Ealy – Agrarian Reflections on Civil Rights
Agrarian
Reflections on Civil Rights
Philadelphia Society Regional Meeting,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 1-2, 2004
Steven D. Ealy
Senior Fellow, Liberty Fund, Inc.
I.
“The Southern people are not
actually united on anything these daysñexcept the Negro question,” Donald
Davidson wrote to Allen Tate in October 1929.[i]
Davidson and Tate had been discussing the possible subjects and authors to be
included in a symposium defending the rural South against encroaching
industrialization and the proponents of the “New South.”[ii]
In any such defense of the South, the “Negro question” would be a crucial
issue, especially if Davidson’s sense of a Southern consensus on race was
correct. When Davidson finally
agreed to give Robert Penn Warren the assignment on race, he wrote to Warren
that “It’s Up To You, Red, to prove that Negroes are country folks . . .
‘born and bred in a briar-patch’.”[iii]
Thus the genesis of Warren’s contribution to
I’ll Take My Stand.
Two assumptions supported Warren’s argument in “The Briar Patch.”[iv]
First, regardless of how blacks came to America, or how oppressed they may have
been once here, America was the contemporary home of the descendants of the
slaves. Both blacks and whites must come to terms with the implications of this
fact. Second, blacks and whites share a basic interest in how society develops,
and their fates are inextricably linked together.
After an argument for vocational education and the development of the
professions for blacks Warren began a more general discussion of the
requirements for the development of strong black communities, a topic he
approached through a discussion of why educated blacks had moved from the South.
Warren noted that the most common reasons for this movement were a lack of
opportunity and discrimination, and he collapsed these two issues into the
single question of equality. While acknowledging that equality was a complicated
question, Warren thought it could be untangled.
Warrenóoptimistically, naively,
or disingenuously, wroteó”The simplest issue, and probably the one on which
most people would agree, is that of equal right before the law” (ITMS,
252). Justice before the law, so often unavailable to the black, “is the least
he can demand for himself or others can demand for him.” Warren underlined the
broader social importance of racial equality before the law, without spelling
out the implications of his comment. “The matter of political right carries
repercussions which affect almost every relation of the two races,” he wrote,
but then concluded by merely reiterating “the least that can be desired in
behalf of the negro is that any regulation shall apply equitably to both him and
the white man.” (ITMS, 252)
The question of industrial
development stood at the heart of agrarian concerns, if not at the heart of
Warren’s essay. The agrarians of I’ll
Take My Stand were motivated both by their opposition to the “industrial
gospel” (ITMS, xx) and by their belief that “the culture of the soil
is the best and most sensitive of vocations” (ITMS, xxix). Applying
both the positive and negative elements of the agrarian position to the question
of black society, Warren offered a two-fold argument: industrial development was
not a panacea for the black community and agriculture provided the surest means
to black self-sufficiency.
Warren thought that efforts toward industrialization and the
development of organized labor in the South would encounter white resistance at
two levels. At the elite level there was a “naÔve distrust of most types of
organization” (ITMS, 257). Equally important was the attitude of
“poor whites” that saw themselves threatened if blacks become economically
independent. The danger from the white lower classes stemmed from the
willingness on the part of these whites to use violence against individual
blacks who were seen as potential threats (ITMS, 258-59).
Warren thought that the only way to avoid racial violence under the
conditions of increased industrialization in the South was through the
recognition that “the fates of the ‘poor white’ and the negro are linked
in a single tether. The well-being and adjustment of one depends on that of the
other” (ITMS, 259). White labor could attempt to retard the development
of black labor through intimidation or violence. Or white labor could learn
“that color has nothing to do with the true laying of a brick and that the
comfort of all involved in the process depends on his recognition and acceptance
of the fact” (ITMS, 260).
Unless white labor learned this lesson industry would play black labor
off against white labor to the detriment of both. A peaceful solution to
changing labor conditions brought about by industrial expansion “will demand
tact on the part of the employer, judgment and patience on the part of both the
negro and white workman, effective legislation, and the understanding by the
ordinary citizen” (ITMS, 260). Warren did not answer the crucial
question of whether Southern reserves of tact, judgment, patience and
understanding were adequate to handle the inevitable stresses created by
industrial growth.
Warren concluded his discussion of industrialization by noting one final
lesson that must be learned by the white laborer if these changes in the labor
market were to occur peacefully. “What the white workman must learn . . . is
that he may respect himself as a white man, but if he fails to concede the negro
equal protection, he does not properly respect himself as a man” (ITMS,
260). Warren was not optimistic that this lesson would be learned easily.
Having dealt with industrialism and the demands that it would place on
Southern society, Warren then turned to a defense of rural life as offering
blacks the best opportunity for economic independence and development of strong
communal structures. Warren argued that, by “temperament and capacity,” the
southern black belonged in the small town or on the farm. A return to rural life
would provide the blacks with “the status of a human being who is likely to
find in agriculture and domestic pursuits the happiness that his good nature and
easy ways incline him to as an ordinary function of his being” (ITMS,
260-261).
Warren argued that a move toward
the land would provide the “readiest and probably surest way for the greater
number of the negroes to establish themselves” (ITMS, 261). In addition
to providing for financial independence, such a move would save blacks from the
“formalized and impersonal” group relations of the city (ITMS, 262). There
was more opportunity for contact between the races in a rural setting, and this
contact allowed for the development of personal relations that transcended race.[v]
Warren in fact maintained that “the rural life provides the most satisfactory
relationship of the two races which can be found at present” (ITMS,
262).
The movement of blacks into
agriculture, however, again raised “the difficulty of competition between the
two races” (ITMS, 263), which again raised the question of racial
violence. Warren thought that in a rural setting the issue was “more readily
ponderable,” but he offered no plan to deal with the type of violence he had
emphasized in talking about urban competition. Warren seemed to think of rural
whites as having more patience, prudence, and good will toward blacks than their
urban counterparts. In fact, racial violence in the South was as likely to be
found in rural areas and small towns as in urban industrialized areas.[vi]
Ultimately Warren set forth a
challenge to Southern whites, and this challenge was, intentionally or
unintentionally, aimed directly at his agrarian brothers. “If the Southern
white man feels that the agrarian life has a certain irreplaceable value in his
society, and if he hopes to maintain its integrity in the face of industrialism
or its dignity in the face of agricultural depression, he must find a place for
the negro in his scheme” (ITMS, 263).
In keeping with the theme of the
symposium, Warren proposed that that place is the agrarian society, and he
identified a number of issues that needed to be addressed if the movement of
blacks into agriculture was to be successful. Agricultural education was a
necessity, and blacks had to “receive equal consideration” in cooperative
and protective efforts (ITMS, 264). More generally, the conditions
necessary for the development of the black community had to be recognized and
respected. Whites had to understand that the black community “must have such
roots as the white society owns” (ITMS, 264). Warren concluded with the
claim that “the chief problem for all alike is the restoration of society at
large to a balance and security which the industrial regime is far from
promising to achieve” (ITMS, 264).
Warren’s essay is not so much an
argument for segregation as it is an acceptance of segregation as a given within
which action must take place. Warren certainly accepted the outlines of the
segregated society that already existed as the basis for his analysis: “Let
the negro sit beneath his own vine and fig tree” (ITMS, 264). Warren
accepted the distinction between political discrimination and social
discrimination as delineated by the Supreme Court, and therefore he accepted the
doctrine of “separate but equal” as a legitimate rule for social life.[vii]
That stated, it must be
immediately noted that Warren did not simply accept all discriminatory acts as
inevitable and legitimate. Warren argued for the absolute importance of equal
treatment before the law for blacks, for the importance of black
self-sufficiency and control of their own communities. Warren recognized the
human equality of blacks, and not just legal equality, when he argued that
“this negro community must have such roots as the white society owns” (ITMS,
264). Warren argued that in the marketplace, color was not important for success
but that ability and performance were the keys to economic success. He
challenged white laborers to show respect for themselves as men by acknowledging
the legal equality of blacks and eschewing violence. He challenged the white
intellectual who sought to defend the “Southern way of life” to “find a
place for the negro in his scheme.” The essay, in passing, also stressed that
legal equality “carries repercussions which affect almost every relation of
the two races” without delineating those repercussions (ITMS, 252).
While it would be pushing the point to argue that “The Briar Patch” was a
direct attack on the “Southern way of life” when it came to race relations,
it was, in the words of Louis Rubin, Jr., “implicitly disruptive of the
southern racial status quo.”[viii]
II
A brief survey of the treatment of
race in the other contributions to I’ll
Take My Stand will situate Warren’s argument within the context of the
entire symposium. Whether one treats I’ll
Take My Stand as a set of practical proposals for political and social
reform or as an expression of moral and artistic vision, it is legitimate to ask
if agrarianism has anything of importance to say regarding race relations and
racial justice.
The “Statement of Principles”
(ITMS, xix-xxx) that opens the collection perhaps sets the tone for the
entire work. It states that the essays included in the collection “all tend to
support a Southern way of life against what may be called the American or
prevailing way” (ITMS, xix). While the racial mores of the South might
be thought to be a part of the “Southern way of life” the agrarians intend
to defend, there is no mention of race relations in the “Statement of
Principles” at all. The only use of the word “race” in this
“Statement” occurs in its final paragraph:
For, in conclusion, this much is
clear: If a community, or a section, or a race, or an age, is groaning under
industrialism, and well aware that it is an evil dispensation, it must find the
way to throw it off. To think that this cannot be done is pusillanimous. And if
the whole community, section, race, or age thinks it cannot be done, then it has
simply lost its political genius and doomed itself to impotence. (ITMS,
xxx)
The agrarians saw industrialism as
the great enemy to the good life, in
part, because of its impact on labor. The “Statement of
Principles” says this: “The first principle of a good labor is that it must
be effective, but the second principle is that it must be enjoyed. Labor is one
of the largest items in the human career; it is a modest demand to ask that it
may partake of happiness.” (ITMS, xxii) Labor that can be “enjoyed”
and that can lead to “happiness” is thus a part of living a full human life.
The final passage from the “Statement of Principles” quoted above invokes
the image of Hebrews in bondage toiling under tyrannical pharaohs when it speaks
of “a race groaning under industrialism.” John Crowe Ransom refers to “the
new so-called industrial ‘slavery’ ” (ITMS, 23) in his essay, and
he does not intend the phrase to be taken ironically. What is ironic is that a
work motivated by a fierce desire to protect the traditions of personal and
community liberty should take such a nonchalant attitude toward real slavery and
its aftermath.
Except for Warren’s essay, those
chapters that touch on race do so only incidentally, and in most cases they
refer back to the history of slavery in the antebellum South. In his opening
essay John Crowe Ransom wrote, “Slavery was a feature monstrous enough in
theory, but, more often than not, humane in practice; and it is impossible to
believe that its abolition alone could have effected any great revolution in
society” (ITMS, 14). Slavery was not crucial to the life of the Old
South; if it were a vital part of that culture, however, it was not so bad.[ix]
The most extensive discussion of
slavery in I’ll Take My Stand
besides that offered by Warren is found in Frank Owsley’s “The Irrepressible
Conflict,” which treats race primarily in terms of the history of slavery and
its abolition. Owsley agreed with Warren that efforts at colonization as a way
to eliminate the racial problem generally had been opposed by blacks (ITMS,
78). Owsley argued that “Slavery was no simple question of ethics; it cut
across the categories of human thought like a giant question mark. It was a
moral, an economic, a religious, a social, a philosophical, and above all a
political question” (ITMS, 76). The irrepressible conflict of his
title, however, was not between the forces of slavery and the forces of freedom,
but “between the industrial and commercial civilization of the North and the
agrarian civilization of the South” (ITMS, 74). Despite an absence of
focus on contemporary race relations, an insight into the agrarians’ view of
the contemporary race question can be gleaned from Owsley’s essay. He wrote
that there is an explanation for slavery “which the North has never
graspedñin fact, never can grasp until the negro race covers the North as
thickly as it does the lower South” (ITMS, 68). Blacks were imported
into the Southern Colonies in such numbers that whites feared for their racial
integrity. The blacks brought into the colonies “were cannibals and
barbarians, and therefore dangerous . . . . Even if no race wars occurred, there
was dread of being submerged and absorbed by the black race” (ITMS,
77).
This view of blacks as barbarians,
and the attendant fear that it generated, appears to be the operative view of at
least some of the agrarians. Andrew Lytle, in “The Hind Tit” (ITMS,
201-245), argued in similar fashion that long after the conclusion of the Civil
War, the “menace of the free negro” helped to insure that farmers would give
their allegiance to leaders who had left the countryside to enter industry and
urban life (ITMS, 215). Ransom also alluded to the problem of the
“professional demagogue” without explicitly raising the question of race (ITMS,
24).
The essay on education, written by
John Gould Fletcher, paralleled Warren’s argument for vocational education for
blacks. “Although there is no doubt that the negro could, if he wished, pass
easily through the high school and college mill,” under present circumstances
it would be a waste of time (ITMS, 119). Far better to support blacks at
“Tuskegee and the Hampton Institute, which are adapted to the capacity of that
race and produce far healthier and happier specimens of it than all the
institutions of ‘higher learning’ than we can ever give them” (ITMS,
121).
Finally, in “Whither Southern
Economy?” Herman Clarence Nixon pointed toward the need for agricultural
education if blacks were to thrive. Nixon noted that agriculture, especially the
production of cotton, had been the chief economic activity of Southern blacks
since the end of the Civil War. These blacks (and those who exploit them) had
been primarily responsible for “overemphasizing a commercialized cotton
production and delaying a wholesome agricultural diversification” in the South
(ITMS, 190). Nixon praised Booker T. Washington for “the persistency
with which he urged his people to get more land and to keep it and to grow
something besides cotton” (ITMS, 190).
None of the other authors in I’ll
Take My Stand sought to “find a place for the negro in his scheme.” As
Louis Rubin observed, “Generally the black man in I’ll
Take My Stand is viewed as a kind of peasant, an element in southern society
fitted to be the hewer of wood and drawer of water, and one that can be
accommodated within an Agrarian dispensation without too much adjustment.”[x]
Virginia Rock confirms that “most of them did not even discuss the Negro,”
and concludes, “Those who did take cognizance of the race question in their
essays would not have aroused the ire of Southern traditionalists.” (Rock,
303) I agree with Paul Conkin’s observation that “The presence of
[Warren’s] essay thus early revealed the one time bomb lurking beneath the
seeming consensus in I’ll Take My Standñrace.”[xi]
III
In his discussion of the prospects for agrarianism, Mark Malvasi takes as
exemplars of the generation following on the contributors to
I’ll Take My Stand Mel Bradford and Richard M. Weaver.[xii]
I will conclude this overview of the agrarian position on race by comparing the
writings of Weaver and Warren from the 1950s and -60s. At least since Socrates
claimed that the polis could be understood as man writ large,[xiii]
political thinkers have been drawing analogies between the body of man and the
body politic. So I conclude with a brief discussion of the question of personal
and social integration.
In “Individuality and Modernity” Weaver maintains, “It seems a
threshold fact that personality is some kind of integration. The individual whom
we regard as having authentic personality appears to possess a center, and
everything that he does is in relation to this.”[xiv]
Weaver contends that personality is under attack today from a number of
directions and the “forces Ömost inimical to personality” include assaults
on memory (IM, 75-78), on status (IM, 78-80), and on privacy (IM, 80-82).
This center that is the heart of personality is not something given to
us. Rather, “The fact that one has this kind of center means that one has
created something as a result of his effort in living” and it is this
something that “gives one a defined character, or a self” (IM, 78).
Weaver suggests that “man is happiest Öwhen he enjoys a kind of
equipoise of status and function, or of being and action” (IM, 78). One
component of the modern attack on personality is the over-emphasis or exclusive
focus on function (action) and the denigration of status (being). Now, status
may be either earned or prescriptive. It is clear from Weaver’s discussion, I
think, that he has earned status in mind when talking of personality. Let me
quote his argument at length on this point. “The idea of status,” Weaver
writes,
while certainly capable of abuse,
is an important element in one’s psychic well-being. It is natural and it is
right for a man to wish to be seen as something more than he is at a random
moment. He wishes to be known as an individual, and individuality requires
historicity. If he has by effort and sacrifice won himself a position among men,
that position is part of his being; when you touch him, you touch it. When you
address him, you are not addressing merely the externals of indifferently
preserved flesh; you are addressing the man within, who has achieved a state
of being. (IM, 79)[xv]
Although I can do little more than
point to it here, a coupling of Weaver’s understanding of human personality
with his defense of “cultural freedom”[xvi]
provides a solid basis for understanding the importance of regionalism or
localism in political and social affairs. In “The Importance of Cultural
Freedom” Weaver builds the case for “the right of cultural pluralism” and
“the right of cultural freedom” (CF, 408). I simply highlight a few of
Weaver’s most significant claims: 1) “all cultures are necessarily
regional” (CF, 407); 2) “Culture grows from roots more enduring than those
of the political state” (CF, 408); 3) “No government and no ideology which
try to cut a people off from its past can be friendly to culture” (CF, 411).
One could conclude, on the basis of Weaver’s writing, that the core of
agrarianism is a defense of the individual personality understood in all of its
fullness, which includes its relation both to the past and to its current
community. On the few occasions when Weaver turns explicitly to questions of
race, however, his robust understanding of personality and cultural pluralism
seems to disappear.
We could approach this issue
through an analysis of Weaver’s discussion of black culture in Ideas
Have Consequences, but in the time allotted I will use a blunter instrument
provided by Weaver himself, a book review published in National
Review in 1957 entitled “Integration Is Communization.”[xvii]
Among the books Weaver reviews is Passive
Resistance in South Africa, in which the author “notes that Communism is
there being progressively redefined in racial terms. That is to say, Communism
is coming to be identified with racial integration” (IC, 555). Now, assuming
this to be a correct analysis of the situation, there are a number of directions
in which one might proceed. One possible approach would be to argue that as
political operatives communists were cagey enough to look to the easiest targets
of interest in order to promote their agenda. This approach to the question
would require that one at least consider the possibility that there were
legitimate grievances which were then slyly and amorally exploited by communists
to promote their revolution. Weaver seems to reject this possibility when he
writes that “The blame for this [communism coming to be identified with racial
integration] he tries to shift to the apartheid laws themselves. But surely this
is artless” (IC, 555-56).
Weaver turns from the book on
South Africa to a discussion of the United States in order to apply his argument
here: “The communist tactic most aggressively used in this country now is the
one hinted at by Mr. Kuperóthe approach through the idea of ‘racial
collectivism’.” (IC, 556) From the standpoint of communists and their
stooges this strategy has two advantages: argument for racial integration “can
now be presented with a great deal of moral unction” and “the tactical
advantage of undermining our historic constitutional structure” (IC, 556).
Even if American intellectuals and politicians are deceived, Weaver suggests
that the common people are not. “To them Communism has always signalized its
advent by an ostensibly free and natural but actually self-conscious and
tendentious racial mingling” (IC, 556).
It strikes me that Weaver’s
normally careful use of language is lost in this discussion. He writes, ”
‘Integration’ and ‘Communization’ are, after all, pretty closely
synonymous. In the light of what is happening today, the first may be little
more than a euphemism for the second. It does not take many steps to get from
the ‘integrating’ of facilities to the ‘communizing’ of facilities, if
the impulse is there” (IC, 557).
Contrast Weaver with Warren on
this point. Remember that “The Briar Patch” acknowledged that there is a
reciprocal relationship between one’s self-understanding and one’s
understanding of others. Just as the split between men is a reflection of the
split within the individual man, the manner in which one treats others is a
reflection of how one understands oneself. In “The Briar Patch” Warren
argued that if the white man “fails to concede the negro equal protection, he
does not properly respect himself as a man” (ITMS, 260). In the
self-interview that concludes Segregation,
the same point is made forcefully:
Q: You mean they ought to let the
South work out a way to live with the Negro? A: I don’t think the problem is
to learn to live with the Negro.
Q: What is it, then? A: It is to learn to live with ourselves. Q: What do
you mean? A: I don’t think you can live with yourself when you are humiliating
the man next to you. (Seg, 63)
The “self-division” that
Warren explored in Segregation is the
result of “some failure to find identity.” (Seg, 54) “Identity,”
in turn, became one of the major lines of investigation followed by Warren in Who
Speaks for the Negro? As Warren pushed to understand the identity of the
American black, he ultimately pushed beyond that limited identity to see it
merge with the question of what it means to be a human being. Warren quoted
Robert Watson, a student at Southern University in Baton Rouge, to that effect.
What am I struggling for? I’m
struggling for the heights of a man. Regardless. I think that if I reach the
heights of a man in a limited all-Negro society, I have not reached the heights
of a man by world standards. (WSFN, 364)[xviii]
In a similar vein, Warren came to see the word
“integration” in terms of the split within the individual that is the
foundation of the split between men. Although James Baldwin presented an
apocalyptic vision of personal and racial integration, (WSFN, 282)
Warren’s model for integration as human wholeness was Whitney M. Young. Young
had begun to connect the necessity of “making a living” with “the act of
living.” Young had come to see work as an element of human fulfillment, and
not just an instrumental means to a greater end. If this assessment is correct,
Warren wrote,
text-indent:0in”>Young is
up to more than an attack on segregation and poverty, up to more than a program
of integrating the Negro into American society. He is attacking, instinctively,
perhaps, the great dehumanizing force of our society: the fragmentation of the
individual through the fragmentation of function and the draining away of
opportunity for significant moral responsibilityñthe fragmentation of
community through the fragmentation of the individual. In the end, then, the
integration of the Negro into American society would be, if I read Young aright,
a correlative of the integration of the personality, white or black. (WSFN,
171)
This vision of the integrated
personality as the foundation for moral responsibility was the key to Warren’s
hopes that the racial split in American society could be healed. A truly
integrated society will be a reflection of truly integrated individuals.
I would argue that Weaver and
Warren share many points of agreement in understanding the dynamics of human
personalityóeach sees the self as the creation of moral choice and action,
each understands that men are not social atoms but are embedded both in a
contemporary community and an historical narrative, and each emphasizes the
importance of piety in living a grounded moral life. I would suggest, however,
that Warren was able to maintain his robust understanding of human personality
when he turned to questions of race relations, and Weaver was unable to do this.
Warren’s challenge in “The
Briar Patch,” a challenge made in 1930 to himself and his fellow agrarians can
be given a more general cast for us today: “If the conservative feels that
tradition, piety, and liberty have a certain irreplaceable value in his society,
and if he hopes to maintain conservatism’s integrity in the face of social
turbulence, moral disintegration, and political divergence, he must allow for a
full and free role for people of color in his scheme.” This challenge stands
before us today as it has throughout our history as a nation. Should we shirk or
ignore this challenge, our failure should be seen not only as an important
political opportunity lost, but would stand as evidence of conservativism’s
limited moral and spiritual vision.
[i]
The Literary Correspondence of Donald Davidson and Allen Tate, ed. John
Tyree Fain and Thomas Daniel Young (Athens: University of Georgia Press,
1974), 237. Lyle Lanier, another of the contributors to I’ll
Take My Stand, made an even stronger statement in a letter to Tate.
Race, wrote Lanier, “is the only real issue on which Southerners can be
differentiated from people in other sections” and was the only issue “on
which any real unanimity of thought and action can be secured from Southern
people at present.” Quoted in Virginia J. Rock, “The Making and Meaning
of I’ll Take My Stand: A Study
in Utopian-Conservatism, 1925-1939″ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Minnesota, 1961), published by University Microfilms, 1961, 266. Hereafter
cited parenthetically as Rock.
[ii] Donald Davidson, ”
‘I’ll Take My Stand’: A History,”
American Review V (Summer, 1935), 301-304.
[iii] Quoted in Paul Conkin, The
Southern Agrarians (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988), 72.
Warren expressed his concern about his ability to write the essay without
“pulling a boner” in a letter to Tate (Selected Letters of Robert
Penn Warren, Volume I: The
Apprentice Years, 1924-1934, ed. William Bedford Clark [Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 2000],
185). Hereafter cited as Selected
Letters. In later years Warren was critical of “The Briar Patch,”
characterizing it as “a cogent and humane defense of segregation.” When
Davidson read Warren’s article, however, he was “shocked,” claiming
“The Briar Patch” had “progressive implications” and that “the
ideas advanced about the negro don’t seem to chime with our ideas as I
understand them.”
[iv] Robert Penn Warren, “The
Briar Patch,” in I’ll Take My
Stand, by Twelve Southerners (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1930;
Harper Torchbooks, 1962), 246-64. Hereafter cited parenthetically as ITMS.
All page references are to the Harper Torchbooks edition. For a more
complete account of this essay, and Warren’s later writings on race, see
my ” ‘An Exciting Spiral’: Robert Penn Warren on Race and
Community,” rWp: An Annual of Robert
Penn Warren Studies II (2002): 101-122.
[v] “But in all
casesóowner, cropper, handóthere is the important aspect of a certain
personal contact; there is all the difference in the world between thinking
of a man as simply a negro or a white man and thinking of him as a person,
knowing something of his character and his habits, and depending in any
fashion on his reliability” (ITMS, 262).
[vi] See the chapter entitled
“The Grid of Violence” in Pete Daniel,
Standing at the Crossroads: Southern Life in the Twentieth Century
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 50-71. Donald G.
Nieman, ed., Black Freedom/White
Violence 1865-1900 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994), collects more
that twenty studies on racial violence. As a young child Warren had heard of
a local lynching, so he knew directly of small-town racial violence. See
Robert Penn Warren, Who Speaks for the
Negro?(New York: Random House, 1965, 11-12). Hereafter cited as WSFN.
[vii] As Warren said later, he
saw no possibility of the system of segregation being ended. “The image of
the South I carried in my head was one of massive immobility in all ways, in
both its virtues and vices-it
was an image of the unchangeable human condition, beautiful, sad, tragic.”
(WSFN, 12)
[viii] Louis D. Rubin, Jr., The
Wary Fugitives: Four Poets and the South (Baton Rogue: Louisiana
University State Press, 1978), 233. For the reflections of a contemporary
agrarian thinker on race, see Wendell Berry, The
Hidden Wound (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989). While Berry does
not discuss Warren his concerns parallel those of Warren (see especially
115-129).
[ix] Compare the argument of
Frank Owsley: “Without slavery the economic and social life of the South
would have not been radically different. Perhaps the plantation life would
not have been as pronounced without it, yet the South would long have
remained agriculturalñas it still is after sixty-five years of
‘freedom’! Certainly the South would have developed its political
philosophy very much as it did.” (ITMS,
76-77)
[x] Rubin, 232.
[xi] Conkin, 72-73. If the
argument I have made is correct, the question that must be addressed is what
is the basis for Warren’s later antipathy to the essay? In a number of
places (WSFN, 10, for example) Warren states that he had not reread
“The Briar Patch” since sending it to Davidson from Oxford. My suspicion
is that what Warren remembered in later years was not the specific argument
he made in “The Briar Patch” but the general atmosphere of casual racism
that he was a part of during that period. For an example this, see
Warren’s comments in a 1932 letter to Allen Tate and Caroline Gordon (Selected
Letters, 217). It must also be noted that there were lines of
disagreement among the contributors on the question of race, disagreements
which came to the surface later during an attempt to build a political
movement on agrarian principles (see Conklin, 100).
[xii] Mark G. Malvasi, The
Unregenerate South: The Agrarian Thought of John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate,
and Donald Davidson (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1997), 224-47.
[xiii] Plato, The
Republic, Book II, 368e-369a.
[xiv] “Individuality and
Modernity,” in In Defense of
Tradition: Collected Shorter Writings of Richard M. Weaver, 1929-1963,
Ted J. Smith III, ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000), 73. Hereafter
cited parenthetically as IM.
[xv] Weaver notes that the
ravages of time lower one’s ability to function, but argues that a healthy
society remembers the individual at his fullest and finest: “his
achievements are listed after his name, and he is, so to speak, emeritus”
(IM, 79).
[xvi] “The Importance of
Cultural Freedom,” in In Defense of
Tradition, 405-421. Hereafter cited parenthetically as CF.
[xvii] In In
Defense of Tradition, 555-58. Hereafter cited parenthetically as IC.
[xviii] This recognition of a
standard of human excellence that transcends race or other artificial
categories provided the foundation for the sympathetic relationship between
Warren and the writer Ralph Ellison. See WSFN, 325-354, especially
347-353.