TWO REVOLUTIONS
DABBS, JAMES McBRIDE
Two Revolutions The Emerging South, by Thomas D. Clark. Oxford University Press. 317 pp. $6. Reviewed by James McBride Dabbs This book by Thomas D. Clark is primarily a picture of the South of...
...In the introduction, two statements lie close together...
...When it comes to the changing facts of Southern life, Clark's book is rich indeed...
...The very heart of the regional heritage is hospitality, gra-ciousness, Christianity, and humaneness, all of these embedded in moderation.'' Barring the question of the moderation of Christianity, we can only hope that the best of the Southern tradition is still somehow alive...
...But, as the author says, "the great revolution started with the end of the crop year 1920...
...There are the facts of the land, cotton, cattle, industry, the community, roads, the tourists who travel them, and, last and most completely, the Negro...
...Eventually, idealists, romanticists, rear-guard warriors, and the old way of life will be ground underfoot by the juggernaut of change...
...It has long symbolized the South's honor and dignity...
...Though he recognizes the romantic and sentimental qualities of the South, the author points out that the emotionalism of the region has solid material roots...
...And yet, "A great, sprawling geographic region of deeply sentimental people faces revolution with little or no basic preparation for a new way of life...
...Whatever it is, the Negro has been and is "the central theme" of Southern life...
...You will find here a pretty complete statement of these changes...
...As James Baldwin says, the white Southerner is "never really thinking of anything else...
...Clark, however, has done successfully what he set out to do: "to write objectively, but at times I have felt completely inadequate to the task of fathoming the meaningful impulses running through the modern South...
...The creeping paralysis of agrarian failure closed men's minds to new ideas...
...Perhaps its basic problem is, as Clark says, the necessity of reconciling its past to its future...
...But why, if the South has faced crises so often, has it not learned to live with them...
...both are startled at what has happened...
...Who is adequate for this task, a task which sadly needs doing, since the South is still riding off furiously in several directions at once...
...This makes the situation doubly difficult, especially for a region which, in spite of all its crises, has poweriul conservative forces within it...
...Clark points out that the racial revolution in the South is accompanying an industrial revolution...
...Here are some of the chapter headings: "Like a Shadow on the Heart," "So Runs the Land," "The Road South," "In the Image of the Future...
...Like the Afrikaaner, neither the white nor the colored Southerner has as yet forgiven history...
...White and black alike find themselves torn away from the past...
...Within recent years, with the coming of new crops, and better houses and roads, "People are far more willing to accept new ideas and changes in their way of life . . . changes within a generation which exceeded modifications made in Southern life in the past century...
...This is the kind of question that Clark's book occasionally raises...
...At the end he makes a plea which, I think, is essentially sound...
...The years since have indeed been revolutionary...
...Reviewed by James McBride Dabbs This book by Thomas D. Clark is primarily a picture of the South of the last forty years, although there are many references to earlier times...
...The first, as I remember, has been emphasized by Vann Woodward...
...You will also find suggested here and there the stresses that both helped to cause the changes and resulted from them...
...For myself, I should have been willing for further probing of such questions with a briefer catalogue of the facts...
...Moderation," he say "is an inherent part of the best of the Southern tradition...
...If one were to select a single condition which has struck most viewers of the South it would be that of crisis...
...Cotton has gone West, cattle have come East, the Negroes have gone North, and the Yankees have come South...
...As lor the causes of these material changes, Clark includes "the growth of international competition in cotton and sugar, the artificial stimulus of World War I, a rising tide of Negro migration out of the South, and the arrival of the boll weevil...
...Occasionally in the text, and usually with a touch of humor, the same gift of phrasing appears...
...As an illustration of this, "The sharp decline of the staple economy after 1890 made the farmer atlopt, almost from economic necessity, conservative points of view in religion, social affairs, politics, and economics...
...In regard to the revolutionary results, he says: "Not until the new place of the farm in Southern society in relationship to the new industry is fully established can there be much social calm in the region...
...Historically the South's emotional response has always been based on its agricultural fortunes...
...What do we in the South wish to happen...
Vol. 26 • April 1962 • No. 4
