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the same room as whites perhaps most remarkably stewart said that he actually experienced more racism in wilmington delaware than he did in virginia and south carolina indeed white southerners in 1885 made small talk with him stewart wrote and this is not quoted by woodward in the south it is no unusual thing for a man to ask the distance to the next point to borrow your paper to remark about the weather to enter into conversation stewart further remarked i feel about as safe here as in providence r i i can ride in first class cars on the railroads and in the streets i can go into saloons and get refreshments even as in new york i can stop in and drink a glass of soda and be more politely waited upon than in some parts of new york on january 25 1898 the charleston news and courier published an item of devilish satire in response to a jim crow law then under consideration by the south carolina legislature much like people in 2024 never believing that ice would become a massively budgeted paramilitary force randomly shooting american citizens and kidnapping taxpaying immigrants without due process it then seemed unthinkable to call for railroad cars to be segregated by race and so a shit stirring editor by the name of james c hemphill who had an extremely impressive mustache and who had written many editorials against lynching had this to say woodward quotes some of it but when i found the entire piece on newsbank i couldn t resist offering more of it there should be a jim crow section in the jury box and a separate jim crow deck and witness stand in every court and a jim crow bible for colored witnesses to kiss it would be advisable also to have a jim crow section in county auditors and treasurers offices for the accommodation of colored taxpayers the two races are dreadfully mixed in these offices for weeks every year especially about christmas and just afterward when the time for making returns and paying taxes without penalty is about to expire the cars are provided with seats so that everybody can sit down and keep separate from everybody else it is not so in the county offices there the crowd stands together in a bench or is strung out in a waiting and highly variegated line there should be a jim crow department for making returns and paying for the privileges and blessings of citizenship unfortunately the charleston news and courier was taken over by a different editor robert lathan who did not have an amazing mustache or a sense of humanism where the jim crow stance shifted from high 19th century snark to bona fide xenophobia on september 26 1906 in response to a massacre in atlanta one that was as vile and as forgotten as the 1921 tulsa riots in which whites murdered dozens of black people because the georgia gubernatorial race between then candidates hoke smith and clark howell stoked racist fears about a black upper class the news and courier blamed racial integration on this as long as the negroes sic persist in the commission of the crime which caused the terrible outbreak in atlanta this week so long will the mob do its fearful work separation of the races is the only radical solution of the negro problem in this country there is nothing new about it it was the almighty who established the bounds of the habitation of the races the negroes were brought here by compulsion they should be induced to leave here by persuasion there is no room for them here living on terms of political and social equality with the white people the item also notes that the problem is worse now 1906 than it was ten or twenty years ago never mind that only eight years before the same newspaper roundly ridiculed any application of jim crow laws but lathan had no problem leaning into racism concluding the problem can be settled effectively only by the separation of the races the sooner it is settled the better for both races and for the sake of all humanity fortunately lathan had the decency to drop dead at the early age of fifty six before he could blow more racist dog whistles woodward s salient point still resonates today would some of these jim crow laws have been abandoned if the people had stood up to the racist lawmakers would some of the terrible violence in the aftermath of the civil war and extending into the 20th century the east st louis riot in 1917 the red summer of 1919 et al have been mitigated then and now it takes only a handful of hateful demagogues delivering repugnant sermons from the mount to make a terrible idea stick like any pithy historian with his finger firmly on the pulse of institutional ills woodward has had a few scholars challenge his thesis in bind us apart nicholas guyatt observed that some abolitionists in the early 19th century notably william short stumped for racial segregation what short called amalgamation because they feared interracial sex interracial love could only be tolerated by covertly racist jacksonian democrats like president andrew johnson if it involved non whites passing as white some ostensible liberals even argued that freed slaves should be sent off to africa lincoln himself was keen on sending freed slaves to liberia in 1854 he also tendered famously abhorrent remarks against racial inequality in his 1858 debates with douglas these are all fair and unsettling observations but it doesn t entirely overturn woodward s thesis particularly since guyatt is vague about the timeline in his book woodward was explicitly talking about how jim crow laws were put onto the books and how this codification galvanized more whites to endorse what they had previously either disregarded or countered with high caliber badinage not hypocritical whites who professed to stick up for blacks even as they simultaneously promoted versions of segregation unlike woodward guyatt mentions segregationist jim crow laws that had swept through southern legislatures after the collapse of reconstruction in 1877 but never cites the states the dates these laws were passed or perhaps most importantly the severity of these statutes woodward by contrast is far from ambiguous about what states did what up to 1900 the only law of this type adopted by the majority of southern states was that applying to passengers aboard trains and south carolina did not adopt that until 1898 north carolina in 1899 and virginia the last in 1900 in 1896 plessy v ferguson created the conditions for these separate but equal iniquities to flourish at the state level until brown v the board of education of topeka overturned this interpretation in 1954 leading to what woodward fairly describes as a volatile time racism certainly did flourish after the civil war but woodward s more important point is that laws helped to enable white supremacy to give southern racists who were on the fence some terrible ideas about accepting black people into their regular lives it s not unlike the way that trump emboldened racists with his false claims that haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs during the september 2024 debate with kamala harris and people who often long to be law abiding citizens are more inclined to believe such racist malarkey capitulating their natural ability to get along with each other if an institution or a significant person in power tells them that bigotry is not only okay but very much something enforced by malevolent legislation this was why martin luther king adamantly declared in why we can t wait that one has the moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws but it isn t just statutes we need to worry about if there is no accountability for the manner in which well meaning institutions operate then these can also become enablers of regressive policy historian eric foner in his great and massive volume on reconstruction noted that woodward later observed that postbellum progress was much like most of the democratic party in the 2020s essentially nonrevolutionary and conservative foner cited two later woodward volumes 1 1960 s the burden of southern history in which woodward proposed that a third war aim that is racial equality had been practiced by union soldiers and 2 1971 s american counterpoint in which woodward retracted this the freedmen s bureau a federal agency which existed from 1865 to 1872 to help integrate nearly four million formerly enslaved blacks and poor whites became a pale shadow of its lofty intentions union general oliver howard in cahoots with president andrew johnson went well out of his way to subvert the radical policy that had initiated the bureau howard sought to remove virtually every subordinate who sought to fulfill the original mission of the bureau and help the freedmen c vann woodward didn t confine his studies to how the tyranny of law encouraged racism to triumph over equality and decency he was also deeply worried about how well meaning federal agencies become corrupted neutered of their original purpose various editions of the strange career of jim crow became less optimistic with every new revision perhaps this is because a great historian always remembers that even when he exhumes the vital scholarship revealing a more sophisticated understanding of the past we are always contending with odious loudmouths in the present manipulating a potentially more humane population to settle for the worst next up thomas s kuhn s the structure of scientific revolutions april 15 2026 may 6 2026 by edward champion the age of innocence modern library 58 edith wharton s classic novel is a more somber and often breathtaking warning about the dangers of conforming with the upper crust but the reading experience is not made easy by newland archer the dudebro of his time being wharton s most insufferable protagonist modern library reading challenge wharton edith books conformity edith wharton modern library newland archer reading the age of innocence leave a comment this is the forty third entry in the modern library reading challenge an ambitious project to read the entire modern library from 100 to 1 previous entry zuleika dobson newland archer the hero of edith wharton s most celebrated novel and the first book written by a woman to win the pulitzer prize is the 1870s answer to some privileged techbro half heartedly trading crypto out of some sand hill road office rental split with an ai slop merchant leaving the finer details of regular cash flow to a hungrier underling living paycheck to paycheck yes he s a lawyer although we never see him drafting a brief or appearing in court he does review unwelcome documents the mingotts ask him to persuade ellen olenska to talk her out of a divorce and there is an off stage lawsuit mentioned near the end of the book but that s about it he has everything and more if you ran into him today he d probably be bragging about his kitchen renovation or his duolingo streak fortunately he is confined to the atmospheric pages of wharton s novel where we witness newland attending friendly parties at highbank and living in that dreaded conformist manner that even emerson associated with the living dead in self reliance he has boxes containing the newest books yet all this privilege is just not enough for this foppish and artless staple slacking in nigh high society just before gotham became the center of the universe oh sure he s got a fetching fiancée named may welland who is nearly as vapid as he is until she comes touchingly alive with an act of genuinely moving generosity during one particularly poignant moment halfway through the book which naturally made me abhor newland more may has a cousin named countess ellen olenska a hot piece of ass who stirs newland s languorous johnson into an upward bolt by way of her putative cosmopolitan experience thus in the age of innocence it s hello ellen goodbye may without the decency of roger hodgson s high tenor singing will we ever meet again over cheerful keyboards in a major you may be thinking that i hated the book but that s not true wharton s prose and storytelling craft in age is as delicately crafted as any of the other high watermarks of her awe inspiring career frequently saddled with that understated sardonic quality of hers that i love so much she notes that a woman s hair had tried to turn white and only succeeded in fading her description of ned winsett also crackles when she notes how he moved his arms with large pawing gestures as though he were distributing lay blessings to a kneeling multitude and even though wharton notes during a hubba hubba moment how newland and ellen s vain terrors shriveled up like ghosts at sunrise a brilliantly evocative image conjuring those last chance pangs that feel more immediate with oxytocin hits i don t buy for a second that newland truly loves or cares about anyone in case i haven t been subtle enough it s newland archer i hate it s a hell of a thing to hang a subtle evisceration of hoary societal virtues on such a cipher i m fine with reading books about unlikable characters but it s another thing when they are uninteresting sure wharton walks the walk in executing a narrative momentum despite such an unremarkable upper crust zero at the cynosure but i m not going to lie newland archer such a subtly obnoxious prick on the page that i would happily orchestrate one of the bloodiest ass beatings known to humankind if i had the power to enter classic works of literature like the characters in jasper fforde s thursday next series newland is essentially the mediocre man of his time and his infuriating entitlement is captured agonizingly well by wharton there were always two or three young men fairly well off and without professional ambition who for a certain number of hours of each day sat at their desks accomplishing trivial tasks or simply reading the newspapers though it was supposed to be proper for them to have an occupation the crude fact of money making was still regarded as derogatory and the law being a profession was accounted a more gentlemanly pursuit than business marriage for newland is little more than a medium with which to pass a substantial chunk of years early on in the novel when countess olenska responds to one of his messages he is smitten by the first three words i ran away like most young men who refuse to understand that moving to a new city or taking up a new job aren t going to rid you of your preexisting problems newland is intoxicated by amorphous flight and instead of asking olenska what in the sam hill she means by running away he instead imagines some dark menace from abroad newland s limited imagination seems to be the very impetus that kickstarts his patriarchal desire to dominate her newland s indolence and his first world problems are probably the primary reason why i m not as hot on this wharton volume as i d like to be at least with new year s day contained in old new york wharton demonstrated great craft on the affair between henry prest and mrs lizzie hazeldean revealing how society s understanding of this ostensible series of horizontal hookups...