Back in the day—way, way back in the day—in 1953, the day of McCarthy, as a matter of fact—southern historian C. Vann Woodword published a famous article, “The Irony of Southern History,” which began as follows:
“In a time when nationalism sweeps everything else before it, as it does at present, the regional historian is likely to be oppressed by a sense of his unimportance. America is the all-important subject, and national ideas, national institutions, and national policies are the themes that compel attention. Foreign peoples, eager to know what this New-World colossus means to them and their immediate future, are impatient with details of regional variations, and Americans, intent on the need for national unity, tend to minimize their importance. New England, the West, and other regions are occasionally permitted to speak for the nation. But the South is thought to be hedged about with peculiarities that set it apart as unique. As a standpoint from which to write American history it is regarded as eccentric and, as a background for an historian, something of a handicap to be overcome.
“Of the eccentric position of the South in the nation there are admittedly many remaining indications. I do not think, however, that this eccentricity need be regarded as entirely a handicap. In fact, I think that it could possibly be turned to advantage by the Southern historian, both in understanding American history and in interpreting it to non-Americans. For from a broader point of view it is not the South but America that is unique among the peoples of the world. This peculiarity arises out of the American legend of success and victory, a legend that is not shared by any other people of the civilized world. The collective will of this country has simply never known what it means to be confronted by complete frustration. Whether by luck, by abundant resources, by ingenuity, by technology, by organizing cleverness, or by sheer force of arms America has been able to overcome every major historic crisis- economic, political, or foreign-with which it has had to cope. This remarkable record has naturally left a deep imprint upon the American mind. It explains in large part the national faith in unlimited progress, in the efficacy of material means, in the importance of mass and speed, the worship of success, and the belief in the invincibility of American arms.”
It was an impressive thesis, but, unfortunately, the true irony of southern history is the lack of it—the lack of irony, that is, not of history. This is not to say that there have not been many southerners, including Woodward himself, not to mention Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and even George Bush, who escaped the clichés of the old South. But, in the febrile fifties, in the midst of both rampant anti-communism and economic expansion, many southerners embraced a faith “in unlimited progress, in the efficacy of material means, in the importance of mass and speed, the worship of success, and the belief in the invincibility of American arms,” fancying themselves the most, rather than the least, American of all the Americans and, even as the civil rights movement was finally remedying the worst elements of the southern way of life, they wrapped yet another layer of myth around the “Lost Cause,” helped not a little by the meretricious rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, who, like them, regarded the entire civil rights movement as a communist plot.
But, the times they are a-changing. After nine black parishioners were murdered in Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church South Carolina Governor Niki Haley, not always my favorite person, recognized that it was time—past time—to take down the Confederate flags that still adorned the South Carolina state house grounds, a proposal that was approved by a two-thirds majority in both houses of the state legislature. In equally deep-South Alabama, the flags had already come down.
Well, as South Carolina goes, so goes the South, right? I mean, that’s what happened the last time around. But a few southerners still haven’t gotten the memo, as the recent set-to in Congress over the display of Confederate flags in federal cemeteries indicates. Hey, what’s a little treason among friends, amirite? And, in Texas, it seems, we’re going backwards. Emma Brown, writing in the Washington Post, has this:
“Five million public school students in Texas will begin using new social studies textbooks this fall based on state academic standards that barely address racial segregation. The state’s guidelines for teaching American history also do not mention the Ku Klux Klan or Jim Crow laws.
“And when it comes to the Civil War, children are supposed to learn that the conflict was caused by ‘sectionalism, states’ rights and slavery’ — written deliberately in that order to telegraph slavery’s secondary role in driving the conflict, according to some members of the state board of education.
“Slavery was a ‘side issue to the Civil War,’ said Pat Hardy, a Republican board member, when the board adopted the standards in 2010. ‘There would be those who would say the reason for the Civil War was over slavery. No. It was over states’ rights.’”
I’m guessing, kids in Texas won’t be learning that when ultimate southern gentleman Robert E. Lee invaded the North, he captured and enslaved free blacks. Nor will they learn that southern soldiers shot and killed black prisoners of war out of hand, in defiance of all the rules of “civilized” warfare. And they won’t be learning of the reign of terror unleashed by whites after the Civil War to deprive southern blacks of their rights. And they certainly won’t be reading The Strange Career of Jim Crow, written by C. Vann Woodward way back in 1955. Which is kind of ironic, when you think about it.
