Monday,
January 15, 2007
The
The
ANNOTICO Report
The
Mississippi Delta, is in the northwest quadrant
of the poorest state in the country.
During
Reconstruction, there was interracial cooperation not seen in other areas. but when lopsided demographics threatened White
Elite supremacy, the Elite enacted Disenfranchisement and enforced
Racial Laws.
This
situation persisted until the 1954 US Supreme Court handed down its unanimous
decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, that
outlawed desegregation, and congealed both blacks and whites. For
two decades, the Delta was the epicenter of the national struggle over civil
rights.
In
the national imagination, white Deltans are depicted
either as paternalistic Episcopalian planters or virulently racist backcountry
crackers. But Delta whites were actually a hierarchical alliance of a variety
of ethnic groups. German Jews were present from the earliest American
settlement. They and the Eastern European Jews who followed came to dominate
the merchant class of Delta towns, eventually branching into finance and
plantation ownership. In 1880
By the late 19th century, Lebanese, ITALIAN and Chinese immigrants landed in
the Delta and carved out niches in the local economy. Even as they sought to be
accepted among whites, By the late 1930s the Chinese began
to gain entrance into white schools, churches, restaurants and clubs.
Meanwhile, the ITALIANS and Lebanese labored on the margins of whiteness. For
that matter, so did poor country whites.
< B! R>After one last unified stand in 1964, the
cleavages in whiteness reappeared to undermine racial solidarity. While Delta
Jews by and large upheld segregation, the Lebanese kept their heads down, and ITALIANS were split. Perhaps
because they had the most tenuous claim to whiteness, the
Chinese anxiously tried to negotiate both sides of the racial divide. Most
important, perhaps, the elites lost control of the poor whites who had always been expected to do their bidding vis-a-vis blacks.
Definitions
of Whiteness Amid the Delta Blues
In
the Mississippi Delta, race isn't as easy as black and white.
Gregory
Rodriguez
January 14, 2007
Then what's a white person, we asked? After some confusion over the meaning of
the question, he concluded that it was probably anybody "who isn't
black."
Last week, I crisscrossed the Mississippi Delta, the ancient alluvial plain
that defines the northwest quadrant of the poorest state in the country. I rode
shotgun with anthropologist Jane Adams and photographer and journalist D.
Gorton. They're a husband-and-wife team who first met here more than 40 years
ago as young white civil rights activist s! . Now they
make frequent pilgrimages to the region from their home in
And what more perfect place to do it? For two decades,
the Delta was the epicenter of the national struggle over civil rights. Sen.
James O. Eastland, once labeled the "symbol of racism in
The Mississippi Delta has been called "the South's South" and "
Whites have been a minority in the Delta ever since it was settled in the 19th
century. Even today, after decades of severe depopulation, blacks still
outnumber whites in the core Delta counties by a margin of more than 2 to 1.
During Reconstruction, when large numbers of former slaves started pouring into
the region, the area's demographics gave them some leverage with white planters
who depended on their labor. Many labor-hungry plantation owners
! even realized that a modicum of interracial
cooperation was necessary for the sake of economic progress. Some thought it
wise to refrain from the wholesale violence against blacks that was routine in
the rest of the state. For a brief moment, the Delta offered more opportunity
for black land ownership than any other place in the South.
But the black population boom that white farmers had heartily welcomed started
to fuel fears that lopsided demographics threatened their supremacy. In 1890,
the year Deltan elites signed on to a statewide
campaign to disenfranchise blacks, blacks outnumbered whites 7 to 1. Simply
put, white politicians realized that they couldn't hope to win fair elections
in a region where blacks made up at least 80% of the potential electorate.
Disenfranchisement and out-of-control land prices pushed more blacks into
sharecropping. And as opportunity for economic advancement disappeared, the
racial climate deteriorated.
In the national imagina t! ion,
white Deltans are depicted either as paternalistic
Episcopalian planters or virulently racist backcountry crackers. But Delta
whites were actually a hierarchical alliance of a variety of ethnic groups.
German Jews were present from the earliest American settlement. They and the
Eastern European Jews who followed came to dominate the merchant class of Delta
towns, eventually branching into finance and plantation ownership. In 1880
By the late 19th century, Lebanese, Italian and Chinese immigrants landed in
the Delta and carved out niches in the local economy. Even as they sought to be
accepted among whites, the Chinese and Lebanese often lived among and started
businesses that catered to African Americans. The Chinese were officially
deemed nonwhite, but by the late 1930s they began to gain entrance into white
schools, churches, restaurants and clubs. Meanwhile, the I!
talians and Lebanese labored
on the margins of whiteness. For that matter, so did poor country whites.
Mozelle Chason, a
72-year-old pastor's wife, told us that no town children even talked to her
until she reached high school. The poor country kids "would bring things
in our lunches that they wouldn't dream of touching," she said. Sheriff
Holder has similar recollections. The "city slickers" wanted nothing
to do with the "rednecks," "hicks" or "white trash."
But in 1954, after the Supreme Court handed down its unanimous decision in
Brown vs. Board of Education, the loose affiliation of whites congealed and
hardened. It didn't just happen by itself. The "racial unity" was
enforced by organizations such as the White Citizens Council, which asked all
those people who sought to be considered white to stand strong against
desegregation.
Adams and Gorton long wondered why the Delta did not descend into a Bosnia-like
bloodbath. What they've concluded is that after o n! e
last unified stand in 1964, the cleavages in whiteness reappeared to undermine
racial solidarity. While Delta Jews by and large upheld segregation, the
Lebanese kept their heads down, and Italians were split. Perhaps because they
had the most tenuous claim to whiteness, the Chinese anxiously tried to
negotiate both sides of the racial divide. Most important, perhaps, the elites
lost control of the poor whites who had always been
expected to do their bidding vis-a-vis blacks.
After massive school integration in the winter of 1969, white solidarity
suffered another blow as white elites put their children into private white
academies and left poor white kids in the public schools. By the close of the
20th century, however, barriers to entrance in the white elite began to erode.
At Abe's Bar-B-Q in
But as I paid the check, I chatted with the Lebanese American owner, George P.
Davis Jr., who was more acutely aware of the movable boundaries of whiteness. I
asked him if he and his family were fully accepted as white folks in town.
"I hope so," he said as he smiled, "but you never know."
And, as he pointed to himself and the black employees working behind him, he
added: "Let's just say it's gotten better for all of us."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/
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