When my brother, Fred, passed away on March 30, it was left to me — the only family member within easy driving distance of his home in Tupelo — to sort and disperse the personal effects left unclaimed by his three children.
By far, the biggest challenge in that task was finding a home for his beloved collection of books. There must have been 500 or 600 books, almost all of them on history (Fred was a history professor) and theology. I doubt there were 10 novels in his entire library.
I think I showed remarkable restraint in holding back only about 20 books to add to my personal collection.
One of those was a book that captured my attention because of its condition — the weathered spine spoke of its age — and the title, “A Southerner Discovers The South.”
The publisher’s page revealed the book was published in 1938 and I wondered what the author, Jonathan Daniels, a North Carolina newspaper editor and White House press secretary from 1940-1950, might have “discovered” about the South more than 80 years ago.
What would this progressive Southerner reveal given the context of the times in which he wrote, a time that preceded the Civil Rights movement in the South?
That alone was intriguing, but a single line from the author, printed on the page just before the table of contents, was an appeal to my love of the wit of the written word:
“All of the characters in this book are fictitious, though most of them will be surprised to discover it.”
I was hooked.
As is to be expected, some of the things Daniels wrote have not held up well — there are phrases and descriptions sprinkled throughout the book that, while were common at the time, makes the reader wince today as he detailed his car journey from Virginia to Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas,Mississippi, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
Along the way, he met not only with people of power, prestige and position — governors, TVA officials, newspaper editors, wealthy Coca-Cola heirs, labor union organizers and “New Deal” officials — but regular folk as well.
The book does not shy away from issues of race, but aside from the one beaten-down old hitchhiker he picked up in Alabama, Daniels spoke of Southern Blacks rather than speaking with them.
Surprisingly for someone considered as a progressive, Daniels expressed doubts about the New Deal programs being initiated in the South and was equally dubious about efforts to unionize tenant farmers. His view suggested that if the South was going to escape its poverty, it would be the Southern people themselves — both Black and white — who would have to achieve it.
“The South is awakening, scratching at new desires…Once they were sleepy. Now they stir and are wide-open at last. A regional plan is a plot from seeing to getting, from needing to wanting, to possessing.
“Such an ordered program in the South must include expansions of facilities for public education in a region lacking skills, for public health in a region still plagued by preventable diseases, for public welfare in a country in which the private welfare of so many is insecure.”
This could have been written last week.
Mississippi is still struggling to provide education and skills training, refuses to expand Medicaid to provide preventative medicine for an estimated 300,000 working people who lack health insurance and rails against any federal programs that provide funds for our poorest citizens.
But it is on the issue of race, that he touches our current condition in its most vulnerable and painful place.
“The Southern Negro is not an incurably ignorant ape,” he wrote. “The Southern white masses are not biologically degenerate.
“Both are peoples capable of vastly more training than they possess….Both are people who could consume and produce more wealth. And they are capable of happy, productive, peaceful life, side by side. White men and black men have shared the South’s too little for a long time…They would be able to build a South in terms of the South’s potentiality, if together they had a chance to make and share plenty.”
There’s where Daniels’ observations collide with his idealism.
Eighty years ago, he assumed the people of the South were willing to work together, Black and white.
That so little progress has been made leads to the unfortunate truth: There remain too many white people who won’t go anywhere if it means Black people must go with them.
G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
Sadly, we could say the same about Daniels’ vision for a better, more hopeful, more decent Mississippi.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 37 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.