Revolutionary Pulaski:
Elshtain, Jean Bethke
REVOLUTIONARY PULASKI OLD SOUTH & NEW Pulaski, Tennessee, is a town under siege. In October 1989 about 175 Klansmen and members of the Aryan Nations converged on Pulaski, much against the will of...
...Despite extraordinary steps the town took in October, the Aryan Nations and the Klan reconnoitered and converged on Pulaski again this January...
...In my view, though, this remnant of old-style nativism is an anomaly...
...Giles Countians know that the invaders will be back, but they are proud that they can now mobilize larger crowds than the Klan...
...The students, open in their professions of anti-Catholicism, would never so boldly proclaim anti-Semitic or racist sentiments...
...In October 1989 about 175 Klansmen and members of the Aryan Nations converged on Pulaski, much against the will of the townspeople...
...During a recent discussion of the abortion issue, students-all women-spoke forcefully and as if from a fund of knowledge about routine excommunications, repression, and claims of papal infallibility...
...JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN...
...It does give one pause-why is it that anti-Catholicism remains the one acceptable prejudice within the American academy...
...The insignia of these latter-day white supremacists included the flags of the Confederacy and Nazi Germany...
...The community pulled together in other ways...
...The lines of countermarchers outnumbered the Klan and Aryan Nations, who were greeted by steely silence from Giles Countians wearing the orange-armband insignia that has become the trademark of the anti-Klan Pulaskians...
...But Pulaski was prepared for the offensive...
...The right-to-life position, which several of the students tied to the Catholic church and to meddling priests, got categorized as a pernicious form of manipulation, whereas the prochoice position was represented as a pure instance of rational persuasion and commitment to all things Americans hold dear, particularly rights...
...Yet on a number of issues, especially race, the New South is far ahead of what might be called, at this point, the Old North...
...As one of the tactics promoted by Giles Countians United, the town sought and received an injunction against the Klan for violating the local parade ordinance...
...Speakers emphasized a legacy that goes back to the nation's origins: The town was named for the Revolutionary War hero who came from Poland to fight at the side of the Founding Fathers against British rule...
...The constitutionality of this measure is now a subject of federal court litigation...
...More than four thousand people signed a petition stating that they didn't want the Aryan Nations in their town...
...where, the mapmakers believed, "there be dragons...
...With demographers and political observers reporting that a reverse migration of blacks back to the South is now occurring, the contrast between North and South on race questions will tilt even more in favor of the New South...
...That revolutionary spirit was recalled and linked to contemporary struggles for freedom in Eastern Europe...
...JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN...
...The New South is not all new, as I have occasion to know...
...The reason Pulaski has earned the dubious honor of being a focal point for Aryan supremacists is that the Klan was born there in the terrible aftermath of the Civil War and the depredations of Reconstruction...
...The Klan, of course, made the case that the ordinance deprives them of their right to free speech...
...A countermarch, sponsored by Giles Countians United, listened to a construction of the town's history different from the version preached by the Klan...
...Their call was for a white revolution to wrest control of the United States from blacks, Jews, Catholics, and homosexuals...
...Two high school football games were rescheduled in order to avoid any local festivity on the day that the Aryan Nations gathered...
...When I spoke to a few of the graduate students in the Department of Political Science about this phenomenon, they told me that the view of the Catholic church that many of them grew up with in their fundamentalist congregations was very much that of a benighted, oppressive, and much-to-be-feared cohort of priests and nuns out to bamboozle the innocent and to undermine the bases of American life...
...When I moved to Nashville, many of my Northeastern friends thought I was heading toward that place on ancient maps where the known world ends and terra incognita begins...
...The town had promoted a week-long series of gatherings dedicated to the theme of racial harmony...
...They were prepared to forfeit a Saturday business day to back up their views...
...Once again local merchants refused to conduct business as usual...
...On January 13, the day of the afternoon march, Pulaski police chief Stanley Newton cited the Klan with violating a section of the ordinance which prohibited any parade, meeting, or demonstration...
...During the march itself, however, local police allowed the parade to proceed and merely cited the Klan for contempt...
...At considerable cost to themselves, more than 130 businesses in Pulaski closed...
...The image of the Catholic church held by at least some of Vanderbilt's students seems to have got stuck somewhere in the sixteenth century with the issue of Tetzel and indulgences...
...Residents of all faiths prayed for an end to intolerance...
...In the course I teach at Vanderbilt University, for example, I am startled at hearing unabashed and unapologetic professions of anti-Catholicism...
...As they await the next intrusion, they are promoting community events on the themes of racial brotherhood and sisterhood...
...But this is the Pulaski of the New South and the reaction of Pulaski residents to the intrusion of white supremacists and racists was to meet at the Highland Baptist Church, under the rubric "Giles Countians United," and ask God to "grant us wisdom, grant us courage for the living of the days...
Vol. 117 • April 1990 • No. 7
