{"product_id":"there-goes-my-everything-isbn-9780307275509","title":"There Goes My Everything","description":"During the civil rights movement, epic battles for justice were fought in the streets, at lunch counters, and in the classrooms of the American South. Just as many battles were waged, however, in the hearts and minds of ordinary white southerners whose world became unrecognizable to them. Jason Sokol’s vivid and unprecedented account of white southerners’ attitudes and actions, related in their own words, reveals in a new light the contradictory mixture of stubborn resistance and pragmatic acceptance–as well as the startling and unexpected personal transformations–with which they greeted the enforcement of legal equality.“Fascinating and remarkably empathetic.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic Monthly\u003c\/i\u003e“[\u003ci\u003eThere Goes My Everything\u003c\/i\u003e is] on my personal list of the year’s best books.” —Jonathan Yardley, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post \u003c\/i\u003e “A richly documented, often compellingly dramatic narrative, whose strength is its absence of polemic.” —\u003ci\u003eDallas Morning News\u003c\/i\u003e\"As eye-opening a look at race relations in the Civil Rights Era as anything this side of Dr. King's own \u003ci\u003eLetter From a Birmingham Jail\u003c\/i\u003e.\"—\u003ci\u003eArkansas Democrat-Gazette\u003c\/i\u003e“Simply stunning…This is one of the few books about the civil rights movement…that gets it right…Deserves to be read by every American.” —\u003ci\u003eTucson Citizen\u003c\/i\u003eJason Sokol grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, and attended Oberlin College and the University of California, Berkeley, where he received his doctorate in American history. He lives in Ithaca, New York, and teaches at Cornell University.ONEPrelude: In the Wake of the War, 1945-1955On battlefields in europe and the Pacific, World War II blew gusts of   change toward Joe Gilmer and Lewis Barton. For these white soldiers who   fought alongside blacks, the war left indelible imprints. \"Before the   war I had the same feeling towards the Negro as the typical Southerner.   God didn't intend them to have equal rights with other races, I   thought,\" Petty Officer Barton wrote in a letter to his hometown   newspaper, the Lumberton, North Carolina, \u003ci\u003eRobesonian.\u003c\/i\u003e By 1945, his   belief became one of the war's millions of casualties. \"I am afraid   that all race prejudice is gone from the boys who have fought this   war,\" Sergeant Gilmer wrote to the \u003ci\u003eFort Worth Star-Telegram.\u003c\/i\u003e \"White   boys who have seen Negroes die to save their 'buddies,' and to help   keep America free, are not in favor of the 'Jim Crow' law.\" In several   regiments, by war's end, whites and blacks ate, worked, lived, and   fought together. The South's segregation laws seemed petty and absurd   by comparison. \"Forcing them to ride in the rear of busses and stand   for white[s] to sit down, I realize now is narrow-minded childishness   practiced by our state,\" Barton wrote. \"I discovered that the Negro is   a human being.\" It was a lesson some white southerners would soon   learn. For many others, the humanity of blacks remained a threat of the   first order, a fear too immediate to peacefully allow, a reality to   indefinitely deny. \"It isn't going to be wise for any man . . . to try   to abuse the colored people any more,\" Joe Gilmer warned. \"The veterans   of this war have learned that freedom means more than just freedom for   the white man.\" Many southern veterans carried this truth back to their   communities. The question of the ensuing decade—between the end of   World War II in 1945 and the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott in   1955—was whether white southerners would welcome or challenge it.Joe Gilmer's and Lewis Barton's transformative experiences placed them   in a minority. Many soldiers who fought alongside blacks felt their   attitudes change, but they constituted only a small fraction of white   southern servicemen. About two-thirds of all white soldiers said blacks   should have the same rights after the war as they had before. Many   justified their beliefs with assertions like, \"We get along fine with   the Negro, why change?\" and, \"They're satisfied with the way they are   now.\" More than 90 percent of white southern soldiers supported   separate military facilities and outfits. And white southerners who   stayed at home defended segregation even more vehemently. The sight of   blacks in uniform had the peculiar ability to spark violence. \"It seems   that a Negro in uniform has stimulated some white civilians and   soldiers to protect the customary caste etiquette of the South,\" read a   1943 report on the American soldier. That \"protection\" often manifested   itself in the form of racial violence. During the war, the South was   the site of six civilian riots, twenty military riots and mutinies, and   between forty-five and seventy-five lynchings. While some soldiers felt   that interracial contact in the army promoted tolerance, \"a larger   group seemed to have re-inforced their pre-Army attitudes while in the   service. . . . The job done, they wanted to get out, get home, and by   and large resume where they had left off.\" That often meant supporting   Jim Crow as staunchly as ever.Gilmer and Barton both believed their profound wartime experiences were   not unique; they thought many white southern soldiers had similar   changes in attitudes. Although the testimonies of most whites challenge   that generalization, there is some evidence to support it. \"All of our   servicemen have not reacted in the same way,\" Guy Johnson said in 1945.   Johnson headed the Southern Regional Council, a progressive group—made   up of mostly white southerners—that came to support integration. \"Some   of them have come out with worse attitudes toward the other race than   they had when they went in. I believe, however, that the majority of   our fighting men have had experiences which have taught them a new   appreciation of their fellow Americans of another race.\" In fact, those   with \"a new appreciation\" for blacks comprised but a small segment. Yet   their experiences were significant, and augured larger changes in the   years to come.Before Frank Smith gained notoriety as the rare progressive congressman   from the Mississippi Delta, he fought in the army during World War II.   What Smith learned at Artillery Officers Training School in Fort Sill,   Oklahoma, in 1942 stayed with him for the rest of his life. \"OCS at   Fort Sill was a revolutionary experience to those of us from the South,   and probably to a good many others from outside the South. Negro   officer candidates were scattered among us wherever they happened to   fall in the alphabetical list.\" Smith detected little resistance to   this policy among southern soldiers. \"The Southerners who expressed   themselves to me said they had no objections, and some even voiced   approval . . . [N]obody was bucking the tide.\" Southerners who would   later oppose segregation, like Smith, often looked back on the war as a   turning point. While Smith grew up as a member of the Mississippi   Delta's small middle class, Claude Ramsay was raised in poverty across   the state in Ocean Springs. Ramsay carried traditional southern beliefs   about race into the war. Yet when he returned to civilian life, he   began to believe that blacks should have their rights. He landed a job   at International Paper Company shortly after the war, and won the   presidency of the state AFL-CIO in 1959. For the rest of his life,   Ramsay would consider the war a defining experience.Georgia native Harold Fleming had similar memories of his service as a   commander in the Pacific. \"It did more to change my life than any other   experience I've ever had,\" Fleming confessed. \"I'm a . . . good old boy   at heart.\" He neither sought nor expected any transformation in his   racial views, but his war experiences thrust such changes upon him.   Stationed in Okinawa, Fleming was placed in charge of African-American   troops. \"The nearest thing you could be in the army to being black was   to be a company officer with black troops,\" he later told journalist   Fred Powledge, \"because you lived and operated under the same   circumstances they did, and they got crapped all over.\" This experience   did not instantly convert the \"good old boy\" to political radicalism,   but it did open his eyes and change his life. \" 'Radicalized' would be   too strong a word. It wasn't that I came to love Negroes; it was that I   came to despise the system that did this.\" Fleming completed the   transition when he went to work for the SRC after graduating from   Harvard. He would eventually lead the organization during the 1950s.   Fleming kept few friends from his prewar days; he associated mostly   with like-minded progressives and friends from the American Veterans   Committee. The committee consisted of \"usually young veterans, just   back from the war, white and black, who thought there was or ought to   be a new day on this race stuff. And I exchanged my old friends for a   new set of friends and co-workers and collaborators.\" After the war,   nothing in Harold Fleming's life remained the same. \"The army   experience activated me,\" he later recalled; it set him along an arc   that reshaped his career, his friendships, and the stuff of his   everyday life.Most southern soldiers' life trajectories were unlike those of Frank   Smith, Claude Ramsay, or Harold Fleming. Still, the majority of white   southern soldiers who fought alongside blacks found that they \"got   along well together.\" A platoon sergeant from South Carolina   remembered, \"When I heard about it, I said I'd be damned if I'd wear   the same shoulder patch they did. After that first day when we saw how   they fought, I changed my mind. They're just like any of the other boys   to us.\" Many soldiers confirmed that in combat the color line vanished.   \"We was trapped behind the line, and white was afraid of dying as   blacks,\" African-American veteran Wilson Evans remembered of the Battle   of the Bulge. \"And there was no color, no nothing. . . . I did see that   Americans could become Americans for about eight or nine days.\" While   these soldiers asserted that race was inconsequential in combat, an   overwhelming majority of white southern soldiers still resented the   army's integrated living quarters. Combat suspended the color line, but   the garrison introduced it again.Seth Lurie, an air force major from New Orleans, was stationed after   the war at Craig Field in rural Dallas County, Alabama. He described   himself as \"a reconstructed southerner,\" and attributed that conversion   to his military career. \"The greatest teacher is experience . . . My   education on this came solely from the military.\" Like Frank Smith,   Lurie was housed alphabetically at Officer Training School. In that   interracial contact, prejudices centuries in the making dissolved   during everyday interaction:That was my first real contact with Negroes. . . . I learned that a   Negro was a human being, with blood in his brain, and perspiration on   his brow, with aches the same . . . ambitions the same, thought of home   the same. I learned later that he died the same as a white man dies,   for the same cause. Also in combat I learned that he has the same   courage and daring as a white man. . . . To the best of my knowledge,   there is no resentment on the part of any white officer.Lurie's revelations were powerful. They showed that weeks of experience   could undo the received wisdom and ingrained customs of an entire   upbringing.Seth Lurie was quick to realize that his experiences did not suggest a   region-wide transformation. He could see it firsthand in his   interactions with the residents of nearby Selma. \"Old timers in this   town are against progress. . . . Until this segregation-preaching   generation dies off and a new generation takes hold, there will be   trouble.\" Monumental wartime changes failed to grip all southerners.   More than half of the war's veterans predicted \"trouble\" with blacks,   and almost 20 percent foresaw \"trouble\" with Jews. A 1946 social   psychological survey found \"little reason for doubting the   re-absorption of the vast majority of American soldiers into the normal   patterns of American life.\" White southern soldiers became reabsorbed   in the South's traditional way of life. Many believed they had fought   to defend, not overturn, racial customs.While African-American veterans remembered that some white soldiers   lost their prejudices in the war, those memories were far outweighed by   accounts of whites who violently defended Jim Crow. Dempsey Travis was   stationed in Camp Shenango, Pennsylvania, where the only PX excluded   blacks. When a black soldier went into the PX for a beer, whites kicked   his eye out. Travis joined an expanding crowd of African-American   soldiers who discussed what action to take. A caravan of six trucks   arrived, and white soldiers jumped off—wearing battle fatigues and   carrying arms. They fired into the crowd, hitting Travis in several   places. He recalled the ambulance ride: \"Two guys were sitting in   front. The one says to the driver, 'Why we be doin' this to our own   soldiers?' Driver says, 'Who ever told you niggers were our soldiers?   Where I come from'—I detected a southern accent—'we shoot niggers like   we shoot rabbits.' \" By 1943, Travis had been put in charge of a troop   movement on its way to Camp Lee, in Richmond, Virginia. It was the   first time Travis, a Chicago native, had witnessed the life of the   South. Some sights singed his northern eyes. German POWs rode in the   front of the city's streetcars, blacks in the back. After Travis   received a transfer to Aberdeen, Maryland, in 1945, he came across the   rare white southerner who seemed to have been liberated by the war. A   major from Texas made Travis manager of an integrated PX. In the end,   Travis \"found the most sympathetic white men in the army were actually   southerners.\" White southerners were nothing if not diverse: some   welcomed blacks; others brimmed with hostility. In the memories of most   black soldiers, however, the hostility far surpassed the acceptance.Alfred Duckett found few sympathetic whites. A freelance journalist who   published articles in many of America's major black newspapers, Duckett   was drafted and sent to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. \"The first night we   arrived, a white officer told us what the rules were. . . . 'We want   you to know we're not takin' any foolishness down here, because we   don't shoot 'em down here, we hang 'em.' \" When Duckett shipped over to   Camp Lucky Strike in France, he found \"an almost psychotic terror on   the part of white commanders that there would be a great deal of   association with the white women.\" The company's chaplain traveled in   advance to each town, and informed the locals that blacks had tails.   The commander issued an edict that black troops could not associate   with French civilians. When Allen Leftridge disobeyed this order and   conversed with a French woman who was serving coffee and doughnuts, a   white MP shot him in the back. The white officers were so paranoid   about black soldiers that they locked up the regiment's guns. Blacks   received arms only in combat. As some white southerners clung to the   myth of the \"happy Negro,\" many recoiled in terror at the prospect of   black men with guns—or even worse, with white women.When the last battles were over and soldiers became veterans, whites   and blacks alike gazed back toward home. Many black soldiers discovered   that if their native Southland had begun to grapple with economic and   demographic change, little metamorphosis had occurred in white racial   attitudes. Ben Fielder, an African-American from Mississippi, served in   both Europe and the Far East, and made his way up the ranks to staff   sergeant. After returning to the United States, Fielder and a white   veteran embarked on a train ride from California back to their native   Mississippi. As the train rumbled across the country, the two dined   together and passed the time telling stories. Fielder felt they   transcended \"this race nonsense\" and \"became tight.\" When the train   passed into Texas and Louisiana, Fielder realized his mistake. The   white soldier assumed a posture of superiority, and informed Fielder   that the war was over, that they were back in the South, and that, as   Fielder recalled, \"I was still just a nigger. Not an American soldier   anymore. Just a nigger.\" Black veteran German Levy of Brookhaven,   Mississippi, concurred that on the level of white racial behavior,   little had changed. \"The pancake hadn't turned over . . . you come back   home right into the same world you left.\" In many ways, the South at   war's end closely resembled the prewar land. Reconstructed or not,   white soldiers made their way back to factories, farms, and families,   or moved into growing cities. While these soldiers had seen the wide   world, some returned to communities that seemed much the same as before   they left. Many preferred it that way.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302244438245,"sku":"NP9780307275509","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307275509.jpg?v=1767742390","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/there-goes-my-everything-isbn-9780307275509","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}