THE RACE VOLCANO AND THE SOUTH
Hesseltine, William B.
The Race Volcano And The South BROWN AMERICANS: The Story of a Tenth of the Nation, by Edwin R. Embree. Viking Press. $2.75. RACE AND RUMORS OF RACE: Challenge to American Crisis, by Howard W....
...It is a volume to be read as an introductory survey of the Negro problem...
...Edwin Embree attempts a straightforward, relatively unemotional survey of the Negro in America...
...5) young Negroes want to drink at soda fountains...
...After a cursory description of the Brown Americans, the author discusses—mingling statistical fact with pertinent anecdote —the Negro's educational history and academic progress, his economic activities, his political and social handicaps, and his artistic achievements...
...In fact, Southerners—who are most immediately concerned—have always lived on the edge of a volcano...
...Then, applying the psychoanalyst's "recognition technique," Prof...
...There is more involved in the race problem than Embree's cold statistics and warm human-interest stories would ever indicate...
...Odum marshalls an array of assorted rumors which contribute to the nervous tension...
...But one can read Brown Americans without gaining any impression of the depth of emotional conflicts involved in the race question...
...But fate has played loose with Southern hopes —the war has developed dangerous democratic dogmas: It has given money to Negroes, and it has increased both the number of points and the area of racial friction...
...6) Negroes are buying ice picks, guns, and ammunition in preparation for murdering the whites...
...1943...
...4) Mrs...
...Their cone-shaped social structure contains a core of molten lava, and from its depths come frequent rumblings foretelling the day when the volcano will blow its top...
...The Negroes think —somewhat impudently—that their new economic position gives them some rights, and the .Northerners, who "don't understand Niggers" agree with them...
...and (9) Negroes are saying they'll run the country when Hitler "takes over...
...Boiled down, he finds that the whites think the Negroes are inferior and should be kept in their place...
...RACE AND RUMORS OF RACE: Challenge to American Crisis, by Howard W. Odum...
...7) bus drivers and Negroes fight over Jim Crow regulations...
...Reviewed by William B. Hesseltine THE PROBLEM of the Negro in America is the problem of race throughout the world...
...Prof...
...It is also a volcano, and badly as Southerners need the soothing ministrations of medicine men, the South needs worse the death-defying work of some social geologists who will attempt to remove the pressure from the hot lava deep inside...
...In the latter capacity, he attempts to define the basic attitudes of White Southerners, Negroes, and Northerners...
...The war has served to increase the volume and intensity of these rumblings, and Southern nerves, which have been tense since the earlier days of the New Deal, are about to snap...
...8) Negroes are causing trouble in the army...
...Mobile and Beaumont were minor out-' breaks, but they indicate the state of Southern nerves...
...Two recent books illustrate the variety of approaches which can be made to the problem, and suggest the difficulties involved in its solution...
...Altogether, it's an impressive list of rumors, and they may well have been partly stimulated, as the author implies, by "outside" agitators...
...University of North Carolina Press...
...Odum has written carefully and ably, and there should be no doubt about the therapeutic value either of his analysis or of his specifics on the ragged Southern nervous system...
...What the people of the United States do about this problem is of significance far beyond the nation's borders...
...3) "Eleanor CluBs" have adopted the motto "a white woman in every kitchen by Christmas...
...The Southerners were enthusiastic warmongers when they thought that a war would bring contracts, high prices, profits, and glory...
...These, too, boil down to the assertions (1) that as soon as the white men have gone to the Army the Negroes will take their women, (2) Negro women are leaving domestic service and are impudently asking white women to take in black washing...
...The tone is factual, the material is elementary, but the style and the general presentation are attractive...
...But the Southern system is more than a nervous disorder...
...In his book on Race and Rumors of Race, Sociologist Howard Odum combines the roles of homeopathic practitioner and psychoanalyst...
...Roosevelt eats with Negro women and was refused accommodations in a Nashville hotel...
Vol. 8 • January 1944 • No. 2
