Volume 28, Number 9 · May 28, 1981
The Experiment at Davis Bend
By George M. Fredrickson
The Pursuit of a Dream
by Janet Sharp Hermann
Oxford University Press, 290 pp., $17.50
It is difficult to think about race relations in the nineteenth-century South without evoking a stereotyped image of white oppressors and black victims. Like many stereotypes this view reflects a substantial portion of the truth. Historians of human nastiness and brutality can find innumerable examples in the annals of Southern slavery and segregationism. The institutions or systems of control devised by whites to extort labor and deference from blacks inevitably encouraged arrogance and cruelty on one side of the color line, and despair, degradation, or suicidal defiance on the other. But human beings do not respond in predictable or mechanical ways to the dominant forces in their environment. Some whites did not follow the doctrines of white supremacy and insisted on treating blacks with humanity and respect; some blacks found paths to achievement, pride, and independence within the confines of a racist society.
Review, 2566 words
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