Speak Now Against The Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South - Hardcover

Egerton, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679408088 ISBN 13: 9780679408086

Publisher: Knopf, 1994

Synopsis

With 48 pages of photographs

About this title

From the Inside Flap

s of photographs

Reviews

Egerton, author of several books on Southern culture and history (Generations), has put together a sprawling history of the South from 1932 to 1954-the Depression to the landmark Brown desegregation decision. His title derives from Faulkner's lament against Southern white intransigence, and his underlying question is: why wasn't change grasped sooner? Egerton answers by probing the writings of infrequently daring intellectuals (Myles Horton and Don West of Tennessee's Highlander Folk School were among the few real radicals) and often-reactionary politicians ("feudal barons" like Virginia Senators Carter Glass and Harry F. Byrd), describing the modernizing impact of radio and roadways, and charting cataclysms like the New Deal and WWII. He captures neat anecdotes: the white director of the University of North Carolina Press, who commissioned the 1943 book What the Negro Wants, was shocked by black demands for equality. Egerton's near-encyclopedic approach, surveying lists of academics, writers, organizations and institutions, makes his book read like a compendium, but given his ambitious topic, he has done yeoman work to recapture an era. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Egerton's examination of the South in the period immediately preceding the civil rights movement is less history through group biography than history through cameo appearance. Calling himself ``a middle-aged, middle-class, white Southern male with moderately liberal biases,'' Egerton (Southern Food, 1987, etc.) gracefully combines the narrative techniques of fiction with the richness of historical fact to examine the South in the period immediately preceding the civil rights movement. Covering the years from 1932 (the beginning of the New Deal) to 1954 (when the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education), the story unfolds chronologically, as most good history does, so the causes and effects are clear. Chronicling the Southern Tenant Farmer's Union and other groups, Egerton reminds us that conscience and opposition to racism existed in the South before Rosa Parks took her seat on the bus. But all these considerable strengths are dissipated by the way Egerton uses the huge cast he has selected. Those--black and white, rich and poor--who set the stage for Martin Luther King Jr. appear, disappear, and reappear in dizzying fashion. Far less known than King, some of the most interesting are Will Alexander, Mary McLeod Bethune, W.J. Cash, Frank Porter Graham, James Weldon Johnson, Lucy Randolph Mason, and Ralph McGill. If Egerton had explained their lives more fully, he would leave readers more satisfied. Still, the author does ultimately wrestle successfully with his wonderment at who and what transformed the politics and culture of the South in the space of a single generation. Those devoted to the study of Southern history will read this book avidly. Newcomers will learn a great deal from the author's inspired conceptualization but will need frequent respites from the flood of humanity he presents. (48 pages photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Spanning the years 1932-54, Egerton's intensely detailed dissection of his native South covers its seemingly somnolent attitude toward civil rights before the Brown desegregation decision sounded reveille. Beneath the stasis of the Jim Crow regime, though, brave individuals bestirred complacent white supremos, who generally managed to remain united in defense of the status quo. Egerton often hangs his narrative on this theme of conservative unity/liberal disharmony, which culminates in the idea that an opportunity for ending segregation uncoerced by the North was missed after the war. With such a strong, sturdy structure in place, Egerton's prose almost effortlessly covers the impact of the New Deal and the political lay of the land, particularly the congressional barons who kept blacks separate and unequal for as long as they could. But Egerton's fluency builds on hard research, interspersed with lighter personal views about growing up a vaguely liberal white. Apart from politics and the fortunes of nascent civil rights organizations, other passages critique 20 years of journalism and the incomparable literary florescence of white and black writers. (The title lifts a phrase from a prescient Faulkner speech delivered a month before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus.) The signal service this engrossing chronicle provides is the historical resurrection of lawyers, scriveners, tenant-farm organizers, and everyday people who sweltered under segregation even as they cast about for ways to end it. A milestone narrative in civil rights history. Gilbert Taylor

Native Southerner Egerton (Shades of Gray, LJ 10/1/91) details a rich historical narrative of black and white Southerners opposing white supremacy during the 1930s and 1940s. Egerton superbly weaves descriptions of social and intellectual ferment, politics, and culture (e.g., literature, religion, music) into a coherent synthesis. He explains why the South failed to dismantle white supremacy when the possibility existed for voluntary, peaceful social reform. Egerton excoriates the crude, anti-democratic, self-serving social elites and politicians who denied human rights to black Americans. His book is a tribute to those black and white Southerners who wanted racial equality when many white Americans preferred not to acknowledge that racism had corroded America. Strongly recommended for public and academic libraries.
Charles L. Lumpkins, Bloomsburg Univ. Lib., Pa.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679408088
• ISBN 13: 9780679408086
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 704