A Little Child in Alabama

Martin Luther King Day -- and I was thinking about a suitable post. I took a look at my last year's post with the conclusion of King's stirring "I Have a Dream" speech and one bit particularly caught my attention.

"I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers."

Some of those vicious racists were probably my kin -- my maternal grandparents both grew up in rural Alabama and had family there. And when the Sixties came, with the push for integration, I was confounded to hear the views held by my beloved grandparents.

They weren't vicious racists, but they were racists nonetheless. We talked and argued and I was baffled by their intractability -- as baffled as they were by my opinions.

But I understand some of this a bit better now -- fifty years after the fact.

This little green textbook -- published in Richmond, Virginia in 1899 -- holds the key.

It belonged to my grandmother's brother -- and I can't resist including the picture he drew (his teacher, perhaps?)

But the thing is, as I began looking through this text book, I saw just what my grandparents learned in school -- and what we learn in school is often hard to undo. (Click on the pictures to enlarge and read the words yourself.)

The text -- a history of the United States -- is 423 pages long. Almost half is devoted to the Civil War (battle by battle) and the whole thing is very sympathetic to the South -- from a denunciation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's ill-informed view of slavery to this sweet picture below of the mistress of a plantation reading to the slaves on Sunday.

"The outcry against slavery had made the Southern people study the subject, and they had reached the conclusion that the evils connected with it were less than those of any other system of labor. Hundreds of thousands of African savages had been christianized under its influence. The kindest relations existed between the slaves and their owners. A cruel or neglectful master or mistress was rarely found. The sense of responsibility pressed heavily on the slave-owners, and they generally did the best they could for the physical and religious welfare of the slaves. The bondage in which the negroes were held was not thought a wrong to them because they were better off than any other menial class in the world."

Oh, dear. I read this and am outraged. Over a hundred years ago, young Claude Wright (and probably my grand mother and grandfather as well) read it and believed it.

Never mind that his family had not been slave owners (only a small proportion of Southerners were.)







The glorification of the Noble South is the sub text that runs through these pages.

"Women of every degree shared the enthusiasm, and courageously, though sadly, sent their loved ones to the army."






















The ruined plantation house . . . Reconstruction . . . Oppression and Tyranny . . . the Ku Klux Klan . . . it's all here in this textbook.

A text book for racists.

It reminds me of the song from "South Pacific"

You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!