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Reviews of Books
never reveal this, for black political life now shifted to
arenas less vulnerable to white attack, namely women's
home missionary societies and voluntary associations.
Gilmore reconstructs this process and connects the
activism of black women to the rise of welfare state
politics in the Progressive Era. Drawing on the newly
created political role of client, black women made
demands for their communities and built bridges to
powerful whites in a seemingly nonpolitical way,
blithely disregarding whites' intentions of constructing
a racially exclusive Progressivism.
The book leaves readers pondering some important
questions. Quibblers will raise questions about typicality, although the author makes clear from the outset
that it is the very extraordinariness of her subjects that
fascinates her. Others will wonder about whether this
North Carolina-derived model works for black women's politics in the Deep South. More pressing are
issues concerning the role of class and the workings of
color politics within contemporary southern black
communities. Gilmore convincingly demonstrates how
the meaning of middle-class standing differed for
blacks and whites at the time. Her contextual approach
to class deserves notice and emulation. Yet she dismisses without a full hearing critical questions about
the relationship between these middle-class activists
and the working-class women and men whose lives
they set out to refashion.
This reticence may derive in part from Gilmore's
sense of purpose. "This book," she informs readers
early on, "chronicles, indeed it celebrates, the black
middle class in the years prior to 1920" (pp. xviii-xix).
Its possible limitations notwithstanding, that goal
drives the book's greatest achievement: to remind
readers in a fresh and invigorating way that history is
provisional. Outcomes appear inevitable only after
they have pushed other possibilities out of sight. In this
time of deep political pessimism, when so much academic writing seems to encourage despair about collective action, Gilmore offers a bracing vindication of
intentional social change. Her thinking owes much to
the wisdom of her subjects, as she well appreciates. In
describing the veteran activist Charlotte Hawkins
Brown, Gilmore tells us that "she operated by a simple
rule: it is better to overestimate possibility than to
underestimate it" (p. 185). Gilmore's observance of
this maxim makes for a gripping story likely to engage
readers outside the academy as well as students and
professional historians. Her book should be required
reading in courses on the postbellum South, women's
history, Mrican-American history, and twentieth-century politics.
NANCY MACLEAN
Northwestern University
JONATHAN M. BRYANT. How Curious a Land: Conflict
and Change in Greene County, Georgia, 1850-1885.
(The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies.)
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1996.
Pp. x, 266. $29.95.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
The fundamental question of what took place in the
American South as a result of the Civil War remains a
topic of vital scholarly interest. In its earliest and
simplest form, scholarship frequently reduced the issue to that of the continuity or discontinuity of southern society. Recent works have been more reluctant to
make such broad generalizations and have observed
elements of both. The methodology of choice has been
the case study examining a state, a section of a state, or
even a county. Jonathan M. Bryant's book offers
another look at the puzzle with a study of what
happened in Greene County, Georgia, between 1850
and 1885.
In keeping with recent literature, Bryant sees elements of both change and persistence. He observes
that contemporaries perceived the development of a
new class of leaders in the postwar period, yet he also
notes that these individuals were new only in occupations and generation and, mostly, emerged from leading antebellum plantation families. Bryant suggests
that an ideology based on the capitalist ethic was
accepted and dominated the postwar leadership, but
he also recognizes that many among the elite had
already embraced such views before the war. Freedom
for slaves represented a revolution in the labor system,
but it is clear that an element of forced labor after 1865
remained to limit the full freedom of the former slaves.
Although Bryant recognizes the complexity of the
situation, the overall view of this study is that the Civil
War (or perhaps the integration of the county into
different markets-it is not clear) produced a radical
change in Greene County. Bryant's picture of that
revolution closely parallels C. Vann Woodward's Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (1951), which first
advanced the idea of discontinuity in the South. Bryant
portrays a world in which enormous changes took
place; in agreement with Woodward, he sees wartime
impoverishment and the destruction of the slave labor
system as forcing the crop-lien system on the people of
Greene County. This further advanced the economic
forces that left them poor and with little chance for
economic advancement. Also in keeping with Woodward's conclusions, Bryant sees the exploitative racism
of whites as further impoverishing the region. Are
these findings conclusive? Can we agree that discontinuity outweighs continuity? Ultimately, an answer to
that question depends on a clear definition of what is
meant by "radical change," and that is lacking.
There is little that is new in the conclusions offered,
and the methodology is equally familiar. Bryant's
interpretation rests heavily on newspapers and collections of family papers, used with little apparent internal criticism. Observing the free labor system and
changes in markets, these sources asserted change had
taken place, and Bryant accepts their evaluation and
bases his own conclusions on them. Statistical evidence
of the impoverishment of the county is based on
published census materials that show an obvious decline in wealth. Since abolition changed census definitions of what constituted wealth, such a result is
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1998
United States
inevitable, however, and 'a more sophisticated use of
these figures is desirable.
Bryant is most original in his discussion of the
evolution of postbellum Georgia labor law. Of particular interest is his analysis of the 1871 contract law that
made it possible for either party to file a contract with
the county court. If a party failed to carry out the
contract, he was then subject to arrest for contempt of
court and liable to imprisonment and fine. Bryant
shows how this aided employers, who actually prosecuted tenants under the law and required them to work
off fines. More than market forces may be said to have
crushed the hopes of freedpeople for autonomy and
economic independence in the postwar world.
Although Bryant tells us much about the history of
Greene County, this book also exhibits a major problem of the case study at the county level. Evidence
does not always exist that would allow the author to
draw definite conclusions, and the result is reliance on
the generalizations made by scholars about other
areas. This is risky business. It helps to make sense of
the history of the county, but the reader should be
aware that the author is not using the case study to
verify broader propositions and that what is described
as happening may not have happened at all.
Bryant's study helps show the complexity of events
at the local level during a critical era in the nation's
history. It is flawed, however, by problems of definition
and evidence that limit the work's usefulness.
CARL H. MONEYHON
University of Arkansas,
Little Rock
PAUL HARVEY. Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures
and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 18651925. (The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern
Studies.) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press. 1997. Pp. x, 330. Cloth $49.95, paper $17.95.
1997.
Scholars usually concede that religion has played a
vital role in shaping the lives of most southerners. Yet,
religious life in the late nineteenth and early twentiethcentury South remains difficult to understand, partially
because existing studies have focused either on whites
or on African Americans but not on both. Paul Harvey's book is an ambitious work that explores the
interconnectedness of black and white Baptists in the
South between 1865 and 1925. Harvey maintains that a
proper understanding of the New South lies in conceptualizing "southern religion" as biracial and bicultural.
That is, black and white Baptists may have developed
their own separate religious institutions in the postbellum South, but they continued to influence each other
in ways that were sometimes overt, sometimes subtle.
Moreover, would-be denomination builders, reformers, and progressive-minded individuals of both races
discovered that localism and rural folkways often
hindered the changes they proposed.
Harvey's title comes from the term "redemption,"
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283
which denotes the evangelical concept of individual
salvation as well as the return of white southern
Democrats to political power in the 1870s. As the
"redeemers" regained control of southern states, a
group of leaders emerged within the Southern Baptist
Convention (SBC) who were intent on redeeming
more than the Old South's social and political order.
These individuals wanted to strengthen and professionalize their denomination by educating clergymen
who would address the challenges of poverty, immorality, and poor education as well as preach the gospel.
Men like James Marion Frost, a neglected figure in
southern religious history, built the Southern Baptist
Sunday School Board. This agency produced literature
that helped ministers to educate and indoctrinate local
church members. By the turn of the century, Southern
Baptists had expanded their missionary, educational,
and publishing enterprises, but the growth came at a
price. Some complained that the SBC was becoming
too bureaucratic. Others struggled with new worship
forms and the precise meaning of orthodoxy. Obviously, the SBC was never a homogeneous entity, and
Harvey says as much. Still, there may have been even
more diversity than he admits.
While whites struggled with building their denomination, African Americans faced problems of their
own. Whites scrutinized black churches because they
could not comprehend their unique worship style. One
thing whites clearly understood was that black
churches were social forums and fledgling political
institutions, a volatile mix that fueled white racism and
frequently led to terrorist acts against Mrican Americans. This much is familiar territory, but the story is
more complex, and Harvey is at his best when he
demythologizes the black Baptist experience. For example, African-American pastors did not have unlimited power over their congregations. In fact, churches
had ways to curb pastoral authority including the
"annual call," a yearly ritual to renew or deny the
minister's tenure. Neither was there ideological solidarity among black Baptist ministers. Some aspired to
middle-class respectability as much as their likeminded white brethren, and the establishment of the
National Baptist Convention (NBC) in 1895 provided
new avenues for advancing one's professional status.
Harvey's deft treatment of Sutton E. Griggs, Richard
H. Boyd, and Emmanuel K. Love is a moving testimony to the rich diversity among Mrican-American
Baptists.
In a work of this scope, it is understandable that the
author may not interpret every detail correctly. For
example, Harvey's occasional overreliance on secondary sources leads him to accept stereotypical interpretations uncritically. He believes the common misconception that the antimission movement was rooted
exclusively in hyper-Calvinism, while in reality, antimission ism raised more questions about ecclesiastical
authority than predestination. He also dismisses Landmarkism, perhaps the single most influential feature of
early SBC life, as "folk religion," whatever that is.
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