← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · edward gibbon
Thread ID: 20169 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2005-09-12
2005-09-12 17:32 | User Profile
I hope some find what I wrote to be interesting and note how little some things have changed. [QUOTE]ââ¬Â¦These words should establish Mr. Percy as a member of a class which had long been culturally sure of itself and was not afraid to speak its mind. For an America which has lost the ability to write of simple truths, and an intellectual and political class which has lost courage to confront unpleasant truths what he had to say can be disturbing. Mr. Percy wrote some truths about the Negro of the Mississippi Delta.
Although his father as Senator from Mississippi had written an article in Atlantic Monthly in 1922 attacking and mocking the Ku Klux Klan,[1] Mr. Percy became the object of vilification by the northern Negro press. During the great flood of 1927 the Chicago Defender accused Mr. Percy of pouring sewerage into the Negro residential section while white folk played golf. This calumny came despite continued working of the sewerage system of the town and the golf course being under four feet of water. In exasperation he noted Negroes believed what was in the newspaper rather than what was before their eyes.
After a stupid killing of a Negro by a young white policeman, this patrician arranged to talk to the Negroes in one of their churches with his being the only white present. [B][COLOR=Red]After the singing of a hymn which ended in a pounding barbaric chant of menace, the planter, knowing full well reason would not carry the debate, attacked the assembled Negroes as being the real murderers. Telling the congregation that the flood did not spare black or white, Mr. Percy reminded the Negroes that the whites did not desert them, but instead worked for them. The complaining blacks did nothing for themselves or anybody else. The only thing they were asked to do was to unload food donated for them by the Red Cross. The murdered black refused to help unless paid, and the maddened policeman then shot him. For this he was arrested and would be tried. Mr. Percy then accused the assembled blacks of being the real murderers with blood on their hands. He then demanded they get on their knees and beg their God for forgiveness so that they would not be punished as they deserved.
They went to their knees. All including Mr. Percy prayed. This supplication averted danger. Then Mr. Percy called for volunteers to unload the next boat. All of four people stood up. One was an old friend. One was a one-armed man. Two were old preachers who had been slaves on his ancestral plantation and were too old to lift a bucket. There seemed to be no redeeming moral to this tale other than the brutal honesty of a cultured man among inferiors.[2][/COLOR] [/B]
In his world travels Mr. Percy found very few men worthy of leisure. Those deemed worthy were saints, a few aristocrats and Negroes.[3] The ability for the two races to live somewhat amicably in the South was due to the southern Negro having the most beautiful manners in the world with the southern white learning from him a close second.[4] Even then Mr. Percy did caution how a Negro social event was the most joyous and fun filled one could hope to experience - right up until the first knife was pulled. Perhaps in some confession of self-pity Mr. Percy observed there has been a super abundance of sympathy for the Negro in the South, but none for the white who lives among them. To live as a superior either intellectually or economically among inferiors whom one must protect as a sense of decency sorely burdened one who felt his own trouble was all he can bear. To live in pretense that Negroes and whites shared a common culture was illusory and deeply hypocritical. Mr. Percy thought the Negro only superficially accepted the ethics and had rejected the standards of the white man. Murder, lying, thieving and violence have been regarded by the Negro not as crimes, or sins or even regrettable acts. Delinquent white men could become brutalized or embittered. Negroes retained their charm even after a crime although one may have doubts if Mr. Percy would make the same assertion after witnessing the behavior of blacks in urban America of the present.[5] Lest any think his patronizing was vicious, Mr. Percy did remark that any white man worth being called white or a man was owned by a Negro.[6]
While he remarked on general excellences of the Negro, Mr. Percy lamented his inability to help the Negro because no Negro unreservedly trusts any white man; nor does he trust any Negro because his leaders have betrayed him. The southern Negro turned to country preachers who were immoral, uneducated and avaricious. (W.E.B. DuBois had claimed the religious activities of the poor whites were copied from the black church. What pained him was how debased much of the music was which purported to copy Negro melodies. Whites had caught the body, but not the "soul" of Jubilee songs.[7] One must suspect he would have disclaimed influence on Jimmy Swaggert or Jim Bakker.) Even then the atmosphere of America misled and endangered the Negro. What bothered him especially was the sickening adulation paid to Negro athletes and entertainers. Another wicked intrusion into the cultural milieu was the white sentimentalist. The noblest of them, Mrs. Roosevelt, accomplished her insidious evil with the highest motives.[8]
2005-09-12 23:25 | User Profile
edward gibbon,
Yes very interesting. Great article.
2005-09-13 16:03 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Faust]edward gibbon,
Yes very interesting. Great article.[/QUOTE]I excerpted substantial parts of my book for this article. I wished to point out how little has really changed in 78 years.
2005-09-16 19:42 | User Profile
[QUOTE]The southern Negro turned to country preachers who were immoral, uneducated and avaricious.[/QUOTE] They're "city preachers" now and just as sorry. No, nothing has changed in that regard.