DOC Brushing Back Jim Crow by Bruce Adelson in History

Description

In this powerful memoir; Charles Dew; one of America’s most respected historians of the South--and particularly its history of slavery--turns the focus on his own life; which began not in the halls of enlightenment but in a society unequivocally committed to segregation. Dew re-creates the midcentury American South of his childhood--in many respects a boy’s paradise; but one stained by Lost Cause revisionism and; worse; by the full brunt of Jim Crow. Through entertainments and "educational" books that belittled African Americans; as well as the living examples of his own family; Dew was indoctrinated in a white supremacy that; at best; was condescendingly paternalistic and; at worst; brutally intolerant. The fear that southern culture; and the "hallowed white male brotherhood;" could come undone through the slightest flexibility in the color line gave the Jim Crow mindset its distinctly unyielding quality. Dew recalls his father; in most regards a decent man; becoming livid over a black tradesman daring to use the front; and not the back; door.The second half of the book shows how this former Confederate youth and descendant of Thomas Roderick Dew; one of slavery’s most passionate apologists; went on to reject his racist upbringing and become a scholar of the South and its deeply conflicted history. The centerpiece of Dew’s story is his sobering discovery of a price circular from 1860--an itemized list of humans up for sale. Contemplating this document becomes Dew’s first step in an exploration of antebellum Richmond’s slave trade that investigates the terrible--but; to its white participants; unremarkable--inhumanity inherent in the institution.Dew’s wish with this book is to show how the South of his childhood came into being; poisoning the minds even of honorable people; and to answer the question put to him by Illinois Browning Culver; the African American woman who devoted decades of her life to serving his family: "Charles; why do the grown-ups put so much hate in the children?"