There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975 1st Edition Edition

by Jason Sokol (Author)

20 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0307263568

ISBN-10: 0307263568

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While the landmarks of the civil rights movement have become indelible parts of our collective memory, few have written about what life was like for white southerners who lived through that historic time. Now, in his brilliant debut book, historian Jason Sokol explores the untold stories of ordinary people experiencing the tumultuous decades that forever altered the American landscape. So often historical accounts of the era have focused on the movement’s most dramatic moments and figures, and paid greatest attention to the brave steps taken by blacks to effect long-awaited change. In this riveting book, Sokol goes beyond the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, the 1960 student sit-ins, and the soul-stirring speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., and into the lives of middle- and working-class whites whose world was becoming unrecognizable to them. He takes us to New Orleans’s Ninth Ward, where, in 1960, a painful episode of school integration brought out the fiercest prejudices in some and made accidental radicals of others; to Ollie’s Barbecue in Birmingham and Pickrick Fried Chicken in Atlanta, and thousands of lunch counters in between, where “some white employees greeted black customers as though they had been patrons for years; others slammed doors in their faces; still more served them hesitantly and reluctantly.”

There Goes My Everything traces the origins of the civil rights struggle from World War II, when some black and white American soldiers lived and fought side by side overseas (leading them to question Jim Crow at home), to the beginnings of change in the 1950s and the flared tensions of the 1960s, into the 1970s, when strongholds of white rule suddenly found themselves overtaken by rising black political power. Through it all, Sokol resists the easy categorization of whites caught in the torrent of change; rather, he gives us nuanced portraits of people resisting, embracing, and questioning the social revolution taking place around them. Drawing on recorded interviews, magazine bureau dispatches, and newspaper editorials, Sokol seamlessly weaves together historical analysis with firsthand accounts. Here are the stories of white southerners in their own words, presented without condescension or moral judgment.

An unprecedented picture of one of the historic periods in twentieth-century America.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The experiences of white Southerners during the period of the Civil Rights movement have, until now, gone largely unexplored. Sokol, a doctoral candidate in history at UC-Berkeley, traces the process of desegregation by drawing on public records and interviews conducted with white Southerners as they faced the tide of change brought by Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Sokol actively resists easy generalizations or stereotypes of the men and women whose rejection of equal rights created the central tension of the Civil Rights movement. Instead of stock characters, Sokol presents individuals—such as Ollie McClung, whose opposition to integration stemmed, at least in part, from a belief in personal liberty—as well as hundreds of voices for whom change meant "their world would never be the same." Sokol never apologizes or attempts to mitigate the often brutal and violent consequences of Southern racism. His eloquent presentation, with all of its complications, provides an invaluable and much-needed addition to our understanding of how the Civil Rights movement was actually lived. Photos. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Historian Sokol examines how the civil rights movement challenged long-held notions among southern whites about the character and circumstances of their black neighbors and workers and their own place in society. The movement for racial equality changed race relations and altered attitudes, transformed institutions and towns, and upended tradition. It also caused profound changes in whites as individuals. Drawing on recorded interviews and published and unpublished articles chronicling the turbulent times between 1945 and 1975, Sokol presents a portrait of white people in the frontline southern towns, from Little Rock and Atlanta to Birmingham and rural North Carolina. Sokol illustrates the complexity of the human drama behind the civil rights movement from the perspective of those whose cherished way of life was gone forever, those who felt liberated, and those who found new, subtler ways to practice their hate. This is a fascinating look at a side of the civil rights movement that has not been a widely explored aspect of one of the greatest social transformations in U.S. history. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product details

Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Knopf; 1st Edition edition (August 22, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307263568
ISBN-13: 978-0307263568
Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.5 x 9.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 20 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,791,319 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #898 in Civil Rights
- #4032 in Civil Rights & Liberties (Books)
- #4982 in Ethnic Demographic Studies

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"the white man's problem (but) the black man's burden"

June 30, 2010

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Jason Sokol writes a remarkable history of the civil rights movement, looking at events primarlily from 1955 - 1975 from the perspective of Southern Whites. As a born and bred Westerner (raised in "post-civil rights" America), the issue is fascinating, and is one that has preplexed me for years: how is it that Americans could so obvilously (to my eyes) discrimnate against other Americans for so long? What was "wrong" with these people? Sokol provides a number of satisfying answers, thoroughly researched and documented.

The book begins by detailing the monumnetal social change that occured in the United States after World War II - a conflict ostensibly for "freedom" that for many highlighted the double-standard that African-Americans had faced since before the nation's founding. For Blacks as well as Whites the hypocrisy began the civil rights movement. Yet for every White Southerner whose perspective was changed, there were those whose prejustices and assumptions remained - hence the 20 year struggle that resulted in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The fundamental reasons behind the resistance of White Southerners to integration, Sokol shows, was complex and several fold. At its roots were fear and resentment: fear of change, of course, but also fear of self-reflection and of a realization (long over due, in my opinion), that the Civil War was over. Resentment that the South had lost and their "way of life" (the "paternalistic" relationship between Whites and Blacks that had existed since the Antebellum days) was over and that they had to finally face the implications of their defeat. To White Southerners, however, efforts at integration was an assult on the "Southern way of life" - and therefore was "anti-American", even "Communist." These competing visions of American freedom (freedom to be prejudiced, to treat other Americans with contempt and as second class citizens, to murder them at will, to deprive them of their Constitutional rights versus the civil rights movement) was at the heart of the conflict in Southern White's eyes. To Whites in the South, the federal government's mandated integration was nothing less than totalitarianism.

Southern Whites had a romanticized view of the past and of racial relations: they "knew" their African-Americans; they were happy and content with the status quo, and Black silence on the issue of Jim Crow was understood to be a tacit acceptance of the way things were. That things could be otherwise - that the de facto and de jure racism of the South of that time was ugly and morally repugnant wasn't given a second thought; to bring this to their attention was unbearable. It was an irony, Sokol points out, that Southern Blacks were seen as both subservient and threatening.

Once integration began, there was of course, token resistance - George Wallace and Jesse Helms are the most familiar names of those who initally talked good game about fighting integration, but soon changed their rhetoric once significant numbers of African-Americans finally had the right to vote - most White Southerners found that the change wasn't as unpalatable nor as dangerous as they had imagined. However, the power dynamics between the wealthy and the poor had not changed: race remained a divisive issue in union organizing, for example, and as the South began to industrialize and mechanize, land ownership became even more skewed towards wealthy Whites, who did not hesitate to "play the race card" in seeking economic and political scapegoats. A political legacy of civil rights in the South, Sokol points out, is the loss of the South to the Republican party. Johnson's pushing through of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act gave the Republicans the South, which they still hold.

For the historian - or the merely curious - I highly recommend this book. It does much to explain the reasoning and rationales behind the violence, anger and resentment Southern Whites felt during those tumultous years. Far from condemning the South, a nuanced view of the region is presented: there were White Southerners who supported (both actively as well as tacity) civil rights, just as there were the Bull Connors', Orval Fabus' and George Wallaces.

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History Repeating Itself

April 28, 2011

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975 (Vintage)

After hearing the author speak about his coming book, and being extremely impressed with his extensive research as well as his scholarly presentation, I ordered this book from Amazon and it only added to my respect for him and his scholarship.

The topic is not one that lends itself to the sort of 'cause and effect' approach that so many historians favor, with the making of lists and prioritizing events; it's a complicated subject and understanding it requires the reader to fully engage in the many subtle tales of those who lived it. Back when I was teaching history, I began each semester with the statement that history is a soap opera. Sokol weaves a rich tapestry, without judgement but, neither does he pretty it up. And this subject is the stuff of soap operas!

Understanding the complex social structure, the myths and (yes) hypocricies that got turned upside-down during the difficult struggle for integration does not come easily, or painlessly. As a white progressive who lived in the South during a good part of that tumult, I really had no sympathy at the time for those who spoke the apologies of segregation (ever so politely) or for those who stood on the sidelines and refused to even whisper a moral statement. Reading this book actually gave me some perspective on the myopia of contaminated cultures and, while I certainly would never join those who defend such nonsense, I think I have gained in that I now understand that all my efforts to convince, to 'educate' bigots is really wasted. One thing this book brought me to understand is that most people use their reasoning skills to justify that which appeals to them on the emotional level.

Another lightbulb that illuminated early in the reading of this study was that, indeed, history does repeat itself. Much of the cause of today's fear and loathing derives from the same recesses as those of the integration era. It remains to be seen if we handle the current challenge better. Perhaps if enough people read this book, it would help.

10 people found this helpful

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