Lawrence Jacob Friedman

“The White Savage: Racial Fantasies in the Postbellum Southâ€? (Lawrence J. Friedman, 1971) examines the intellectual justifications of “home ruleâ€? for the South. After losing the war and weathering Reconstruction, Southern nationalists became more aggressive in their pursuit of the freedom to practice segregation without interference from the federal government. The delusion behind segregation was that the majority could force “tameâ€? blacks into servility and “wildâ€? blacks out of the South. The best of part of this book is the debunking of Woodrow Wilson’s so-called progressivism. Wilson, originally from Virginia, and his Southern henchmen didn’t like the fact that the Republicans gave D.C.’s large black population federal jobs and allowed integrated offices.

Wilson’s cronies wasted no time in bringing all the ugly of Jim Crow--separate and inferior facilities for blacks--to our nation’s capital. Wilson told one black delegation that “segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.â€? Another time when a black journalist William Monroe Trotter criticized segregation, Wilson told him, “Your manner offends meâ€? and threw him out of the meeting. Blacks all over the country complained about Wilson, but he didn’t give a damn. “If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me," he told the NYT in 1914, “they ought to correct it.â€?… (plus d'informations)