of Reconstruction orthodoxy.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In his section in the book on
Dunning, James S. Humphreys says Dunning was busy teaching, mentoring his
graduate students, and was in demand socially both in New York and Washington
and wonders when Dunning found time to write. He notes that Dunning relied on
his students’ works for <i>Reconstruction: Political and Economic</i>, which
allowed him to complete the book quickly and may have made him more partisan
against Radical Reconstruction. (Shepherd W. McKinley quotes Philip R. Muller
as saying the book is “flawed” and that Dunning wrote the book quickly and from
secondary sources and also notes he relied heavily on his students’
dissertations.) Smith writes in the introduction that in 1909 Dunning and W. E.
B. DuBois appeared at a session of the American Historical Association with
Dunning. DuBois took issue with much of the Dunning School’s teachings (while
acknowledging corruption among some black politicians and admitting many
ex-slaves were ignorant and easily deceived), pointing out that former slaves
learned quickly, acted responsibly, and received pitifully little support from
the U. S. government. According to Smith, Dunning spoke of DuBois’ presentation
in high terms. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Unfortunately for Dunning’s
reputation, that rushed project was, and in some circles remains, influential
and will forever be what he is remembered for. Dunning’s portrayal of
Reconstruction would prevail for much of the Twentieth Century. It was the only
view of Reconstruction I was exposed to until I was taking some graduate
courses at Ohio State in the 1970s. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is still a
mark in the floor of the classroom where my jaw dropped when I first learned
another viewpoint existed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Bragg writes that
the last reissue of <i>Reconstruction: Political and Economic</i> was in 1962.
I have a copy of that edition. It contains a cover blurb by Pulitzer Prize
winning historian David Donald saying, “[E]ven though many of its viewpoints
are now controverted by modern historians, it remains the point of departure
for all recent scholarship in the field.” A blurb by another Pulitzer Prize
winner, Allan Nevins, concludes, “[The book] should be read at the beginning of
all study of the period, and reread at the end.” From its first publication in
1907 academia was sold. A few examples of Dunning’s impact on textbooks follow:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">In 1930 Eliot Morrison and Henry
Steele Commager wrote in their widely-used textbook, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Growth of the American Republic,</i> “As for Sambo, whose wrongs moved
abolitionists to tears, there is some reason to believe that he suffered less
than any other class in the South from its peculiar institution.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black;">The Literature of the South, </span></i><span style="color: black;">by
Richard Croom Beatty, et. al., published in 1952 by the textbook publisher,
Scott Foresman Company, describes the post-war years as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“With national politics in the
hands of vindictive and often unscrupulous men, Reconstruction measures were
such as to rub salt into the still sensitive wounds made by the Civil War…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“Corruption in the South was so bad
that the Ku Klux Klan was organized, under such leaders as Nathan Bedford
Forrest, to fight radical Reconstruction policies and to reestablish white
supremacy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“Beginning in 1874, however, a
number of occurrences brought about a healthier national attitude toward the
South. [Radicals] were defeated at the polls; the Supreme Court, following the
election returns, reversed opinions issued a few years earlier and abolished
the legal basis for Reconstruction policies. One of the first acts of the newly
elected Congress was to relinquish control of the Southern racial problems.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>John
D. Hicks, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, writes in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The American Nation: A History of the United
States from 1865 to the Present, Third Edition,</i> a college textbook
published by Houghton Mifflin in 1955, “The reconstruction of the South was
badly done. After the death of Lincoln, the government of the United States
fell into the hands of crass and cruel men who scrupled at nothing in the
achievement of their ends. Andrew Johnson, a Southerner who comprehended the
problems of the South, was first swept out of power, then out of office, and
with General Grant as an ineffective front the Radicals in Congress had their
way.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>With
academia on board, the Dunning message would get to the masses with the help of
a new and effective medium, cinema.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">In 1915 </span><span style="color: black;">D. W.
Griffith produced <i>The </i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Birth of a Nation,</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> a</span> technical
masterpiece describing the events leading to the Civil War, the war itself,
Reconstruction, and how Southerners reacted to Reconstruction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The film is almost as much an
anti-war film as it is historical (or ahistorical, depending on one’s
viewpoint). It was released in February 1915, almost seven months after what
would become World War I began in Europe, and perhaps D. W. Griffith foresaw
that the U. S. would have to decide whether to enter the war and was
registering his opposition to our doing so.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The film
came out fifty years after the Civil War ended, which was well within living
memory at the time. For reference, 1968 is the roughly the same distance from
2019 as 1865 was to 1915, and the events of 1968—the assassinations of Martin
Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy as well as the Chicago Democratic
National Convention to name a few—are still fresh and hotly debated today. So
it was in 1915 with the Civil War and Reconstruction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The film
depicts some of the fears of the time—that blacks’ becoming too powerful would
lead to political chaos, that blacks would disenfranchise whites, and that
white women would not be safe—probably the worst and most politically effective
fear possible, and one that would be used to justify thousands of lynchings for
decades to come.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
response to the indignities heaped upon the South, the hero comes up with the
idea that becomes the Ku Klux Klan and brings back the “good old days”
including disenfranchising blacks at gunpoint.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>D. W. Griffith was born ten years
after the end of the Civil War to a father who had been a Confederate colonel
in that war. According to Dick Lehr in his 2014 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birth of a Nation: How a Legendary Filmmaker and a Crusading Editor
Reignited America’s Civil War,</i> Griffith idolized his father, who died when
Griffith was ten as a result, according to Griffith, of a Civil War wound. Lehr
posits the death was actually the result of too much food and bourbon. Griffith’s
family was plunged into reduced circumstances when it was learned his father
had three mortgages on his property to cover gambling and other debts. The land
was lost, and Griffith’s mother moved to Louisville and attempted to earn a
living running a boarding house. Griffith blamed his family’s poverty on the
loss of his father, and his father’s death on the war. This was not going to be
an objective film. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Griffith makes use of slides
quoting Woodrow Wilson, who was president at the time and who had thus far
“kept us out of war.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The quotes
from Wilson’s 1902 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">History of the
American People</i> demonstrate Wilson also suffered from the national amnesia:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Adventurers
swarmed out of the North as much the enemies of the one race as of the other,
to cozen, beguile, and use the negroes [sic]… . In the villages the negroes
[sic] were the office holders, men who knew none of the uses of authority
except as insolences<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“…The
policy of the Congressional leaders … wrought a veritable overthrow of
Civilization in the South… in their determination to put the White South under
the heel of the Black South.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“They were
roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation until at last there had sprung
into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South to protect
the Southern Country.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
ellipses are Griffith’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Wilson’s
first wife, Ellen, died in August 1914, and the White House was in mourning
when the film came out. Wilson, who felt he could not be seen watching a movie
in public, allowed a special screening of the film at the White House and is
reported to have pronounced it “…like writing history with lightening. My only
regret is that it is all so terribly true.” Some sources claim this quote is
fake news, but it is consistent with Wilson’s actions as president.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Wilson was
born in Virginia in 1856 and grew up in Georgia. In his 2013 biography, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wilson,</i> A. Scott Berg says Wilson’s
formative years during and after the Civil War shaped his views on race and his
presidency. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Wilson’s
views and his actions on race sparked protests at Princeton in 2016, where he
was once president, seeking to remove his name from a building named after him.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>According
to Nieman, <i>The</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Birth of a Nation</span></i> was the highest
grossing film until <i>Gone with the Wind</i> (1939).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black;">The Birth of a Nation</span></i><span style="color: black;"> inspired
William Joseph Simmons, an Atlanta physician and ne’er-do-well, to form a
fraternal group that would, with the help of some experienced public relations
people, Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke, become the resurgent Ku Klux
Klan of the 1920s. This KKK was so influential that, according to Linda
Gordon’s 2017 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Second Coming of the
KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition,</i> it
became a national political force. It had the most members north of the
Mason-Dixon line, especially in Ohio and Indiana, where most of the state
government was under its thumb.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The resurgent Klan, of course, was
opposed to blacks (many Confederate memorials, including the controversial 1924
Charlottesville statue of Robert E. Lee, were erected during the brief reign of
the new Klan), but it was equally opposed to Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">It would be comforting to think the
Klan was comprised of ignorant rural rednecks, but in fact it had a surprising
number of urban members. Gordon cites historian Kenneth T. Jackson’s findings
that 50% of Klan members were urbanites and 32% lived in the country’s larger
cities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Several Klan members were elected
to Congress. One of them was Washington Representative Albert Johnson, who,
with Pennsylvania Senator David Reed, sponsored the Johnson-Reed Act, also
known as the Immigration Act of 1924, which limited immigration by assigning
quotas based on the ethnicity of those already in the US in 1890 and excluded
all Asians including South Asians. Such restrictions were the result of
prejudice against the more recent immigrants, many of whom were from southern
and eastern Europe and many of whom were Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and
Jews. The restrictions were justified by the “scientific racism” espoused by
Columbia- and Yale-educated attorney Madison Grant in his 1916 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Passing of the Great Race</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The National Origins Act, a part of
the Johnson-Reed Act, did not address Mexicans, who were needed as fruit
workers and in manufacturing jobs. According to Allyson Hobbes in her 2014 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing
in American Life,</i> Chinese immigrants used false paperwork to circumvent the
Chinese Exclusion Act and enter the United States as Mexicans at the Mexican
border at least as early as 1907. There’s no reason to believe it stopped in
1907.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">America entered the war that
Griffith opposed. Because of a need to mobilize and gear up for war production,
jobs that were previously held by white males opened up to women and blacks.
During World War I, between 300,000 and 500,000 blacks left the South for
northern urban jobs. Between 750,000 and one million blacks followed in the
1920s. While these black migrants encountered hardship and discrimination in
the North, their lives were greatly improved over those they had lived in the
Jim Crow South.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Housing in the North was from the
start of the Great Migration a major problem for blacks, who were effectively
contained in small overcrowded and poorly maintained areas of the cities they
migrated to. Chicago’s South Side, where an infamous 1919 riot took place, is
one example. According to Richard Rothstein in his 2017 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated
America,</i> in 1897 white property owners in the Woodlawn neighborhood
“declared war” on blacks, driving them out of the area with threats of
violence, unimpeded by public authority. In 1907 the Hyde Park Improvement
Protective Club organized boycotts of merchants who sold to blacks and offered
to buy out the homes of blacks who lived in the area. When such methods did not
work, whites resorted to bombings and other extralegal means which were
conducted against not only blacks who attempted to rent or buy housing in white
areas, but also against realtors who were involved with renting or selling
homes outside the black belt to blacks. From 1917 to 1921 there were 58 fire
bombings of homes in white border areas blacks had moved into with no arrests
or prosecutions despite the deaths of two blacks. Thirty of these 58 bombings
took place in the spring of 1919 just before the summer riot. Over the years
blacks were forced into crowded conditions in an area of declining housing
stock. Whites perceived blacks as a threat to property values in part based on
the dilapidated and overcrowded housing blacks occupied on the south side,
which had become dilapidated and overcrowded because so many blacks were forced
into and contained in a small area and because landlords had little incentive
to maintain property that would rent at high prices regardless of condition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The U.S. Supreme Court in 1917
invalidated a racial zoning ordinance in Louisville, Kentucky. Shortly after
this decision the Chicago Real Estate Board reaffirmed a need to found property
owners’ associations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Because of housing discrimination
black areas became self-contained and to a degree self-sustaining. Ministers,
undertakers, bankers, barbers and in time lawyers and doctors had a ready-made
client base. Some of these areas became quite successful and attracted the envy
of less successful white neighbors. One example of this was the Tulsa, Oklahoma
district of Greenwood, which in 1921 was destroyed by a white mob on the
pretext that a white woman had been molested by a black man. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">I’m going to spend some time on the
Greenwood riot because while I was looking up information on John Hope Franklin,
I discovered his father, Buck Colbert Franklin (1879-1960), defended victims of
the riot when the city of Tulsa attempted to prevent their replacing their
homes. That led me to Buck Colbert Franklin’s autobiography, <i>My Life and
Times, </i>which was edited by his son, John Hope Franklin and John Hope’s son,
John Whittington Franklin and published by the Louisiana State University Press
in 1997. (I was thrilled to find a copy signed by John Hope Franklin.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Buck Colbert Franklin was born in
Indian Territory (his father was a Chickasaw freedman and his mother was
one-quarter Cherokee and had grown up as Cherokee) and was in Tulsa at the time
of the riot. Many sources claim Greenwood was the wealthiest or one of the
wealthiest black areas in the country. Franklin doesn’t go there, but he does
say that at one time Tulsa had been integrated, but by 1921 Tulsa was one of
the most segregated cities in America, and he blames two very wealthy black
real estate developers who came to Tulsa “a few years before statehood” and
bought thirty or forty acres of land, plotted and surveyed it, and “put [it] upon
the market to be sold to Negroes only.” He says developers of “other races”
purchased adjoining land and followed suit. Oklahoma became a state in 1907, so
exactly when this happened is difficult to establish, but Greenwood would have
been an area of homes and businesses no more than twenty years old. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Franklin was in Tulsa to establish
his law business in preparation for a move from Rentiesville, Oklahoma, an
all-black community not far from Tulsa, where he had encountered death threats
from the Baptist majority because he and his family were Methodist, which goes
to show that even when people are all the same race, someone, somehow, will
find a reason to hate some outsider. He was living frugally and in a rooming
house. The day the riot started, May 31, 1921, he was in the courthouse and
overheard some conversations but didn’t think much of them. When he got to his
lodgings his landlady told him she’d heard some rumors of trouble brewing. He
went into the streets and saw one white man and one black man, both of whom
claimed to have fought in the recent war, telling people they needed to burn
some houses in the white areas of town to disburse the riot and get the state
to call in troops to control the violence. Franklin says he (Franklin)
addressed the crowd and got them to disburse. He says the white man told him,
“This sort of battle is as much mine as it is yours. A great mob is forming,
and you are at a disadvantage you can never overcome in an open fight.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Franklin tried to call the sheriff,
but telephone wires had been cut. He tried to get to the sheriff’s office, but
he was immediately arrested and taken to a detention camp. He says homes were
being looted and planes were flying overhead dropping explosives on the
buildings. The book has before and after photos of the area, and they resemble before
and after photos of Dresden in 1944 on a smaller scale. He writes “only two”
prominent black men were killed. (Subsequent estimates put the number of blacks
killed possibly as high as 250.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">According to an article about the
riot in the October 5, 2018 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York
Times,</i> a black man most likely tripped and accidentally stepped on the
woman’s foot in a crowded elevator; charges against him were later dropped.
Franklin’s story is essentially the same (and was possibly the unattributed
source for the <i>Times</i> article). He says the woman slapped the man, and a
reporter looking for a scoop was on the elevator. Voila! Fake news.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">As if the destruction of their
community and the loss of everything were not enough (Franklin’s savings,
clothing, and law books were incinerated along with his rooming house),
insurance companies, citing clauses in their contracts denying payment for
losses incurred in “riots, civil commotion and the like” refused payment. Add
to that, the city attempted to impose a requirement that replacement buildings
be fireproof. Franklin had formed a partnership with some other attorneys and
successfully argued against this requirement, citing the due process clause. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Franklin writes that no
“responsible white resident of the city” was involved, meaning, I suppose, the
riot was carried out by poor whites. Which I suppose is possible. (Writing
about the Chicago riot of 1919, William M. Tuttle, Jr. cites whites’ feelings
of what he terms “status deprivation” suffered by poorer whites as blacks
prospered as one cause of the riot.) Franklin was there; I wasn’t even born at
the time, but it’s difficult for me to envision poor whites having access to
airplanes, and “responsible whites” were certainly involved in making it
difficult to rebuild.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">When I think of the post-Civil War
era, I don’t usually consider that black Southerners had much success when they
brought lawsuits against whites. According to <i>Litigating Across the Color
Line: Civil Cases Between Black and White Southerners from the End of Slavery
to Civil Rights </i>(2018)<i> </i>by Melissa Milewski, that was not the case,
at least when it came to civil lawsuits. Milewski researched 1,377 civil cases
litigated by blacks in eight southern supreme courts between 1865 and 1950.
Seventy-one percent, or 980, of these cases were between black and white
litigants, of which black litigants won fifty-nine percent of the time. In the
early part of this period many of the cases were between former slaves and
their former masters. Forty-one percent were filed by black women.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">It was not unheard of in the
postwar South for former masters to leave bequests to former slaves in their
wills. Frequently these were for, in the terms of the time, natural children
resulting from a master-slave relationship. It was also not unheard of for
those who saw themselves as legitimate heirs to contest these wills. According
to Milewski, if the court could determine that the bequest was the intent and
was made by someone with a sound mind, the will was usually upheld. Other cases
involved blacks who were illiterate being coerced into signing deeds they could
not read, could not understand, or which were misrepresented. Usually courts
ruled in favor of those who could prove they were taken advantage of. Some
cases involved negligence by cities. One woman, for example, fell into an
unmarked hole being dug for a sewer line on a dark night. She won. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Ms. Milewski emphasizes she only
reviewed cases that were appealed. She points out that almost always black
litigants hired white attorneys and, often with the coaching of their
attorneys, played to juries’ prejudice against blacks, i.e., that they could
not possibly understand the complexities of their cases. The tactics worked. When
the issues were clear cut and favored black litigants, they won. Courts were
extremely reluctant to let their prejudices establish new precedents, since
these could one day be used against them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">These cases did not involve civil
rights. Those would have to wait. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">By the time <i>Gone with the Wind </i>came
along the Lost Cause myth was received wisdom. The North had witnessed more
than twenty years of the Great Migration, and racism was pervasive throughout
the country.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">When the film premiered in December
1939, the country had been in the Great Depression for nearly ten years. The dry
west had been through the Dust Bowl. War had just broken out in Europe. People
longed for a simpler time. The introduction to the film addresses both the Lost
Cause myth and the longing for a simpler time:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“There was a land of Cavaliers and
Cotton Fields called the Old South..<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“Here in this pretty World
Gallantry took its last bow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“Here was the last to be seen of
Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and Slave..<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“Look for it only in books, for it
is no more than a dream remembered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“A Civilization gone with the
wind.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The film is a four hour long
cinematic masterpiece and remains the highest grossing film ever when adjusted
for inflation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">And once again a high profit paean
to the Lost Cause came on the eve of war and the resulting changes that would impact
the nation for years to come. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">A second Great Migration began
about 1940 as demand for defense workers increased. And once again blacks were
treated as second class citizens. Black defense workers, who were among the 1.2
million southern blacks who joined the Great Migration during the war, were
provided with substandard segregated housing. Rothstein<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>compares “officially and explicitly segregated” public housing
built for defense workers in Richmond, California during World War II. Housing
for blacks was built haphazardly and close to railroad tracks. Housing for
whites was built inland, close to white residential areas, and some was
sturdily constructed and permanent. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">At the end of the war white soldiers
returned home and some took advantage of the GI Bill of Rights, which enabled
them to buy homes with no down payment, which led to a housing boom, and go to
school, but black ex-GIs were more often than not denied these rights.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">According to Rothstein,</span> the
postwar housing boom was largely financed by VA and FHA loans, and in order to
qualify for that financing, subdivisions were not only encouraged, but required
to include covenants restricting the subdivisions to “Caucasians.” In 1959, a
man in Berkley, California bought a house financed by FHA and was not able to
move into the house immediately. He let a black teacher rent the house until he
could move in. As a result he was advised he’d lost his participation in the
FHA insurance program and that he’d never again be able to obtain a
government-backed mortgage, even though this was eleven years after the Supreme
Court had declared such discrimination unlawful in <i>Shelley v. Kraemer.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The GI Bill did not have smooth
sailing through Congress. In order to get the bill passed it needed the support
of Mississippi congressman John Rankin, whom Edward Humes in his 2006 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the
American Dream, </i>describes as a racist and a thug. But he was a powerful
racist and thug. The bill made it through Congress with provisions that allowed
local control of loans. In Rankin’s state of Mississippi, where half the
population was black, in the summer of 1947 three thousand VA loans were made,
of which two went to black veterans.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Other writers have also termed
Rankin a thug. Katznelson quotes Rankin as saying, in opposition to a 1940
anti-lynching bill (ellipses are Katznelson’s):<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Remember that southern Democrats
now have the balance of power in both Houses of Congress. By your conduct you
may make it impossible for us to support many of your important committee
assignments, and other positions to which you aspire… You Democrats, who are
pushing this vicious measure are destroying your usefulness here… The
Republicans would be delighted to see you cut President Roosevelt’s throat
politically, and are therefore voting with you on this vicious measure… They
know if he signs it, it will ruin him in the Southern states; and if he vetoes
it, they can get the benefit of the Negro votes this vicious measure would
inflict in the North.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>According to Katznelson, Rankin and
his cohorts had used their power to restrict Social Security, aid to the
indigent, unemployment benefits, and the Fair Labor Standards Act to whites by
not applying these programs and requirements to agricultural and domestic
workers and by insisting on local control. According to Katznelson, during
World War I money provided to families of soldiers had put money in the pockets
of black women and children who then had the nerve not to take on menial
household work or go into the fields. Rankin was not going to see a repeat of
that situation!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Nancy J. Altman in <i>The Truth
About Social Security</i> (2018) takes exception to this version of Social
Security history. Included in her book is a write-up by Larry DeWitt, who was
Historian at the Social Security Administration from 1995 until 2012, titled
“The Decision to Exclude Agricultural and Domestic Workers from the 1935 Social
Security Act.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>DeWitt says many recent writers have
taken the approach that the Social Security Act excluded agricultural and
domestic workers because of racism and that this view has become <i>de rigueur</i>
in modern textbooks that discuss the origins of Social Security. In part he
attributes confusion between Title I of the Act, which provided old age
assistance (welfare) and was administered by the states with Title II, which is
what was referred to as an “old age annuity,” and which is what we think of as
Social Security today to the misunderstanding. Title II is administered at the
federal level. He also attributes the tendency to take the Act out of the
context of its time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>DeWitt writes that collecting
employee and employer contributions to Social Security for agricultural and
domestic work would have been extremely difficult, and legislators decided it
was necessary not to make an already complicated collection process so
difficult it would endanger the program. Additionally, agricultural and
domestic workers were just two of the categories excluded. Others included the
self-employed, non-profit sector employees, professionals (doctors, lawyers,
ministers, etc.), those working for charitable or educational foundations and
the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, those age 65 or
older, casual laborers, members of Congress, and those employed by federal,
state, or local governments. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Social Security was a new type of
program. When it became law, contributions would not begin until 1937, and the
first payouts would begin in 1942, seven years in the future. Employees were
being asked to give up current income during a difficult economy for what
probably seemed like a highly speculative promise of payout in an uncertain
future. Many most likely wondered if the government would be able or willing to
pay. As DeWitt writes, people were more likely to request that they be exempt
than to seek coverage. Even after domestic workers were brought into the
program in 1950, they and their employers fought to get out—one group even took
its case to the Supreme Court.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Even so, according to DeWitt, 65%of
blacks were excluded as opposed to 27% of white workers. Obviously, some of
those excluded (federal, state, and local employees, professionals, etc.) had
coverage elsewhere. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Hume tells the story of Monte Posey,
a black veteran who had been accepted at the University of Illinois. His VA
counselor told him he recommended against his getting funds for his education
and suggested he sign up for a trade. When Posey questioned the decision, his
counselor told him, “Look around. There are no opportunities for college
educated Negroes. You’ll be wasting your time.” Posey persisted, got his
education, and eventually became an investigator for the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: center;">
THE MOVE TO THE SUBURBS<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
their introduction to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Suburban
History</i> (2006), editors Kevin M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue assert “[i]n
the still developing history of the postwar United States, suburbs belong at
center stage.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That
may be an overstatement, but the postwar suburban boom definitely changed the
living conditions, attitudes, and eventual net worth of millions of almost
exclusively white former renters and homeowners in congested cities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Andrew
Weise, associate professor of history at San Diego State University, takes
exception to the “almost exclusively white” stereotype in his 2004 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Places of Their Own: African American
Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century,</i> claiming “historians have done a
better job excluding African Americans from the suburbs than even white
suburbanites.” While he makes some good points about the separate and often
better than equal suburbs in the south, especially in the Atlanta area, and
wealthy black enclaves such as the Addisleigh Park neighborhood of St. Alban’s
in New York’s borough of Queens, which was featured in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ebony</i> as a “suburban Sugar Hill” and was home to such celebrities
as Ella Fitzgerald, Roy Campanella, Billie Holiday, Jackie Robinson, and Count
Basie, he also includes areas such as Detroit’s Eight Mile-Wyoming and Chagrin
Falls Park, just east of Cleveland, which were areas that included a few nice
homes but were largely small plots with space for crops and even livestock on
which people had built their own homes often with scrap lumber. In 1941 FHA
infamously required a developer to erect a half mile long wall six feet high to
separate a new (white) subdivision from the Eight Mile-Wyoming neighborhood.
Even including such areas as these and some similar areas on Long Island, which
originated as homes for servants, and Pacoima, in the Los Angeles area, which
in 1957 offered VA financing to black buyers, Weise admits African Americans
never comprised more than 5% of the U. S. suburban population before 1960. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>While
a few communities, including Shaker Heights, Ohio, as described in <i>Created
Equal: A Social and Political History of the United States </i>(2003) by
Jacquelin Jones, et al, welcomed black home buyers, they were few and far
between. Richard Polenberg in his 1980 <i>One Nation Divisible: Class, Race,
and Ethnicity in the United States Since 1938 </i>describes the ultimately
successful effort by William Myers, Jr. and his wife to integrate Levittown,
Pennsylvania in 1957. Myers bought a home from its white owners. While he and
his wife were fixing the house up to move in neighbors assumed they were
working for a white owner. When it became known they were the owners, the usual
incidents happened. Polenberg quotes Marvin Bressler, who said in a Fall 1960 <i>Social
Problems </i>article that those harassing the Myers were “almost wholly
recruited from the ranks of the relatively uneducated urban proletariat in the
process of the uncertain transit to the suburban middle class.” (Perhaps another
example of status deprivation.) The state of Pennsylvania obtained a court
order prohibiting further harassment, and the governor made it clear the order
would be enforced. Polenberg writes that after two months the agitation died
down and no issue arose when other blacks moved into the community. In 1958 two
blacks who wanted to live in Levittown, New Jersey sued. Levitt eventually
relented in order to avoid negative publicity and announced in March 1960 that
blacks could buy in the development. Nevertheless, Levitt dispersed black
families across the development so that no two adjacent homes were owned by
blacks. In spite of a few success stories such as these as the 1960s were
dawning, Polenberg describes the number of black suburbanites in the 1950s as
“infinitesimal.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’m
always open to revisionism, but I’m going with the consensus on this one. White
suburbanites were quite proficient at exclusion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The dropping of the atomic bomb
ended the war with Japan in August, 1945, much sooner than anyone had thought
possible. Troops were rapidly demobilized, going from 12 million in 1945 to 3
million in 1946 and to between 1.2 and 1.5 million in 1947. As Kenneth T.
Jackson says in his 1985 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crabgrass
Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States,</i> “In truth, the United
States was no better prepared for peace than it had been for war when the
German <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wehrmacht</i> crossed the Polish
frontier in the predawn hours of September 1, 1939.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">According to
Jackson, six million families were doubling up with families or friends by
1947. Another 500,000 were living in Quonset huts or temporary quarters. In
Chicago 250 former trolley cars were sold as homes. In New York City a couple
set up housekeeping for two days in a department store window hoping to
generate enough publicity to find an apartment. In Omaha someone advertised a
“big ice box,” 7 X 17 feet that “could be fixed up to live in.” In North Dakota
surplus grain bins were turned into apartments. Joseph G. Goulden in his 1976 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Best Years: 1945-1950,</i> reports
ex-GIs at Missouri Valley College in Marshall, Missouri asked President Truman
to give them fuselages from surplus B-29, B-24, and B-12 bombers for conversion
into living quarters. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The government acted
by underwriting a vast new construction program responding to a need for five
million new homes. Congress regularly approved billions of dollars’ worth of
additional mortgage insurance for FHA. Even more important was the Servicemen’s
Readjustment Act of 1944, which created a Veterans Administration mortgage
program similar to that of FHA. VA supported the view that 16 million World War
II GIs should return to civilian life with a home of their own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Single family housing starts were
114,000 in 1944, 937,000 in 1946, 1,183,000 in 1948, and 1,692,000 in 1950—an
all-time high. (2017 housing starts were estimated to be 1,219,000.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
story of Levittown, New York is a familiar one. Briefly, from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crabgrass, </i>Jackson relates how the
Levitts, who had built upper middle-class housing before the war, got a
government contract to build 2,350 war workers’ homes in Norfolk, Virginia, and
from that experience learned how to build homes on a production line basis.
After the war, the Levitts assembled 4,000 acres of what had been potato farms
in Hempstead. Eventually these potato farms would yield 17,400 homes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Contemporary
critics of the suburbs, most notably John Keats, whose 1956 <i>The Crack in the
Picture Window </i>opens by terming them “open air slums” and proceeds from
there, notes the look-alike nature of the housing and discusses the shoddiness
of some of the early construction. He quotes the Office of the Housing
Expediter, which in 1948 determined “[t]he chisel was the tool most often used
to construct the postwar development house.” A 1952 House investigating
committee found builders would not take responsibility for their work because
the returning veterans, desperate for housing and unfamiliar with buying homes,
had signed contracts that were so vague that in some cases they failed “to
indicate the veterans will receive a house.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One of
those who attracted the attention of regulators was Fred Trump, who was called
before Congress in 1954 for profiteering on Beach Haven, a large (segregated) Brooklyn
apartment development. Trump pocketed several million dollars over what he was
entitled to by charging an architect’s fee, setting up shell corporations that
rented the land, overcharging for construction costs (to the tune of $4
million—more than $36 million in today’s dollars), etc. He was never charged
with any crimes, but if you’re looking for some entertaining reading, here’s
the place to go: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-stat/graphics/politics/trump-archive/docs/fha-investigation-1954-part-1.pdf"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast;">https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-stat/graphics/politics/trump-archive/docs/fha-investigation-1954-part-1.pdf</span></a>
The fun starts on page 395 and goes through page 420. The apple didn’t fall far
from the tree. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Keats
finishes his book with dire predictions for suburbs. In the style of Miniver
Cheevy, he longs for the homes of yesteryear with their space, their attics,
and their basements. What Keats forgot was that even if there had been an ample
supply of such houses, which there wasn’t, they would not have been something
returning vets could afford. Goulden writes that one 1946 survey showed 75% of
those searching for homes could pay no more than $50 a month, limiting them to
homes costing no more than $6,000.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
homes may not have been much, but they were a start.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The war had thrown
people together who otherwise might never have gotten to know one another, say,
an ethnic Italian or Greek, or a person of a different religion. Ethnics became
white. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">As I mentioned above, during the 1920s new immigrants had
been subject to the wrath of the resurgent KKK, which was opposed to immigrants
a well as blacks, Catholics, and Jews.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">By the 1940s this
anti-immigrant virulence was still fresh in the minds of those who had borne
the brunt of it, though the Klan of the 1920s had all but disappeared. As a
result of the war, in which these immigrants and especially their offspring
participated, ethnic immigrants merged into society and, with the exception of
Jews in some areas (Leawood, Kansas being an example), were now considered
“white.” They qualified for VA and FHA loans and took part in the migration to
the new subdivisions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">While the
Holocaust eventually made Americans more accepting of Jews, the full horror of
the Holocaust did not enter the public consciousness until the 1961 trial of
Adolph Eichmann. Laura Z. Hobson’s 1947 novel, <i>Gentlemen’s Agreement,</i>
which was made into an Academy Award film the same year and Arthur Miller’s
1945 <i>Focus,</i> his only novel, address continuing discrimination against
Jews, especially in housing, in the early postwar years. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">In October 1971 I
had Columbus Day off and took the opportunity to visit the Lazarus Department
Store in downtown Columbus, Ohio, where I had moved a few months before. It had
a dining area, and while I was having a coffee, I overheard a conversation
between two older women about experiences they’d had at the store during the
war, when, because of wartime shortages, they couldn’t buy everything they
wanted. They found the (Jewish) staff impolite, especially since America was at
war, in their opinion, because of the Jews. At the time I thought to myself,
“Oh, well. They’ll be dead soon.” But it seems antisemitism will never be dead.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>According
to David R. Roediger in his 2005 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Working
Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White</i>, home ownership had
been historically more important to immigrants than to native-born whites.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A WPA study in Chicago in 1939 found 21.7% of
native-born whites owned homes while 41.3% of foreign-born did, including 50%
of Lithuanians and Poles and about 40% of Italians. According to Roediger, new
immigrants did not buy into the American Dream of home ownership—they helped
create it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">When it came to
integrating their neighborhoods racially, the nouveaux whites joined the
opposition. As Thomas J. Sugrue in his 1996 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit</i> says,
no single ethnic group dominated most neighborhood associations. “Officers of
the Greater Detroit Homeowners’ Association, Unit No. 2, in a blue-collar
northwest Detroit neighborhood, included a veritable United Nations of ethnic
names, among them Benzing, Bonaventura, Francisco, Kopicko, Sloan, Clanahan,
Klebba, Beardsley, Twomey, and Barr.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
the 1950s 1.2 million people per year to migrated to the suburbs. By 1960 the
suburban and urban populations were equal at 60 million each. By 1970 suburbanites
outnumbered urbanites.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The government was selective about
who and what kind of housing would qualify for FHA and VA financing.</span>
Until 1966 FHA approval for mortgage insurance depended upon the mortgagor's
credit rating, the soundness of the physical property, and the stability of the
neighborhood in which the property was located. (In 1966 the stability of the
neighborhood requirement was removed; Jackson writes, “Ironically, the primary
effect of the change was to make it easier for white families to finance their
escape from areas experiencing racial change.”) Until the middle 1950s FHA
underwriting manuals encouraged developers to put racial restrictions on their
developments to protect the “character” of their properties. Richard Rothstein says
FHA and subsequently VA demanded racial covenants in subdivisions where the
agencies sponsored construction loans. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
Developers used FHA and VA as a shield not to sell to black
buyers. While developers might say they’d like to sell to black buyers, they
could portray the situation as beyond their control. William Levitt is reported
to have said, “<span style="background: white; color: #1b1b1b;">We can solve a
housing problem or we can try to solve a racial problem, but we cannot combine
the two.” </span>Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen in their 2000 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened</i>
report Levitt wrote that when a black assistant district attorney moved next to
him in Brooklyn, he feared a diminution in values if “too many” moved in, so he
“picked up and moved out,” leading to his living and building in the suburbs.
He had little interest in solving a racial problem. Further, according to
Rosalind Rosenberg in her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Divided Lives:
American Women in the Twentieth Century </i>(1992), FHA would not approve
mortgage funds for female-headed families.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
The people welcome in the suburbs were pretty much white
couples with young children. Baxandall and Ewen give an example of a couple who
divorced. The wife found her neighbors, especially the husbands, hostile when
she remained in Levittown.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
It should be noted the government’s funding of housing did
not have to go overwhelmingly to the construction of private homes. Baxandall
and Ewen relate that in 1945 Republican Senator Robert Taft (not a
bleeding-heart liberal), Senator Allen Ellender (a southern Democrat), and
Senator Robert Wagner (a Democrat from New York) introduced the Taft Ellender
Wagner Act, which provided for 500,000 public housing units to be built over
the next fourteen years. In 1946 Republicans won both houses of Congress, and
hearings were held on the issue of public housing in 1947. The Joint Committee
Study and Investigation of Housing was presided over by the just-elected
Senator Joseph McCarthy. Honing skills he would put to use later in his career,
Sen. McCarthy used inquisitor and sledge hammer techniques to declare public
housing a breeding ground for communists. He succeeded in stymying public
housing funding.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
According to Thomas Sugrue, in his 1996 <i>The Origins of the
Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, </i>in Detroit blacks
were initially constrained to the area called Black Bottom. Paradise Valley,
the business district of Black Bottom, got<span style="color: black;"> its name
from early participants in the Great Migration who were seeking better
conditions in industrial Detroit than they had endured in the rural south. As
Sugrue writes, “The name was a reflection of the hope of black newcomers to the
city, and an ironic comment on hopes still unmet.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">From the 1920s to the 1950s,
Detroit’s black population went from 41,000 to 300,000, and Black Bottom was
one of the very few areas open to blacks. As the Great Migration continued,
more and more people were shoehorned into Black Bottom’s deteriorating housing
stock, much of which dated to the 1860s and 1870s and was owned by absentee
landlords who, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>had little incentive to
maintain properties that would rent at any price.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">As in Chicago, early efforts to
integrate neighborhoods outside the boundaries of Detroit’s Black Bottom were
met with violence. Even after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shelley,</i>
realtors, lenders, developers, homeowners (including at times middle class
black homeowners), and local governments resisted integration. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The postwar job situation in
Detroit was similarly skewed against blacks. During the war, jobs opened up
because of the shortage of labor. At the national level, the United Auto
Workers (UAW) was on the cutting edge of the civil rights movement. The UAW
funded the NAACP, CORE, and other black organizations. The UAW also sponsored
conferences on civil rights, backed open housing campaigns, and advocated for
integrated housing projects. This was advantageous to the union because when
blacks had been barred from the labor force, they were frequently hired as
strike breakers. Now that they could join the union, the UAW had a better
bargaining position. On the local level, however, it was frequently a different
story.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>The organizational structure
of the UAW permitted discrimination, and UAW leaders were reluctant to
interfere, fearing rebellion from the segregated skilled trades workers among
others, and the auto companies left hiring decisions to often racist local
plant managers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">After the war, with millions of GIs
returning home, demand for black labor decreased, and if a black worker was
fortunate enough to be hired, he (or possibly but not likely she) would be
given, in Sugrue’s words, the meanest and dirtiest jobs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Also, after the war, in an effort
to weaken unions, industry began a program of deindustrialization and
decentralization. Sugrue traces deindustrialization to 1949 when Ford
accelerated plastics production in its Rouge plant. Production was accelerated
from 650 pieces per day to 870. Those who could not keep up were let go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Deindustrialization was especially
rough on black workers in part because of seniority rules. Many black workers
who had been hired during the labor shortage years of World War II did not have
the seniority to keep their jobs when layoffs came. It was also difficult for
workers, especially older workers, to transfer skills that were becoming obsolete
to new jobs. At the same time, younger workers were encountering a labor market
that had no entry jobs for them. Companies decentralized, wooed by areas with
an abundance of cheap land, lower costs, lower non-union labor rates, and lower
taxes. Some of the decentralization was encouraged by the government as a civil
defense measure, and the Interstate Highway System, sold as a means of
evacuating cities in the event of war, enabled decentralization. Companies
began in the 1950s to replace workers with automated technology. Workers who
relied on public transportation were out of luck. Some workers moved, but few
black workers were willing to move to the predominantly white rural areas,
small towns, and especially to the southern towns gaining from deindustrialization,
leaving the city of Detroit hollowed out with a diminishing tax base as
industry left, its population mostly black (currently it’s more than 80%
black), and those who remained dealing with high perpetual unemployment (which
Sugrue terms deproletarianization), and a city with an infrastructure it could
no longer maintain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">While <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shelley v. Kraemer </i>opened housing opportunities to blacks who had
previously been denied access to housing outside limited areas, it also
inspired panic among white homeowners who saw their ability to control the race
of people in their neighborhoods vanish. Realtors, black and white, were able
to translate the eagerness of blacks to escape their old neighborhoods and
whites not to live near blacks into profits. Realtors would either sell to or
pretend to be selling to blacks in formerly all-white neighborhoods. They would
then solicit business from nearby homeowners, many of whom were anxious to sell
before it was “too late.” Often realtors would buy homes themselves at below
market prices and sell them to black buyers at a premium. Often the home was
financed by a land contract (at 25% interest, according to Sherry Lamb Shirmer
in her 2002 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A City Divided, </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">which is about Kansas City</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">),</i> which meant the deed would not be in
the buyers’ names until the house was paid for, and if one payment was missed,
the house and all equity was at risk.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Black homeowners moving to formerly
white areas would then be saddled with high interest loans on overpriced
property. They would take in boarders, maintenance would be deferred, and in
many ways, they’d be in the same circumstances they thought they’d left
behind—in a nicer home, perhaps, but usually in a majority black neighborhood
once again. Possibly worse, such circumstances would provide confirmation bias
to whites who believed integration inevitably led to slums. Sugrue quotes one
Detroit city official as saying “the ghetto crept outward block by block.”
Sugrue says that a block that had been all white would become predominantly
black just a few years after the first black family moved in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I’m going to take a short detour to Chicago for a
couple of paragraphs because that’s where Lorraine Hansberry set her 1959 play,
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">A Raisin in the Sun,</span></i><span style="color: black;"> which was the first play by a black woman to be produced
on Broadway. The film is about the Younger family who eventually leave their kitchenette
apartment with a bathroom shared with other tenants on Chicago’s south side for
suburban Clybourne Park. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">As the family is packing for the
move, they receive a visit from Karl Lindner, who represents the Clybourne Park
Improvement Association to deal with “special community problems” and wants to
buy their house for more than they paid for it in order to avoid “certain
incidents” (such as fires, bricks thrown through windows, etc.). The Youngers
decline his offer and move. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">While we hope things work out well
for the Youngers in their new home, the ending is ambiguous. We’ll come back to
Clybourne Park later. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">In a case of life imitating art,
most of the Broadway cast were hired to do the 1961 film version of <i>A Raisin
in the Sun.</i> Black cast members had a great deal of difficulty finding
housing in Los Angeles, which, according to Darren Dochuck in his 2011 <i>From
the Bible Belt to the Sunbelt: Plain Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and
the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism,</i> was the most segregated city in the
U.S. <i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Lorraine Hansberry was writing from
experience. From Princeton professor Imani Perry’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine
Hansberry</i> (2018), in 1937 Carl Hansberry, Ms. Hansberry’s father, decided
to challenge racial segregation and bought a building in Woodlawn, a
neighborhood with a racial covenant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The family moved in and encountered
the wrath of neighbors and endured the mob scenes that usually resulted from
integration in those days. The Woodlawn Property Owners Association filed a
claim in circuit court to have the Hansberrys evicted, and they were. For three
years Carl Hansberry pursued his claim, and the case wound up in the Supreme
Court, which in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hansberry v. Lee</i>
(1940) found in her father’s favor on very narrow grounds. The real life
Hansberrys and the fictional Youngers were desperate to leave their old
neighborhood behind. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Eventually those who could not
afford to escape Detroit’s Lower East Side or Chicago’s south side no longer
had middle class examples living near them. Blacks on the upper end of the
economic scale, for example, those who moved into the Boston Edison and Arden
Park neighborhoods as well as those who moved to more middle-class enclaves,
put their old lives behind them and took pains to distance themselves from the
poorer blacks they left behind. Blacks were becoming segregated by class.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">As the Kerner Commission would
conclude in 1968, in the postwar years America moved further toward two
societies. Our government heaped benefits on white suburbanites, from low to no
down payment financing insured by the government, to tax deductions for the low
interest paid on mortgages, to building freeways to enable suburbanites to get
from city to ‘burb with relative ease (often displacing without compensation
residents of black neighborhoods, Detroit’s Black Bottom among them, to build
these freeways). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Black urban America, on the other
hand, faced a hollowing out as its middle class, black and white, left and as
industries deindustrialized, automated, and abandoned central cities for
greener pastures (sometimes literally). Our government not only did not
discourage this, it encouraged and enabled it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Since the postwar era the
trajectory of white suburbanites has been generally upward. Rothstein, writing
in 2017, says that the Long Island Levittown Cape model that sold for $7,990 in
1949 now sells for $350,000 without having been remodeled. A quick check on
Google shows the median price in Levittown is now $469,000. West coast price
increases are even more extreme. The $15,000 suburban San Francisco Bay Area home
John McPartland describes in his 1957 <i>No Down Payment</i> would now fetch an
easy $2 million, and I don’t even want to think about how much the $35,000 home
in Hillsborough he describes would cost now. That opportunity to build wealth
was denied to blacks. The trajectory of urban blacks has been the reverse.
Sugrue writes that the poorest third of Detroit’s black population in 1950 and
1960 was even poorer in 1970 and 1980.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">In an article in the February 2019 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reason</i> magazine Rothstein makes the case
that the postwar housing shortage was a missed opportunity. He writes, “Had the
[Public Works Administration] and FHA acted in a lawful manner, some bigoted
white families might have refused to live in public projects or purchase
suburban homes. But the housing shortage was so severe that for any family that
refused, many were waiting to take its place. Had federal agencies performed in
a nondiscriminatory fashion, the landscapes of our metropolitan areas would be
much more diverse than they are now.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Alas,
they didn’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: center;">
THE LOST CAUSE MEETS THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Lost Cause and its legacies of
Jim Crow, housing discrimination, and the other detritus of racism became the
accepted norm for most of society until the Civil Rights era. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>From 1945
through the mid-1960s political leaders, pundits, and some academics imagined
the United States to be a “consensus society.” I don’t buy it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It seems
to me what we call a “consensus society” reflected a population whose view of
itself was a conformity coerced by a fear of appearing different or thinking
differently in an era of a fear of “the other.” If one were to express an
opinion or take action too far outside the mainstream, one ran the risk of
being labeled a communist. Labeling opponents “communists” worked well for such
politicians as Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon. For a good part of the
postwar years, those who disagreed with the mainstream found it best to get
along by going along.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
immediate postwar years saw an immense change in American society. Because most
of the veterans helped by the GI Bill were white and male, veterans would
generally only encounter other white veterans in their classrooms, and because government
financing for the new housing developments usually required that they be
restricted to whites, that’s who lived next door. The postwar world, for
whites, was pretty homogenous, making it unlikely one would encounter alternate
viewpoints or get too far out of line. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Many of
those educated under the GI Bill would move into the corporate world where they
would have little if any autonomy. Elaine Tyler May in her 1988 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Homeward Bound,</i> which describes postwar
domestic containment so well, shows that it applied to men as well as their
homebound wives. She writes, “In the face of the highly organized world of work
that stripped men of their autonomy, fatherhood could be a source of meaning
and creativity. Presumably nowhere else was it easier for a man to be his own
boss than in fatherhood.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>While jobs
at the time were somewhat secure (certainly relative to today) and even came
with benefits and a pension (I suspect that term will have to be explained to
history students in the not too distant future), Dad really needed that job, so
he’d be unlikely to step too far out of line at work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
“consensus society” myth was reinforced by television, which kept people at
home and fed them visions of how life was presumably being lived by other white
suburbanites. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leave It to Beaver, Father
Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet,</i> etc. all provided examples of ideal suburban
life (if not the actual lives of those being portrayed, especially by Ozzie and
Harriet). While a few bones were thrown to urban blue-collar workers, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Honeymooners</i> among them, even
Gertrude Berg moved <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Goldbergs</i>
from the Bronx to the ‘burbs to reflect the new norm. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In her Epilogue, May says, “When many baby boomers were
still infants, however, domestic containment began to crumble under its own weight.
Gradually in the early 1960s, an increasing number of white middle-class
Americans began to question the private therapeutic approach to solving social
problems.” In discussing Betty Friedan’s <i>The Feminine Mystique,</i> May
says, “It was as if someone was finally willing to say that the emperor had no
clothes; soon a chorus joined in support.” That was true of the whole
“consensus.”<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The seeds were being sown that would make this
“consensus” unenforceable. Public school children of the 1950s and 1960s (I was
one) were born after World War II, the “good war.” Our fathers had either
fought in the war or they (and often our mothers as well) had jobs that
supported the war effort. Those of us who were white grew up in unprecedented
prosperity in segregated subdivisions and suburbs and attended segregated
public schools and churches. My only contact with black people was at that
unintentionally subversive activity—church camp, and, like the National
Brotherhood Week so ably skewered by Tom Lehrer in his 1965 song by the same
name, that was only one week a year. When we were taught history at all (and in
my high school, history was considered so unimportant that most of us were
subjected to television classes in the auditorium with no chance to interact
with the teacher), we were taught a sanitized version that at best ended with
World War II. We were taught our country was always right, and we believed
that. We were taught to respect authority, and we did. We were laughably naïve.
We were set up for disillusionment, and when we discovered some of what we had
been taught was either incomplete or false, we questioned everything. Elizabeth
Warren and I were in the same graduating class, and I would say she is a prime
example of someone who discovered that “consensus” was built on a foundation of
bullshit and that the emperor indeed had no clothes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The first chink in the consensus armor for me came when I
learned (in college) about the Japanese internment camps. While that was the first
scale to drop from my eyes, others were casting off their scales as well.
Blacks as well as many white liberals began questioning why all the government
benefits should be going to those who increasingly did not need them while
southern blacks did not even have protection from lynching, let alone the right
to vote. Betty Friedan, according Rosenberg<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">,</i>
in 1943 gave up a graduate fellowship for a romance that did not last, married,
lost a job because of a pregnancy, and moved to the suburbs where she wrote <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Feminine Mystique</i> in 1963, giving
voice to wives’ frustrations with their contained lives. Gays began asking why
what they did in the privacy of their own bedrooms should be anyone’s business.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The problem with teaching a whitewashed version of anything,
and especially history, is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;">if one lie is discovered,
everything is suspect. As the country, full of students who had been taught all
our wars were good and our country right or wrong, sank slowly and surely into
the quagmire that would become the war in Vietnam, all pretense of consensus
vanished. In that era of civil rights awareness and disillusionment with
government, the Lost Cause and Reconstruction as evil were easy targets. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Kenneth M. Stampp’s <i>The Era of Reconstruction,
1865-1877 </i>began to be taught in college classrooms in 1965. </span>The book
could be read as the anti-Dunning<span style="color: black;">. While admitting
“few revisionists would claim the Dunning interpretation is pure fabrication,”
Stampp</span> takes on just about every accusation against Reconstruction
Dunning threw at it in his 1907 <i>Reconstruction Political and Economic:
1865-1877 </i>and turns them around. Corruption? Stampp points out there were
singularly corrupt Republican machines in control of Massachusetts, New York,
and Pennsylvania. Further, the thefts of the Democratic Tammany machine in New
York surpassed the total of all the thefts in the southern states combined.
Additionally, Stampp says many of the Reconstruction state governments were
well run and that much of the writing about excessive spending was considerably
overstated. He says Republicans ran into race prejudice problems in the North
as well as the South. Interestingly, he also says race prejudice was more of an
issue with poorer whites than with upper class whites, who of course believed
in white supremacy but didn’t make keeping blacks subordinate “the central
purpose of their lives,” and “their secure social positions made them less
reluctant to grant Negroes equal civil and political rights.” Stampp’s
description of Andrew Johnson’s public tirades sound like Trump without
Twitter.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’m
not the only person who has noticed the similarity between Andrew Johnson’s
speeches, especially those given in his “Swing Around the Circle,” and those of
Donald Trump. In his January-February 2020 <i>Mother Jones </i>article “Trump’s
Not Richard Nixon, He’s Andrew Johnson,” Tim Murphy quotes from Johnson’s St.
Louis speech and comments, noting “the only thing missing is a MAGA hat.”
Murphy also writes the impeachment was about more than the Tenure of Office Act
and both Murphy and Stephanie McCurry, a professor of history at Columbia
University, writing in a February 17, 2020 <i>Nation </i>review of Brenda
Wineapple’s 2019 <i>The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream
of a Just Nation</i> say Johnson’s conviction, like Trump’s, was never in doubt
in spite of the general belief fostered by Ted Sorenson’s assertion in his 1956
Pulitzer Prize winning <i>Profiles in Courage,</i> ghostwritten for John F.
Kennedy, that Kansas Senator Edmund Ross prevented Johnson’s impeachment and
suffered unduly for his vote. McCurry writes that Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase
took control of the proceedings and reserved the right to cast a vote in case
of a tie. Chase’s views of the military governments established in the South
were well known, and few wanted House Speaker Ben Wade, who was so radical
that, according to McCurry, he was “the only US politician quoted by name in
Karl Marx’s <i>Capital.”</i> And he supported (gasp!) women’s suffrage. As for
Edmund Ross, he wound up being appointed Governor of New Mexico Territory.
Murphy writes that Ross in all probability was bribed, and David O. Stewart,
author of <i>Impeached: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s
Legacy </i>(2009) recently wrote Ross, rather than being a “profile in
courage,” was actually a profile in impeachment corruption. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stampp also refutes the alleged venality of
those in Congress who supported Reconstruction. He points out many of those,
especially Thaddeus Stevens, came of age in the 1830s and 1840s, an era of
reform movements. They believed in the doctrine of natural rights and in the
equality of all men. It would be naïve to say they were not swayed by political
motives or inclined to support business interests in the North (they were
Republicans, after all), but Stampp rejects the stereotype of the evil radical
intending to keep a heel on the neck of the south.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>While
Stampp gets the credit for bringing revisionism of the Reconstruction era into
the classroom, John Hope Franklin wrote <i>Reconstruction: After the Civil War </i>in
1961, which makes some of the same—in fact, some of the identical points Stampp
made four years later. I found Franklin’s book more readable, and he places a
great deal of emphasis on economic events that contributed to the end of
Reconstruction. Franklin points out that much of the debt Reconstruction governments
supposedly saddled the south with was for necessary infrastructure repair and
guaranteeing railroad bonds. Stampp mentions Franklin’s book in his
bibliographic note section but does not attribute any of his research to
Franklin.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One
factor in Reconstruction’s ending was northern businessmen began to suffer what
we would call civil rights fatigue. They simply tired of hearing about problems
in the South as other issues, especially the depression that began in 1873,
began to take precedence. Stampp, writing in 1965, concludes by saying that
while state-imposed discrimination was an evasion of the supreme law of the
land, the odds were in the long run in favor of blacks.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mark
Kurlansky in his 2003 <i>1968: The Year That Rocked the World </i>says the
country suffered another bout of civil rights fatigue in 1968. This was
followed by the Nixon and Reagan years. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>More
than fifty years after Stampp’s book came out, while things have gotten better,
one has to wonder how long a run Stampp had in mind.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
THE RETURN TO THE
CITY<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="color: black;">When we last discussed the Youngers, they were on their way
to their new home in Clybourne Park. So what happened with them? As I mentioned
above, Sugrue wrote most blocks in changing neighborhoods went from being all
white to predominantly black in three or four years, and that brings us to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Clybourne
Park</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">,</span> Bruce Norris’
Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning 2011 play, which I saw at the Unicorn in
2013.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Act One is set in 1959 and tells
the <i>Raisin in the Sun </i>story from the perspective of the neighborhood. In
Act Two we find ourselves in the same house in 2009. It’s run down from fifty
years of neglect and hard use, but the area has turned around. It’s now
desirable because it is close to downtown, and a lot of gentrification is
happening. We meet Lindsay (and her husband, Steve, who is superfluous to this
paper and evidently to Lindsay as well), who live in a distant suburb and who
have bought 406 Clybourne Street intending to fix it up, but there is so much
wrong with the house they decide to have it torn down and build a bigger house
for which an architect has already drawn up plans and construction on a koi
pond (!) is underway. This has resulted in their neighbors’ petitioning the
landmarks commission to make sure the new house fits in with the neighborhood,
which has been designated as historical.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">As it turns out, Lena, the representative
of the neighborhood, is the great niece of the woman who bought this very house
in 1959, and (irony alert!) Lindsay is the daughter of Karl Lindner, the
neighborhood representative who tried so hard to keep the Youngers from buying
the house fifty years ago. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">One of the neighborhood
representatives reads from the City Council’s designation of Clybourne Park as
a collection of low-rise single-family homes intended to house a community of
working-class families. There is concern that the size, and especially the
height, of the new home will not fit in with the community. Lindsay points out
that communities change. Lena asks about the motivation behind the “long range
initiative to change the face of this neighborhood.” Lindsay considers the
change to be positive; Lena says there are certain economic interests that are
being served by the changes and others that are not. Lena says, “It happens one
house at a time.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The play brings the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Raisin</i> story full circle. Karl Lindner
did his best to keep the Youngers from moving to Clybourne Park because “a
homeowner has a right to have the neighborhood he lives in a certain kind of
way and live around people who share a common background.” Fifty years later,
Lindsay, Karl Lindner’s daughter, comes up against the great niece of Lena
Younger, who would prefer that she not move to Clybourne Park because “a homeowner
has a right to have the neighborhood he lives in a certain kind of way and live
around people who share a common background.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">After the Youngers moved to
Clybourne Park in 1959, the neighborhood, as Sugrue would have predicted,
became predominantly black in a few years “one house at a time.” Now long-time
residents are concerned that the neighborhood will become gentrified and
occupied by wealthy whites, making the neighborhood too expensive for the
current residents “one house at a time.” Lindsay believes she is improving the
neighborhood. Lena disagrees.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The March 2019 issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reason</i> reports that in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood (which
during the era of white flight became Puerto Rican, followed by hippies and
Yippies and then by gays and is now being gentrified), a couple with a disabled
daughter who uses a wheelchair wanted to add a garage with a ramp and elevator
to their home. Some neighbors opposed the addition, saying it’s not in keeping
with the historic nature of the neighborhood. The president of the neighborhood
association wrote that he understood the situation, and he doesn’t mean to be
heartless or uncaring, but “this is not the neighborhood for that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Cornelius Swart’s 2017 documentary, <i>Priced Out,</i>
available on Kanopy, is an interesting take on the impact of gentrification on
the Albina section of Portland, Oregon, where long time black residents are
being forced to leave their homes by those who are intent on “reviving” the
area, which drives up home prices, property taxes, and rent beyond their
ability to pay. They’re being driven to distant suburbs, which are now more
affordable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This seems to be a nationwide phenomenon. Certain areas
of Kansas City are seeing old homes torn down to make way for newer and larger
homes (often shoehorned onto small lots) and existing homes (including the one
next to mine) undergoing extensive renovations. The results are higher home
values in those areas and higher property taxes that many, especially those in
what were low-income neighborhoods, cannot pay. Sad to say, those gentrifying
the neighborhoods don’t seem to care. In fact, some want to be rid of their
poorer neighbors. In response to a concern expressed on a local blog about
tenants displaced by gentrification downtown, one person wrote, “</span><span style="background: white; color: #202020;">Who gives a damn. I work hard for my
money, and I can afford to live [downtown]. I am not going to apologize for
yearsnofnhard [sic] work, smart life choices and good decisions. I choose to
live downtown because I can. People who work hard and make good life divisions [sic]
shouldn’t be forced to now live with those that can’t keep their shit
together.” Jeremy LeFaver, a former Missouri State Representative, when asked
on “Ruckus,” a local news and talk show on Channel 19, what people who can no
longer pay their property tax bills should do, responded compassionately, “What
happens to anybody who can’t afford things? They take out a loan, they move… .”
Let them eat cake! Taxing entities certainly aren’t going to stem the tide of
gentrification, since higher home values add to their revenue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: #202020;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Poor people who were once denied
access to the suburbs are now being kicked out of the neighborhoods they once
couldn’t leave. </span><span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: black;">WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In January 1989, the late John Conyers introduced HR 40
Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act</span><span style="color: #363135;">. The number “40” references the short-lived “forty acres
and a mule” proposed as reparations in 1865. The bill has been reintroduced
every year since. Last year in refusing to consider the bill, Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell said, </span><span style="color: #262626;">"I don't
think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us
currently living are responsible is a good idea. We've tried to deal with our
original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war and by passing landmark civil
rights legislation. We elected an African American president."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If there’s one point I hope I’ve made in this paper, it’s
that the damage done by slavery and its consequences did not end 150 years ago.
To quote William Faulkner, it’s a past that’s “never dead. It’s not even past.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There is a precedent for reparations. In 1988 Congress
passed and President Ronald Reagan signed, perhaps even knowingly, the Civil
Liberties Act of 1988, which gave, tax-free, $20,000 to each surviving Japanese
who was a citizen or legal resident and who had been interned in the U.S.
during World War II. Payments began in 1990. Those who had been kidnapped in
Latin America and interned in the U.S. were not included but were offered
$5,000 in 1996.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #363135;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 1989 the idea of reparations seemed far-fetched, but
thirty years later, some of the 2020 presidential candidates, Elizabeth Warren
among them, embraced the idea of at least studying reparations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #363135; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As I was writing this paper the
Princeton Theological Seminary announced it would set aside nearly $28 million
for reparations which will be used </span><span style="background: #fefefe; color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">to make changes to its curriculum, hire more
scholars to study the legacy of slavery, and rename campus spaces in honor of
prominent African-Americans among other initiatives. </span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is in spite of the fact that the seminary did not own
slaves and that its buildings were not constructed with slave labor. The
seminary received financial contributions from southern sources, including
slaveowners and congregations with ties to slavery. For a time, a large portion
of the seminary's endowment was connected to Southern banks that were financing
the expansion of slavery in the Southwest. Several of the seminary's founders
and early leaders used slave labor, despite speaking out against slavery and
many seminary faculty, board members and alumni were involved in the American
Colonization Society, which argued against immediate emancipation and advocated
sending formerly enslaved people back to Africa.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On a (yet
another) personal note, once I would have subscribed to the Mitch McConnell
school on reparations. Thanks to a <i>New York Times </i>book review<i>,</i> I
read Rothstein’s book, and it was like learning about the Japanese internment
camps and that there was a view of Reconstruction other than that of the
Dunning School all over again. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Rothstein
proposes that one solution for blacks’ lack of access to the ability to build
home equity would be for the government to buy homes in postwar developments
like Levittown and sell those homes to blacks for the inflated value of their
postwar prices. In Levittown that would mean blacks could buy homes that sell
for (in 2017) $350,000 for $75,000.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Another remedy
Rothstein proposes would be a ban on zoning ordinances that prevent multifamily
housing or that require all single-family homes in a neighborhood to be built
on large lots with high minimum requirements for square footage. Such changes
would most likely have to occur on a state or local level; however, in December
2018 Minneapolis ended single family zoning and now allows structures with up
to three dwelling units in every neighborhood, and Oregon passed a law in June
2019 requiring every city in that state with a population over 25,000 to allow
residential buildings up to four units in neighborhoods of single family homes.
Perhaps others will follow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 1978
California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 13 requiring that property
owners be taxed based on the prices they paid, rather than the current value of
their homes. Perhaps those in gentrifying neighborhoods could start an
initiative to enact similar legislation in their areas. (And yes, Howard Jarvis
and Paul Gann were right-wing nuts, but even a stopped clock is right twice a
day.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Katznelson says
we owe it to ourselves not to forget and suggests that </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">for the lag in entering
the Social Security system, the excluded could be identified and they, or their
heirs, could be offered one-time grants that would have to be paid into
designated retirement funds. For the absence of access to the minimum wage, tax
credits to an equivalence of the average loss could be tendered. I would
suggest we name these the John Rankin Memorial Reparations or something similar
to commemorate the fact that taxpayers in the twenty-first century are paying
for his long-ago racist thuggery. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’m sure that once Congress agrees
to look at the case for reparations, other options will appear, and I’m equally
sure any proposal will be met by gasps followed by, “But how will we pay for
this?” The correct response is: How do we pay for anything? And why does this
question never come up when we’re taking some military action? The invasions of
Iraq and Afghanistan come immediately to mind.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #363135;">THE
EMPTY CARTOUCHE REVISITED<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #363135;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 2018 I wrote a paper in Dr. Merrill’s American History
1914-1945 class that had an off-hand reference to the protests at Princeton
demanding the removal of Woodrow Wilson’s name from a building. I added,
“Whether it is reasonable to impose Twenty-First Century views on a president
who was a product of the Nineteenth Century is a topic for another paper.” He
struck through “paper” and wrote “book.” Maybe some other day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When I began this paper, I didn’t know where I’d wind up
regarding the removal of statues, memorials, etc. that have become offensive. Spoiler
alert: I still don’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I envisioned these monuments as one-of-a-kind, custom
made, and so on. Thanks to Sarah Beetham‘s dissertation, I learned many if not
most of the monuments were produced by three manufacturers, the Ames
Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts, the New England Granite Works
of Hartford, Connecticut, and the Monumental Bronze Company of Bridgeport,
Connecticut. The last produced monuments that were the lowest-priced, and those
were the ones most cash-strapped municipalities purchased. These companies
produced monuments both for the North and for the South, and many, especially
those in the “Silent Sam” genre, were the same except those in the North had
belt buckles that said “US,” whereas those in the South had buckles with “CS.” I’m
generally opposed to removing history that can’t be replaced, but these things
seem to be akin to generic fast food restaurants today. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In a February 9, 2020 <i>New York Times </i>editorial
Alison M. Parker, a history professor at the University of Delaware writes,
“There are now some 1,740 Confederate monuments, statues, flags, place names
and other symbols across the country. To date, only about 115 have been
removed.” She says there are fewer than 100 monuments that pay tribute to the
civil rights movement. She is firmly in favor of removal, concluding,
“Monuments can either work to dismantle white supremacy… or they can perpetuate
it. The symbols of white supremacy have no business in our public spaces.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There are others who argue in favor of their removal. Susan
Nieman, whom I mentioned above, is a Jewish American who is a long-time
resident of Berlin and writes that Germany’s efforts to atone for the Nazi era
include the removal of all symbols of Nazism. She notes that American Nazis
took part in the Charlottesville protest against removing a statue of Robert E.
Lee, which is essentially her case for removal, although she generously
concedes that “not all of those who oppose removal are Nazis.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My first reaction to Ms. Nieman’s concession was it was a
backhanded <i>ad hominem </i>attack, but I’m having second thoughts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On February 21, 2020, Reason.com had an article written
by Billy Binion, an assistant editor at <i>Reason </i>noting that Virginia was
considering allowing cities to decide to remove Confederate monuments. As I
write this, Virginia prohibits the removal of any monument without permission
from the state. The proposal has encountered resistance from state
representatives who claim it is “rewriting history.” Binion, who grew up in
Richmond, favors removal on the grounds that most of the monuments were erected
between 1900 and 1930, decades after the Civil War ended, and were themselves attempts
to rewrite history and “keep the record of Confederate heroism free from the
stain of calumny,” as a speaker said when unveiling the controversial 1924
statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville. Binion concludes by noting the
statues propagated the Lost Cause myth, which is “widely rejected” by
historians, but which “still exists today.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When I hit the “print” setup, I noticed there were more
than 400 comments. Reason.com, being libertarian, does not moderate comments or
request that commenters identify themselves. I did not read all the comments,
but the few I read, unfortunately, confirm that Nieman has a point. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One rationale for removal of what are today considered offensive
monuments to a racist era seems to boil down to the fact that they are by
today’s standards offensive, and people might be offended. Do we have the right
not to be offended? Initially I would have said, “no,” but when I read the
vitriol merely considering removal generates, I’m at a loss.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On the one hand, the monuments reflect an era of white
supremacy and revisionist history of the Civil War, and that was a part of
history. On the other hand, even nearly a century after they were erected, they
are capable of generating a great deal of hate. To go or not to go? That is the
question, and I don’t have the answer. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There are other options. I was on a much too short visit
to Almaty, Kazakhstan a few years ago. A statue of Lenin, which had once
occupied a prominent central city location, had been moved to a secluded
location in a city park. Perhaps we could learn from the Kazakhs instead of the
Germans. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Eric Foner, in a 1999 review of James W. Loewen’s <i>Lies
Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong,</i> reprinted in <i>Battles
for Freedom: the Use and Abuse of American History</i> (2017)<i>,</i>
concludes, “The point is not that every monument to a slaveholder ought to be
dismantled but that existing historical sites must be revised to convey a more
complex and honest view of our past, and that statues of black Civil War
soldiers, slave rebels, civil rights activists and the like should share space
with Confederate generals and Klansmen, all of them part of America’s history. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Foner is the son of Jewish parents and a red diaper baby,
so there’s at least one non-Nazi who disagrees with Nieman. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Foner, in an interview the day after
Trump’s nomination in 2016 with Richard Kreitner, <i>The Nation’s</i> assistant
editor, advocates what he calls a “usable past,” which he says does not mean
propaganda. He says a distorted past is not useful and gives the example of the
history he was taught in high school—America “was created perfect and has just
been getting better ever since.” Kreitner notes that this is what the Cheneys
advocate as usable. Foner responds that it really wasn’t because when the 1960s
came along it was impossible to reconcile the history we’d been taught with the
problems that suddenly became apparent. The past we’d been taught was “a past
without black people, without Native Americans.” He says a more accurate and
more honest past has been created by several generations of historians and that
for those who want social change knowing how social change took place in the
past is a very valuable thing. A usable past is a historical consciousness that
can enable us to address the problems of today in an intelligent manner.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Rothstein writes that textbooks
continue to ignore segregation as much as possible. The 2012 edition of <i>The
Americans: Reconstruction to the 21<sup>st</sup> Century,</i> for example, is a
thousand-page volume published by Holt McDougal, which devotes this one
sentence to residential segregation in the North: “African Americans found
themselves forced into segregated neighborhoods.” Rothstein points out this
passive sentence gives no clue as to who did the forcing or how it was carried
out. But getting a better history of segregation will be a challenge. For one
thing, according to <i>The Wall Street Journal’s</i> token liberal columnist,
William A. Galston, in a February 19, 2020 editorial, high schools in only
thirty-one states now require a year-long history course.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Growing up in Oklahoma and being
a history major, I often heard about “Alfalfa Bill” Murray, who, when trying to
find a job for a crony of his, called the University of Oklahoma president, who
asked what kind of qualifications the man had. Murray is reputed to have said,
“Hell, I don’t know. Why not let him teach history? Anybody can do that.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I don’t know if history is
considered unnecessary or subversive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I recently watched Scott
Thurman’s 2012 documentary, <i>The Revisionaries </i>(available on Kanopy) about
the battle to control what’s in textbooks by the Texas Board of Education. The
main battle covered is that of creationism versus evolution, which science won
(for now), but it also discusses the social sciences battle in which demands were
made that publishers insert such gems as the contributions of Phyllis Schlafly,
the Moral Majority, the Heritage Foundation, and the NRA to the conservative
“revolution” of the 1980s and delete Thomas Jefferson as an influence on the
Declaration of Independence because one of the board, Cynthia Dunbar, an
attorney and a professor at Liberty University, thinks a “secular humanistic
ideology” has clouded interpretations of Jefferson’s work. Dunbar, not
surprisingly, insists discussion of the separation of church and state be
restricted. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another board member wants
President Obama’s middle name (Hussein) inserted wherever he is mentioned in a
textbook. Others wanted the “communist influence” on civil rights emphasized. You
can’t make this stuff up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The Texas State Board of
Education’s influence is nationwide, since the state buys so many textbooks
that publishers recoup the entire cost of producing a textbook from the
purchases of that one state, and they are reluctant to publish more than one
version of a textbook. Little has changed at the Texas Board of Education since
Charles Ramsdell was writing his textbook for a board that believed </span><span style="color: black;">“strict censorship is the thing that will bring the honest
truth.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">But it won’t. It will create the same situation I was in
when I left high school all ready to be disillusioned. George Santayana
famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” If
we censor the past, how can future generations learn from mistakes to which
they are denied access? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">To paraphrase Al Smith, I think the cure for history is
more history. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">In his introduction to <i>The Dunning School,</i> John
David Smith advises students should be taught to heed Arthur M. Schlesinger,
Jr.’s advice that historians “judge men of the past with the same forbearance
and charity which we hope they will apply toward us.” Students should also be
taught to put things in context. Stanford Professor Sam Wineburg advises,
“Judging past actors by present standards wrests them from their own context
and subjects them to ways of thinking that we, not they, have developed.
Presentism, the act of viewing the past through the lens of the present, is a
psychological default state that must be overcome before one achieves mature
historical understanding.” Harold Holzer, a Lincoln scholar, advises viewing
the past “from the vantage of the twenty-first century… encourages our looking
at history from the comparatively enlightened future backward, not from the
past forward. And diagnoses from the ever-widening distances unavoidably
distort history.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Arm
students with this advice and turn them loose. They need to learn how to think,
not what to think. Everyone is going to approach study coming from different
backgrounds and with different assumptions. Ideally students should be asked to
start with study and reach a conclusion rather than starting with a conclusion
and seeking support for that conclusion. In short, study for information, not
confirmation. Nancy S. Love, in her 2006 <i>Understanding Dogmas and Dreams, </i>advocates
“connected knowing,” or caring about how others understand themselves and
attempting to understand them, to the extent possible, on their own terms. We
should, she says, enter into another world view, adopt another perspective in
order to increase understanding—even becoming, at least temporarily, that which
we are exploring. I’ve often found it helpful to ask myself if there are other
ways to look at things I think I believe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Sometimes
I wind up not knowing what to believe, which is probably why I’m a lapsed
Unitarian. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-56000156348160805012020-06-09T05:36:00.000-07:002020-06-09T05:52:01.673-07:00The Common Sense Manifesto (With a Nod to Thomas Paine, Not Karl Marx): A Review of the Book by Max J. Skidmore<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Max
J. Skidmore was a professor of political science at UMKC for many years. He
retired last year and came back as an adjunct professor. He had planned to
continue teaching, but with the university going completely online for the
summer and increasingly changing classes to online for the fall, he decided at
age 86 to hang it up for good. It is very difficult to teach political science,
a topic that relies on discussion and the exchange of ideas, online.<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
He
is probably busier than he was when teaching. He’s writing yet another book,
and his 2016 <i>Presidents, Pandemics, and Politics</i> has made him the go-to
guy for global media seeking context for our current pandemic. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
I
first heard him speak at a venue for the over-50 crowd just before the 2016
election. At the time I was planning to vote for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian
candidate, because I was not impressed with the Democratic candidate and I was
appalled at the orange buffoon on offer from Republicans. During his talk,
Skidmore pointed out that only two candidates had a chance of winning, and our
job was to decide which of those two would be better. He also said that James
Comey was a Republican and that we should not be surprised if he takes some
action to help his party. Just a day or so later, and just a few days before
the election, Comey announced a new inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s emails. I
decided Skidmore knew what he was talking about and switched my vote to
Clinton. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
I
began taking history classes at UMKC a couple of years ago. Last summer the
history offerings were few and far between, so I checked the political science
offerings and saw Skidmore had a class. I signed up for it and enjoyed it so
much I took two more of his classes, which were so popular I had to finesse my
way into the spring class. It was full, but he said if there was a chair
available, I was welcome to attend. There was, and during the first session a
student got offended, walked out, and dropped the class. I was in. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Skidmore
is liberal and doesn’t mince words, which is probably why the student walked
out that first day. But his liberal views are relevant to political science and
he is extremely tolerant of opposing views. One student asked him for
clarification on the subject of fundamentalism. Skidmore took twenty minutes to
respond to the question. When I was in school at a conservative state college,
we had liberal professors who had to keep their heads down. Back then, it was conservative
professors who would go off topic with impunity. One I remember none too fondly
was a geography professor who was in the John Birch Society. I was pretty much
putting myself through school—it was easier then—tuition was $12 an hour-- so I
was taking twenty hours a semester in order to finish early and get a job. I
finished in just over three years. Once, when my geography professor began one
of his rants, I decided his rant would not be on the test, so I tuned him out
and worked on something for another class. As I was deep in my work, I kept
hearing him get louder and louder, and I looked up. He was right over me and
saying something like, “People who do that should have their heads bashed in.”
I don’t know what he had been talking about, but I didn’t want my head bashed
in, so I put the other class work away. My point here is teachers’ expressing
political opinions is nothing new, and it shouldn’t be a big deal if those
opinions are relevant to the class. The teachings of the John Birch Society had
little if anything to do with geography (and I sure as hell can’t imagine my geography
professor tolerating any disagreement). Skidmore’s lectures are relevant, and
he’s good with disagreement. In fact, I think he welcomes it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Over
his 55-plus years of teaching, Skidmore has written more than two dozen books,
at least one of which was written with George McGovern. His latest, which came
out this year, is <i>The Common Sense Manifesto (With a Nod to Thomas Paine, Not
Karl Marx).</i> I read the book earlier this year, but I decided not to review
it while I was still a student of Skidmore’s because, even though I’m not
taking classes for credit, I didn’t want there to be any accusations that I was
trolling for grades. I recently reread the book for this review, and I’d forgotten
how good it is. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
This
review is going to be a bit of an opinion piece as well as a look at Skidmore’s
book because his experiences and observations so closely mirror my own. He
begins the book by saying he was once a Republican. So was I, and I want to
take this opportunity to address a talking point that seems to have been issued
by Fox News or some propaganda tool very much like it. Once upon a time in the
way back days, thanks to a historical school at Columbia University called the
Dunning School and the book its leader, William A. Dunning, wrote in 1907, <i>Reconstruction:
Political and Economic, 1865-1877,</i> several generations of Americans were
taught Reconstruction was an unmitigated evil and when white supremacy was
restored in the South, things were as nature intended. Dunning’s teachings came
into question in the 1960s and were pretty much demolished in 1988 when Eric
Foner wrote <i>Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.</i>
Generally, history classes now teach that Reconstruction was a positive move
and “Redemption,” or the return to white supremacy, which included (but was
certainly not limited to) voter suppression, lynchings, racially motivated
killings, segregation, “separate but equal,” which was often separate but usually
unequal, and the like negated the gains blacks made after emancipation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Nowadays,
if you bring up all the evils “Redemption” brought with it, the trained seals
of the right will respond, “Yes. And the people responsible were DEMOCRATS!”
And they certainly were. When Skidmore and I were younger, Republicans were the
party of Lincoln, and Southern Democrats opposed anti-lynching laws. But, as
Skidmore points out in his introduction, as a result of Lyndon B. Johnson’s
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, “Almost
immediately, bigoted southern Democrats morphed into bigoted southern
Republicans.” In 1968 Richard Nixon used his “Southern Strategy” to take the
rest of the party with him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
In
short, to use the slogan of Virginia Slims, a cigarette marketed to women in
the 1970s, since Lincoln, the Republican Party has “come a long way, baby.”
Lincoln would be so proud!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
The
first chapter is “Travesty and Tragedy,” a history of the Republican party that
demonstrates Trump is not an aberration but rather the logical progression of a
party that has relied on lies and subterfuge to obtain and retain power
beginning at least with Richard Nixon who, in 1968, through a fundraiser with
connections in Asia promised the South Vietnamese a better deal if he were
elected president. As a result, they refused to join negotiations, Nixon won,
and the war went on. Nixon’s perfidy was rumored for years and was confirmed in
2007. Reagan is presumed to have used the same tactics in 1980 to convince
Iranians to continue to hold the American hostages until after the election,
but that smoking gun has yet to be found. Reagan, who had spoiled Gerald Ford’s
chances for election in 1976, defeated Jimmy Carter, and the Republican party
moved to the right, dragging Democrats with them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Taking
a detour here, the reason the Iranian students were enraged and kidnapped the
American Embassy staff was the United States had allowed the terminally ill
Shah of Iran to seek treatment here. Carter had not wanted to grant the Shah’s
request but was pressured into it by David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger—yet
another example of a Democratic president being led astray by Republicans. He
paid for it by being portrayed as weak and ineffectual. Memo to future
Democratic presidents: Grow ummm… a backbone!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Reagan
enhanced Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” speaking early in his campaign at a
county fair near the site of the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers in
Mississippi and dispensing with dog whistles for the event, proclaiming, “[W]hen
it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you.” Recently phone recordings
of conversations between Nixon and Reagan in 1971 reveal both were quite the
racists. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
The
Reagan administration established a precedent for the Trump administration by
appointing people who opposed the mission of agencies to head those agencies.
One such example was James Watt, who was appointed to lead the Department of
the Interior, even though he saw no need for conservation because, as an
evangelical Christian, he did “not know how many future generations we can
count on before the Lord returns.” I was working for the Office of Surface
Mining, an Interior agency Carter, who was an environmentalist, had established
to repair the damage of centuries of coal mining. (This is how I came to live
in Kansas City the first time.) OSM was funded by a tax on coal. Watt, as an
attorney for the Mountain States Legal Fund, had fought OSM in court because
his clients objected to the coal tax. Once he was Secretary of the Interior,
OSM was gutted. After all, why clean up a mess when end times were imminent?
Despite the rose colored glasses the right likes to portray the Reagan
administration through, unemployment soared to 10.4% during his first two years
in office. I was among the unemployed, and having been unemployed, I sympathize
with anyone who finds themselves in that situation. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
George
H. W. Bush followed Reagan, who, had he not been a popular president and was by
the end of his term obviously in at least the early stages of Alzheimer’s,
would have been impeached for the Iran-Contra affair. There’s reason to believe
Bush, as the former head of the CIA, was at least aware of Iran-Contra, but he
pardoned enough people to escape the taint.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
I
once saw Gore Vidal describe the Bush family as a bunch of thieves. He said,
“They’ll take whatever isn’t nailed down.” Vidal is not exactly a reliable
source (and I’ve read a lot of his books), but the family does have a history
of being involved in a lot of messy business and emerging looking squeaky
clean. In his 2003 <i>The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the
Rise of the Third Reich, </i>Max Wallace discusses Prescott Bush’s involvement
with the Union Banking Corporation, which was a cloak operation laundering
money for Germany’s Thuyssen family, which was instrumental in financing
Hitler’s rise to power and supplied much of the steel used to prosecute the
war. There were ties to other German companies as well, and the laundering went
on well after Germany declared war on the U.S. In order to “save the family’s
honor,” George H. W. Bush abandoned plans to attend Yale and joined the Navy,
and Prescott agreed to spy for the OSS. Voila! War hero and squeaky clean. John
Loftus, a former Justice Department Nazi war crimes investigator is familiar
with the Bush family’s wartime activities and concludes, “The Bush family
fortune that helped put two members of the family in the White House can be
traced directly to the Third Reich.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
In
1992 Bill Clinton defeated George H. W. Bush, and the Republican party reacted
as if the natural order of the universe had been overturned. Rush Limbaugh, who
had taken advantage of the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine to build a
small conservative cult, went into overdrive with his coarse criticisms of
Clinton and his family, including their then teenage daughter. In 1996 Fox News
began broadcasting. In spite of Clinton’s bending over backwards (and sometimes
just bending over) to accommodate Republicans, they refused to accept his
administration as legitimate. Serial philanderers Bob Livingston and Newt
Gingrich publicized every sexual misstep Clinton ever made in his life. Finally,
they glommed onto Monica Lewinsky. As Skidmore says, Republicans finally found
something Americans would pay attention to: Sex. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
In
2000 Americans were treated to what at the time I thought was the death knell
for the Electoral College. Skidmore covers the shenanigans that went on in
Florida, where George W. Bush’s brother was governor and Katherine Harris, the
co-chair of W.’s Florida campaign, was also the secretary of state. Ballots
were ambiguous. Even Patrick Buchanan said he’d received votes meant for Al
Gore. In spite of what Florida voters wanted and the national popular vote, W.
became president. And he may have made an adequate placeholder president, as
had John Taylor and Millard Fillmore, but then came 9/11 and the invasion of
Iraq, which (a) had nothing to do with 9/11, (b) had no weapons of mass
destruction, and (c) was not importing uranium from Africa or anywhere else. 9/11
was a handy excuse for such intrusions into Americans personal lives as the
PATRIOT Act, and of course, no one wanted to seem unpatriotic and question such
hallowed institutions as the Electoral College. I’ll skip the “Swift Boating”
of John Kerry, a real hero of Vietnam and proceed to Barak Obama, America’s
first black president. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
When
Obama was elected, I, and I think the majority of the country were hopeful that
America had taken a giant step toward racial healing. Man, were we ever naïve!
In William Tuttle’s 1970 <i>Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919,</i>
he attributes what he calls “status deprivation,” or the resentment of poorer
whites toward blacks who have done well, as a major factor in the riot, which
was instigated by whites who were upset that some blacks had “risen above their
station.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Ninety
years later a black man was president. How dare he? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Republicans
tapped into this resentment. Trump began his political career by questioning
Obama’s citizenship. Add to this the Obama administration’s bailing out Wall
Street and leaving Main Street subject to what Aaron Glantz calls in the title
of his new book <i>Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund
Managers, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their
Homes and Demolished the American Dream.</i> I’ve only read the <i>New York
Review of Books</i> writeup, but Glantz covers how the Obama administration
subsidized the foreclosure of millions of homes, which were then sold at
extremely discounted prices to vulture capitalists who now rent them, sometimes
to former owners. These homes are given the same treatment vulture capitalists
give companies they take over. No maintenance, rent until they fall apart, and
then abandon them. In other words, the banks and Wall Street got socialism.
Everyone else was left to deal with cutthroat capitalism. No wonder there was
resentment. And so we come to the orange buffoon, another gift of the Electoral
College.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Before
I get into Skidmore’s common sense suggestions, I want to discuss the protests
now going on as a result of George Floyd’s being killed by police force in
Minneapolis. In my opinion these protests are about more than the killing of
yet another black person by police. People are pissed. Forty percent of people
making $40,000 or less are out of jobs. They see the 1% riding out the
coronavirus crisis in their gated communities, on their yachts, in their
country homes, abandoning cities, etc. They see Ellen DeGeneres moaning about
being confined to her palatial house as a gardener (who can’t do his job from
home) works in the background. (Let me emphasize THEY see Ellen—I have a strict
rule against television during the daytime, and I limit it at night to no more
than a couple of hours, most of which is streamed.) They see people who can
work from home who are actually in better shape financially because of the
shutdown (and admittedly I’m one of them) while they must endanger their lives
to feed their families. They see voting being made hazardous. (Missouri’s
governor recently told people if they felt uncomfortable voting, don’t vote.)
They see and probably experience difficulties getting unemployment benefits
that were promised them as their bills and rent pile up. They see senators such
as Lindsay Graham, who, without putting too fine a point on it, grew up white
trash and resents when anyone who can’t help his career gets any benefits,
bemoaning the $600 additional benefits the unemployed are promised because the
poor might actually come out ahead. All the while, as Nicholas Kristoff wrote
in the appropriately titled editorial “Crumbs for the Hungry, Windfalls for the
Rich” in the May 24, 2020 <i>New York Times,</i> Congress, sneaked in a $135
billion provision to enable wealthy real estate developers to take tax breaks <u>retroactive
to 2017.</u> Speculation is this benefits Trump and the Kushners. People,
including those protesting George Floyd’s death, are suddenly being confronted
with the fact that the democracy they thought they were living in is a
kleptocracy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
A
popular meme these days is a flat pack guillotine from IKEA. It’s a joke. So
far.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
To
reiterate. The protests are about much more than the death of yet another black
man at the hands of the police.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Returning
to Skidmore’s book, which was written before the pandemic, he has a chapter,
“Why Does Poverty Still Exist in the World’s Richest Country?” In it he discusses
how poverty is hidden from view, which it was until now. In the 2007-8 crisis,
unemployment was handled over the internet, funds were credited to
government-issued debit cards. It was all so discreet! This time it’s
different. Harvesters handed out 8,000 meal boxes in one day recently at
Kauffman Stadium. And that was one day. Hunger in America? Whodathunkit?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
He
discusses the role of conservative Republicans and Christian evangelicals in
keeping the poor poor. Let’s face it. When many of the upper crust think of the
poor, they see cheap labor. I mentioned above Lindsay Graham’s objection to the
$600 supplemental unemployment insurance, which will be expiring in about a
month. <i>The Wall Street Journal,</i> that forum for the rich and mistreated,
recently printed an article from Portland, Oregon restaurateur Kurt Huffman
bemoaning the fact that his slaves, er, I mean employees weren’t champing at
the bit to return to work for $15 an hour and tips totaling as much as an
additional $1 an hour (his words, not mine). How dare his employees
inconvenience him? I couldn’t help myself. I sent the following to the <i>Journal:</i></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mr. Huffman claims he
can’t reopen his restaurants until August 1 because he’d have to pay workers
$25.40 to match what they are now getting on unemployment. A quick Google
search reveals Mr. Huffman is Portland’s “leading restaurateur” and lists his
favorite restaurant as St. John’s in London. But Mr. Huffman seemingly expects
his employees, who are no doubt dealing with children at home and all the other
issues everyone else is dealing with during this lockdown, to drop everything
and return to work for him for $15 an hour plus maybe an extra buck for
tips. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The fact is Mr.
Huffman can reopen his restaurants. All he has to do is pay his employees
enough to make it worth working for him. If he paid, say, $30 an hour, he’d
have no problem reopening. That’s roughly $60,000 per year, which is probably
not a fantastic salary in a high cost area like Portland. Maybe he’d have to
skip a trip or two to his favorite restaurant, but he’d have his restaurants
open. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mr. Huffman is
choosing to keep his restaurants closed. I’m reserving my sympathies for his
employees.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> The letter, not
surprisingly, did not get printed, but evidently I was not the only person who
responded negatively to Mr. Huffman’s opinion piece. The <i>Journal</i> printed
an editorial essentially saying they understood employees’ not wanting to take
a loss to come back to work, but it was unfortunate that they had the option of
doing so. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Mr. Huffman and
many like him don’t consider that the poor are people. If they think of them at
all, they think of them as a labor pool, and the bigger that pool, the more
competition for low wage jobs. It’s people like Mr. Huffman who make me think a
Universal Basic Income is essential. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> And that brings
me to Skidmore’s proposal that programs, to the greatest extent possible, be
universal—not just directed to the poor. He gives Social Security and Medicare
as examples. (By the way, he’s written several books on Social Security.) He
says that when everyone benefits, few complain. The recent stimulus checks, for
example, were not universal. Mine was not enough to buy a whole bag of dog
food. I’m not complaining—I’d rather have that problem than really need the
check, but you can see there is an opportunity for resentment among those who
might like an extra $1200 for green fees.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Skidmore
concludes, “Whatever excuses may be offered, it is shameful for poverty to
exist in a society as affluent as that of the United States. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> His chapter,
“Modern Political Economy and Public Policy” is intriguing. He begins by
pointing out conventional wisdom is often wrong. Take for example, “When times
are tough, families have to tighten their belts. Government has to tighten its
belt too.” This seems intuitive, and most people don’t give it much thought.
But it’s demonstrably wrong. When the Great Depression hit, Herbert Hoover
followed that mantra and the country turned its back on him. FDR followed and
blew that mantra out of the water with deficit spending like the country had
never seen before, followed by even more deficit spending during World War II,
paving the way for an economic boom that was unprecedented. When the financial
crisis hit in 2007-8, deficit spending once more paved the way for the longest
bull market in history. Of course, as I’ve mentioned before, that deficit spending
helped Wall Street but not Main Street. Critics of that era bemoan too little
deficit spending, not too much. In the current crisis once again, the country
is resorting to deficit spending, and as happened with the financial crisis,
deficit hawks are warning of runaway inflation. It didn’t happen then, and it’s
not happening now. As I write this, 30-year U. S. Treasury bonds yield 1.47%,
meaning actual investors don’t see inflation in our future. So while families
may have to tighten their belts in hard times, government needs to do the
reverse. In order to believe conventional wisdom, we’d have to ignore nearly a
hundred years of economic history.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Even more
counterintuitive, Skidmore advocates planning programs that will do the job and
ignoring the cost. He says this is the approach LBJ took with Medicare. And
more than fifty years later, it’s still working. And then he gets into Modern
Monetary Theory (MMT). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Stephanie
Kelton is probably the most well-known of the MMTers. She taught at the
University of Missouri at Kansas City, and at one time MMT was referred to as
the “Kansas City School” of economics. Alas, she got an offer she couldn’t
refuse and UMKC wouldn’t match, and she’s now at Stony Brook University. Her
book on MMT is due out this month. I’m looking forward to reading it, and I
hope to be able to understand MMT.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Essentially, as
I understand it, as long as the U.S. has its own currency it controls the
issuance of that currency, which is mostly digital these days. There’s no need
to find money. It’s created as it was during the last financial crisis and for
that matter during the New Deal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Now that the
country is in yet another crisis, it’s time to use MMT to help those in need
both for altruistic reasons and for selfish ones. Think about it. Conservatives
are complaining that young people today are not settling down, buying homes,
having children, etc. In fact, demographers have noted the U.S. birth rate of
1.7 is well below the replacement rate. Almost always, the reason is economic,
and quite frequently student loans are the main reason. Who wants to buy a
house (presuming they can qualify for a loan) and have children when they’re
already drowning in debt? If student debt were to go away and future education
were free, conservatives’ goal of encouraging family formation would be more
realistic. Employers are not letting the current crisis go to waste—they’re
getting rid of high paid older workers and leaving these people without health
insurance. It’s time for universal health care, which would benefit employers. And
so on. It amazes me that conservatives are so opposed to making life better for
the masses that they lose sight of the fact that these programs would make life
better for them as well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Skidmore begins
his chapter “Crafting Public Policy in a Modern Political Economy” with FDR’s
1944 State of the Union speech in which he noted, “People who are hungry and
out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” I’m writing this a
few days after what passes for a president today announced he’d be calling on
the military to quell unrest and followed his announcement with a clearing the
streets of peaceful protesters in front of the White House by using tear gas
(although the administration denies tear gas was used, Resaon.com, hardly a
bastion of liberalism, noted, “it was a gaseous substance that caused tears”)
so he could walk across the street and pose in front of an Episcopal church
holding a Bible. He looked like an orange Mussolini to me. Add to that the fact
that white supremacists have been documented to have posted incitements to riot
on antifa websites, and I can’t help but wonder if there’s a Reichstag burning
somewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> In his 1944
State of the Union Speech, FDR introduced and economic Bill of Rights, among
which are:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> The right to a
useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the
nation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> The right to
earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> The right of
every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and
his family a decent living.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> The right of
every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from
unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> The right of
every family to a decent home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> The right to
adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> The right to
adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and
unemployment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> The right to a
good education.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> More than
seventy-five years later, we’ve not made much progress toward these goals.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> When FDR
proposed this economic Bill of Rights we were still at war. He died the next
year. Although Truman worked to enact the program, he was stymied when
Republicans took control of both houses of Congress in 1946 and gave us the
likes of Richard Nixon and Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy. Skidmore discusses how we
can finally get these rights—and more.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> He quotes
Stephanie Kelton: Anything that is technically feasible is financially
affordable. As a side note here I’m reminded of the Manhattan Project, which
went from technically feasible to Hiroshima in about three years. He insists
the government should do its job without “privatizing” it, including prisons,
Medicare (referring to Medicare Advantage—I was tempted to sign up for it, but
my advisor told me, “The reason they call it “Advantage” is insurers have the
advantage,” and sure enough I’ve been reading some disturbing things about it),
and other services. His proposals include Medicare for All, a Universal Basic
Income (which was in another form once considered by Richard Nixon, by the
way), free colleges, infrastructure repair (have you ever noticed
“infrastructure” is, as Will Rogers said about the weather, something “everyone
talks about but no one ever does anything about?” With the pandemic shutdown,
this would be an opportune time for infrastructure repair, but… .), family
leave and child care, an expanded Postal Service, and a Green New Deal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Skidmore
opposes, as I believe any rational person would, the Electoral College. Now
before anyone goes ballistic and tells me that if the Electoral College were
abolished, California would determine every president, as Skidmore points out,
Texas and Florida combined have more voters than California. Who’s to say the
states of the Old Confederacy, not California, would determine the outcome?
Regardless, if we’re to claim we are a democracy, we really need to let voters,
not the Electoral College decide who wins the presidency. He has many examples
of how Republicans, whom demographics do not favor, intend to retain power
without a majority of voters supporting them. Those examples alone are worth
reading the book. The book has several appendices, my favorite being “Appendix
on Common Sense Self-Protection: Fighting is Wrong; Learn to Fight.” Before
going further, I should tell you Skidmore has black belts in Tai Chi, Karate,
and Jiu Jitsu, and he’s taught self-defense courses. The chapter starts as a
conventional treatise on self-defense and concludes on voting as
self-protection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> And think about
it. If there’s one lesson we should learn from the past four years is we need
to vote cognizantly. It’s not enough to pout our way to the polls and elect
someone without qualifications who is ignorant and a failure in his own life simply
because he or she plays to our inner kindergartner. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #1d2228; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The book is a
quick 266 pages, and it’s well worth reading--preferably before you go to the
polls in November. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span> </span></div>
Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-1616240291673577082020-05-13T08:14:00.000-07:002020-05-13T08:14:38.758-07:00Why You Should Be a Socialist, a Review of the Book by Nathan J. Robinson<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My
classes at UMKC are over. It was a challenging semester. A week before Spring
Break classes went online. Given that the class I took, Political Ideologies,
was a class that relied a great deal on discussion, both the professor and the
students had to make considerable adjustments. But we soldiered through. What
choice did we have?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That
said, I’ve come across three books that I will be discussing. I’ve read two,
and I’m anxiously awaiting the third, which is due out in June. That book is on
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), and given that the country has embarked on a
course that will require reliance on MMT, I would really like to understand it.
I hope I’m up to the challenge. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
first book I’m going to discuss is <i>Why You Should Be a Socialist </i>by Nathan
J. Robinson, which was published in late 2019. I read a review of this book
somewhere and was able to get it from the library before the stay-at-home order
went into effect. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Robinson
is editor-in-chief of <i>Current Affairs,</i> a magazine he started in 2015 and
with which I am not familiar. He was born in 1988 and has a Ph.D. from Harvard,
an M.A. from Brandeis, and a J.D. from Yale. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He
writes exceptionally well and knows when to mix pathos with self-deprecating
humor at least in the early part of the book. He describes the growing
inequality in this country, in one example contrasting a home featured in <i>The
Wall Street Journal’s</i> “Mansion” section in its Friday editions as having
four kitchens, one of which has a loading dock for catering trucks, two
garages—a two-car one for the owner and a 30-car guest garage, and, well, you
get the idea, with GoFundMe appeals for help paying medical expenses and an
injured woman who begged responders not to call an ambulance because she
couldn’t afford one. These observations, not reading Marx, he says, are what
led him to socialism. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He
attacks the arguments in favor of the status quo, pointing out people are not
rewarded according to their productivity, the rich do not “deserve” their
riches because they were given to them through voluntary transactions, those
who do not succeed do not do so because they “didn’t try hard enough,” and that
those who succeed do not prove that anyone can any more than, as Henry George
pointed out, every competitor can win a race. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He
attacks neoliberalism, pointing out it is neither new nor liberal. He says it
is the privatization of everything including education and fire departments
(pointing out during the 2017 California wildfires, some people had paid for
special policies so their homes could be coated in fire retardant, and only
those houses were). It is also the commodification of everything—for example,
the University of Akron eliminated most of its history department in favor of…
e-sports, since they were more in demand, prisoners are placed in rehab
“programs” which are little more than slave labor, children are placed in
for-profit juvenile detention centers for offenses that might be as trivial as
creating satirical MySpace pages, etc. He then takes on corporations, which he
describes as “an army of psychopathic androids.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>By
the time he gets to socialism, he points out there is a difference between a
socialist ethic and a socialist economy. The former is an anger at the
systematic destructiveness and injustice of capitalism, while the latter is a
rearrangement of the way goods are produced and distributed. He writes that the
New Deal “was a series of improvisations in response to specific problems that
were stalling economic development… there was no master plan, many ideas
failed, and some were ended after a period of experimentation.” Some, as we
know, still exist and are taken for granted. He recommends that we take a
similar approach today and solve problems without worrying too much about
whether those solutions fit the definition of socialist, saying it doesn’t
matter if it’s socialism. It matters that it helps create something closer to
an equitable society.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He
reminds us that socialist experiments have been successful in this country,
including a series of mayors in Milwaukee, where socialism was so popular that
even that crusading demagogue and Wisconsin Senator, Joe McCarthy, didn’t dare
criticize the mayors. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Robinson
points out how absurd some conservative arguments are, including if people do
not work for their money they will become lazy and dependent, to which he gives
the example of Dan Bilzerian, who inherited money and spends his life posting
Instagram photos of his driving expensive cars, dating porn stars, etc. He
devotes a chapter titled “Mean, False, and Hopeless” to refuting such arguments
while pointing out that the conservative movement began following the 1971
advice of future Supreme Court justice Lewis Powell, who wrote that the right
should install conservative professors in classrooms, turn out a stream of
books, press vigorously for support of the free enterprise system and penalize
politically all who oppose it. Accordingly, a network of think tanks, legal
organizations, and lobbying groups (and even educational institutions) now
exist to support the conservative view.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Robinson
saves most of his vitriol for liberals in a chapter titled “Polishing Turds.”
He is extremely hard on Obama, who brought many Republicans and former Goldman
Sachs employees into his administration naively thinking bipartisanship was
possible. He tells of Obama deputy chief of staff Jim Messina who was shocked
when a Republican staffer told him after the 2008 election, “We’re not going to
compromise with you on anything. We’re going to fight Obama on everything.”
When Messina pointed out that’s not what Democrats did for Bush, the staffer
replied. “We don’t care.” He’s also tough on Bill Clinton.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As
many of you know, I’ve long considered Bill Clinton a closet Republican, and
while I admire Barak Obama, as a review of Reed Hundt’s <i>A Crisis Wasted</i>
in the April 20/27 <i>The Nation</i> says, he let his Republican appointees steamroll
him into a bailout of the financial industry that left homeowners without any
relief. Ten million families were forced out of their homes. I strongly believe
the resentment caused by this socialism for the rich and cutthroat capitalism
for everyone else is a major reason we now have an orange buffoon in the White
House.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Memo
to Joe Biden: If you win the election, remember one thing—you can’t be
bipartisan unilaterally. Learn from Moscow Mitch and remember Merrick Garland.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Both
Robinson and Max Skidmore, whose book I’ll discuss next, advocate a greater
role for the Post Office including providing banking services, which would give
underserved Americans access to checking accounts without the high fees
associated with low balances. This is not a new idea. The Post Office offered
banking services between 1911 and 1967. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Several
stimulus proposals have included funds to shore up the USPS, but Trump said he
won’t sign off on any relief for the USPS unless is raises its prices for
package shipment. He says prices should be “four or five times” more than they
are. I found it strange that the president would want to raise prices for
package shipment, but the rationale became a bit clearer when I read an opinion
piece by Gary MacDougal in the May 6 edition of <i>The Wall Street Journal.</i>
Mr. MacDougal advocates phasing out, not bailing out the Postal Service. Mr.
MacDougal is a director of UPS. No conflict of interest there. Nope. None at
all. Move along folks. Nothing to see here.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So
why does Trump want to make it more expensive for us to ship Christmas packages
to Grandma? He wants to get back at Jeff Bezos, who is a verifiable billionaire
(as opposed to Trump whose claims to billionaire status have never been
substantiated) and who owns <i>The Washington Post,</i> which is one of Trump’s
many critics. What Trump evidently fails to comprehend is if Amazon’s costs go
up, Amazon will pass these costs along. Or, to paraphrase the late unlamented
Al Capp, what’s bad for General Amazon is bad for the USA.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Robinson
has chapters on how to respond to criticisms of socialism and how to get things
done. He warns that every time “a socialist opens her mouth, the first thing
you’ll hear in reply is ‘Venezuela.’” He points out that Venezuela is a
right-wing bourgeois kleptocracy posing as a socialist government. We don’t
have to go too far in history to see similar misnomers. Nazis claimed to be
national socialists and could not have been more right-wing. The Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics was a totalitarian autocracy. The German Democratic
Republic was neither. He describes himself as a libertarian socialist, which is
never fully defined, but as I mentioned above, he suggests we not be too
concerned about ideologies when implementing solutions. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Fortunately,
that seems to be the approach both parties are taking during this crisis—so
far.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
book has many interesting ideas including a guaranteed income or a universal
basic income and Medicare for All. Given the current crisis, when many jobs are
not coming back (and, frankly many companies are not letting the crisis go to
waste and are using it as an opportunity to eliminate higher paid and older
staff, leaving these former employees high and dry and without health
insurance), how obvious does the need for universal health care and some sort
of income guarantee have to be before Congress does something about it? Just
last week Harvesters handed out 8,000 boxes of food at Kaufman Stadium. This
crisis is too big to hide. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
libraries should be open again soon. I’d suggest you check the book out and
read it with an open mind. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-70645738056278149972019-12-10T07:21:00.001-08:002019-12-10T07:22:41.041-08:00Changing Values, Changing History<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">This is a paper I wrote for my fall 2019 political science class. It's the first paper I ever submitted that got a grade of 100. I think that was generous, but I'll take it!</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">CHANGING VALUES,
CHANGING HISTORY<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">THE EMPTY CARTOUCHE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I was
in Egypt earlier this year and was surprised that it was such a police state
that those of us on the tour were encouraged not to go out on our own. We had
armed guards and a police escort, so I guess those precautions were necessary.
Add to that the fact we were forbidden to discuss American politics with our
fellow travelers, and it was a long trip. After all, how interested can one be
in strangers’ pets, children, and so on? At any rate I had time to do a lot of
thinking while away from the good ol’ US of A.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On
many of our stops at Egypt’s temples we were shown walls of hieroglyphs with
blank cartouches. A cartouche is an oval that encloses a group of hieroglyphs
that typically represents the name and title of a monarch (or pharaoh). If a
monarch fell out of favor, that pharaoh’s name was simply chiseled out of the
cartouche. The monarch’s accomplishments are still shown, but the name of the
one who accomplished those feats is typically lost to history.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A few
of these erasures failed because the pharaohs were so notorious. One was <span style="background: white; color: #545454;">Queen </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Hatshepsut who donned a fake beard and ruled as a king over
the wishes of her son, who got the chisels moving when she died. Another was </span><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">Amenhotep IV who attempted to institute
a monotheistic religion much to the chagrin of the priests of the various old gods
whose livelihoods he threatened.</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It occurred to me similar erasures, revisions, and
mythmaking are constantly going on in the modern world. My first inclination
was to consider the removal of statues venerating Confederates, the move to
remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from a building at Princeton because of Wilson’s
racist actions as a president, and so on a form of erasure. These kinds of
erasures seemed to me to be akin to Stalin’s constant revisions and erasures
(both by execution and then by an early form of Photoshopping), but then it
occurred to me more subtle acts of erasures and revisions are constantly going
on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One example is the insistence that the United States was
created as a Christian nation. Although this is demonstrably false, </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">a movement arose in the
1950s to revise history. Kevin M. Kruse says in his 2015 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America</i>
that under President Dwight Eisenhower the first National Prayer Breakfast took
place in 1954, “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance, and “In God
We Trust” was declared the country’s motto and added to paper currency. There
was even a proposal that the Constitution be amended to declare, “The Nation
devoutly recognizes the authority and law of Jesus Christ, Saviour [sic] and
Ruler of nations through whom are bestowed the blessings of Almighty God.” It
turned out that was pushing the envelope a tad far. Another amendment was
proposed to overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling in <i>Engel v. Vitale </i>(1962)
that voluntary prayer in public schools violated the First Amendment
prohibition of a state establishment of religion. Had it not been for </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Rep. Emmanuel Celler, who helped
derail that amendment in the Judiciary committee, this amendment may well have
come to embarrassing fruition<span style="color: black;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>While
that would be an interesting rabbit hole to go down, I’ve decided on another
one: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, “Redemption,”
and some of their legacies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">THE LOST CAUSE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Almost immediately after the Civil
War ended, a form of amnesia descended on both the North and the South. An
estimated 3.9 million slaves, or more than 10% of the population of the country
at the time, were freed, and both North and South were at a loss as to how to
deal with the former slaves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In their
1942 <i>Economic History of the United States,</i> Ernest L. Bogart and Donald
L. Kemmerer note that when Russia freed 23 million serfs just four years before
the end of our Civil War each was given a parcel of the land they had tilled. Susan
Nieman in her 2019 <i>Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil </i>writes
that in 1865 </span>at a meeting with twenty former slaves in Savannah attended
by General William T. Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the freedmen
requested enough land to support their families and to live away from white
people. As a result, Special Field Order No. 15 was issued granting families
“not more than 40 acres of tillable ground.” It didn’t last. The plan, which
had also proposed that the freedmen be given the Army’s surplus mules, was
parodied as “40 acres and a mule.” The land that had been distributed was taken
back and given to its former owners. Nieman notes that while this land was
being taken back, the government was giving land in the west to those, many of
whom were immigrants, who would settle it under the Homestead Act.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="color: black;">Bogart and
Kemmerer quote Frederick Douglass as saying, “[Emancipation] left freedmen in a
bad condition. It made him free and henceforth he must make his own way in the
world. Yet he had none of the conditions of self-preservation or self-protection.
He was free from the individual master, but the slave of society. He had
neither money, property, nor friends. He was free from the old plantation, but
he had nothing but the dusty road under his feet… . He was turned loose, naked,
hungry, and destitute to the open sky.”</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Bogart and Kemmerer point out it
was difficult to introduce the wage system in the south because neither the
planters nor the freedmen were accustomed to money-wages services for which
bare subsistence had formerly been given. They further say blacks after
Emancipation considered any form of labor a kind of badge of slavery and
considered idleness the greatest blessing of liberty. Freedmen left the
plantations in large numbers and moved to towns and worked only when they were
in need of money. Bogart and Kemmerer continue to explain and rationalize the
actions of planters desperately in need of labor. They advanced rations,
withheld payments until crops were in, and even then they may not pay the wages
due. “In other cases they tried to restore a kind of servitude by means of
apprenticeship, vagrancy, and poor laws under which wandering Negroes could be
arrested and sentenced to hard labor on a neighboring plantation.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Strangely, this practice was made
possible by the very amendment that freed the slaves, which states: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“Neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been
duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to
their jurisdiction.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Slavery was outlawed, but if
someone could be convicted of a crime, that person could effectively become a
slave.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Neiman writes that convict labor
was not just for plantations. Southern businesses took advantage of convict
labor to depress wages for free workers, break early strikes, and suppress the
drive for unionization in the South. A fictional example of convict labor being
used off the plantation is Scarlett O’Hara’s leasing convicts to work in her
lumber mill in <i>Gone with the Wind </i>(1939)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">According to Eric Foner in his 1988
<i>Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877</i>, Chinese
laborers were being imported to work on the transcontinental railroad. Some
plantation owners considered importing Chinese laborers to do the field work
slaves used to do and drive down wages for the former slaves. According to
Elizabeth Wien in an August 25, 2019 <i>New York Times </i>book review, some
planters actually followed through on this until 1882 when Congress passed the
Chinese Exclusion Act. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Bogart and Kemmerer were writing in
1942 as economists and offer no moral judgements, but we can see that the
south, once dependent on a slave economy, refused to give up its dependence on
a low (or no) wage economy. Ira Katznelson writes in his 2005 <i>When
Affirmative Action Was White: The Untold Story of Racial Inequality in
Twentieth Century America</i> that this principle continued into the New Deal
era. I think it could be argued that to some extent it still continues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the
Constitution were passed between 1865 and 1870, giving black Americans suffrage
and equal protection under the law. Former male slaves could now vote, own
property, receive an education, legally marry, sign contracts, file lawsuits,
and hold political office. By 1868, 700,000 blacks were registered as voters,
fourteen held seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, and many held office
in state legislatures. Blacks formed their own churches, schools, and
organizations. With the help of the Freedman’s bureau, some 200,000 learned to
read. Reconstruction was begun to enforce these amendments and bring the South
back into the union. Under Reconstruction the first Ku Klux Klan was suppressed
in 1871. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">In a July 28, 2018 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New
York Times</i> editorial, Brent Staples says women’s rights advocates were so
focused on women’s right to vote that many opposed the Fifteenth Amendment on
the grounds that passage of the amendment “would only mean degradation for
women at the hands of Negro men.” After the Fifteenth Amendment passed, racism
intensified within the movement, and black suffrage groups were discouraged
from seeking affiliation with white suffrage groups because that might anger
people in the South. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">As with any long war, the country suffered from fatigue.
Once the war ended, even the victors wanted to move on. As early as 1866 an
editor of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chicago Tribune</i> is
quoted by Phillip Leigh in his 2017 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Southern
Reconstruction</i> as having written the following to Illinois Senator Lyman
Trumbull:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“You all in Washington must remember that the excitement of
the great contest is dying out, and that commercial and industrial enterprises
and pursuits are engaging a large share of public attention…people are more
mindful of themselves than of any philanthropic scheme that looks to making
Sambo a voter, juror and office holder.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As the country’s attention turned to
westward expansion, scandals in the Grant administration, and especially the
economic crisis of 1873, its already limited appetite for reform waned. As part
of the compromise to settle the contested election of 1876, Republicans agreed
to end Reconstruction. Rutherford B. Hayes removed the last troops from the
South in 1877. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">After Reconstruction ended, the South implemented Jim Crow
laws, suppressed voting rights, and many former slaves became sharecroppers,
which gave the former slaves all the disadvantages of slavery without the
upside of being fed and clothed by their former masters. Further, many still
had no education and were at a disadvantage when it came time to calculate
their share of earnings and powerless to do anything about it when they were
cheated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">After Reconstruction, Northerners generally forgot about
the former slaves and hoped the problem would go away. It was easy in the
public mind to look back on the antebellum world as a time when things were
simpler, chivalry ruled in the South, and so on. The country was ready for what
became known as the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The myth began very shortly after
the war ended. Caroline E. Janney, a professor of history at the University of
Virginia, writing in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Virginia
Encyclopedia,</i> traces the term to </span>Edward A. Pollard, an editor of the
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Richmond Examiner, </i>who published <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of
the War of the Confederates</i> in 1866. Other southern writers followed. The
myth included six tenets, according to Ms. Janney. These are:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->Secession,
not slavery, caused the war.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->African
Americans were “faithful slaves,” loyal to their masters and the Confederate
cause and unprepared for the responsibilities of freedom.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->The
Confederacy was defeated militarily only because of the Union’s overwhelming
advantages in men and resources.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->Confederate
soldiers were heroic and saintly.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->The
most heroic and saintly of all Confederates was Robert E. Lee.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->Southern
women were loyal to the Confederate cause and sanctified by the sacrifice of
their loved ones.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To those
tenets should be added that the martyred Abraham Lincoln was a saintly man of
the people, and, had he lived, he would never have imposed a harsh
Reconstruction on the defeated South.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 1907, Columbia University
Professor William A. Dunning, who headed a historiographical school of thought
on Reconstruction that came to bear his name, published <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865-1877.</i> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Foner describes the Dunning School
at Columbia (where Foner taught until his 2018 retirement) as a group of young southern
scholars who gathered at Columbia to study the Reconstruction era under the
scholarship of Dunning and John W. Burgess. Blacks, their mentors taught, were
children incapable of appreciating freedom and granting them suffrage was “a
monstrous thing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i>The Dunning School: Historians,
Race, and the Meaning of Reconstruction</i>, edited by John David Smith and J.
Vincent Lowery (2013) (with a forward by Foner) is a nuanced and in my opinion
a much-needed study of the Dunning School and helped me understand a little
better where Dunning and his students were coming from. This is certainly not
to exonerate them, but to put them in context. Smith writes in the introduction
that most writers of the period 1875-1910 were influenced by notions of
laissez-faire capitalism and Anglo-Saxonism and commonly condemned
Reconstruction as an evil. He quotes Vernon L. Wharton (1907-1964) as saying
that the school “merely gave elaborate and expert documentation to a story
already generally accepted.” Dunning and his students, according to Smith,
documented and propagated the “tragic” Reconstruction rather than creating it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Dunning studied under John W.
Burgess, whom Stephen W. McKinley calls the “Godfather” of the Dunning School.
Burgess (1844-1931) was born in Tennessee to a Unionist slaveholder originally
from Rhode Island. He joined the Union Army in 1862. He left the South in 1862
and moved to Amherst, Mass., where he had friends. He was introduced to
Hegelianism at Amherst College and encountered Tacitus’ <i>Germania,</i> which
led to his “subsequent worship of all things German,” to create and justify
national hierarchies. Tacitus would also inspire Hitler, which I’m only throwing
in as a historical note, not an <i>ad hominem</i> attack on Burgess. Burgess
moved to Columbia in 1876 where Dunning studied under him. As Shepherd W.
McKinley says, the two worked closely for more than thirty years, their
relationship evolving from teacher-student to older mentor-younger colleague to
equals and competitors and finally to fading elder-rising star. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Smith cautions that the Dunning
school was not a monolith and that students expressed a variety of ideas. James
Wilford Garner (1871-1938), for example, bluntly stated that the real cause of
the civil war was the perpetuation and extension of slavery. On the other hand,
Walter Lynwood Fleming (1874-1932), whom Dunning termed not “any too much
reconstructed himself,” wrote an 800-page book on Reconstruction in Alabama in
which, among other things, he celebrated the accomplishments of the Klan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>John Grégoire de Roulhac Hamilton (1878-1961)
was a scion of a very wealthy family that remained wealthy, although less so,
after the Civil War. He was also quite racist and gained the nickname “Ransack”
for his habit of traveling the south at his own expense and convincing people
to give him their Civil War primary sources which he used to build the Southern
Historical Society (SHS). Although he remained a racist and expressed disdain
for the intellectual powers of black scholars, he personally saw to it John
Hope Franklin was given access to the SHS archives in defiance of state Jim
Crow laws in effect at the time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Paul Leland Haworth (1876-1936) was
an Indiana Quaker who became something of an outcast among the Dunningites. J.
Vincent Lowery says he is rarely mentioned in connection with the group even
though he completed his dissertation under Dunning in 1906. Haworth had a more
favorable view of Reconstruction and blamed southern whites, not blacks, for
the “Negro problem.” He wrote <i>The Hayes-Tilden Disputed Presidential
Election of 1876</i> (1906) in which he considered that the outcome was
probably the correct one inasmuch as in disputed South Carolina voters were
suppressed and “in an absolutely free and fair election the state would have
gone Republican by from five to fifteen thousand.” His book was generally
ignored, receiving only one disparaging review in the American Historical
Review and a scathing write-up by Henry Watterson of the <i>Louisville
Courier-Journal</i> questioning Hayworth’s objectivity. Watterson had
participated in the Wormley Conference (which settled the election) as an
ardent Tilden supporter, so his own objectivity is certainly open to question. Haworth
taught for a year at Bryn Mawr, became a member of the Progressive party, and
ran unsuccessfully for a state office in 1912. In 1915 he published <i>America
in Ferment</i> offering a Progressive diagnosis of the times. While
sympathizing with the plight of blacks and continuing to attack Jim Crow laws
and the failure of Southerners to uphold the “separate but equal standard,” Haworth
retained the Anglo-Saxon centrist view of the world and advocated immigration
restrictions to prevent “race suicide.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Fred Arthur Bailey’s chapter on
Charles W. Ramsdell (1877-1942) is mostly interesting for its discussion of the
textbook battles in Texas. (Which continue to this day, as I’ll discuss later
and as Eric Foner discusses in a 2010 essay reprinted in <i>Battles for Freedom</i>;
the Texas texts are still whitewashing history in several senses of the word.) Ramsdell
was from the Texas Hill Country near Austin and after Columbia wound up at the
University of Texas, which was notoriously frugal with salaries. Ramsdell
needed to augment his income, so he coauthored a history to compete in the
lucrative Texas textbook market. The book was eventually approved. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>By the 1890s southern aristocrats
had crippled Reconstruction but faced a challenge from a threatening alliance
of small farmers, both white and black, who were discontented with the southern
oligarchy. Southern aristocrats responded by linking class stratification and
white supremacy, emphasizing fears of black domination. Populists were defeated
in the elections of 1896, and legislatures quickly passed laws to avoid a
recurrence. As Rogers and Hammerstein would later term it, southerners had “to
be carefully taught.” Southern legislatures passed uniform textbook laws with
Texas leading the way in 1897. One Texas leader in 1915 declared, “Strict
censorship is the thing that will bring the honest truth.” When a professor at
Roanoke College in Virginia was found to be using Henry William Elson’s 1904 <i>History
of the United States of America,</i> the professor resigned and the book was
purged from universities throughout the south. Bailey writes offending passages
were said to portray sexual indiscretions of masters with their female slaves,
termed the conflict a slaveholders’ war, and praised Lincoln.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I have a 1912 reprint of Elson’s
book. (You never know when these things will come in handy.) I was only able to
find the following about sexual indiscretions:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“One feature of [slavery] that
brought it general condemnation was the miscegenation of the two races. The
northern Abolitionists doubtless had an exaggerated notion of the prevalence of
this evil, nor did they take into account of the fact it was not wholly due to
slavery. It is a racial evil not confined to America nor to modern times. By
the better class of slaveholders it was never considered respectable.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I suspect the real reason for the
objection to this text is Elson’s insistence, repeatedly and in no uncertain
terms, that slavery caused the war. Among his arguments:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Some say the war arose from the
different interpretations of the Constitution on the question of state
sovereignty, miscalled states rights. But what caused this difference of
interpretation? Slavery… . Others say secession caused the war. Very true; but
what caused secession? Slavery.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Elson was simply not buying the
“Lost Cause” myth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>William Watson Davis (1884-1960) was
born in Florida in comfortable circumstances to a family that had been
slaveholders for generations. Unlike most Dunningites, Davis stated unequivocally
slavery was the cause of the Civil War going so far as to say, “The stupidest
man realized the essential point in the great social issue of the war.” Davis
did not minimize the violence against blacks during Reconstruction, but he also
did not condemn it. Somewhat ironically in 1910 this member of the Dunning
School wound up at the University of Kansas in that former bastion of
abolitionism, Lawrence, where he taught until he retired in 1954.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>William Harris Bragg’s chapter on C.
Mildred Thompson (1881-1975) is possibly the most interesting not only because
Thompson was anomalous but because Bragg discusses the Dunning School’s fall
from grace as well as a possible revision to the revisionism. Thompson was a
native of Atlanta who went to Vassar in 1899 and then studied at Columbia
beginning in 1906 at a time when Columbia was not fully coeducational. When
Thompson earned her PhD, she was one of only 543 to hold that degree, and only
10% of those were women. While doing graduate work at Columbia, Thompson was
teaching at Vassar, where she supported integration and where she would remain
until 1948. She became close friends with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and
supported the New Deal. In her 1915 <i>Reconstruction in Georgia</i> Thompson
wrote that Reconstruction brought Georgia a wider democratization of society
and that the “greatest constructive achievement of the Civil War was the
establishment of the negro [sic] in freedom” although the Republicans had
“failed to establish him in permanent equality… either in political rights or
social privileges.” She wrote favorably of some of the black politicians of the
Reconstruction era. She questioned granting black suffrage as having “extended
and intensified the racial antagonism a hundredfold.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Bragg writes that Kenneth Stampp’s
1965 <i>The Era of Reconstruction</i> “probably marked the beginning of the end
of the Dunningites as a respectable school of historiography within the
university.” Stampp conceded the individual Dunningites’ state studies remained
valuable for factual detail, but the conclusions were by and large “anti-Negro
and anti-radical.” With Eric Foner’s 1988 <i>Reconstruction,</i> the academic
repudiation of the Dunningites neared completion. Bragg writes that the 2010 <i>The
Great Task Remaining Before Us: Reconstruction as America’s Continuing Civil
War,</i> a collection of Reconstruction essays edited by Paul A. Cimbala and
Randall M. Miller, neither mentions nor includes any of the work of Dunning or
his students. But there appears to be a revision to the revision. In 2012 Adam
Fairclough, a British historian of the American civil rights movement, wrote a
qualified defense of the Dunning School as well as their assertion that the
“grant of black suffrage” had been a mistake. Bragg, writing in 2013, says, “It
remains to be seen whether Fairclough’s argument represents an interesting
footnote to post-Civil War historiography or the thin edge of a wedge that
might shatter a quarter century of Reconstruction orthodoxy.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In his section in the book on
Dunning, James S. Humphreys says Dunning was busy teaching, mentoring his
graduate students, and was in demand socially both in New York and Washington
and wonders when Dunning found time to write. He notes that Dunning relied on
his students’ works for <i>Reconstruction: Political and Economic</i>, which
allowed him to complete the book quickly and may have made him more partisan
against Radical Reconstruction. (Shepherd W. McKinley quotes Philip R. Muller
as saying the book is “flawed” and that Dunning wrote the book quickly and from
secondary sources and also notes he relied heavily on his students’
dissertations.) Smith writes in the introduction that in 1909 Dunning and W. E.
B. DuBois appeared at a session of the American Historical Association with
Dunning. DuBois took issue with much of the Dunning School’s teachings (while
acknowledging corruption among some black politicians and admitting many
ex-slaves were ignorant and easily deceived), pointing out that former slaves
learned quickly, acted responsibly, and received pitifully little support from
the U. S. government. According to Smith, Dunning spoke of DuBois’ presentation
in high terms. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Unfortunately for Dunning’s
reputation, that rushed project was, and in some circles remains, influential
and will forever be what he is remembered for. Dunning’s portrayal of
Reconstruction would prevail for much of the Twentieth Century. It was the only
view of Reconstruction I was exposed to until I was taking some graduate
courses at Ohio State in the 1970s. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is still a
mark in the floor of the classroom where my jaw dropped when I first learned
another viewpoint existed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Bragg writes that
the last reissue of <i>Reconstruction: Political and Economic</i> was in 1962.
I have a copy of that edition. It contains a cover blurb by Pulitzer Prize
winning historian David Donald saying, “[E]ven though many of its viewpoints
are now controverted by modern historians, it remains the point of departure
for all recent scholarship in the field.” A blurb by another Pulitzer Prize
winner, Allan Nevins, concludes, “[The book] should be read at the beginning of
all study of the period, and reread at the end.” From its first publication in
1907 academia was sold. A few examples of Dunning’s impact on textbooks follow:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">In 1930 Eliot Morrison and Henry
Steele Commager wrote in their widely-used textbook, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Growth of the American Republic,</i> “As for Sambo, whose wrongs moved
abolitionists to tears, there is some reason to believe that he suffered less
than any other class in the South from its peculiar institution.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black;">The Literature of the South, </span></i><span style="color: black;">by
Richard Croom Beatty, et. al., published in 1952 by the textbook publisher,
Scott Foresman Company, describes the post-war years as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“With national politics in the
hands of vindictive and often unscrupulous men, Reconstruction measures were
such as to rub salt into the still sensitive wounds made by the Civil War…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“Corruption in the South was so bad
that the Ku Klux Klan was organized, under such leaders as Nathan Bedford
Forrest, to fight radical Reconstruction policies and to reestablish white
supremacy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“Beginning in 1874, however, a
number of occurrences brought about a healthier national attitude toward the
South. [Radicals] were defeated at the polls; the Supreme Court, following the
election returns, reversed opinions issued a few years earlier and abolished
the legal basis for Reconstruction policies. One of the first acts of the newly
elected Congress was to relinquish control of the Southern racial problems.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>John
D. Hicks, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, writes in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The American Nation: A History of the United
States from 1865 to the Present, Third Edition,</i> a college textbook
published by Houghton Mifflin in 1955, “The reconstruction of the South was
badly done. After the death of Lincoln, the government of the United States
fell into the hands of crass and cruel men who scrupled at nothing in the
achievement of their ends. Andrew Johnson, a Southerner who comprehended the
problems of the South, was first swept out of power, then out of office, and
with General Grant as an ineffective front the Radicals in Congress had their
way.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>With
academia on board, the Dunning message would get to the masses with the help of
a new and effective medium, cinema.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">In 1915 </span><span style="color: black;">D. W.
Griffith produced <i>The </i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Birth of a Nation,</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> a</span> technical
masterpiece describing the events leading to the Civil War, the war itself,
Reconstruction, and how Southerners reacted to Reconstruction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The film is almost as much an
anti-war film as it is historical (or ahistorical, depending on one’s
viewpoint). It was released in February 1915, almost seven months after what
would become World War I began in Europe, and perhaps D. W. Griffith foresaw
that the U. S. would have to decide whether to enter the war and was
registering his opposition to our doing so.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The film
came out fifty years after the Civil War ended, which was well within living
memory at the time. For reference, 1968 is the roughly the same distance from
2019 as 1865 was to 1915, and the events of 1968—the assassinations of Martin
Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy as well as the Chicago Democratic
National Convention to name a few—are still fresh and hotly debated today. So
it was in 1915 with the Civil War and Reconstruction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The film
depicts some of the fears of the time—that blacks’ becoming too powerful would
lead to political chaos, that blacks would disenfranchise whites, and that
white women would not be safe—probably the worst and most politically effective
fear possible, and one that would be used to justify thousands of lynchings for
decades to come.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
response to the indignities heaped upon the South, the hero comes up with the
idea that becomes the Ku Klux Klan and brings back the “good old days”
including disenfranchising blacks at gunpoint.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>D. W. Griffith was born ten years
after the end of the Civil War to a father who had been a Confederate colonel
in that war. According to Dick Lehr in his 2014 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birth of a Nation: How a Legendary Filmmaker and a Crusading Editor
Reignited America’s Civil War,</i> Griffith idolized his father, who died when
Griffith was ten as a result, according to Griffith, of a Civil War wound. Lehr
posits the death was actually the result of too much food and bourbon.
Griffith’s family was plunged into reduced circumstances when it was learned
his father had three mortgages on his property to cover gambling and other
debts. The land was lost, and Griffith’s mother moved to Louisville and
attempted to earn a living running a boarding house. Griffith blamed his
family’s poverty on the loss of his father, and his father’s death on the war.
This was not going to be an objective film. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Griffith makes use of slides
quoting Woodrow Wilson, who was president at the time and who had thus far
“kept us out of war.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The quotes
from Wilson’s 1902 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">History of the
American People</i> demonstrate Wilson also suffered from the national amnesia:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Adventurers
swarmed out of the North as much the enemies of the one race as of the other,
to cozen, beguile, and use the negroes [sic]… . In the villages the negroes
[sic] were the office holders, men who knew none of the uses of authority
except as insolences<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“…The
policy of the Congressional leaders … wrought a veritable overthrow of
Civilization in the South… in their determination to put the White South under
the heel of the Black South.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“They were
roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation until at last there had sprung
into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South to protect
the Southern Country.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
ellipses are Griffith’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Wilson’s
first wife, Ellen, died in August 1914, and the White House was in mourning
when the film came out. Wilson, who felt he could not be seen watching a movie
in public, allowed a special screening of the film at the White House and is
reported to have pronounced it “…like writing history with lightening. My only
regret is that it is all so terribly true.” Some sources claim this quote is
fake news, but it is consistent with Wilson’s actions as president.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Wilson was
born in Virginia in 1856 and grew up in Georgia. In his 2013 biography, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wilson,</i> A. Scott Berg says Wilson’s
formative years during and after the Civil War shaped his views on race and his
presidency. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Wilson’s
views and his actions on race sparked protests at Princeton in 2016, where he
was once president, seeking to remove his name from a building named after him.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>According
to Nieman, <i>The</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Birth of a Nation</span></i> was the highest
grossing film until <i>Gone with the Wind</i> (1939).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black;">The Birth of a Nation</span></i><span style="color: black;"> inspired
William Joseph Simmons, an Atlanta physician and ne’er-do-well, to form a
fraternal group that would, with the help of some experienced public relations
people, Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke, become the resurgent Ku Klux
Klan of the 1920s. This KKK was so influential that, according to Linda
Gordon’s 2017 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Second Coming of the
KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition,</i> it
became a national political force. It had the most members north of the
Mason-Dixon line, especially in Ohio and Indiana, where most of the state
government was under its thumb.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The resurgent Klan, of course, was
opposed to blacks (many Confederate memorials, including the controversial 1924
Charlottesville statue of Robert E. Lee, were erected during the brief reign of
the new Klan), but it was equally opposed to Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">It would be comforting to think the
Klan was comprised of ignorant rural rednecks, but in fact it had a surprising
number of urban members. Gordon cites historian Kenneth T. Jackson’s findings
that 50% of Klan members were urbanites and 32% lived in the country’s larger
cities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Several Klan members were elected
to Congress. One of them was Washington Representative Albert Johnson, who,
with Pennsylvania Senator David Reed, sponsored the Johnson-Reed Act, also
known as the Immigration Act of 1924, which limited immigration by assigning
quotas based on the ethnicity of those already in the US in 1890 and excluded
all Asians including South Asians. Such restrictions were the result of
prejudice against the more recent immigrants, many of whom were from southern
and eastern Europe and many of whom were Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and
Jews. The restrictions were justified by the “scientific racism” espoused by
Columbia- and Yale-educated attorney Madison Grant in his 1916 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Passing of the Great Race</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The National Origins Act, a part of
the Johnson-Reed Act, did not address Mexicans, who were needed as fruit
workers and in manufacturing jobs. According to Allyson Hobbes in her 2014 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing
in American Life,</i> Chinese immigrants used false paperwork to circumvent the
Chinese Exclusion Act and enter the United States as Mexicans at the Mexican
border at least as early as 1907. There’s no reason to believe it stopped in
1907.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">America entered the war that
Griffith opposed. Because of a need to mobilize and gear up for war production,
jobs that were previously held by white males opened up to women and blacks.
During World War I, between 300,000 and 500,000 blacks left the South for
northern urban jobs. Between 750,000 and one million blacks followed in the
1920s. While these black migrants encountered hardship and discrimination in
the North, their lives were greatly improved over those they had lived in the
Jim Crow South.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Housing in the North was from the
start of the Great Migration a major problem for blacks, who were effectively
contained in small overcrowded and poorly maintained areas of the cities they
migrated to. Chicago’s South Side, where an infamous 1919 riot took place, is
one example. According to Richard Rothstein in his 2017 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated
America,</i> in 1897 white property owners in the Woodlawn neighborhood
“declared war” on blacks, driving them out of the area with threats of violence,
unimpeded by public authority. In 1907 the Hyde Park Improvement Protective
Club organized boycotts of merchants who sold to blacks and offered to buy out
the homes of blacks who lived in the area. When such methods did not work,
whites resorted to bombings and other extralegal means which were conducted
against not only blacks who attempted to rent or buy housing in white areas,
but also against realtors who were involved with renting or selling homes
outside the black belt to blacks. From 1917 to 1921 there were 58 fire bombings
of homes in white border areas blacks had moved into with no arrests or
prosecutions despite the deaths of two blacks. Thirty of these 58 bombings took
place in the spring of 1919 just before the summer riot. Over the years blacks
were forced into crowded conditions in an area of declining housing stock.
Whites perceived blacks as a threat to property values in part based on the
dilapidated and overcrowded housing blacks occupied on the south side, which
had become dilapidated and overcrowded because so many blacks were forced into
and contained in a small area and because landlords had little incentive to
maintain property that would rent at high prices regardless of condition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The U.S. Supreme Court in 1917
invalidated a racial zoning ordinance in Louisville, Kentucky. Shortly after
this decision the Chicago Real Estate Board reaffirmed a need to found property
owners’ associations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Because of housing discrimination
black areas became self-contained and to a degree self-sustaining. Ministers,
undertakers, bankers, barbers and in time lawyers and doctors had a ready-made
client base. Some of these areas became quite successful and attracted the envy
of less successful white neighbors. One example of this was the Tulsa, Oklahoma
district of Greenwood, which in 1921 was destroyed by a white mob on the
pretext that a white woman had been molested by a black man. (According to an
article about the riot in the October 5, 2018 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times,</i> the man most likely tripped and accidentally
stepped on the woman’s foot; charges against him were later dropped.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">By the time <i>Gone with the Wind </i>came
along the Lost Cause myth was received wisdom. The North had witnessed more
than twenty years of the Great Migration, and racism was pervasive throughout
the country.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">When the film premiered in December
1939, the country had been in the Great Depression for nearly ten years. The dry
west had been through the Dust Bowl. War had just broken out in Europe. People
longed for a simpler time. The introduction to the film addresses both the Lost
Cause myth and the longing for a simpler time:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“There was a land of Cavaliers and
Cotton Fields called the Old South..<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“Here in this pretty World
Gallantry took its last bow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“Here was the last to be seen of
Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and Slave..<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“Look for it only in books, for it
is no more than a dream remembered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">“A Civilization gone with the
wind.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The film is a four hour long
cinematic masterpiece and remains the highest grossing film ever when adjusted
for inflation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">And once again a high profit paean
to the Lost Cause came on the eve of war and the resulting changes that would impact
the nation for years to come. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">A second Great Migration began
about 1940 as demand for defense workers increased. And once again blacks were
treated as second class citizens. Black defense workers, who were among the 1.2
million southern blacks who joined the Great Migration during the war, were
provided with substandard segregated housing. Rothstein<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>compares “officially and explicitly segregated” public housing
built for defense workers in Richmond, California during World War II. Housing
for blacks was built haphazardly and close to railroad tracks. Housing for
whites was built inland, close to white residential areas, and some was
sturdily constructed and permanent. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">At the end of the war white soldiers
returned home and some took advantage of the GI Bill of Rights, which enabled
them to buy homes with no down payment, which led to a housing boom, and go to
school, but black ex-GIs were more often than not denied these rights.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">According to Rothstein,</span> the
postwar housing boom was largely financed by VA and FHA loans, and in order to
qualify for that financing, subdivisions were not only encouraged, but required
to include covenants restricting the subdivisions to “Caucasians.” In 1959, a
man in Berkley, California bought a house financed by FHA and was not able to
move into the house immediately. He let a black teacher rent the house until he
could move in. As a result he was advised he’d lost his participation in the
FHA insurance program and that he’d never again be able to obtain a
government-backed mortgage, even though this was eleven years after the Supreme
Court had declared such discrimination unlawful in <i>Shelley v. Kraemer.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The GI Bill did not have smooth
sailing through Congress. In order to get the bill passed it needed the support
of Mississippi congressman John Rankin, whom Edward Humes in his 2006 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Over Here: How the G.I. Bill Transformed the
American Dream, </i>describes as a racist and a thug. But he was a powerful
racist and thug. The bill made it through Congress with provisions that allowed
local control of loans. In Rankin’s state of Mississippi, where half the
population was black, in the summer of 1947 three thousand VA loans were made,
of which two went to black veterans.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Other writers have also termed
Rankin a thug. Katznelson quotes Rankin as saying, in opposition to a 1940
anti-lynching bill (ellipses are Katznelson’s):<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Remember that southern Democrats
now have the balance of power in both Houses of Congress. By your conduct you
may make it impossible for us to support many of your important committee
assignments, and other positions to which you aspire… You Democrats, who are
pushing this vicious measure are destroying your usefulness here… The
Republicans would be delighted to see you cut President Roosevelt’s throat
politically, and are therefore voting with you on this vicious measure… They
know if he signs it, it will ruin him in the Southern states; and if he vetoes
it, they can get the benefit of the Negro votes this vicious measure would
inflict in the North.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Rankin and his cohorts had used
their power to restrict Social Security, aid to the indigent, unemployment
benefits, and the Fair Labor Standards Act to whites by not applying these
programs and requirements to agricultural and domestic workers and by insisting
on local control. According to Katznelson, during World War I money provided to
families of soldiers had put money in the pockets of black women and children
who then had the nerve not to take on menial household work or go into the
fields. Rankin was not going to see a repeat of that situation!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Hume also tells the story of Monte
Posey, a black veteran who had been accepted at the University of Illinois. His
VA counselor told him he recommended against his getting funds for his
education and suggested he sign up for a trade. When Posey questioned the
decision, his counselor told him, “Look around. There are no opportunities for
college educated Negroes. You’ll be wasting your time.” Posey persisted, got
his education, and eventually became an investigator for the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: center;">
THE MOVE TO THE SUBURBS<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
their introduction to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New Suburban
History</i> (2006), editors Kevin M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue assert “[i]n
the still developing history of the postwar United States, suburbs belong at
center stage.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That
may be an overstatement, but the postwar suburban boom definitely changed the
living conditions, attitudes, and eventual net worth of millions of almost
exclusively white former renters and homeowners in congested cities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Andrew Weise, associate professor of
history at San Diego State University, takes exception to the “almost
exclusively white” stereotype in his 2004 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Places
of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century,</i>
claiming “historians have done a better job excluding African Americans from
the suburbs than even white suburbanites.” While he makes some good points
about the separate and often better than equal suburbs in the south, especially
in the Atlanta area, and wealthy black enclaves such as the Addisleigh Park
neighborhood of St. Alban’s in New York’s borough of Queens, which was featured
in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ebony</i> as a “suburban Sugar Hill”
and was home to such celebrities as Ella Fitzgerald, Roy Campanella, Billie
Holiday, Jackie Robinson, and Count Basie, he also includes areas such as
Detroit’s Eight Mile-Wyoming and Chagrin Falls Park, just east of Cleveland,
which were areas that included a few nice homes but were largely small plots
with space for crops and even livestock on which people had built their own
homes often with scrap lumber. In 1941 FHA infamously required a developer to erect
a half mile long wall six feet high to separate a new (white) subdivision from
the Eight Mile-Wyoming neighborhood. Even including such areas as these and
some similar areas on Long Island, which originated as homes for servants, and
Pacoima, in the Los Angeles area, which in 1957 offered VA financing to black
buyers, Weise admits African Americans never comprised more than 5% of the U.
S. suburban population before 1960. While a few communities, including Shaker
Heights, Ohio, as described in <i>Created Equal: A Social and Political History
of the United States </i>(2003) by Jacquelin Jones, et al, welcomed black home
buyers, Richard Polenberg describes the number of black suburbanites in the
1950s as “infinitesimal” in his 1980 <i>One Nation Divisible: Class, Race, and
Ethnicity in the United States Since 1938.</i> I’m always open to revisionism,
but I’m going with the consensus on this one. White suburbanites were quite
proficient at exclusion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The dropping of the atomic bomb
ended the war with Japan in August, 1945, much sooner than anyone had thought
possible. Troops were rapidly demobilized, going from 12 million in 1945 to 3
million in 1946 and to between 1.2 and 1.5 million in 1947. As Kenneth T.
Jackson says in his 1985 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crabgrass
Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States,</i> “In truth, the United
States was no better prepared for peace than it had been for war when the
German <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wehrmacht</i> crossed the Polish
frontier in the predawn hours of September 1, 1939.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">According to
Jackson, six million families were doubling up with families or friends by
1947. Another 500,000 were living in Quonset huts or temporary quarters. In
Chicago 250 former trolley cars were sold as homes. In New York City a couple
set up housekeeping for two days in a department store window hoping to
generate enough publicity to find an apartment. In Omaha someone advertised a
“big ice box,” 7 X 17 feet that “could be fixed up to live in.” In North Dakota
surplus grain bins were turned into apartments. Joseph G. Goulden in his 1976 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Best Years: 1945-1950,</i> reports
ex-GIs at Missouri Valley College in Marshall, Missouri asked President Truman
to give them fuselages from surplus B-29, B-24, and B-12 bombers for conversion
into living quarters. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The government acted
by underwriting a vast new construction program responding to a need for five
million new homes. Congress regularly approved billions of dollars’ worth of
additional mortgage insurance for FHA. Even more important was the Servicemen’s
Readjustment Act of 1944, which created a Veterans Administration mortgage
program similar to that of FHA. VA supported the view that 16 million World War
II GIs should return to civilian life with a home of their own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Single family housing starts were
114,000 in 1944, 937,000 in 1946, 1,183,000 in 1948, and 1,692,000 in 1950—an
all-time high. (2017 housing starts were estimated to be 1,219,000.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
story of Levittown, New York is a familiar one. Briefly, from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crabgrass, </i>Jackson relates how the
Levitts, who had built upper middle-class housing before the war, got a
government contract to build 2,350 war workers’ homes in Norfolk, Virginia, and
from that experience learned how to build homes on a production line basis.
After the war, the Levitts assembled 4,000 acres of what had been potato farms
in Hempstead. Eventually these potato farms would yield 17,400 homes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The war had thrown
people together who otherwise might never have gotten to know one another, say,
an ethnic Italian or Greek, or a person of a different religion. Ethnics became
white. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">As I mentioned above, during the 1920s new immigrants had
been subject to the wrath of the resurgent KKK, which was opposed to immigrants
a well as blacks, Catholics, and Jews.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">By the 1940s this
anti-immigrant virulence was still fresh in the minds of those who had borne
the brunt of it, though the Klan of the 1920s had all but disappeared. As a
result of the war, in which these immigrants and especially their offspring
participated, ethnic immigrants merged into society and, with the exception of
Jews in some areas (Leawood, Kansas being an example), were now considered
“white.” They qualified for VA and FHA loans and took part in the migration to
the new subdivisions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>According
to David R. Roediger in his 2005 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Working
Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White</i>, home ownership had
been historically more important to immigrants than to native-born whites.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A WPA study in Chicago in 1939 found 21.7% of
native-born whites owned homes while 41.3% of foreign-born did, including 50%
of Lithuanians and Poles and about 40% of Italians. According to Roediger, new
immigrants did not buy into the American Dream of home ownership—they helped
create it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">When it came to
integrating their neighborhoods racially, the nouveaux whites joined the
opposition. As Thomas J. Sugrue in his 1996 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit</i> says,
no single ethnic group dominated most neighborhood associations. “Officers of
the Greater Detroit Homeowners’ Association, Unit No. 2, in a blue-collar
northwest Detroit neighborhood, included a veritable United Nations of ethnic
names, among them Benzing, Bonaventura, Francisco, Kopicko, Sloan, Clanahan,
Klebba, Beardsley, Twomey, and Barr.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
the 1950s 1.2 million people per year to migrated to the suburbs. By 1960 the
suburban and urban populations were equal at 60 million each. By 1970
suburbanites outnumbered urbanites.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The government was selective about
who and what kind of housing would qualify for FHA and VA financing.</span>
Until 1966 FHA approval for mortgage insurance depended upon the mortgagor's
credit rating, the soundness of the physical property, and the stability of the
neighborhood in which the property was located. (In 1966 the stability of the
neighborhood requirement was removed; Jackson writes, “Ironically, the primary
effect of the change was to make it easier for white families to finance their
escape from areas experiencing racial change.”) Until the middle 1950s FHA
underwriting manuals encouraged developers to put racial restrictions on their
developments to protect the “character” of their properties. Richard Rothstein says
FHA and subsequently VA demanded racial covenants in subdivisions where the
agencies sponsored construction loans. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
Developers used FHA and VA as a shield not to sell to black
buyers. While developers might say they’d like to sell to black buyers, they
could portray the situation as beyond their control. William Levitt is reported
to have said, “<span style="background: white; color: #1b1b1b;">We can solve a
housing problem or we can try to solve a racial problem, but we cannot combine
the two.” </span>Rosalyn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen in their 2000 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened</i>
report Levitt wrote that when a black assistant district attorney moved next to
him in Brooklyn, he feared a diminution in values if “too many” moved in, so he
“picked up and moved out,” leading to his living and building in the suburbs.
He had little interest in solving a racial problem. Further, according to
Rosalind Rosenberg in her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Divided Lives:
American Women in the Twentieth Century </i>(1992), FHA would not approve
mortgage funds for female-headed families.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
The people welcome in the suburbs were pretty much white
couples with young children. Baxandall and Ewen give an example of a couple who
divorced. The wife found her neighbors, especially the husbands, hostile when
she remained in Levittown.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
It should be noted the government’s funding of housing did
not have to go overwhelmingly to the construction of private homes. Baxandall
and Ewen relate that in 1945 Republican Senator Robert Taft (not a
bleeding-heart liberal), Senator Allen Ellender (a southern Democrat), and
Senator Robert Wagner (a Democrat from New York) introduced the Taft Ellender
Wagner Act, which provided for 500,000 public housing units to be built over
the next fourteen years. In 1946 Republicans won both houses of Congress, and
hearings were held on the issue of public housing in 1947. The Joint Committee
Study and Investigation of Housing was presided over by the just-elected
Senator Joseph McCarthy. Honing skills he would put to use later in his career,
Sen. McCarthy used inquisitor and sledge hammer techniques to declare public
housing a breeding ground for communists. He succeeded in stymying public
housing funding.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
According to Thomas Sugrue, in his 1996 <i>The Origins of the
Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, </i>in Detroit blacks
were initially constrained to the area called Black Bottom. Paradise Valley,
the business district of Black Bottom, got<span style="color: black;"> its name
from early participants in the Great Migration who were seeking better
conditions in industrial Detroit than they had endured in the rural south. As
Sugrue writes, “The name was a reflection of the hope of black newcomers to the
city, and an ironic comment on hopes still unmet.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">From the 1920s to the 1950s,
Detroit’s black population went from 41,000 to 300,000, and Black Bottom was
one of the very few areas open to blacks. As the Great Migration continued,
more and more people were shoehorned into Black Bottom’s deteriorating housing
stock, much of which dated to the 1860s and 1870s and was owned by absentee
landlords who, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>had little incentive to
maintain properties that would rent at any price.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">As in Chicago, early efforts to
integrate neighborhoods outside the boundaries of Detroit’s Black Bottom were met
with violence. Even after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shelley,</i>
realtors, lenders, developers, homeowners (including at times middle class
black homeowners), and local governments resisted integration. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The postwar job situation in
Detroit was similarly skewed against blacks. During the war, jobs opened up
because of the shortage of labor. At the national level, the United Auto
Workers (UAW) was on the cutting edge of the civil rights movement. The UAW
funded the NAACP, CORE, and other black organizations. The UAW also sponsored
conferences on civil rights, backed open housing campaigns, and advocated for
integrated housing projects. This was advantageous to the union because when
blacks had been barred from the labor force, they were frequently hired as
strike breakers. Now that they could join the union, the UAW had a better
bargaining position. On the local level, however, it was frequently a different
story.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>The organizational structure
of the UAW permitted discrimination, and UAW leaders were reluctant to
interfere, fearing rebellion from the segregated skilled trades workers among
others, and the auto companies left hiring decisions to often racist local
plant managers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">After the war, with millions of GIs
returning home, demand for black labor decreased, and if a black worker was
fortunate enough to be hired, he (or possibly but not likely she) would be
given, in Sugrue’s words, the meanest and dirtiest jobs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Also, after the war, in an effort
to weaken unions, industry began a program of deindustrialization and
decentralization. Sugrue traces deindustrialization to 1949 when Ford
accelerated plastics production in its Rouge plant. Production was accelerated
from 650 pieces per day to 870. Those who could not keep up were let go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Deindustrialization was especially
rough on black workers in part because of seniority rules. Many black workers
who had been hired during the labor shortage years of World War II did not have
the seniority to keep their jobs when layoffs came. It was also difficult for
workers, especially older workers, to transfer skills that were becoming
obsolete to new jobs. At the same time, younger workers were encountering a
labor market that had no entry jobs for them. Companies decentralized, wooed by
areas with an abundance of cheap land, lower costs, lower non-union labor
rates, and lower taxes. Some of the decentralization was encouraged by the
government as a civil defense measure, and the Interstate Highway System, sold
as a means of evacuating cities in the event of war, enabled decentralization.
Companies began in the 1950s to replace workers with automated technology.
Workers who relied on public transportation were out of luck. Some workers
moved, but few black workers were willing to move to the predominantly white
rural areas, small towns, and especially to the southern towns gaining from
deindustrialization, leaving the city of Detroit hollowed out with a
diminishing tax base as industry left, its population mostly black (currently
it’s more than 80% black), and those who remained dealing with high perpetual
unemployment (which Sugrue terms deproletarianization), and a city with an
infrastructure it could no longer maintain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">While <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shelley v. Kraemer </i>opened housing opportunities to blacks who had
previously been denied access to housing outside limited areas, it also
inspired panic among white homeowners who saw their ability to control the race
of people in their neighborhoods vanish. Realtors, black and white, were able
to translate the eagerness of blacks to escape their old neighborhoods and
whites not to live near blacks into profits. Realtors would either sell to or
pretend to be selling to blacks in formerly all-white neighborhoods. They would
then solicit business from nearby homeowners, many of whom were anxious to sell
before it was “too late.” Often realtors would buy homes themselves at below
market prices and sell them to black buyers at a premium. Often the home was
financed by a land contract (at 25% interest, according to Sherry Lamb Shirmer
in her 2002 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A City Divided, </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">which is about Kansas City</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">),</i> which meant the deed would not be in
the buyers’ names until the house was paid for, and if one payment was missed,
the house and all equity was at risk.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Black homeowners moving to formerly
white areas would then be saddled with high interest loans on overpriced
property. They would take in boarders, maintenance would be deferred, and in
many ways, they’d be in the same circumstances they thought they’d left
behind—in a nicer home, perhaps, but usually in a majority black neighborhood
once again. Possibly worse, such circumstances would provide confirmation bias
to whites who believed integration inevitably led to slums. Sugrue quotes one
Detroit city official as saying “the ghetto crept outward block by block.”
Sugrue says that a block that had been all white would become predominantly
black just a few years after the first black family moved in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I’m going to take a short detour to Chicago for a
couple of paragraphs because that’s where Lorraine Hansberry set her 1959 play,
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">A Raisin in the Sun,</span></i><span style="color: black;"> which was the first play by a black woman to be produced
on Broadway. The film is about the Younger family who eventually leave their kitchenette
apartment with a bathroom shared with other tenants on Chicago’s south side for
suburban Clybourne Park. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">As the family is packing for the
move, they receive a visit from Karl Lindner, who represents the Clybourne Park
Improvement Association to deal with “special community problems” and wants to
buy their house for more than they paid for it in order to avoid “certain
incidents” (such as fires, bricks thrown through windows, etc.). The Youngers
decline his offer and move. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">While we hope things work out well
for the Youngers in their new home, the ending is ambiguous. We’ll come back to
Clybourne Park later. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Lorraine Hansberry was writing from
experience. From Princeton professor Imani Perry’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine
Hansberry</i> (2018), in 1937 Carl Hansberry, Ms. Hansberry’s father, decided
to challenge racial segregation and bought a building in Woodlawn, a
neighborhood with a racial covenant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The family moved in and encountered
the wrath of neighbors and endured the mob scenes that usually resulted from
integration in those days. The Woodlawn Property Owners Association filed a
claim in circuit court to have the Hansberrys evicted, and they were. For three
years Carl Hansberry pursued his claim, and the case wound up in the Supreme
Court, which in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hansberry v. Lee</i>
(1940) found in her father’s favor on very narrow grounds. The real life
Hansberrys and the fictional Youngers were desperate to leave their old
neighborhood behind. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Those who could not afford to
escape Detroit’s Lower East Side or Chicago’s south side no longer had middle
class examples living near them. Blacks on the upper end of the economic scale,
for example, those who moved into the Boston Edison and Arden Park
neighborhoods as well as those who moved to more middle-class enclaves, put their
old lives behind them and took pains to distance themselves from the poorer
blacks they left behind. Blacks were becoming segregated by class.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">As the Kerner Commission would
conclude in 1968, in the postwar years America moved further toward two
societies. Our government heaped benefits on white suburbanites, from low to no
down payment financing insured by the government, to tax deductions for the low
interest paid on mortgages, to building freeways to enable suburbanites to get
from city to ‘burb with relative ease (often displacing without compensation
residents of black neighborhoods, Detroit’s Black Bottom among them, to build
these freeways). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Black urban America, on the other
hand, faced a hollowing out as its middle class, black and white, left and as
industries deindustrialized, automated, and abandoned central cities for
greener pastures (sometimes literally). Our government not only did not
discourage this, it encouraged and enabled it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Since the postwar era the
trajectory of white suburbanites has been generally upward. Rothstein, writing
in 2017, says that the Long Island Levittown Cape model that sold for $7,990 in
1949 now sells for $350,000 without having been remodeled. A quick check on
Google shows the median price in Levittown is now $469,000. West coast price
increases are even more extreme. The $15,000 suburban San Francisco Bay Area home
John McPartland describes in his 1957 <i>No Down Payment</i> would now fetch an
easy $2 million, and I don’t even want to think about how much the $35,000 home
in Hillsborough he describes would cost now. That opportunity to build wealth
was denied to blacks. The trajectory of urban blacks has been the reverse.
Sugrue writes that the poorest third of Detroit’s black population in 1950 and
1960 was even poorer in 1970 and 1980.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">In an article in the February 2019 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reason</i> magazine Rothstein makes the case
that the postwar housing shortage was a missed opportunity. He writes, “Had the
[Public Works Administration] and FHA acted in a lawful manner, some bigoted
white families might have refused to live in public projects or purchase
suburban homes. But the housing shortage was so severe that for any family that
refused, many were waiting to take its place. Had federal agencies performed in
a nondiscriminatory fashion, the landscapes of our metropolitan areas would be
much more diverse than they are now.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Alas,
they didn’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: center;">
THE LOST CAUSE MEETS THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Lost Cause and its legacies of
Jim Crow, housing discrimination, and the other detritus of racism became the
accepted norm for most of society until the Civil Rights era. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>From 1945
through the mid-1960s political leaders, pundits, and some academics imagined
the United States to be a “consensus society.” I don’t buy it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It seems
to me what we call a “consensus society” reflected a population whose view of
itself was a conformity coerced by a fear of appearing different or thinking differently
in an era of a fear of “the other.” If one were to express an opinion or take
action too far outside the mainstream, one ran the risk of being labeled a
communist. Labeling opponents “communists” worked well for such politicians as
Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon. For a good part of the postwar years, those
who disagreed with the mainstream found it best to get along by going along.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
immediate postwar years saw an immense change in American society. Because most
of the veterans helped by the GI Bill were white and male, veterans would
generally only encounter other white veterans in their classrooms, and because government
financing for the new housing developments usually required that they be
restricted to whites, that’s who lived next door. The postwar world, for
whites, was pretty homogenous, making it unlikely one would encounter alternate
viewpoints or get too far out of line. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Many of
those educated under the GI Bill would move into the corporate world where they
would have little if any autonomy. Elaine Tyler May in her 1988 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Homeward Bound,</i> which describes postwar
domestic containment so well, shows that it applied to men as well as their
homebound wives. She writes, “In the face of the highly organized world of work
that stripped men of their autonomy, fatherhood could be a source of meaning
and creativity. Presumably nowhere else was it easier for a man to be his own
boss than in fatherhood.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>While jobs
at the time were somewhat secure (certainly relative to today) and even came with
benefits and a pension (I suspect that term will have to be explained to
history students in the not too distant future), Dad really needed that job, so
he’d be unlikely to step too far out of line at work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
“consensus society” myth was reinforced by television, which kept people at
home and fed them visions of how life was presumably being lived by other white
suburbanites. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leave It to Beaver, Father
Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet,</i> etc. all provided examples of ideal suburban
life (if not the actual lives of those being portrayed, especially by Ozzie and
Harriet). While a few bones were thrown to urban blue-collar workers, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Honeymooners</i> among them, even
Gertrude Berg moved <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Goldbergs</i>
from the Bronx to the ‘burbs to reflect the new norm. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In her Epilogue, May says, “When many baby boomers were
still infants, however, domestic containment began to crumble under its own
weight. Gradually in the early 1960s, an increasing number of white
middle-class Americans began to question the private therapeutic approach to
solving social problems.” In discussing The <i>Feminine Mystique,</i> May says,
“It was as if someone was finally willing to say that the emperor had no
clothes; soon a chorus joined in support.” That was true of the whole
“consensus.”<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The seeds were being sown that would make this
“consensus” unenforceable. Public school children of the 1950s and 1960s (I was
one) were born after World War II, the “good war.” Our fathers had either
fought in the war or they (and often our mothers as well) had jobs that
supported the war effort. Those of us who were white grew up in unprecedented
prosperity in segregated subdivisions and suburbs and attended segregated
public schools and churches. My only contact with black people was at that
unintentionally subversive activity—church camp, and, like the National
Brotherhood Week so ably skewered by Tom Lehrer in his 1965 song by the same
name, that was only one week a year. When we were taught history at all (and in
my high school, history was considered so unimportant that most of us were
subjected to television classes in the auditorium with no chance to interact
with the teacher), we were taught a sanitized version that at best ended with
World War II. We were taught our country was always right, and we believed
that. We were taught to respect authority, and we did. We were laughably naïve.
We were set up for disillusionment, and when we discovered some of what we had
been taught was either incomplete or false, we questioned everything. Elizabeth
Warren and I were in the same graduating class, and I would say she is a prime
example of someone who discovered that “consensus” was built on a foundation of
bullshit and that the emperor indeed had no clothes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The first chink in the consensus armor for me came when I
learned (in college) about the Japanese internment camps. While that was the
first scale to drop from my eyes, others were casting off their scales as well.
Blacks as well as many white liberals began questioning why all the government
benefits should be going to those who increasingly did not need them while
southern blacks did not even have protection from lynching, let alone the right
to vote. Betty Friedan, according Rosenberg<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">,</i>
in 1943 gave up a graduate fellowship for a romance that did not last, married,
lost a job because of a pregnancy, and moved to the suburbs where she wrote <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Feminine Mystique</i> in 1963, giving
voice to wives’ frustrations with their contained lives. Gays began asking why
what they did in the privacy of their own bedrooms should be anyone’s business.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The problem with teaching a whitewashed version of
anything, and especially history, is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;">if one lie is discovered,
everything is suspect. As the country, full of students who had been taught all
our wars were good and our country right or wrong, sank slowly and surely into
the quagmire that would become the war in Vietnam, all pretense of consensus
vanished. In that era of civil rights awareness and disillusionment with
government, the Lost Cause and Reconstruction as evil were easy targets. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Kenneth M. Stampp’s <i>The Era of Reconstruction,
1865-1877 </i>began to be taught in college classrooms in 1965. </span>The book
could be read as the anti-Dunning<span style="color: black;">. While admitting
“few revisionists would claim the Dunning interpretation is pure fabrication,”
Stampp</span> takes on just about every accusation against Reconstruction
Dunning threw at it in his 1907 <i>Reconstruction Political and Economic:
1865-1877 </i>and turns them around. Corruption? Stampp points out there were
singularly corrupt Republican machines in control of Massachusetts, New York,
and Pennsylvania. Further, the thefts of the Democratic Tammany machine in New
York surpassed the total of all the thefts in the southern states combined.
Additionally, Stampp says many of the Reconstruction state governments were
well run and that much of the writing about excessive spending was considerably
overstated. He says Republicans ran into race prejudice problems in the North
as well as the South. Interestingly, he also says race prejudice was more of an
issue with poorer whites than with upper class whites, who of course believed
in white supremacy but didn’t make keeping blacks subordinate “the central
purpose of their lives,” and “their secure social positions made them less
reluctant to grant Negroes equal civil and political rights.” Stampp’s
description of Andrew Johnson’s public tirades sound like Trump without
Twitter.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also refutes the alleged venality of those
in Congress who supported Reconstruction. He points out many of those,
especially Thaddeus Stevens, came of age in the 1830s and 1840s, an era of
reform movements. They believed in the doctrine of natural rights and in the
equality of all men. It would be naïve to say they were not swayed by political
motives or inclined to support business interests in the North (they were
Republicans, after all), but Stampp rejects the stereotype of the evil radical
intending to keep a heel on the neck of the south.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>While
Stampp gets the credit for bringing revisionism of the Reconstruction era into
the classroom, John Hope Franklin wrote <i>Reconstruction: After the Civil War </i>in
1961, which makes some of the same—in fact, some of the identical points Stampp
made four years later. I found Franklin’s book more readable, and he places a
great deal of emphasis on economic events that contributed to the end of
Reconstruction. Franklin points out that much of the debt Reconstruction
governments supposedly saddled the south with was for necessary infrastructure
repair and guaranteeing railroad bonds. Stampp mentions Franklin’s book in his
bibliographic note section but does not attribute any of his research to
Franklin.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One
factor in Reconstruction’s ending was northern businessmen began to suffer what
we would call civil rights fatigue. They simply tired of hearing about problems
in the south as other issues, especially the depression that began in 1873,
began to take precedence. Stampp, writing in 1965, concludes by saying that
while state-imposed discrimination was an evasion of the supreme law of the
land, the odds were in the long run in favor of blacks.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mark
Kurlansky in his 2003 <i>1968: The Year That Rocked the World </i>says the
country suffered another bout of civil rights fatigue in 1968. The was followed
by the Nixon and Reagan years. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>More
than fifty years after Stampp’s book came out, while things have gotten better,
one has to wonder how long a run Stampp had in mind.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
THE RETURN TO THE
CITY<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="color: black;">When we last discussed the Youngers, they were on their way
to their new home in Clybourne Park. So what happened with them? As I mentioned
above, Sugrue wrote most blocks in changing neighborhoods went from being all
white to predominantly black in three or four years, and that brings us to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Clybourne
Park</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">,</span> Bruce Norris’
Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning 2011 play, which I saw at the Unicorn in
2013.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Act One is set in 1959 and tells
the <i>Raisin in the Sun </i>story from the perspective of the neighborhood. In
Act Two we find ourselves in the same house in 2009. It’s run down from fifty
years of neglect and hard use, but the area has turned around. It’s now
desirable because it is close to downtown, and a lot of gentrification is
happening. We meet Lindsay (and her husband, Steve, who is superfluous to this
paper and evidently to Lindsay as well), who live in a distant suburb and who
have bought 406 Clybourne Street intending to fix it up, but there is so much
wrong with the house they decided to have it torn down and build a bigger house
for which an architect has already drawn up plans and construction on a koi
pond (!) is underway. This has resulted in their neighbors’ petitioning the
landmarks commission to make sure the new house fits in with the neighborhood,
which has been designated as historical.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">As it turns out, Lena, the representative
of the neighborhood, is the great niece of the woman who bought this very house
in 1959, and (irony alert!) Lindsay is the daughter of Karl Lindner, the
neighborhood representative who tried so hard to keep the Youngers from buying
the house fifty years ago. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">One of the neighborhood
representatives reads from the City Council’s designation of Clybourne Park as
a collection of low-rise single-family homes intended to house a community of
working-class families. There is concern that the size, and especially the
height, of the new home will not fit in with the community. Lindsay points out
that communities change. Lena asks about the motivation behind the “long range
initiative to change the face of this neighborhood.” Lindsay considers the
change to be positive; Lena says there are certain economic interests that are
being served by the changes and others that are not. Lena says, “It happens one
house at a time.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The play brings the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Raisin</i> story full circle. Karl Lindner
did his best to keep the Youngers from moving to Clybourne Park because “a
homeowner has a right to have the neighborhood he lives in a certain kind of
way and live around people who share a common background.” Fifty years later,
Lindsay, Karl Lindner’s daughter, comes up against the great niece of Lena
Younger, who would prefer that she not move to Clybourne Park because “a
homeowner has a right to have the neighborhood he lives in a certain kind of
way and live around people who share a common background.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">After the Youngers moved to
Clybourne Park in 1959, the neighborhood, as Sugrue would have predicted,
became predominantly black in a few years “one house at a time.” Now long-time
residents are concerned that the neighborhood will become gentrified and
occupied by wealthy whites, making the neighborhood too expensive for the
current residents “one house at a time.” Lindsay believes she is improving the
neighborhood. Lena disagrees.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The March 2019 issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reason</i> reports that in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood (which
during the era of white flight became Puerto Rican, followed by hippies and
Yippies and then by gays and is now being gentrified), a couple with a disabled
daughter who uses a wheelchair wanted to add a garage with a ramp and elevator
to their home. Some neighbors opposed the addition, saying it’s not in keeping
with the historic nature of the neighborhood. The president of the neighborhood
association wrote that he understood the situation, and he doesn’t mean to be
heartless or uncaring, but “this is not the neighborhood for that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Cornelius Swart’s 2017 documentary, <i>Priced Out,</i>
available on Kanopy, is an interesting take on the impact of gentrification on
the Albina section of Portland, Oregon, where long time black residents are
being forced to leave their homes by those who are intent on “reviving” the
area, which drives up home prices, property taxes, and rent beyond their
ability to pay. They’re being driven to distant suburbs, which are now more
affordable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This seems to be a nationwide phenomenon. Certain areas
of Kansas City are seeing old homes torn down to make way for newer and larger
homes (often shoehorned onto small lots) and existing homes undergoing
expensive renovations. The results are higher home values in those areas and
higher property taxes that many, especially those in what were low-income
neighborhoods, cannot pay. Sad to say, those gentrifying the neighborhoods
don’t seem to care. In fact, some want to be rid of their poorer neighbors. In
response to a concern expressed on a local blog about tenants displaced by
gentrification downtown, one person wrote, “</span><span style="background: white; color: #202020;">Who gives a damn. I work hard for my money, and I can afford
to live [downtown]. I am not going to apologize for yearsnofnhard [sic] work,
smart life choices and good decisions. I choose to live downtown because I can.
People who work hard and make good life divisions [sic] shouldn’t be forced to now
live with those that can’t keep their shit together.” Jeremy LeFaver, a former
Missouri State Representative, when asked on “Ruckus,” a local news and talk
show on Channel 19, what people who can no longer pay their property tax bills
should do, responded compassionately, “What happens to anybody who can’t afford
things? They take out a loan, they move… .” Let them eat cake! Taxing entities
certainly aren’t going to stem the tide of gentrification, since higher home
values add to their revenue.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: #202020;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Poor people who were once denied
access to the suburbs are now being kicked out of the neighborhoods they once
couldn’t leave. </span><span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: black;">WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In January 1989, the late John Conyers introduced HR 40
Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act</span><span style="color: #363135;">. The number “40” references the short-lived “forty acres
and a mule” proposed as reparations in 1865. The bill has been reintroduced
every year since. This year in refusing to consider the bill, Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell said, </span><span style="color: #262626;">"I don't
think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us
currently living are responsible is a good idea. We've tried to deal with our
original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war and by passing landmark civil rights
legislation. We elected an African American president."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If there’s one point I hope I’ve made in this paper, it’s
that the damage done by slavery and its consequences did not end 150 years ago.
To quote William Faulkner, it’s a past that’s “never dead. It’s not even past.”</span><span style="color: #363135;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: #363135;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 1989 the idea of reparations seemed far-fetched, but
thirty years later, some of the 2020 presidential candidates, Elizabeth Warren
among them, have embraced the idea of at least studying reparations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #363135; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As I was writing this paper the
Princeton Theological Seminary announced it would set aside nearly $28 million
for reparations which will be used </span><span style="background: #fefefe; color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">to make changes to its curriculum, hire more
scholars to study the legacy of slavery, and rename campus spaces in honor of
prominent African-Americans among other initiatives. </span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is in spite of the fact that the seminary did not own
slaves and that its buildings were not constructed with slave labor. The
seminary received financial contributions from southern sources, including
slaveowners and congregations with ties to slavery. For a time, a large portion
of the seminary's endowment was connected to Southern banks that were financing
the expansion of slavery in the Southwest. Several of the seminary's founders
and early leaders used slave labor, despite speaking out against slavery and
many seminary faculty, board members and alumni were involved in the American
Colonization Society, which argued against immediate emancipation and advocated
sending formerly enslaved people back to Africa.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On a (yet
another) personal note, once I would have subscribed to the Mitch McConnell
school on reparations. Thanks to a <i>New York Times </i>book review<i>,</i> I
read Rothstein’s book, and it was like learning about the Japanese internment
camps and that there was a view of Reconstruction other than that of the
Dunning School all over again. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Rothstein
proposes that one solution for blacks’ lack of access to the ability to build
home equity would be for the government to buy homes in postwar developments
like Levittown and sell those homes to blacks for the inflated value of their
postwar prices. In Levittown that would mean blacks could buy homes that sell
for (in 2017) $350,000 for $75,000.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Another remedy
Rothstein proposes would be a ban on zoning ordinances that prevent multifamily
housing or that require all single-family homes in a neighborhood to be built
on large lots with high minimum requirements for square footage. Such changes
would most likely have to occur on a local level; however, in December 2018
Minneapolis ended single family zoning and now allows structures with up to
three dwelling units in every neighborhood. Perhaps other cities will follow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 1978
California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 13 requiring that property
owners be taxed based on the prices they paid, rather than the current value of
their homes. Perhaps those in gentrifying neighborhoods could start an
initiative to enact similar legislation in their areas. (And yes, Howard Jarvis
and Paul Gann were right-wing nuts, but even a stopped clock is right twice a
day.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Katznelson says
we owe it to ourselves not to forget and suggests that </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">for the lag in entering
the Social Security system, the excluded could be identified and they, or their
heirs, could be offered one-time grants that would have to be paid into
designated retirement funds. For the absence of access to the minimum wage, tax
credits to an equivalence of the average loss could be tendered. I would
suggest we name these the John Rankin Memorial Reparations or something similar
to commemorate the fact that taxpayers in the twenty-first century are paying
for his long-ago racist thuggery. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’m sure that once Congress agrees
to look at the case for reparations, other options will appear, and I’m equally
sure any proposal will be met by gasps followed by, “But how will we pay for
this?” The correct response is: How do we pay for anything? And why does this
question never come up when we’re taking some military action? The invasions of
Iraq and Afghanistan come immediately to mind.</span><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #363135;">THE
EMPTY CARTOUCHE REVISITED<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background: #FEFEFE; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #363135;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Last fall I wrote a paper in Dr. Merrill’s American
History 1914-1945 class that had an off-hand reference to the protests at Princeton
demanding the removal of Woodrow Wilson’s name from a building. I added,
“Whether it is reasonable to impose Twenty-First Century views on a president
who was a product of the Nineteenth Century is a topic for another paper.” He
struck through “paper” and wrote “book.” Maybe some other day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When I began this paper, I didn’t know where I’d wind up
regarding the removal of statues, memorials, etc. that have become offensive. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There are those who argue in favor of their removal. Susan
Nieman, whom I mentioned above, is a Jewish American who is a long-time
resident of Berlin and writes that Germany’s efforts to atone for the Nazi era
include the removal of all symbols of Nazism. She notes that American Nazis
took part in the Charlottesville protest against removing a statue of Robert E.
Lee, which is essentially her case for removal, although she generously
concedes that “not all of those who oppose removal are Nazis.” How’s that for a
backhanded <i>ad hominem</i> attack?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Basically, the rationale for removal of what are today considered
offensive monuments to a racist era seems to boil down to the fact that they
are by today’s standards offensive, and people might be offended. Gosh. Do we
have the right not to be offended?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Fortunately, there are other options. I was on a much too
short visit to Almaty, Kazakhstan a couple of years ago. A statue of Lenin,
which had once occupied a prominent central city location, had been moved to a
secluded location in a city park. Perhaps we could learn from the Kazakhs
instead of the Germans. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Eric Foner, in a 1999 review of James W. Loewen’s <i>Lies
Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong,</i> reprinted in <i>Battles
for Freedom: the Use and Abuse of American History</i> (2017)<i>,</i>
concludes, “The point is not that every monument to a slaveholder ought to be
dismantled but that existing historical sites must be revised to convey a more
complex and honest view of our past, and that statues of black Civil War
soldiers, slave rebels, civil rights activists and the like should share space
with Confederate generals and Klansmen, all of them part of America’s history. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Foner is the son of Jewish parents and a red diaper baby,
so there’s at least one non-Nazi who disagrees with Nieman. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Foner, in an interview the day
after Trump’s nomination in 2016 with Richard Kreitner, <i>The Nation’s</i>
assistant editor, advocates what he calls a “usable past,” which he says does
not mean propaganda. He says a distorted past is not useful and gives the
example of the history he was taught in high school—America “was created
perfect and has just been getting better ever since.” Kreitner notes that this
is what the Cheneys advocate as usable. Foner responds that it really wasn’t
because when the 1960s came along it was impossible to reconcile the history
we’d been taught with the problems that suddenly became apparent. The past we’d
been taught was “a past without black people, without Native Americans.” He
says a more accurate and more honest past has been created by several
generations of historians and that for those who want social change knowing how
social change took place in the past is a very valuable thing. A usable past is
a historical consciousness that can enable us to address the problems of today
in an intelligent manner.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Rothstein writes that textbooks
continue to ignore segregation as much as possible. The 2012 edition of <i>The
Americans: Reconstruction to the 21<sup>st</sup> Century,</i> for example, is a
thousand-page volume published by Holt McDougal, which devotes this one
sentence to residential segregation in the North: “African Americans found
themselves forced into segregated neighborhoods.” Rothstein points out this
passive sentence gives no clue as to who did the forcing or how it was carried
out. But getting a better history of segregation will be a challenge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I recently watched Scott
Thurman’s 2012 documentary, <i>The Revisionaries </i>(available on Kanopy) about
the battle to control what’s in textbooks by the Texas Board of Education. The
main battle covered is that of creationism versus evolution, which science won
(for now), but it also discusses the social sciences battle in which demands were
made that publishers insert such gems as the contributions of Phyllis Schlafly,
the Moral Majority, the Heritage Foundation, and the NRA to the conservative
“revolution” of the 1980s and delete Thomas Jefferson as an influence on the
Declaration of Independence because one of the board, Cynthia Dunbar, an
attorney and a professor at Liberty University, thinks a “secular humanistic
ideology” has clouded interpretations of Jefferson’s work. Dunbar, not
surprisingly, insists discussion of the separation of church and state be
restricted. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another board member wants
President Obama’s middle name (Hussein) inserted wherever he is mentioned in a
textbook. Others wanted the “communist influence” on civil rights emphasized. You
can’t make this stuff up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The Texas State Board of
Education’s influence is nationwide, since the state buys so many textbooks
that publishers recoup the entire cost of producing a textbook from the
purchases of that one state, and they are reluctant to publish more than one
version of a textbook. Little has changed at the Texas Board of Education since
Charles Ramsdell was writing his textbook for a board that believed </span><span style="color: black;">“strict censorship is the thing that will bring the honest
truth.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">But it won’t. It will create the same situation I was in
when I left high school all ready to be disillusioned. George Santayana
famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” If
we censor the past, how can future generations learn from mistakes to which
they are denied access? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">To paraphrase Al Smith, I think the cure for history is
more history. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">In his introduction to <i>The Dunning School,</i> John
David Smith advises students should be taught to heed Arthur M. Schlesinger,
Jr.’s advice that historians “judge men of the past with the same forbearance
and charity which we hope they will apply toward us.” Students should also be
taught to put things in context. Stanford Professor Sam Wineburg advises,
“Judging past actors by present standards wrests them from their own context
and subjects them to ways of thinking that we, not they, have developed.
Presentism, the act of viewing the past through the lens of the present, is a
psychological default state that must be overcome before one achieves mature
historical understanding.” Harold Holzer, a Lincoln scholar, advises viewing
the past “from the vantage of the twenty-first century… encourages our looking
at history from the comparatively enlightened future backward, not from the
past forward. And diagnoses from the ever-widening distances unavoidably
distort history.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Arm
students with this advice and turn them loose. They need to learn how to think,
not what to think.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Put
the chisels away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-6689896114438181172019-11-11T07:11:00.000-08:002019-11-11T07:11:56.018-08:00Civil War and Reconstruction at the Cinema<br />
This is another of the papers I wrote for my U. S. History 1914-1945 class last year. It's long, but I hope you'll find it interesting. For those of you who are fans of <i>Gone with the Wind,</i> I apologize. Sometimes I just can't help myself!<br />
<br />
If you stick around for future papers, you'll get a sense of <i>deja vu,</i> since I'll be using some of the same research again. And possibly again.<br />
<br />
Enjoy!<br />
<b style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></b>
<b style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"> SELLING THE MYTH</b><br />
<b style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></b>
<i style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"> Remember the war against Franco?</i><br />
<i style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"> That’s the kind where each of us belongs</i><br />
<i style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"> Though he may have won all the battles</i><br />
<i style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"> We had all the good songs.</i><br />
<i style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;"> --Tom Lehrer, “The Folk Song Army,” 1965</i><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 2.5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Almost immediately after the Civil War ended a form of
amnesia descended on both the North and the South. An estimated 3.9 million
slaves, or more than 10% of the population of the country at the time, were
freed, and both North and South were at a loss as to how to deal with the
former slaves. <b><i><o:p></o:p></i></b></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The
Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution were
passed between 1865 and 1870, giving black Americans suffrage and equal
protection under the law. Former slaves could now vote, own property, receive
an education, legally marry, sign contracts, file lawsuits, and hold political
office. By 1868, 700,000 blacks were registered as voters, fourteen held seats
in the U.S. House of Representatives, and many held office in state
legislatures. Blacks formed their own churches, schools, and organizations.
With the help of the Freedman’s bureau, some 200,000 learned to read. Reconstruction
was begun to enforce these amendments and bring the South back into the union.
Under Reconstruction the first Ku Klux Klan was suppressed in 1871. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
As
with any long war, the country suffered from fatigue. Once the war ended, even
the victors wanted to move on. As early as 1866 an editor of the <i>Chicago Tribune</i> is quoted by Phillip Leigh
in his 2017 <i>Southern Reconstruction</i>
as having written the following to Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
“You
all in Washington must remember that the excitement of the great contest is
dying out, and that commercial and industrial enterprises and pursuits are
engaging a large share of public attention…people are more mindful of
themselves than of any philanthropic scheme that looks to making Sambo a voter,
juror and office holder.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
As the country’s attention turned to
westward expansion, scandals in the Grant administration, and the economic
crisis of 1873, its already limited appetite for reform waned. As part of the
compromise to settle the contested election of 1876, Republicans agreed to end
Reconstruction. Rutherford B. Hayes removed the last troops from the South in
1877. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
After
Reconstruction ended, the South implemented Jim Crow laws, suppressed voting rights,
and many former slaves became sharecroppers, which gave the former slaves all
the disadvantages of slavery without the upside of being fed and clothed by
their former masters. Further, many still had no education and were at a
disadvantage when it came time to calculate their share of earnings and
powerless to do anything about it when they were cheated.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
After
Reconstruction, Northerners generally forgot about the former slaves and hoped
the problem would go away. It was easy in the public mind to look back on the
antebellum world as a time when things were simpler, chivalry ruled in the
South, and so on. The country was ready for what became known as the myth of
the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The myth began very shortly after the war ended. Caroline
E. Janney, a professor of history at the University of Virginia, writing in the
<i>Virginia Encyclopedia,</i> traces the
term to Edward A. Pollard, an editor of the <i>Richmond Examiner, </i>who published <i>The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates</i>
in 1866. Other southern writers followed. The myth included six tenets,
according to Ms. Janney. These are:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->1.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Secession, not slavery, caused the war.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->2.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->African Americans were “faithful slaves,” loyal to
their masters and the Confederate cause and unprepared for the responsibilities
of freedom.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->3.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->The Confederacy was defeated militarily only because of
the Union’s overwhelming advantages in men and resources.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->4.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Confederate soldiers were heroic and saintly.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->5.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->The most heroic and saintly of all Confederates was
Robert E. Lee.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .75in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->6.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Southern women were loyal to the Confederate cause and
sanctified by the sacrifice of their loved ones.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
To those
tenets should be added that the martyred Abraham Lincoln was a saintly man of
the people, and, had he lived, he would never have imposed a harsh
Reconstruction on the defeated South.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
In 1907, Columbia University
Professor William A. Dunning published <i>Reconstruction,
Political and Economic, 1865-1877.</i> This book portrayed Reconstruction as an
unmitigated evil. That view would prevail for much of the Twentieth Century.
(My copy of the book, a 1962 Harper Torchbook edition found at an estate sale,
contains a blurb by Pulitzer Prize winning historian David Donald saying,
“[E]ven though many of its viewpoints are now controverted by modern
historians, it remains the point of departure for all recent scholarship in the
field.” A blurb by another Pulitzer Prize winner, Allan Nevins, concludes,
“[The book] should be read at the beginning of all study of the period, and
reread at the end.”) Academia was sold. Now to get the message to the masses.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 7.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
The four films addressed in this
paper, <i>Birth of a Nation </i>(1915), <i>Abraham Lincoln</i> (1930), <i>Young Mr. Lincoln </i>(1939), and <i>Gone with the Wind </i>(also 1939) were made
to appeal to their audiences and make money (tickets to see <i>Birth of a Nation </i>cost as much as
$2—about $49 in today’s money—when most movies cost a dime), but they were also
instrumental in imprinting the Lost Cause myth on a public that was more than
willing to let the past be rewritten. Some, especially <i>Birth of a Nation </i>and <i>Gone
with the Wind </i>(and especially Margaret Mitchell’s book, from which the
movie was adapted), are more blatant in their proselytizing, but the two
biographies of Lincoln, especially <i>Abraham
Lincoln,</i> contribute to the mission as well. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><i>Birth of a Nation</i></b>
is D. W. Griffith’s 1915 technical masterpiece describing the events leading to
the Civil War, the war itself, Reconstruction, and how Southerners reacted to
Reconstruction.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The story, based on <i>The
Clansman,</i> a 1905 book by Thomas Dixon Jr., is told from the perspectives of
two families who are friends—the Camerons, a Southern plantation family consisting
of three sons and two daughters living in South Carolina, and the other a Northern
abolitionist politician, Austin Stoneman, living in Pennsylvania with two sons
and one daughter and spending time in Washington. The Southern family loses two
sons in the war—the Northern family loses one—literally in the arms of one of
the Southern family’s dying sons.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
At War’s end, the Camerons are living in poverty, and Austin
Stoneman is sponsoring Silas Lynch, a mulatto, for political office in South
Carolina. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The film is almost as much an anti-war film as it is
historical (or ahistorical, depending on one’s viewpoint). It was released in
February 1915, almost seven months after what would become World War I began in
Europe, and perhaps D. W. Griffith foresaw that the U. S. would have to decide
whether to enter the war and was registering his opposition to our doing so.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
By a scene at an abolitionist meeting in which one woman
reacts to the smell of a black child, the film also briefly shows hypocrisy
among abolitionists who, in Griffith’s world, wanted to free slaves but didn’t
want to be near them. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
The film
came out fifty years after the Civil War ended, which was well within living
memory at the time. For reference, 1968 is the same distance from 2018 as 1865
was to 1915, and the events of 1968—the assassinations of Martin Luther King,
Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy as well as the Chicago Democratic National Convention
to name a few—are still fresh and hotly debated today. So it was in 1915 with
the Civil War and Reconstruction.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
The film
depicts some of the fears of the time—that blacks’ becoming too powerful would
lead to political chaos, that blacks would disenfranchise whites, and that
white women would not be safe.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
A scene in
the South Carolina statehouse portraying black lawmakers as not quite human drives
the first point home; the second point is demonstrated by a scene in which blacks
were allowed to vote while whites were not. Some former Confederate officials
and military officers did lose the right to vote, but nearly all regained that
right after a few years. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
To
emphasize the last point, that white women would not be safe—probably the worst
and most politically effective fear and one that would be used to justify
thousands of lynchings for decades to come, a placard held up at the Southern
Union League reads, “Equal Rights, Equal Politics, Equal Marriage.” Silas Lynch
frequently casts lascivious looks at Elsie, Austin Stoneman’s daughter, and
eventually tells her he wants to marry her. The same happens to Flora Cameron,
who jumps to her death when trapped by Gus, a freed slave who tells her he wants
to marry her. Gus is soon lynched. Austin Stoneman supports Silas Lynch when
Silas tells Stoneman he wants to marry a white woman, but he’s not so
supportive when Silas tells him which white woman he has in mind. Given that
the issue of consent on the part of the women doesn’t seem to be an issue, it’s
tempting to conclude that “marriage” in this film is a euphemism for “rape.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
In
response to the indignities heaped upon the South, Phil Stoneman comes up with
the idea that becomes the Ku Klux Klan and brings back the good old days
including disenfranchising blacks at gunpoint.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
Most if
not all of the black characters in this film appear to have been played by
white actors in blackface. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
The film
emphasizes the saintly Lincoln version of history (in one scene Lincoln
reprieves the remaining Cameron son from a death sentence) and shows just how
well things were going after the Civil War until Lincoln was assassinated. D.
W. Griffith evidently was relying on amnesia when driving this point home,
since there were only six days between the end of the war and Lincoln’s death. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
D. W.
Griffith was born ten years after the end of the Civil War to a father who had
been a Confederate colonel in that war. According to Dick Lehr in his 2014 <i>The Birth of a Nation: How a Legendary
Filmmaker and a Crusading Editor Reignited America’s Civil War,</i> Griffith
idolized his father, who died when Griffith was ten as a result, according to
Griffith, of a Civil War wound. Lehr posits the death was actually the result
of too much food and bourbon. Griffith’s family was plunged into reduced
circumstances when it was learned his father had three mortgages on his
property to cover gambling and other debts. The land was lost, and Griffith’s
mother moved to Louisville and attempted to earn a living running a boarding
house. Griffith blamed his family’s poverty on the loss of his father, and his
father’s death on the war. This was not going to be an objective film. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Griffith makes use of slides quoting Woodrow Wilson, who
was president at the time and who had thus far “kept us out of war.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
The quotes
from Wilson’s 1902 <i>History of the
American People</i> demonstrate Wilson also suffered from the national amnesia:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
“Adventurers
swarmed out of the North as much the enemies of the one race as of the other,
to cozen, beguile, and use the negroes (sic)… . In the villages the negroes were
the office holders, men who knew none of the uses of authority except as
insolences<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
“…The
policy of the Congressional leaders … wrought a veritable overthrow of
Civilization in the South… in their determination to put the White South under
the heel of the Black South.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
“They were
roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation until at last there had sprung
into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South to protect
the Southern Country.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
Wilson’s
first wife, Ellen, died in August 1914, and the White House was in mourning
when the film came out. Wilson, who felt he could not be seen watching a movie
in public, allowed a special screening of the film at the White House and is
reported to have pronounced it “…like writing history with lightening. My only
regret is that it is all so terribly true.” Some sources claim this quote is fake
news, but it is consistent with Wilson’s actions as president.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
Wilson was
born in Virginia in 1856 and grew up in Georgia. In his 2013 biography, <i>Wilson,</i> A. Scott Berg says Wilson’s
formative years during and after the Civil War shaped his views on race and his
presidency. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
Wilson’s
views and his actions on race sparked protests at Princeton in 2016, where he
was once president, seeking to remove his name from a building named after him.
Whether it is reasonable or productive to impose Twenty-First Century views on
a president who was a product of the Nineteenth Century is a topic for another
paper.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i>Birth of a Nation</i> also inspired William Joseph Simmons, an Atlanta
physician, to form a fraternal group that would, with the help of some
experienced public relations people, Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke,
become the resurgent Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. This KKK was so influential
that, according to Linda Gordon’s 2017 <i>The
Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American
Political Tradition,</i> it became a national political force. It had the most
members north of the Mason-Dixon line, especially in Ohio and Indiana, where
most of the state government was under its thumb. Had the Klan not succumbed to
sexual and financial irregularities, it’s difficult to know how far off the
tracks the movement would have taken the country. Ms. Gordon ends the book in
our current time, which is beyond the scope of this paper, but it appears once
again sexual and financial irregularities may serve a purpose.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><i>Abraham Lincoln,</i></b> also
a D. W. Griffith film, is a hagiographic look at the life of our sixteenth
president. It begins on a slave ship in 1809, a year after the Atlantic slave
trade was abolished. Many slaves have died on the ship, but the captain
believes he has enough slaves left in the hold to make a good profit. A dead
slave is unceremoniously dumped overboard. Next we see people in Virginia and
Massachusetts who are willing to fight for their regions and believe only
George Washington could have kept the Union together. We see Lincoln born, and
we next see him in Illinois, where he fights the town toughs, drinks from a
keg, and is accepted by the town. We see the rail splitter, an early adopter of
multi-tasking, studying law while romancing Ann Rutledge, who dies, leaving
Lincoln bereft. We see him again in 1840 meeting Mary Todd, who is portrayed as
a scheming shrew. He misses his first wedding date after looking at a photo of
Ann Rutledge, who had died in 1835, four years before photography was invented.
Mary Todd and Lincoln are married in 1842.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Based on his performance in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates,
the Republican Party solicits Lincoln to run for president. Lincoln’s views on
the Union are well-known. South Carolina secedes, and against the advice of his
cabinet, Lincoln decides to defend Fort Sumter. The Civil War begins, Lincoln
suffers through some battle losses and tells his wife he’s going to run the
war. He chooses Grant as his general. Grant upsets Mary by smoking cigars in
the White House. Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation (the film skips
over the fact it was only a partial emancipation) and tells Grant the North
“must win the war as a duty to the South as well as the North.” Grant is
portrayed as a drunkard, which is a commonly held view of Grant that Rod
Chernow disputes in his 2017 book, <i>Grant</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Robert E. Lee and his army are portrayed sympathetically.
The soldiers are ragged and many are shoeless. Lee is exhausted, but not too exhausted
to overrule an order of execution for a spy. With Lee’s surrender in sight,
Grant and Lincoln discuss what’s to happen after the war. Lincoln makes it
clear he wants no executions and no property confiscated and that “We’re going
to take them back as if they’d never been away,” which was also shown in <i>Birth of a Nation </i>to emphasize that
Lincoln never intended to implement Reconstruction. We see John Wilkes Booth
listing his grievances against Lincoln and plotting the assassination. The film
ends with Lincoln’s death and a long take on the Lincoln Memorial, thus
avoiding any discussion of Reconstruction.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The film was released in August 1930, ten months after the
1929 stock market crash. In those ten months the shock effects of the crash
were rippling through the economy. Banks had used depositors’ money to make bad
loans and speculate in the stock market and had no way to pay their depositors
back. Banks failed, jobs vanished, and consumers not only had no money to buy
new items, they could not make the payments on things they had already bought
on the installment plan. Farms became more productive, but crop prices fell, so
increased productivity actually worked against farmers, who were not breaking
even. The worst was yet to come, but in 1930 things were bad enough. Perhaps D.
W. Griffith was sending a message that people had survived bad times in the
past and would do so again, and perhaps Griffiths’ portrayal of Lincoln taking
charge of the war was a suggestion to Herbert Hoover that he should take action
on the economic crisis.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The film was the first of Griffith’s two talkies and, in
spite of a script by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Stephen Vincent Benet, it
has not aged well. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><i>Young Mr. Lincoln</i></b><i> </i>is John
Ford’s Oscar-winning 1939 film about Abraham Lincoln’s early years, roughly
from 1832 until 1842 (the latter year is determined from the fact the film ends
before Lincoln’s marriage to Mary Todd, who makes an appearance in the movie).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The film begins with Lincoln running for office. He supports
a national bank, internal improvements, and high protective tariffs. He buys a
barrel of used books, some of which are law books. He courts Ann Rutledge, who
dies, and Lincoln allows his fate to be determined by which way a stick falls
at Ann Rutledge’s grave. He moves from New Salem, Illinois to Springfield,
where he sets up a law practice. He presciently plays <i>Dixie,</i> which was written in 1859, on a mouth harp and meets Mary
Todd at an Independence Day parade where a murder takes place. Lincoln singlehandedly
faces down a lynch mob, successfully defends the accused murderers, solves the
case, and rides off into a thunderstorm to the tune of the <i>Battle Hymn of the Republic.</i> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Lincoln is portrayed by Henry Fonda as an overly folksy and
under pretentious everyman. The film, released in June 1939, came at a time when
the country had suffered through nearly a decade of economic uncertainty and
the Dust Bowl. Many farmers had lost or abandoned their land and moved to
places where their prospects may or may not have improved. The film’s audience
may have been able to relate to Lincoln’s telling the poor farm family of the
accused murderers about how his family left its Kentucky home because they
couldn’t compete with slave labor. Many people in the 1930s had also had left
unprofitable land and had moved to what they hoped would be greener pastures
(this writer’s father’s family among them).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
A year after this film came out Henry Fonda played Tom Joad
in <i>The Grapes of Wrath,</i> based on John
Steinbeck’s novel of the same name about a family that left Oklahoma for
California. That film was released in June 1940. On a somewhat humorous note,
Joseph Stalin showed <i>The Grapes of Wrath</i>
in the USSR to demonstrate how America was failing. The message Soviet viewers
took away from the film was that in America even poor people had cars. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
With the passing of time, Lincoln is being reassessed, and
if anything, his reputation is enhanced by this reassessment. Instead of being
perceived as a saint awaiting beatification, Lincoln’s intelligence, cunning,
and pragmatism are being recognized. An excellent example of the modern take on
our sixteenth president is Gore Vidal’s 2000 <i>Lincoln: A Novel,</i> which is technically fiction (as is the murder
case in <i>Young Mr. Lincoln)</i>, but it’s
fact-filled and readable. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<b><i>Gone with the Wind</i></b>
is David O. Selznick’s 1939 masterpiece based on Margaret Mitchell’s 1936
Pulitzer Prize winning book of the same name. The film won ten Academy Awards,
including one for Hattie McDaniel, making her the first African-American to win
an Oscar. The film remains the highest grossing film of all time when adjusted
for inflation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The main focus of the film is Scarlett O’Hara, who pursues
a miserable Ashley Wilkes for twelve years. (Scarlett is sixteen when the film
opens and admits to being twenty-eight at the end of the book.) Scarlett is
pursued and, after Scarlett marries and buries two husbands, is married by
Rhett Butler, who overheard Scarlett profess her love for Ashley at Twelve
Oaks, the Wilkes’ plantation. After Scarlett’s first husband died, Rhett Butler
told her at a fundraising ball early in the war he wants to hear Scarlett say
the words she said to Ashley Wilkes in the overheard conversation. At the end
of the film, Ashley is a widower, and Scarlett realizes she really wants Rhett
who has decided, after Scarlett professes her love for him, that he is leaving
her, after which she asks Rhett, “Where shall I go? What shall I do?” To which
Rhett responds with the famous line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
So, for a short period of time each has what they’d pursued and decided, in the
words of an Irving Berlin song, “after you get what you want, you don’t want
it.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The film is four hours long and is choked with subplots.
Scarlett promises Ashley she’ll look after Ashley’s wife, Melanie, who is
pregnant. As luck would have it, this leaves Scarlett and Prissy, Scarlett’s
slave, alone with Melanie when Melanie goes into labor just as Atlanta is about
to fall. Prissy has stated she is an expert on childbirth but has overstated
her qualifications, for which Scarlett gives her a violent slap. As Scarlett
seeks Dr. Meade, overhead shots of the massive number of dead and wounded in
Atlanta drive home the toll the war has taken. The doctor, of course, cannot
leave these thousands of soldiers to tend to a childbirth, so it’s up to
Scarlett. Prissy finds Rhett, who rustles up a horse and buggy and takes
Scarlett, Melanie, Prissy, and the baby part of the way to Tara. He leaves an
annoyed Scarlett to join the war. Scarlett makes it past a ruined Twelve Oaks
to Tara, which is standing but only because northern troops had used it as a
headquarters. Scarlett finds her mother has died and her father is mentally
unstable. As with the birth, the responsibility for her family and plantation
falls on Scarlett. At this point Scarlett unearths a radish in the garden and
swears that if she has to lie, cheat, or even kill, neither she nor her family
will ever be hungry again. Shortly thereafter a lone Union soldier enters the
house, and Scarlett shoots and buries him. The soldier has some money on him as
well as some jewelry and (in the book) some coffee.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Carpetbaggers invade and raise the taxes on Tara. Scarlett
is determined to keep Tara and to get the money for the taxes, she has a dress
made out of her mother’s drapes (sans rod) and goes to Atlanta, where, after an
unsuccessful encounter with Rhett, she settles for husband number two, Frank
Kennedy, her sister Suellen’s intended, convincing him that Suellen has a new
beau. Frank owns a general store and sells lumber on the side. Scarlett,
observing the construction going on rebuilding Atlanta, realizes lumber is
where the money is and takes over that business, which is a highly unusual
action for a woman, and especially a married woman, to have taken not only in
the Reconstruction era, but also at the time the book was written and the film
was made.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Far be it for me to question the plot of a Pulitzer Prize
winning best-selling book and one of the most successful movies of all time,
but wouldn’t one expect Frank at least to verify whether Suellen actually had a
new beau before marrying Scarlett?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
While conducting business, Scarlett is attacked and nearly
raped by inhabitants of a shantytown. Frank and some other men attend a
“political meeting” that is in reality a Klan meeting set on cleaning out the
shantytown. Rhett saves the day for everyone except Frank, who is killed. Rhett
seizes the opportunity, proposes to Scarlett, and becomes husband number three.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
A daughter is born and Rhett mounts a successful charm
offensive so their daughter will be accepted in society. Scarlett is caught in
a rather innocent scene with Ashley just before his surprise birthday party,
word of the scene goes around town, and Rhett forces Scarlett to attend the
party. Scarlett comes home, wants a drink, and comes downstairs to a waiting
and drinking Rhett who winds up carrying Scarlett up the stairs and raping her.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
In a scene that would cause apoplexy among the #MeToo
movement were it in a film today, Scarlett is in an unusually good mood the
next morning. Alas, Rhett is taking their daughter to London. When he comes
back, Scarlett tells him she is pregnant. Things get nasty, and Scarlett falls
down the stairs. She survives but miscarries. While she is recuperating, their
daughter falls to her death from her pony. Melanie Wilkes is called to talk to
Rhett, who will not allow the funeral to be held. After convincing Rhett to
allow the funeral, Melanie, who is pregnant against her doctor’s advice,
collapses. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The rest of the movie all happens so fast it’s difficult to
reconcile all that’s going on in such a short period of time. Melanie, who has
just collapsed, is dying. Rhett and Scarlett are in her parlor. What’s happened
with their daughter’s funeral? Scarlett, who was just recuperating from her
fall and miscarriage, is now in perfect health. At any rate, Melanie asks
Scarlett to look after Ashley, Rhett leaves the Wilkes’ house, Scarlett decides
she isn’t in love with Ashley, Rhett goes home and packs, Scarlett comes home
and declares her love for Rhett, he leaves, and she decides to go to Tara for
one last rendition of “Tara’s Theme.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
By the time the book came out in 1936, the Lost Cause of
the Confederacy myth was received wisdom. The North had witnessed more than
twenty years of the Great Migration, and racism was pervasive throughout the
country. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
When the film premiered in December 1939, the country had
been in the Great Depression for nearly ten years. The dry west had been
through the Dust Bowl. War had just broken out in Europe. People longed for a
simpler time. The introduction to the film addresses both the Lost Cause myth
and the longing for a simpler time:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
“There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the
Old South..<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
“Here in this pretty World Gallantry took its last bow.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
“Here was the last to be seen of Knights and their Ladies
Fair, of Master and Slave..<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
“Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream
remembered.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
“A Civilization gone with the wind.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The film, like <i>Abraham
Lincoln,</i> dwells on the hardships suffered by the South, including the shoeless
soldiers.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
None of the three movies that deal with the Civil War
address the fact that the war was no picnic for Northern troops, either,
especially for those in prisoner of war camps such as Andersonville. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Like <i>Birth of a
Nation,</i> Margaret Mitchell’s book is skeptical of war. At the barbecue at
Twelve Oaks, early in the book, Grandpa McRae, upon hearing of the pro-war
talk, enters the discussion:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
“You fire-eating young bucks, listen to me. You don’t want
to fight. I fought and I know. Went out in the Seminole War and was a big
enough fool to go to the Mexican War, too. You all don’t know what war is. You
think it’s riding a pretty horse and having the girls throw flowers at you and
coming home a hero. Well, it ain’t. No, sir. It’s going hungry, and getting the
measles and pneumonia from sleeping in the wet. And if it ain’t measles and
pneumonia, it’s your bowels. Yes sir, what war does to a man’s bowels—dysentery
and things like that—" But who wants to hear what old people have to say?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
At a fundraiser for the convalescing soldiers, Rhett’s
support of the Cause is questioned.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
“Do I understand, sir, that you mean the Cause for which
our heroes have died is not sacred?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Rhett responds, “All wars are sacred to those who have to
fight them. If the people who started wars didn’t make them sacred, who would
be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give
to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars,
there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in
reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too
full of bugles and drums and fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes
the rallying cry is ‘Save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!’ Sometimes it’s
‘Down with Popery!” and sometimes ‘Liberty!’ and sometimes ‘Cotton, Slavery and
States Rights!’”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Of course it would be impossible to put the entire
thousand-plus page book in a movie that audiences would sit through (four hours
is probably pushing the limit), but it’s interesting that, unlike the
unabashedly anti-war <i>Birth of a Nation,</i>
the only anti-war sentiments that filtered from the book to the movie are
Rhett’s and Ashley’s cautions at the beginning of the film.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Perhaps Margaret Mitchell’s anti-war sentiments were lost
on the cutting room floor. Perhaps David Selznick was concerned that if, as
happened in World War I, America joined in the war, the film would be perceived
as anti-American and would be censored or banned. Perhaps Selznick, whose
parents were Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, did not want to prevent Americans
from being prepared for an increasingly likely war with a violently antisemitic
Germany, which had invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938 and Poland in 1939. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
In the book Scarlett is a much more complicated character
than she is on film. Each of her first two marriages produced a child, and
Scarlett considers aborting her third pregnancy. While married to Frank
Kennedy, Scarlett does business with the hated Yankees, who are building homes,
have money, and need lumber, which Scarlett sells.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Mitchell calls out Northern hypocrisy when one of
Scarlett’s customers, a woman from Maine, asks Scarlett where she could find a replacement
for an Irish nurse for her children. Scarlett suggests she hire one of the many
black women who are looking for work as a result of being freed. The woman
rejects that suggestion using vile, racist language that offends Scarlett’s
black driver. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Scarlett replies, “It’s strange you should feel that way
when it was you all who freed them.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The woman responds, “Lor’! Not I, dearie,” and continues
with more vile, racist remarks.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
The campaign for the Lost Cause myth was a successful one.
For decades students were taught slaves had been better off before emancipation
and that the end of Reconstruction allowed the South to put things in their
natural order. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
In 1930, the same year <i>Abraham
Lincoln </i>was released, Eliot Morrison and Henry Steele Commager wrote in
their widely-used textbook, <i>Growth of the
American Republic,</i> “As for Sambo, whose wrongs moved abolitionists to
tears, there is some reason to believe that he suffered less than any other
class in the South from its peculiar institution.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i>The Literature of
the South, </i>by Richard Croom Beatty, et. al.,
published in 1952 by the textbook publisher, Scott Foresman Company, describes
the post-war years as follows:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
“With national politics in the hands of vindictive and
often unscrupulous men, Reconstruction measures were such as to rub salt into
the still sensitive wounds made by the Civil War…<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
“Corruption in the South was so bad that the Ku Klux Klan
was organized, under such leaders as Nathan Bedford Forrest, to fight radical
Reconstruction policies and to reestablish white supremacy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
“Beginning in 1874, however, a number of occurrences
brought about a healthier national attitude toward the South. [Radicals] were
defeated at the polls; the Supreme Court, following the election returns,
reversed opinions issued a few years earlier and abolished the legal basis for
Reconstruction policies. One of the first acts of the newly elected Congress
was to relinquish control of the Southern racial problems.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
John D. Hicks, a professor at the University of California,
Berkeley, writes in his <i>The American
Nation: A History of the United States from 1865 to the Present, Third Edition,</i>
a college textbook published by Houghton Mifflin in 1955, “The reconstruction
of the South was badly done. After the death of Lincoln, the government of the
United States fell into the hands of crass and cruel men who scrupled at
nothing in the achievement of their ends. Andrew Johnson, a Southerner who
comprehended the problems of the South, was first swept out of power, then out
of office, and with General Grant as an ineffective front the Radicals in
Congress had their way.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Such was the version of Reconstruction taught in public
schools and universities for much of the Twentieth Century, including the years
I attended. It was the only version I was exposed to until I took some graduate
courses at Ohio State in the 1970s, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there is
still a mark in the floor of the classroom where my jaw dropped when I first
learned another viewpoint existed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
To paraphrase Tom Lehrer, the North may have won the war,
but for a good part of the last century the South won the narrative.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
And even now the myth lives on. Just this month Cindy
Hyde-Smith won election to the U. S. Senate after her embrace of the myth and
her 2007 sponsorship of a resolution in the Mississippi state senate to honor a
92-year-old daughter of a Confederate soldier who “fought to defend his
homeland.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-65097934308814065862019-10-21T05:24:00.000-07:002019-10-21T05:24:30.558-07:00Modernity and Its Discontents: A History Paper<br />
<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center; text-indent: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;">MODERNITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Several of you have remarked that I've not posted anything to my blog since April, and I'll admit I've been a bit of a slacker lately. I've been taking advantage of the senior program at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, which is available to those over the age of 65 and who are Missouri residents. I don't get credit for the courses, but I get to learn. I want the full college experience, so I have been doing the work, which requires a lot of research (which is so much easier now than it was when I was in college more than fifty years ago thanks to the internet) and writing. Someone suggested I post my papers on my blog, so I decided why not? They're already written, so why not share them? Here's one I wrote for my midterm in American History 1914-1945.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">After World War I the world changed. As Willa Cather put it
in 1936, “The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts.” Whether is was 1922
or “thereabouts” is open to discussion, but it’s safe to say prewar America was
a different country than America was in the postwar years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The United States under Woodrow Wilson had undertaken a
foreign adventure that cost the lives of more than 116,000 American (mostly)
men and resulted in some 320,000 being wounded or made sick by mustard gas. Millions
had to be drafted, equipped, trained, and shipped an ocean away. The war also
resulted in the government’s reigning in civil liberties. In 1917 Congress
passed the Espionage Act, which made it a crime to speak against America’s war
effort at a time when many Americans opposed the war, including, according to
William M. Tuttle, Jr. in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Race Riot,</i>
Chicago mayor Bill Thompson. In 1918 Congress passed the Sedition Act, under
which people who continued to speak against the war could wind up with heavy
fines and a twenty-year jail sentence. (Eugene V. Debs, the perennial Socialist
Party candidate for president, was convicted and sentenced to ten years in
prison under the Sedition Act.) In addition to stifling dissent, the Wilson administration
created the Committee on Public Information to generate public support for the
war in part by demonizing the enemy. The war to make the world safe for
democracy abroad cost Americans a lot of civil liberties at home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">After the Armistice was signed, Wilson traveled to Paris to
sell the world on his Fourteen Points. Unfortunately, he had not sold Congress
before setting sail. After partial success in Europe, Wilson returned home to
mixed public support and Republican (as well as some Democratic) opposition in
the Senate, especially to the League of Nations. Wilson refused any compromise
and set off on a nationwide tour that resulted in his having an incapacitating
stroke on October 2, 1919. Some historians speculate Wilson was a victim of the
Spanish flu in April 1919 while he was in Paris and that he may have suffered
brain damage that made him more inflexible and unwilling to negotiate. Others
speculate he had a series of small strokes (TIAs) that led to the October
event. At any rate, the president served out his term with the help of his wife
until Warren Harding took office in 1921. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Wilson refused to sign a peace treaty or release Eugene V.
Debs (who received more than 900,000 votes for president in 1920 while in
prison). Harding did both in 1921.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">After the war and the peace negotiations, which were
followed by the Red Scare of 1919-1920, people were ready for something less
stressful. Warren Harding promised a “return to normalcy,” and that’s what
people, including women, who for the first time since the passage of the
Nineteenth Amendment could vote nationwide, voted for. But it would be a different
“normalcy.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Because of a need to mobilize and gear up for war
production, jobs that were previously held by white males opened up to women
and blacks. During World War I, between 300,000 and 500,000 blacks left the
south for northern urban jobs. Between 750,000 and one million blacks followed
in the 1920s. While these black migrants encountered hardship and
discrimination in the north, their lives were greatly improved over those they
had lived in the Jim Crow south.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Blacks were effectively contained in small overcrowded and
poorly maintained areas of the cities they migrated to. Chicago’s South Side,
where the 1919 riot took place, is one example. New York’s Harlem is another. Black
neighborhoods developed their own modernism. Harlem became a famous destination
for blacks and whites in the 1920s and had its white promoters including
photographer Carl Van Vechten and British socialite Nancy Cunard. Chicago had
its “black and tan” cabarets. Kansas City even had its Twelfth to Eighteenth and
Vine area. The nightclubs in these areas opened up opportunities for jazz
artists, jazz bands, and vocalists. Examples include Duke Ellington, Billy
Strayhorn, Cab Callaway, and Kansas City’s own Count Basie and Charlie Parker and
a host of others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Because of housing discrimination black areas became
self-contained and to a degree self-sustaining. Ministers, undertakers,
bankers, barbers and in time lawyers and doctors had a ready-made client base.
Some of these areas became quite successful and attracted the envy of less
successful white neighbors. One example of this was the Tulsa, Oklahoma
district of Greenwood, which in 1921 was destroyed by a white mob on the
pretext that a white woman had been molested by a black man. (According to an
article about the riot in the October 5, 2018 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times,</i> the man most likely tripped and accidentally
stepped on the woman’s foot; charges against him were later dropped.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Women who found jobs in the war and war-related industries were
young and single and often left rural and suburban homes for urban areas, where
they found an anonymity that eliminated the social control found in towns
filled with family and family acquaintances. The women who took these jobs
often worked for low pay, so, while their jobs gave them a degree of
independence, as Joshua Zeitz writes, that degree of independence was often
accompanied by the need to date in order to live well, and each date “was a
complex interplay among commerce, sexuality, and love.” As a young waitress he
quotes said, “If I did not have a man, I could not get by on my wages.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">During the war clothing styles had become simplified thanks
in large part to Coco Chanel. Paul Poiret had freed women from the corset.
Chanel went several steps further and used inexpensive jersey for some designs
and blurred the lines between masculine and feminine designs, making clothing
that was practical, maneuverable and suitable for war work. Chanel’s designs
appealed to postwar women who, for the most part, purchased affordable knockoffs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Technology contributed to culture change. On November 2,
1920 the first commercial radio broadcast occurred when KDKA in Pittsburg reported
election returns. Suddenly instant news was available nationwide. Soon radio
programs and music would become part of a mass culture familiar to audiences
across the country. Eventually regional accents would flatten and some accents would
become more acceptable than others. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">At the beginning of the 1920s movies were silent. As long
as actors and actresses could convey emotions by facial expressions, how they
sounded did not matter. Clara Bow, with her ability to convey sympathy,
passion, and chastity all within a matter of seconds, became the nation’s “It
Girl” who helped popularize the flapper movement by portraying flappers in
films that were not only entertaining but instructional. Young people
especially were exposed to Hollywood’s version of modern (1920s-style) dating
behavior, and many adopted the techniques they saw on film, which shocked their
(possibly envious) elders and led to the Hayes Code being adopted in 1930,
although it was not meaningfully enforced until 1934, and some of the best
pre-code movies were made in that brief interlude, including one of my
favorites, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">International House.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The flapper lifestyle took on a life of its own, helped in
part by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels, beginning with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This Side of Paradise </i>in 1920 and his many short stories for
magazines. Labeled and self-promoted “the flapper king,” Scott became the
expert on the subject. And he had his wife, Zelda, as a resource. The lifestyle
was glamorized by columnists like Lois Long, who, with her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Yorker </i>expense account and comfortable salary, wrote as
“Lipstick” about experiences most young working women could only dream about,
but dream they did. The wartime propaganda industry morphed into the
advertising industry, generating demand for accessories necessary to become and
remain a flapper in good standing. These included costume jewelry, cosmetics,
cigarettes (to maintain a slim figure), etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Consumers increasingly turned to chain stores such as
Woolworth for dry goods and the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (better
known as A&P) for food to the detriment of local mom and pop stores. Chain
stores could operate on a lower profit margin because they could buy and sell
in mass quantities, and consumers appreciated lower prices and consistent
quality. Often the arrival of a chain store to a community was greeted with the
same ambivalence as the arrival of a Walmart is today. But lower prices and
brand names won out then as now. Woolworth would not survive the Twentieth
Century, closing in 1997, and A&P limped into this century finally ceasing
to do business in 2015. Both were replaced by more efficient and stylish
stores. Perhaps it is fitting that the Trader Joes in Kansas City sits on the
former site of an A&P. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The increasing availability of electricity made possible labor-saving
devices such as refrigerators, vacuums, washing machines, etc., which freed up
time for middle class housewives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The automobile, and especially the fact that cars were
becoming more affordable and governments were eager to accommodate this new
form of transportation (Robert Moses in New York being a prime example), was
arguably the most long-lasting effect of the 1920s. Not only could people use
the car to find a secluded place for love-making, they could use it to travel
long distances as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald did when they drove from New
England to Alabama because Zelda wanted to rediscover the biscuits and peaches
of her youth. People could even use the car to commute to work from homes that
no longer needed to be near a bus or streetcar line. Cities annexed land. Attractive
new neighborhoods were built complete with restrictive covenants, solving that
pesky problem of having the “wrong” type of people moving in. Eventually suburbs
independent of cities would be built. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">It would seem life was much better for those coming of age
after the war than it had been before the war, but there were those who
disagreed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Not long after the Civil War ended the nation lapsed into a
form of amnesia that came to be known as the “Lost Cause of the Confederacy.”
Academic credence was granted to the “Lost Cause” by Columbia University
professor William A. Dunning, who in his 1907 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reconstruction, Political and Economic 1865-1877,</i> portrayed
Reconstruction as an unmitigated evil. The “Lost Cause” made its way to the
general public via D. W. Griffith’s 1915 technical masterpiece, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Birth of a Nation.</i> One person who viewed
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Birth of a Nation, </i>William Joseph
Simmons, an Atlanta physician and ne’er do well, formed a fraternal group that
would, with the help of some experienced public relations people, Elizabeth
Tyler and Edward Young Clarke, become the resurgent Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s.
This KKK was so influential that, according to Linda Gordon’s 2017 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux
Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition,</i> it became a
national political force. It had the most members north of the Mason-Dixon
line, especially in Ohio and Indiana, where most of the state government was
under its thumb. It was also extremely powerful in Oregon. In some locales,
membership was necessary to do business as names of nonmembers were publicized.
While the Klan had power, members saw fit to enforce old fashioned morality and
one-hundred percent Americanism. Members were known to yank adulterers from
their homes and beat them. Divorcees might be similarly punished as might those
using automobiles for unsavory purposes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">For an organization so intent on maintaining old-fashioned
morality, the Klan came to an ignominious end. D. C. Stephenson, the Indiana
Grand Dragon and a political power broker, raped his aide, who committed
suicide. Stephenson was not powerful enough to avoid publicity or being
convicted of murder. Klan members deserted en masse—especially when it was
learned Stephenson had been drunk, in violation of Prohibition, which the Klan supported,
at the time of the attack. While some members remained loyal to the Klan, it
was not powerful enough to recover its political clout. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Stephenson was sentenced to life and paroled in 1955. In
1961, at the age of seventy, he was arrested for assaulting another young girl
and was fined $300.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The resurgent Klan, of course, was opposed to blacks (many
Confederate memorials, including the controversial 1924 Charlottesville statue
of Robert E. Lee, were erected during the brief reign of the new Klan), but it
was equally opposed to Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">It would be comforting to think the Klan was comprised of ignorant
rural rednecks, but in fact it had a surprising number of urban members. Linda Gordon
cites historian Kenneth Jackson’s findings that 50% of Klan members were
urbanites and 32% lived in the country’s larger cities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Several Klan members were elected to Congress. One of them
was Washington Representative Albert Johnson, who, with Pennsylvania Senator
David Reed, sponsored the Johnson-Reed Act, also known as the Immigration Act
of 1924, which limited immigration by assigning quotas based on the ethnicity
of those already in the US in 1890 and excluded all Asians including South
Asians. Such restrictions were the result of prejudice against the more recent
immigrants, many of whom were from southern and eastern Europe and many of whom
were Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Jews. The restrictions were justified
by the “scientific racism” espoused by Columbia- and Yale-educated attorney
Madison Grant in his 1916 book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Passing of the Great Race</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">The National Origins Act, a part of the Johnson-Reed Act,
did not address Mexicans, who were needed as fruit workers and in manufacturing
jobs. According to Allyson Hobbes in her 2014 book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life,</i>
Chinese immigrants used false paperwork to circumvent the Chinese Exclusion Act
and enter the United States as Mexicans at the Mexican border at least as early
as 1907. There’s no reason to believe it stopped in 1907. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">In addition to the Klan, modernism’s discontents included
Christian fundamentalists, among them baseball star turned evangelist Billy
Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson (who would be caught up in her own sex
scandal in 1926).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">Among the traits associated with modernism are aspiring to
rationality, secular thinking and embracing human mastery over nature.
Modernism in the 1920s also tended to be more of an urban phenomenon. Fundamentalism
as a movement started among conservative Presbyterian theologians at Princeton
Theological Seminary in the last part of the Nineteenth Century. It soon spread
to conservatives among Baptists and other denominations around 1910 to 1920
partly as a reaction to mainstream Protestantism. One of the tenets of
fundamentalism is the belief in the inerrancy of scripture. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">In 1859 Charles Darwin’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Origin of Species</i> was published. As Darwinism became more accepted,
it became obvious that a literal interpretation of scripture was not consistent
with the modern theory of evolution. Fundamentalists in many states decided
that youth should be protected from Darwinism and passed laws to that effect. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">In 1925 a group of local boosters in Dayton, Tennessee
persuaded John Scopes, a young high school science teacher, to violate that
state’s antievolution law. Their objective was to draw attention to their town,
which was economically depressed. They got more than they bargained for when
Clarence Darrow, a nationally famous civil libertarian and committed atheist,
agreed to defend Scopes and William Jennings Bryan agreed to defend the law. In
the end Scopes was convicted and fined $100, which was paid for by the
Baltimore <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sun, </i>whose acerbic
reporter, H. L. Mencken, covered the trial. The case was appealed to the
Tennessee Supreme Court, which upheld the law but overturned the fine on a
technicality. Bryan died five days after the end of the trial. Debates over
whether Darwinism should be taught in the public schools continue to this day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="color: black;">In the 1920s there was a clash between cultures—one eager
to embrace or at least willing to accept change and another trying to return to
an idyllic and simpler past that may never have existed and bring the country along
with it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And that
continues to this day as well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-83938935867931736162019-03-31T05:18:00.000-07:002019-03-31T05:31:34.518-07:00PRESS RELEASE!<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">PRESS RELEASE<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: .5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 1, 2019<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I am hereby announcing I am running
for mayor. I know I’m a little late in getting started, but what the heck?
That’s why ballots have a place for write-ins, right? I’m going to share my
platform as I and both of my supporters have developed it. Here’s what we have
so far. Please feel free to make suggestions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Most candidates will tell you they
will represent you. And you seem to believe them. It’s the triumph of hope over
experience that people keep voting for candidates that make such promises and
deliver nothing to voters. It’s almost like owning GE stock. Or continually
voting for sales and property tax increases hoping our city government will
take care of basic services. C’mon. Remember what Ward Parkway was like until
just last week? And if it takes an election to get the city to fix Ward Parkway,
what makes you think we’re going to do anything in your neighborhood? This
election and our incentive to perform will be over soon, and yet you keep
electing the same kind of people no matter what we do. And you expect us to
pretend we care? Here’s what I promise.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
First. I will vote for any and all
tax incentives. I don’t need to know the details or whether they make sense.
All I know is throwing money at development is a way to make this city great
again. Just ask most of our council members. $17 mil for a parking garage for a
luxury apartment building? Piece of cake. We gotta keep that momentous momentum
momenting. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Being your mayor pays about $130,000
a year. C’mon. Do you really expect anyone to represent you for that kind of
money? Especially if they have a spouse and children that like to eat more than
rice and beans and shop anywhere but garage sales? If that’s all you’re willing
to pay, well, you get what you pay for. I plan to take any and all income
enhancements that are offered by developers, lobbyists, and especially Burns
and Mac, and I mention them only because I had the most obnoxious interview
there I’ve ever experienced. I hope Burns and Mac got wise and fired that
little prick. By the way, if you take me to lunch, I eat low carb, and I’ll
want enough leftovers to take some home to my dog.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Second. The streetcar has
contributed so much to this community since it first began running its two-mile
route. Oh, it has its problems in ice, snow, heavy rains, and so on, but how often
do we have these problems? Soon, global warming will eliminate snow and ice in
our area anyway.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Since the streetcar has been such a
success and is so reliable, I favor extending it not only to the Plaza but also
to Wichita, Topeka, Oklahoma City, and New York. 24 million tourists can’t be
wrong. I also plan to go on as many foreign and domestic junkets to discover
the wonders of streetcars and other forms of, ummmm, entertainment in other
cities and countries as possible. While I might be willing to fly coach to such
reasonably close destinations as Tulsa or Oklahoma City, I’ll require first
class seating for anything further away in this country and at least business
class to foreign destinations. After all, you don’t want me—your mayor--exiting
the plane looking rumpled—or even worse, sober—after an overseas trip, do you?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Third. I will require that Kansas
City residents clear streets of snow and fill potholes on their own streets. People
are always calling in and complaining about snow and potholes. Well, let them
discover just what a hassle it is to plow those streets and fill those
potholes. The city will provide them with sources for snow shovels and asphalt
and assess penalties for noncompliance. This will stop people complaining about
snow and potholes and free up funds for the things that really matter, like luxury
apartment buildings, fixed rail fair weather only transit, and hotels—heaven
knows you can never be too rich, too thin (no offense to any of my opponents) or
have too many hotels--which is where our priorities should be focused. Snow,
schmow. Potholes, schmotholes. We’re big picture people, people.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Fourth. Gentrification is a good
thing. As property values increase on paper, the city can raise property taxes
and generate more revenue for tax incentive programs. If we’re going to provide
multi-decade tax abatements, we have to make up the lost revenue somehow, and
that somehow is you. If you’re elderly and have problems paying these increased
taxes, well, too bad. The young people moving in and gentrifying older
neighborhoods don’t want to live around poor people, anyway. Here is an actual
quote from one of the millennials we have coaxed downtown to live in
taxpayer-subsidized luxury: <span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">“<span style="background: white; color: #202020;">Who
gives a damn. I work hard for my money, and I can afford to live [downtown]. I
am not going to apologize for yearsnofnhard (sic) work, smart life choices and
good decisions. I choose to live downtown because I can. People who work hard
and make good life divisions (sic) shouldn’t be forced to now live with those
that can’t keep their shit together.”</span></span><span style="background: white; color: #202020; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span>As
you can see, people who move downtown may <u>say</u> they want to live in a
diverse area, but by that they don’t mean they want to live around or come into
contact with diverse people. If they wanted to be around diverse people, they’d
use the bus instead of lobbying for the streetcar.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Fifth. I promise to set up several
committees on crime. Perhaps at least one of the committees can come up with
some reasonable sounding approach to the problem. Perhaps we could soften the
effect of crime by using euphemisms. If bribes can be referred to as income
enhancement, why shouldn’t we refer to murder as premature passing?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
My very first order of business
will be to erect a statue in honor of former mayor Kay Waldo Barnes, Kansas
City’s Madonna of tax incentives. This statue will go up in the Power and Light
District and have an eternal flame to commemorate Kansas City’s eternal $14
million per year commitment to the Cordish Company. Did that woman know tax
incentives or what? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
So it’s up to you. If you want a mayor
who is going to promise you neighborhood representation only to desert you once
the first tax incentive proposal (with incentives going to you know who) passes
over his or her desk or under his or her table at the Capital Grille and leave
you with a bitter taste in your mouth as you swear never to vote for that
person again only to be faced with yet another such candidate in another four
years, then do as you always do, sucker. If, on the other hand, you want a mayor
who tells you in advance he’s a crook and doesn’t give a hoot about
neighborhoods, I’m your man. You know what you’re getting, and I promise never
to disappoint you<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Go to the polls
tomorrow and write me in for mayor. You will never have to lower your
expectations again.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">© 2019 Larry Roth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-62698000180944510952019-01-23T11:41:00.001-08:002019-01-24T04:20:39.280-08:00A Review of Antonia Felix's "Elizabeth Warren: Her Fight. Her Work. Her Life."<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
happened on Antonia Felix’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elizabeth
Warren: Her Fight. Her Work. Her Life.</i> at the library, and I couldn’t
resist. I checked it out, and I suggest you do the same.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Before
I go further, I have to come clean. Because of an accident of geography, I went
to Northwest Classen High School in Oklahoma City and was in the same
graduating class as Ms. Warren. The answers to questions people ask when they
learn that are (1) Yes, I knew her, but not well (there were about 800 people
in our class and about 3,200 people in our school), (2) Yes, we were in some of
the same classes, and (3) If I called her, she would not only not remember me,
she’d ask how the hell I got her phone number and would I please lose it. With
that out of the way, let’s go on to the book.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Ms.
Felix starts with Ms. Warren’s childhood and teen years, which were difficult.
Her parents were living close to the edge when her father had a heart attack,
which caused a sudden drop in family income that claimed one car and threatened
to claim their home. Her mother, who had never worked outside the home, took a
minimum wage job at Sears, and Ms. Warren babysat, took in ironing, and sewed
to add to the family income. Together they saved the house. When it came time
for Ms. Warren to graduate from high school, her mother opposed her going on to
college. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Ms.
Warren went to school and then dropped out to marry a man who had been two
years ahead of her at Northwest Classen. Eventually Ms. Warren completed her
undergraduate degree and went on to law school. While in law school she began
researching bankruptcy, believing only deadbeats took advantage of bankruptcy
laws to wiggle out of their debts. Her research did not confirm her bias, so
she started digging further and decided not only were bankruptcy laws not being
abused, they were offering a tenuous safety net increasingly to the middle
class, most of whom had encountered job losses, medical emergencies, and other hardships
that swallowed their finances. Added to that were laws that protected predatory
lending practices, from payday loans to confusing credit card contracts and
mortgages. One finding was that people who took out mortgages were frequently
offered worse terms than they were entitled to, for example, subprime loans
when they qualified for prime loans. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She
began her campaign for a consumer protection bureau pointing out that people
buying toasters were more protected than people taking out loans. Eventually
the events of the last crash led to the creation of the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau (CFPB). The powers that be in Congress made it clear they
would not approve Ms. Warren to head that bureau, which is what she really
wanted, and which she would probably have happily made her career. I remember
thinking at the time those Congress people who blocked her appointment are
going to regret that decision, and sure enough, the next thing you know, she’s
in the Senate. Payback is a bitch.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Ms.
Felix addresses the “Pocahontas” issue, and I’m going to add my own two cents
here. When we went to high school, Oklahoma had only been a state for 55 years.
Before Oklahoma became a state it was Indian Territory. When we were in high
school there were many people still alive who came to Oklahoma as
children in the land runs that began in 1889. Oklahoma was then a young state
with an Indian heritage. Many, if not most, or our classmates claimed to be
“part Indian.” Evidently Ms. Warren’s mother believed she was “part Indian,” as
did most of the people in the small town of Wetumka, Oklahoma, where she and
her future husband grew up. This was such a common belief that Ms. Warren’s
father’s family forbade the marriage and had little to do with either their son
or their daughter-in-law for the rest of their lives. Is it any surprise that
Ms. Warren believed she, too, was “part Indian?” She was, after all, cut off
from her grandparents because they believed she was “part Indian.” According to
Ms. Felix, Ms. Warren never received any preference or any jobs because of her
supposed heritage. Her mistake was an honest one, unlike the president’s claim
to have been of Swedish descent because his father didn’t want it known that
the family was actually of German descent.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I think
Ms. Felix goes a little overboard on the “Pocahontas” issue, quoting Professor
David Wilkins of the University of Minnesota as saying, “But Native academics
and many others outside of politics, being focused on other dimensions, want to
know where she’s been all these years and want to know how someone can claim to
be ‘part’ Native. You’re either Native or you’re not, from our perspective.”
I’d like to know who designated Professor Wilkins the arbiter of who is and is
not Native, 100% or otherwise.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Now
that I’ve got that out of my system, the book details Ms. Warren’s
accomplishments, moving from school to school and winding up a professor at
Harvard. Not bad for a poor girl from Oklahoma. From Harvard, she went to form
the CFPB, and then to the Senate. And she just announced she’s going to run for
president in 2020. Given how far she’s gone, I wouldn’t be surprised if she
makes it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Just
consider the comparison between her and the president. Truly a self-made woman
versus a celebrity claiming to be a self-made billionaire with the help of many
millions from his father. A woman who has stood up for consumers and the middle
class and studied bankruptcy law versus a man possibly most well known for not
paying his vendors and declaring bankruptcy six times. A woman who is one of us
versus a man who says he’s one of us while picking our pockets. The comparisons
go on. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Believe
me, I can imagine the response this post will get. I was at the 50-year reunion
of our class a couple of years ago, and the vitriol spewed at Ms. Warren, who
did not attend—she was endorsing Hillary Clinton that night—was amazing. How
dare someone who was—gasp!—poor and not one of the super in crowd dare to rise
so far above her station? By the way, some of the things Ms. Felix says about
Northwest Classen, circa 1960s, are true—we were called “Silkies” because
supposedly we wore silk underwear, which, of course we didn’t, and a few of the
people in our school came from families that were comfortable, but many more
came from families who were putting on the dog; my own family didn’t see the
point in putting on the dog. My mother once told me not to worry too much about
the popular kids, since, once I graduated, I’d never hear anything about them
again. And for the most part, that’s been the case. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But old
habits die hard. The super elites still have an event the day before our
reunions. (And no, I’ve never been invited, which shows you where I stand!) I
would imagine Ms. Warren’s declaring she’s going to run for president may have
caused a few medical emergencies among our classmates; I would also imagine if
she wins, the carnage will save the Social Security system a few bucks in
Oklahoma.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I am
going to be taking a breather from my blog for a while. Classes at our local
university have started up again, and the papers I do for my class take up a
lot of time. Have a great spring!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">©</span>2019
Larry Roth<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-7550945061774720052019-01-23T07:22:00.002-08:002019-01-23T07:22:49.011-08:00A Promise (Finally) Fulfilled: My 2000 Simplicity Speech<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
early 2000 I was invited to speak at a simplicity conference in Santa Clara,
California. I felt honored, since the other speakers included Vicki Robin,
Duane Elgin (author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Voluntary
Simplicity),</i> Cecile Andrews (author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Circle of Simplicity),</i> and a host of others in what was at the time termed
the “New Frugality” and simplicity movements. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At the
end of my speech I promised to publish the speech “somewhere.” And when I got
home I put the speech in my “sometime” file and forgot about it until I came
across it while looking for something else. I am now fulfilling my promise.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">MY SPEECH<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’m
Larry Roth, and I too once had a high-stress life right here in Silicon Valley.
In February 1995, just a little more than five years ago, I left my job, I left
Silicon Valley, and I left California. I was 46 years old. And I have not once
in the past five years awakened in the morning and said, “Gee! I wish I were
going to work at Company L today.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In 1916
Robert Frost wrote about the road less traveled by. These days frugality is
definitely that road. What I’d like to throw out to you are first some money
saving tips and then a few ideas that may make traveling this road easier.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Never buy new if used will do. Quite often you
can find a used item for ten percent of the cost of a new item. Buying recycled
items is also kind to the environment.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Know the true value of your hard-earned dollars.
So you’re making $50,000 a year. Really? After taxes, your fifty grand is more
likely to be around $30,000. Both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Your
Money or Your Life </i>and my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beating the
System,</i> both of which you can get at the library, have formulas in them for
calculating how much you have to earn to have a dollar to spend.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Don’t suffer from taxophobia. Remember a tax
deduction is not a rebate. If you are in the 28% bracket, you must spend $1.00
for every 28<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">¢</span>
you save in taxes. If you think this is a good deal, send me $100. I’ll send
you $28. What the heck. I’ll send you $29.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Remember little things add up. If you can use a
postcard instead of a letter, you’ll save 13<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">¢. Do that three times, and you’ve
saved more than the price of mailing one first class letter.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->If you have time, shop garage sales and
auctions. If you don’t have time, shop thrift, resale, and consignment stores.
You’ll be amazed at how much you can save, and pretty soon you’ll consider
paying retail prices for new goods a ridiculous waste of money. A few years ago
I was asked to be part of a “cheap-off” for a major network. The contest winner
would be the person who could buy the most back-to-school clothes. For the
filming we needed a child, and since I don’t have any, we borrowed the
producer’s niece. We filmed the segment is a consignment store in San Jose. The
mother of the child, who lived in a decidedly upscale Peninsula suburb, was
clearly miffed at having to be in such a place. We were able to find a lot of
clothes at excellent prices, and for $88 the child was outfitted for school. After
we were finished filming, the camera crew began looking around, and they found
some things for their children. The mother, who had initially been so upset
about having to be in a second-hand store, was so impressed with the prices and
selection that she and the producer were still shopping when I left. I won the
cheap-off, by the way.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Our country is so rich that people often throw
perfectly good items out. Take advantage of this bounty. If you see something
you can use on the curb on garbage day, grab it. I have a 1928 American
Standard pedestal sink in my bathroom that I rescued from the trash collectors.
The downside of this is there is so much stuff to be had for free that you
simply must limit what you take to what you actually need and hope the rest
finds itself to someone else who can use it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->If you work for a company that has a newsletter
that lets employees advertise items for sale, use it to buy and sell.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Make your newspaper pay for itself. Clip
coupons. Look for items you need in the classified ads. And shop grocery stores
and sale brochures (but only for items you need).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">9.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Practice guerilla shopping. Combine coupons (or
double coupons if possible) with store “loss leaders.” I have bought Hamburger
Helper for as little as 19<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">¢</span>, though it usually costs me about 70<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">¢</span>.
(I would never buy it at the regular price of $1.79.) I’ve actually got money
back on some items. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">10.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Stock up when things are on sale. I might spend
$50 on groceries one week and nothing for a couple of weeks, depending on
what’s on sale. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">11.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Buy store brands and generic products. In 1988
there was an e-coli contamination at a Malt-O-Meal factory. As a result, the
public learned that the same cereal sold as Malt-O-Meal was sold under more
than fifty names in more than thirty stores. Juliet B. Schor in her book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Overspent American </i>states that brand
name drugs are often the same as generics, that many vitamins are made by one
country and sold under different brands, and that a “worldwide manufacturer”
sells essentially the same jeans to Walmart, Penney’s, and Calvin Klein. Learn
to ignore the labels. Let choosy mothers overpay for Jif. Peanut butter is
peanut butter.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">12.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Following up on number 11, even if there is a
slight difference in quality, so what? Will you be savoring the taste of your
last peanut butter sandwich a week from now? An hour from now? Ten minutes from
now? I admit to liking Reese’s peanut butter best. But will I pay $2.29 for it
when I can buy a store brand for 99<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">¢</span> to $1.19? No way.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">13.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Beware of wholesale shopping clubs. We all
normally assume that if we buy in massive quantities, our per unit price is
less. Sometimes this is true. Sometimes it isn’t. Check the per unit prices at
your neighborhood stores (where you can use coupons) as well as Sam’s and
Costco (which don’t accept coupons). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">14.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Thinking for yourself is the most profitable
do-it-yourself project. Only you know what is best for you and how to make what
you want happen.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">15.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Live your life as you see fit. If you are over
the age of consent, you do not have to listen to people, be they friends,
relatives, or “talking heads” about what you “should” do. It has always amazed
me that the most unhappy people seem to make it their business to live other
people’s lives. And it amazes me even more that other people try to please
these unhappy folks. Be yourself. Be happy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">16.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Take advantage of the internet. There are all
sorts of opportunities to save money. Looking for a book? Well, Amazon.com and
BarnesandNoble.com have good prices, but the book you’re looking for might be
available cheaper at a used book store you can access through bookfinder.com. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">17.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Buy permanent press clothing when possible. Why
pay for dry cleaning when you don’t have to?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">18.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Look to the internet for cheap phone rates. AOL
offers long distance for 9<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">¢</span> a minute (and a calling card that tacks on a mere 30<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">¢</span>
to the 9<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">¢</span>
rate). Other ISPs may follow AOL’s lead.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
Now a few tips for making your life
easier.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>First,
whether it be religion, a new diet, or, yes, frugality, recent converts tend to
become enthusiastic, convinced their way is the only way and that their job is now
to get others to see the errors of their ways and accept the new religion,
diet, or whatever. This is not a new phenomenon. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote
about it in his 1844 essay <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New England
Reformers</i>. As you might imagine, I have had many people, some of them perfect
strangers, walk up to me and suggest a diet I might want to try. One recent
suggestion came from a young man who recommended I buy a daily waffle breakfast
at McDonald’s, forgo the butter and syrup, and wash it down with a diet soda so
it would “expand” and fill me up. First, I don’t like either McDonald’s or
waffles, and second I’m just not up to drinking soda in the morning. So even
though this diet may have worked for this young man, and he swears it did, I’m
afraid it’s just not for me. Similarly, we must accept that frugality will have
the same appeal to many people that the diet of waffles and soda had to me. And
we must get over our belief that frugality is something the world needs to
embrace (though I think the world would be a better place if the government did
embrace frugality). I believe we can lead simpler and happier lives by
accepting that frugality is the path for us. And I believe we can be more
effective by showing the world what frugality can do for us than trying to
convince the world we are right. If you would like to understand why people
don’t understand the world our way, I suggest that you study any of the books
on the Enneagram by Helen Palmer or Don Riso.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Once
you are financially independent, you will find it takes a year or so to adapt
to your new, slower lifestyle. During that time you will undoubtedly explore
several options. I first worked with an animal rescue group, but I found the
leader of that group devious and more than willing to take over my life (though
I did wind up with a pretty good dog out of the deal). I then worked with
AARP’s tax assistance program, and I really enjoyed that. I suggest you avoid
fanatics and their causes whenever possible. Remember that you are simplifying
your life. You are gaining control of your time. These people will be more than
happy to their agenda for former bosses’ agenda. You’ll have your old schedule
back, and the pay will be lousy!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Don’t
give in to the “shoulds.” Don’t do things or get involved with causes because
you think you should. Remember the reason you became financially independent was
so you could do what you want. When in doubt about getting involved (and if
you’re in doubt, you may well at least subconsciously not want to get
involved), ask yourself, “Is this something I really want to do?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Remember
that your time and energy are resources, as is your money, and you will not
want to waste any of your resources.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Avoid
negative people. Now, I’m not saying turn your back on your friends in times of
need, but if you have someone in your life who insists on seeing the world
through shit-colored glasses and who leaves you tired after every visit, get
that person out of your life. You’ve got a tough enough row to hoe without
having these energy sinks around you. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>These
are the kinds of people who complain about the things many of us feel make life
beautiful. These are the kinds of people who will, for example, complain about
church bells, Christmas carols, and so on. These people can take something
beautiful and not only make it ugly but try to make you feel guilty for having
enjoyed the beauty. And speaking of beauty, I’m not particularly religious, but
Christmas is just about my favorite time of the year.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Did
anyone here overdo it financially this past Christmas? Well, now is a good time
for you to start working on a simpler and more enjoyable Christmas for
yourselves. There’s plenty of time to alert your friends and family that you’re
not going to engage in the gift wars again this year and ask them to honor your
gift truce. If they don’t, well, a gift is a gift. It doesn’t have to be an
obligation. Only you can be dragged into the fray.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Don’t
let any book become your bible or any writer become your prophet. Remember all
we can tell you is what worked for us. I can truthfully say that two books
changed my life. The first was Paul Terhorst’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cashing in on the American Dream,</i> which was published in 1988. I
didn’t agree with Paul’s recommendations that you don’t own a home and that you
buy short-term CDs, so I ignored that part of the book. Likewise, Joe
Dominguez’s and Vicki Robin’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Your Money
or Your Life</i> gave me a concrete path to financial independence and, most
important, the means to know when I was there. I didn’t agree with their
recommendation that I invest solely in U. S. Treasuries of that I never work
for money again once I was financially independent, so I rejected that advice.
And lived. Read our advice, but think for yourself. We don’t live in a
one-size-fits-all world.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Next,
get over past mistakes. Stop beating yourself up for having wasted money, time,
or energy in the past. Remember that what seem like mistakes to us are
sometimes happy accidents of the universe. If there’s something in your past
you’re letting weigh you down, let go of it. To give your regrets some
perspective, consider John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Maud Muller.</i> In this poem a wealthy judge out riding one hot summer
day is given a drink of cool water by a poor farm woman, Maud Muller. As a
result of that one chance meeting, the judge spends the rest of his life
fantasizing about being Maud’s husband and a poor farmer. Maud, meanwhile,
spent the rest of her life fantasizing about being the wife of a rich judge. In
other words, if the fantasy romance had come to fruition, neither party would
have been happy. Whittier concluded:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
The saddest are these: “It might have
been.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Know
when to repair and when to replace. Alexander Pope said way back in the 18<sup>th</sup>
Century, “Be not the first by whom the new are tried, nor yet the last to cast
the old aside.” In 1984 I bought a VCR that cost more than $400. I kept
repairing it because the repair people said, “They don’t make them like that
anymore.” The last repair cost $80 and lasted four months. I saw an ad for a
new VCR for $69. The new VCR programmed itself, it’s smaller and lighter and
fits on top of the TV. The repair people were right. They don’t make them like
they did in 1984. They make them better and cheaper.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Don’t
do your living in the future. I don’t believe we were put here to live lives of
drudgery, either by staying forever in oppressive jobs or engaging in extreme
self-denial. There is a happy medium. Find yours.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Beware
of causes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">du jour.</i> Many of these have
backing from people and organizations that stand to make money from legislative
action. Rodale Press’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guide to Organic
Foods Shopping and Organic Living</i> quoted a study in 1970 that said, “In 10
to 15 years from now every man, woman, and child in the hemisphere will have to
wear a breathing helmet to survive outdoors.” Thirty years later, that
statement looks pretty silly as will most of the prophecies of doom being
stated as fact today. (Take the Y2K hoopla, for example.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Along
those same lines, don’t be so quick to condemn our era’s contributions to
society. A few weeks ago I needed some underwear. I went to the Penney’s outlet
store where I do a lot of my clothes shopping. (There are some things even I
won’t buy used.) The place was disorganized, and, when I finally found the
underwear, I thought it cost too much ($8 for three pair). There’s a Walmart a
block away, so I decided to see what they had. Well, first, they had a person
at the door who told me exactly where in the store to find underwear, and then
they had a package of seven pair of Fruit of the Loom briefs for $5.96. As big
and ruthless as these places are supposed to be, they certainly provide value,
and they respect their customers’ time. No wonder they are doing well. That
same day I visited the former site of a Venture store. Venture was a chain of
stores I found particularly annoying. Not only did they not have any qualms
about advertising things they didn’t have in stock, they’d actually blame you
for not dropping what you were doing and running to their store when they had
sale items. I can’t remember how many times their customer service people said,
“We had plenty of those last Sunday.” Venture eventually made so many people
mad they wouldn’t go there if they were giving stuff away, and Venture went
broke. Home Depot bought the site of the Venture store I used to have so much
fun at, and they just had their grand opening. I know a lot of people who are
into simplicity have problems with stores like Home Depot and Walmart, and I
say let that be their problem. To me, any time I can make one trip to one store
instead of several trips to several stores, I’m saving time and fuel, and I’m a
happy camper.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
only argument I’ve heard against these monster stores is they’re bad for the
indigenous businesses. First, let me point out that existing businesses did not
come with Adam and Eve. They replaced something else. Nothing is permanent. And
second, some of these indigenous businesses deserve to be replaced. My
neighborhood recently lost a natural foods store and a book store. I did not do
mush business with the book store because it always impressed me as a very
unfriendly place, but I did have a friend who tried to do business with the
natural foods store. She wanted a brand of soy milk the store already carried
in a flavor they did not carry. The store told her she’d have to order 24
containers. She did and gave them her contact information. They said they’d
call when her order came in. In 1945, when cars were in short supply, my father
ordered a 1946 Buick. Both he and my friend are still waiting for their orders
to be filled. My friend, by the way, found what she wanted at Wild Oats, and
they even give a discount for buying a full case. Just because some business
has been providing bad service forever does not mean it deserves eternal life. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Learn
to say no. Use this powerful two-letter word when you’re feeling overburdened.
If you’re asked to do extra work, be on a committee, etc., and you can get away
with it, say no if you feel like it. Limit your activities to those you enjoy
or truly believe in. There are other people in the world, and only you can take
care of you.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Listen
to your body. If your body says it’s tired, or hungry, take care of it. It’s
the only one you get.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Learn
to slow down. While sloth is generally considered a vice, being constantly busy
is not necessarily a virtue. Busy-ness is often used to avoid self-examination.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Don’t
save things you won’t use. Learn to use the garbage can or to recycle. I bought
a rental house from a woman who had saved hundreds if not thousands of those
Styrofoam trays you get when you buy meat at the supermarket. I would advise
setting a reasonable limit on accumulating things such as margarine tubs,
cottage cheese containers, etc. To me, if you have, say, ten of these things,
it’s time to stop. You have nothing to gain by accumulating number 11.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Decide
what you want, what your objective is. In my case I wanted an income that would
enable me to live without a job. Your objective could be to live on one income,
to afford a larger home, etc. Very few people, I believe, have frugality in
mind as an end. It is, rather, the means to an end. As an aside here, I find it
empowering to know that I can live without something society as a whole believes
is a necessity, such as cell phones, electric can openers, etc., and I love
finding things I can use at garage sales, estate sales, thrift shops, etc.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We are
living in truly amazing economic times. Both unemployment and interest rates
are low. Many consumer goods, especially computers and electronics, cost much
less than they did just a few years ago. When I think about the inflation and
malaise of just twenty years ago, today’s economy boggles my mind. Will it
last? The honest answer is no one knows, but I can tell you much of Europe
considers our economy to be a bubble similar to the one Japan went through a
few years ago. And even some surprising sources are waving the caution flag.
The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wall Street Journal</i> had two
articles in fifteen days that discussed how previous booms have ended and how
this one might end. Whether the economy holds or folds, though, I suggest we
all consider these times an opportunity to feather our nests. If the economy
fails, we’ll have some money in the bank. If it continues to soar, well, we’re
just that much better off and just that much closer to our goals. Being frugal
in good times, in other words, is a no-lose proposition.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Finally,
the question I personally have been asked most often is, “What did you do about
health care?” And I want to address that issue here. I was extremely fortunate
in that I had Kaiser Permanente, and I was able to convert my group plan here
to an individual plan in Kansas City. The bad news is my monthly rates have
gone from $126 to $285 in five years. Health care is a problem for people who
do not have employers, and I cannot help but believe this one issue keeps more
people in their jobs than any other issue. There are possibilities out there,
one of which is “Simplecare,” a plan that is taking root in Seattle, wherein
people pay cash for most health care and carry catastrophic insurance for major
medical problems. But will Simplecare spread to other markets? I don’t know.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There
is talk about simplicity becoming a “movement” in the political and social
sense, and I personally have some issues with that, since a movement implies
leaders, followers, and a certain degree of groupthink, but if we could form a
movement on a practical level that would result in our being able to obtain
group rate health insurance for those tied to their jobs because they could not
get affordable health insurance elsewhere, I believe that would be the most
immediately productive project we could tackle, and it would result financial
independence becoming a possibility for many more people. Affordable group rate
health care, in other words, would expand the movement.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A lot
of water has gone under the bridge in the past nineteen years. It turned out
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wall Street Journal</i> was spot-on.
The dot.com boom burst shortly after this speech. They’ve been flashing a few
caution signals lately. Long-distance telephone rates are no longer an issue
for most people, VCRs were replaced by DVDs, and DVDs are being replaced by
streaming. Wild Oats was taken over by Whole Foods. I lost a great deal of
weight a couple of years after this speech and have (knock on wood) been able
to keep it off, so I’m no longer approached by strangers offering diets. I no
longer buy Hamburger Helper. Newspapers are going the way of VHSs, so coupons
are getting scarcer, and classified ads are few and far between, but now
there’s Craigslist. Kaiser Permanente deserted the Kansas City market, and
those of us with individual plans were on our own. I wound up with Blue Cross,
and I still have my Medicare supplemental insurance with them. I’m sure you’ll
be able to find some other anachronisms. For any errors I made in this speech,
I’m going to follow my own advice and get over past mistakes.</div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">©</span>2019
Larry Roth<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-81866876623054120422019-01-02T13:36:00.000-08:002019-01-02T13:52:51.586-08:00In Time for Your New Years Resolutions: A Review of Playing with FIRE, Scott Rieckens' New Book on Financial Independence<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
My last
post dealt with Suze Orman’s ludicrous criticism of the FIRE (Financial
Independence Retire Early) movement. While I was doing research for that post,
I discovered a book was soon to be published on FIRE.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I
requested and received a review copy of that book, Scott Rieckens’ <i>Playing with FIRE: How Far Would You Go for
Financial Freedom?,</i> which will be hitting book stores in a couple of weeks.
The book retails for $16.95, but Amazon is taking preorders for $11.56. I’m
going to buy a few to give to some of my family. That’s how much I (to put it
in terms Suze Orman would understand) liked, liked, liked, liked this book.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Yes,
FIRE stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. Now, b</span>efore you get all nasty
about retiring early, as in retiring to sit on the beach, or as Suze Orman said
about FIRE, sit around watching TV and doing nothing, the FIRE version of
retire is—you get to do what you want. If you want to, as Suze suggests, work
in a corporate job until you’re 70, when you can collect your maximum Social
Security benefits, that’s great (although, remember Suze also says that Social
Security won’t be around in 2030). Just because you CAN retire does not mean
you MUST retire. You’re simply giving yourself an option you would not
otherwise have without following the FIRE program. In my own case, as I’ve
mentioned before, with the help of Paul Terhorst’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cashing in on the American Dream </i>and Joe Dominguez’s and Vicki
Robin’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Your Money of Your Life,</i> I
realized early retirement could be enjoyable and that it was possible. I never
thought I’d pull the plug, but new management took over at Company L, and we
had a disagreement over work-life balance. I thought there should be one. I
made the decision to leave 25 years ago, and I finally got everything together
and said goodbye to my old life in February, 1995.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So I’ve
been retired from corporate life and office politics for nearly a quarter
century. Time has flown. I’m thinking of doing a 25-year anniversary revised
edition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beating the System</i> if I
can find the time. It might be interesting to share the mistakes I made and
lessons learned as well as how my views have changed over the past quarter
century. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At any
rate, having lived the FIRE lifestyle for so long, I was grateful that Scott
Rieckens has taken the time to pull this book together. He has also put a
documentary with the same title together, and it will be opening in select
venues very shortly. I would imagine if it is not opening where you live, it
will be on Kanopy, the library free streaming service, soon.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>OK. To
the book. Mr. Rieckens and his wife, Taylor, were living what they thought was
the California dream life in Coronado, California, a suburb of San Diego. Together
they earned, after taxes, $142,000 a year, of which they spent $132,000. The
Rieckens married in 2010 and in 2015 had a child. Taylor decided to work from
home in order to spend time with their daughter. They had bought a bunch of
stuff for their daughter’s birth, and, it seems, every new interest the
Rieckens found involved purchases. They leased two cars, had a boat club
membership (I’ll say this, though, that boat club membership at $350 a month
was a lot cheaper than owning a boat), and everything they wanted. Every
material thing, that is. Scott was feeling drained by his job when he heard
Pete Adeney (Mr. Money Moustache) on a podcast. Adeney said he and his family lived
comfortably on $24,000 to $27,000 per year. That was in February 2017. Scott
started investigating the FIRE movement and grew more intrigued. He began forwarding
blog posts and articles to Taylor, who eventually came around largely as the
result of an exercise that asks what are the ten things that mean the most to
you. Not one of either Scott’s or Taylor’s list included a lot of material
stuff. They decided to take action and began by getting rid of their surplus stuff.
Scott recommends starting small—not eating out, making your own coffee instead
of going to Starbucks, and bringing your lunch to work. In Scott’s case,
bringing his lunch resulted in his coworkers suggesting other ways to save
money. Once Scott started sharing his FIRE discoveries, he found a great many
people were already living the FIRE lifestyle. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Scott
makes the observation about living in California that played a big part in my
decision to leave: he says he and Taylor planned to spend lots of time on the
water—surfing, paddleboarding, kayaking, and swimming—but that didn’t happen.
They were working so much they never had time to do any of those things
(though they had bought paddleboards, kayaks, etc.). When Scott gives up his
much loved $350 per month boat club membership, he lost a one-time $6,000
initial membership fee. He takes that opportunity to discuss the “sunk cost”
fallacy, or the tendency of people to hold on to things that become useless
because of the money we’ve already spent on them. (Ask anyone who’s bought
exercise equipment or held on to GE stock through good, bad, and empty backup
plane trips.) He advises we forget about the money spent, take our losses, and
move on. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Then he
gets into the nitty gritty of FIRE. It involves saving as much as you can—he
and Taylor went from virtually no savings to saving 54% of their income. He
convinced Taylor to get rid of her BMW lease by showing her that by doing so,
their savings rate would increase to 58%, and they’d reach FI in 11 years
instead of 12.5 years with the BMW. Taylor decided the beloved BMW was not
worth an additional 1<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">½ years of her life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There
are several examples of formulas that will tell you how soon you can retire if
you get with the program. The basics are: Spend well below your income and
invest the difference. FIRE enthusiasts recommend Vanguard’s VTSMX funds for
those with at least $3,000 to invest and the VTSAX fund for those with at least
$10,000 to invest. VTSMX investments will automatically become VTSAX funds when
they reach $10,000. A word of caution here—I don’t have a clue about these
funds. Most of my investments have been in bonds. When I rolled my 401(k) over
to an IRA, I bought zero coupon bonds. This has worked out well for me, but I’m
certainly open to exploring the funds the FIRE enthusiasts recommend. For
further reading on the subject, Scott recommends JL Collins’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Simple Path to Wealth.</i> I haven’t
read it, but I will. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
book discusses buying a car. Among the recommendations are buy what you need
(which probably won’t be a turbocharged car), try to find a good used car for
less than $5,000, and pay cash. I’m going to advise you to be flexible here.
The car I owned before I bought my Kia was (I thought) a $4,200 bargain. It had
low miles, had been owned by a little old lady who had only driven it to the
beauty parlor, and it turned out to be not only the most expensive car I’ve ever
owned, but the car that convinced me never to buy another General Motors
product for as long as I live. (And I come from a family that rarely bought
anything that wasn’t GM.) I drive between 2,000 and 3,000 miles per year, and
that car easily cost $2,000 a year to keep running. When the brakes failed the
SECOND time, I decided enough was enough. I had the brakes fixed and drove the
car to a Kia dealership fully expecting to write a check for a new car. When I
didn’t bother filling out the credit application because I was going to pay
cash, the salesman told me I really didn’t want to do that, since if I financed
the car with Kia, they’d knock $1,000 off the price of the car. I asked how
long I had to keep the car financed, and he said three months, and I could pay
one-third of the principal for each of those three months. The interest rate
was 5%. The sales tax in Missouri is 8%, so I saved $80 on the sales tax and
wound up paying three months’ interest at 5% (probably about $35). The car cost
$16,000—the only option I bought was an automatic transmission, and that was
nearly five years ago. I’ve had the car serviced every nine months, and so far
that’s been my only expense. Given that I was paying at least $2,000 a year to
keep my previous car running, I figure this car has saved me $10,000 so far,
and if that continues another three years, the car will have been free. So, I’d
diverge from the FIRE folk here and advise you to keep your options open and
think long-term when it comes to cars.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Scott
and Taylor decided to leave California for a more affordable area. They
narrowed their list to Bend, Oregon, Fort Collins, Colorado, Boise, Idaho, and
Spokane, Washington. They fell in love with Bend and decided to settle there.
They fell in love with a midcentury home and offered the $480,000 asking price.
Alas, and possibly for the best, the home had multiple offers and they wound up
with a $420,000 house in a slightly less desirable area. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
personal note here. Scott grew up largely in Iowa and his parents still live
there. He mentions homes there are $150,000. I’m not clear on why a $420,000
home in Bend was a more attractive alternative. But I’ve never been to Bend,
and this is Scott's and Taylor’s story. But there are many places where housing
is more affordable, including Kansas City (although given the city’s profligate
spending on subsidized housing for the wealthy and a fixed rail fair weather
only streetcar, I’d strongly favor the Kansas side if I were in the housing
market today).</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Scott
sprinkles the book with other people’s FIRE stories, which I found encouraging.
After all, it may seem easy on the surface to cut a lot of unnecessary spending
from a $142,000 annual budget, but how about those who make less? Jillian of
Kalispell, Montana is 35 and reached FI at 32 on a $60,000 income. She spends
$30,000 a year for a <u>family of seven</u>. She and her husband were extremely
frugal and overcame many obstacles, but at 35, they’re financially independent.
Kalen and Kyle of Evans, Colorado currently spend $32,000 a year. They’re 26
and plan to reach FI at 32 by continuing to save 65% of their income (which I
estimate is $92,000 per year). And these are just a couple of the inspiring FI
stories in this book.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>One
young man gives this advice: For traditional employment, don’t pursue your
passion. Find a company that appreciates its employees and will provide
challenging work for equitable compensation. Make the rest of your life about
pursuing your passion. Good advice, indeed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Scott
concludes: “[O]nce you taste a truly free life, untethered to a schedule or a
paycheck or a career ladder, you can’t untaste it. Once you ask yourself the
most important questions—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What do I want
to do with my time, and what makes me happiest</i>—you can’t ignore the
answers.” (Italics his)<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>While
you’re waiting for the book, here are some websites Scott provides for you to
check out the FIRE movement:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mr.
Money Moustache: mrmoneymoustache.com<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mad
Fientist: madfientist.com<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Frugalwoods:
frugalwoods.com<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Physician
on FIRE: physicianonfire.com<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Early
Retirement Extreme: earlyretirementextreme.com<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
Simple Path to Wealth: jlcollinsh.com<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Millennial
Revolution: millennial-revolution.com<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>ChoseFI:
choosefi.com<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Afford
Anything: affordanything.com<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When I
contrast this book with Malcolm Harris (B. 1988)’s whinefest, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kids these Days,</i> which I reviewed last
February, there simply is no comparison. Mr. Harris (B. 1988) wallows in his
misery, and that’s basically all he has to offer. Scott and Taylor are roughly
the same age as Mr. Harris (B. 1988), and they offer a way for people to take
control of their future and live the lives they want to live. And I’m happy to
see the media are giving the FIRE movement serious coverage. With the future so
uncertain (as it always is), FIRE provides a path to prepare for some of that
uncertainty.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I won’t
go so far as to take Suze’s approach and say if you don’t follow Scott’s advice,
you’ll wind up putting a gun to your head, but I don’t think you’ll regret reading
what Scott has to offer. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I hate
to end this post with a downer, but in his latest post Pete Adeney, Mr. Money
Moustache, reveals he and his wife have divorced. If there is good news here,
it’s that their divorce is extremely amicable, and it was all accomplished for $265.
Here’s wishing both of them the best. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Next
up: I’m going to fulfill a promise I made nineteen years ago.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">©</span>2019
Larry Roth<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2939412508503235475.post-53767662131933890972018-11-26T12:56:00.003-08:002018-11-26T13:13:48.345-08:00Suze Orman and the FIRE Movement<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I’ve
been very interested to see the progress of the FIRE movement. For those not acquainted
with the term, it stands for financial independence, retire early. Unlike
earlier frugality movements, this one has been getting serious attention from
the media. Perhaps that’s because journalists are an endangered species these
days and recognize the wisdom of cutting consumption and saving money in an
increasing likelihood of unemployment. I’m looking forward to Scott Reickens’
new book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Playing with FIRE, </i>which is
due out in January. I’m trying to get a review copy, but you may have to wait
for me to get a copy from the library.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When
the frugality movement of the 1990s began, those of us who were part of it were
at first covered by serious writers, among them Nick Ravo of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times, </i>who gave <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Living Cheap News </i>the mention that got
it going. Soon, however, we were covered by writers eager to make fun of the
movement. Amy Dacyczyn, after she had ceased publishing her wildly successful <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tightwad Gazette </i>in 1996<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>was “encouraged” by a reporter to open
up her life. She did, and the reporter wrote a scathing article about Amy’s
deprived children and bare bones lifestyle. The same reporter, who was at that
time childless, went on to write another article advising women not to leave
the workforce when they had children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I was
encouraged that the coverage of the FIRE movement had been overwhelmingly
positive, and every once in a while I check the Mr. Money Moustache website to
see what’s going on, which is how I discovered that Suze Orman hates, hates,
hates, hates the movement. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Her
interview with Paula Pant, whose podcast is titled “Afford Anything,” is
available on YouTube and, I’m sure, elsewhere. It’s cringeworthy and about an
hour and ten minutes long. It’s worth listening to if you want to hear
something worthy of an overlong Saturday Night Live skit, but there’s no reason
to suffer through it, as I did, because I’m going to give you the short
version.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If
you’re going to watch it, though, I suggest you first have a glass of wine and
watch the Kinsey Sicks version of “Don’t Be Happy. Worry,” which is also on
YouTube and sums up Suze’s position on the FIRE movement and pretty much everything
else.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>First,
Suze says $2 million is not enough to retire on. Especially if you retire at a
young age. Suze seems to think FIers retire with their nest egg and start
spending it down. She does not have enough grasp of the movement to realize we
try not only not to touch our principal, but to add to it. Suze then goes on to
say things happen. You could be hit by a car. You could get run over by a bus. You
could fall down on the ice. You could get cancer. Further, artificial
intelligence is coming. In 2030, unemployment could be 25%. That means those
who are working will be taxed at higher rates. Social Security and Medicare
will be gone. Your money may not last, and you’re not adding to your retirement
accounts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Reality
check here. Do you suppose anyone who gets hit by a car, run over by a bus,
falls on the ice, or gets cancer laments not working while they were healthy
enough to enjoy their lives? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Suze,
who once earned and lived on $400 a month, says a safe spending amount per year
would be $350,000 after taxes. When pressed, she says $10 million may be enough
to retire on. When pressed further about people who spend their whole lives
earning $50,000 or less, Suze says they’re more ready for retirement because
they’re used to living on less. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Suze
spends a great deal of this interview telling how rich she is. Why, just a few
years ago, she sold five of her houses, canceled a bunch of her commitments,
and moved to her own private island where she spent time on her yacht learning
how to be its captain. But she got bored and was welcomed back by her fans who
wondered why she’d ever deserted them—sort of like hearing this story from the Norma
Desmond perspective—and she’s flogging a new book. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In
short, Suze says she's smart and rich, so listen to her. People who didn’t have
wound up putting a gun to their heads. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She
compares FIers to those who got on the duck boat that sank here in Missouri.
Those people, after all, thought they were safe and look what happened, so work
as long as you possibly can in an area you love so you don’t feel that it’s
work. At this point I couldn’t help but be reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Slaughterhouse Five, </i>which is one of the
texts for my history class, and I wondered if Suze had been kidnapped by the <span style="color: black;">Tralfadamoreans because she’s certainly not living on
planet American middle class. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Suze’s
ideal retirement age is 70 at which time a person can get their maximum Social
Security benefit. (Remember Social Security? That program that won’t be around
in 2030?) She reminds us once again that $2 million is “nothing,” and that people
who retire early “don’t have a passion” and will spend their long retirement
“sitting and doing nothing,” which I found funny because it was a great effort
on my part to carve out the time to listen to this drivel. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
is OK with Suze if a new mother stays home to raise her children, but once that
kid’s in school, the mother needs to get back in the labor force. She’s even
opposed to college students taking a gap year. But two to six weeks is OK if
you’ve maxed out your retirement contributions and have eight months of living
expenses in the bank.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
find it amazing that anyone would let this nutcase tell them how to live their
lives. As someone who retired early—nearly 25 years ago, I can tell you it was
pretty darned easy for me. I had the guidance of Paul Terhorst’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cashing in on the American Dream </i>to show
me what an early retirement could be like and Joe Dominguez’ and Vicki Robin’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Your Money or Your Life </i>to take me
through the math to show me it was possible. When I left Company L, I was
living on my passive income, so I moved my 401(k) to my IRA. I am extremely
lazy about money, and I did not want to have to think about it every day, so I
bought zero coupon treasuries. I planned not to have to touch the IRA until I
reached age seventy, and I didn’t. In the meantime, I have been able to add to
my non-IRA principal by, among other things, finding an enjoyable consulting
gig that lasted four years and living on less income than the accounts earn. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Unlike
Suze, I do not have a private island, a private plane, or a yacht. And, I’m
extremely happy to report I only have one house. Woe is me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
I have had almost a quarter of a century to do pretty much as I pleased.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Maybe
it’s time for another glass of wine and another viewing of “Don’t be Happy.
Worry.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">© 2018 Larry Roth</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />Larry Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09139853952138930337noreply@blogger.com0