Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

Source of book: I own this. 

I remember reading the opening chapter of O Pioneers back in high school, and telling myself that I should read more Willa Cather. It wasn’t until a number of years later, after I moved out and started collecting books in earnest, that I got copies of both O Pioneers and My Antonia, both of which I enjoyed. (You can read my thoughts on O Pioneers on this blog - I read My Antonia years before I started blogging.) 

More recently, I scored a whole bunch of (barely) used Library of America hardbacks, including three volumes which I believe contain the complete Cather. Yes, I am excited. 

Having loved what I had read of hers, I was determined to take advantage of my new additions, and read some Cather regularly. My friend Darren from law school (we spent way too much time at our school conferences discussing and reading books) named Death Comes for the Archbishop as his favorite. My wife read it a few years ago, and seconded the recommendation, which was all I needed to know. 

I was not disappointed. Death Comes for the Archbishop is a delightful book, with Cather’s classic gentle, nuanced, and empathetic portrayal of ordinary people. Unlike the others of her books I have read, this one starts with its characters as adults (rather than children, as in the ones above), and ends with their deaths at a ripe old age. It also is more of a series of episodes than a story with the traditional arc. The characters live their lives, and interesting vignettes and happenings are remembered. They grow and mature, but never have any one turning point or epiphany. For the most part, they are decent people, with good motives, who try to do their best, accomplish some good, and pass on to their reward. 

This sounds on paper like a kind of...boring sort of story. Except it isn’t. 

The story is based on the lives of two priests from France who worked in the New Mexico territory in the mid-1800s. Although the book mostly follows the history, there are some timeline changes, and a bit of artistic license. Certainly, the details are fictional, but the broad outline of the tale and the general esteem in which the two were held is accurate. 

 The real-life inspiration for Latour was instrumental in building the gorgeous cathedral in Santa Fe.

The book opens with a conference of cardinals in Italy, where a missionary to the New World advocates for the appointment of Bishop Jean Marie Latour to the new territory. Along with Latour comes his vicar, Joseph Vaillant. As we eventually learn through flashbacks, the two were boyhood friends who attended seminary together. This friendship is one of the loveliest things in the book. They genuinely esteem and value each other, and use their complementary strengths to make a great team. 

Once the two reach New Mexico (after a series of mishaps), they work together to minister to their flock for decades, before (and even after) their retirement. They are the kind of clergy that seems hard to find these days: ministers who listen, who respect others (including Protestants and non-Christian Native Americans), and who eschew wealth in favor of service. I know they still exist, and always have - they are just hard to find right now, even in smaller churches, which often end up as little fiefdoms. 

This isn’t to say that the portrayal of priests is all rosy. There are several that are pretty nefarious in their own ways. The ones who build up vast estates, often through underhanded means. There is the one who openly fathers children by many women. There are the ones who antagonized the Native Americans and got themselves killed. It’s a nuanced portrayal. 

Likewise, it is sometimes difficult to believe this book is nearly 100 years old, because it lacks the overt prejudice against non-whites. Rather, it is refreshing to see all sorts - Native Americans, Mexicans, Americans, wealthy, impoverished, enslaved, and women - all portrayed as fully human, equally worthy of respect and assistance as needed, and not defined by their beliefs or ancestry. Father Latour in particular shows great respect for others - although he has little patience for grifting priests or abusive men. 

Perhaps, though, the best part of the book for me was the descriptions of the American Southwest. I live in California, but I am literally next door (as far as states go) to Arizona, and not too far from New Mexico, where most of the story takes place. I have traveled to many of the places in the book, and the landscape is familiar to me. Cather not only shows that she visited these places, but that she loved them. Her depictions show a keen eye for detail - particularly color - and an appreciation of the stark beauty and extremes of the desert. Here are a few of my favorite descriptive passages:

He must have travelled through thirty miles of these conical red hills, winding his way in the narrow cracks between them, and he had begun to think that he would never see anything else. They were so exactly like one another that he seemed to be wandering in some geometric nightmare; flattened cones, they were, more the shape of Mexican ovens than haycocks--yes, exactly the shape of Mexican ovens, red as brick-dust, and naked of vegetation except for small juniper trees. And the junipers, too, were the shape of Mexican Ovens. Every conical hill was spotted with smaller cones of juniper, a uniform yellowish green, as the hills were a uniform red. The hills thrust out of the ground so thickly that they seemed to be pushing each other, elbowing each other aside, tipping each other over. 

In addition to the vivid description, I love the truly poetic use of words and repetition, building the scene by sounds as well as pictures. This one too is familiar:

About a mile above the village he came upon the waterhead, a spring overhung by the sharp-leafed variety of cottonwood called water willow. All about it crowded the oven-shaped hills, -- nothing to hint of water until it rose miraculously out of the parched and thirsty sea of sand. Some subterranean stream found an outlet here, was released from darkness. The result was grass and trees and flowers and human life; household order and hearths from which the smoke of burning piñon logs rose like incense to Heaven.

For those unfamiliar with them, the Pinyon (or Piñon) Pine is where we get pine nuts from. They come in a few varieties - the singleleaf in my part of California. Father Latour isn’t exactly correct when he describes them as a kind of cedar. The junipers are closer to cedar, while the pinyon is a pine. But he is correct that the wood smells aromatic, yet delicate. It is difficult to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced it - or the smell of pinyon pines after a thunderstorm. It’s magic. 

Another marvelous description is of the area around Ácoma. 

Ever afterward the Bishop remembered his first ride to Ácoma as his introduction to the mesa country. One thing which struck him at once was that every mesa was duplicated by a cloud mesa, like a reflection, which lay motionless above it or moved slowly up from behind it. These cloud formations seemed always to be there, however hot and blue the sky. Sometimes they were flat terraces, ledges of vapour; sometimes they were dome-shaped, or fantastic, like the tops of silvery pagodas, rising one above another, as if an oriental city lay directly behind the rock. The tables of granite set down in an empty plain were inconceivable without their attendant clouds, which were a part of them, as the smoke is part of the censer, or the foam of the wave. 

Knowing the physics behind the phenomenon does nothing to diminish its grandeur. This phenomenon is common throughout the Southwest, and has caught my eye many times. 

I can’t leave out this bit, on the Datura, a common poisonous (and hence medicinal) plant throughout the area - and my own state. 

The mesa was absolutely naked of vegetation, but at its foot a rank plant grew conspicuously out of the sand; a plant with big white blossoms like Easter lilies. By its dark blue-green leaves, large and coarse-toothed, Father Latour recognized a species of the noxious datura. The size and luxuriance of these nightshades astonished him. They looked like great artificial plants, made of shining silk. 

The descriptions of food are evocative too. Latour, a Frenchman, waxes eloquent about onion soup, which Father Vaillant is able to make to his specifications. 

“Think of it, Blanchet; in all this vast country between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean, there is probably not another human being who could make a soup like this.”

“Not unless he is a Frenchman,” said Father Joseph. 

“I am not deprecating your individual talent, Joseph,” the Bishop continued, “but, when one thinks of it, a soup like this is not the work of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup.”  

These moments of dialogue are always a treat. Vaillant is the man of action, full of energy, even after he is crippled by a bad fall. Latour, on the other hand, is the thoughtful and philosophic sort. I love this line of his when talking to Vaillant about miracles. 

“Where there is great love there are always miracles,” he said at length. “One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our own perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”  

Later in the book, he remarks to a man calling the ancient stories of the Navajos primitive superstitions, that “their veneration for old customs was a quality he liked in the Indians, and that it played a great part in his own religion.” 

Joseph Vaillant is a bit less patient with human foibles. One hilarious episode involves a widow of a wealthy Mexican ranchero. The property is left to her and her daughter, then to the church after their deaths. The other relatives are furious and challenge the will, claiming that the daughter isn’t really the widow’s child - she is too young. The reason this almost succeeds is that the widow refuses to admit her age. She looks young, and claims to be, well, far too young to have given birth to her own daughter. Finally, Vaillant is able to put enough pressure on her to admit, if not her real age (which we never learn), but a lower age that is at least high enough to support a claim of maternity. Afterward, Vaillant and Latour discuss it:

When they were tramping home, Father Joseph said that as for him, he would rather combat the superstitions of a whole Indian pueblo than the vanity of one white woman.

“And I would rather do almost anything than go through such a scene again,” said the Bishop with a frown. “I don’t think I ever assisted at anything so cruel.”

In contrast to this story, there is another of an enslaved woman who sneaks away from her cruel Protestant masters to pray at the Catholic church. Latour finds her there, and does the little he can to give her comfort and ease her heart - he lacks the political power to free her at that time, although the book mentions later that he found a way to do so years later when he was on firmer political standing with the American authorities. 

What I found intriguing about this story was the way Latour talks about the need for a female facet to the Divine. Protestantism is a reaction against the excesses of Catholicism (and the associated political realities), so one of the things we have lost is the feminine half of the divine nature. Although I think most non-fundie Protestants would agree that God is neither male nor female, and that both human genders are equally in God’s image, in practice, we act as if God is male only, and only males truly resemble God in that sense. This is a sad loss. Here are Latour’s response.

He seemed able to feel all it meant to her to know that there was a Kind Woman in Heaven, though there were such cruel ones on earth. Old people, who have felt blows and toil and known the world’s hard hand, need, even more than children do, a woman’s tenderness. Only a Woman, divine, could know all that a woman can suffer.

Latour also gets that the Kingdom consists not of the rich and powerful, but by the marginalized. (And he lives like it too - very much to his credit.) 

“O Sacred Heart of Mary!” she murmured by his side, and he felt how that name was food and raiment, friend and mother to her. He received the miracle in her heart into his own, saw through her eyes, knew that his poverty was as bleak as hers. When the Kingdom of Heaven had first come into the world, into a cruel world of torture and slaves and masters, He who brought it had said, “And whosoever is least among you, the same shall be first in the Kingdom of Heaven.” This church was Sada’s house, and he was a servant in it. 

I am left to imagine the revolutionary change in our nation and its religion if more of our “christians” felt and acted this way toward the marginalized among us - the poor, the homeless, the immigrants, the minorities. Wow. Imagine it. 

There is one more exchange between Latour and Vaillant that struck me. Vaillant has been called to serve in Colorado, where the mining boom has left great need for spiritual care. Latour knows that his time of working hand in hand with his friend is ending. 

“Well, we are getting older, Jean,” he said abruptly, after a short silence.

The Bishop smiled. “Ah, yes. We are not young men any more. One of these departures will be the last.” 

Father Vaillant nodded. “Whenever God wills. I am ready.” He rose and began to pace the floor, addressing his friend without looking at him. “But it has not been so bad, Jean? We have done the things we used to plan to do, long ago, when we were Seminarians,-- at least some of them. To fulfil the dreams of one’s youth; that is the best that can happen to a man. No worldly success can take the place of that.”

And I guess he is right. To have fulfilled at least some of one’s dreams is a blessing - and something to be thankful for. 

At the end of his life, Latour also expresses gratefulness for two things that he lived long enough to see: the abolition of slavery, and the return of the Navajos to their land. 

[T]he Bishop turned to Bernard; “My son, I have lived to see two great wrongs righted; I have seen the end of black slavery, and I have seen the Navajos restored to their own country.”

For many years, Father Latour used to wonder if there would ever be an end to the Indian wars while there was one Navajo or Apache left alive. Too many traders and manufacturers made a rich profit out of that warfare; a political machine and immense capital were employed to keep it going.

That last line was startling to me. Not much has changed on that front, alas. From the Keystone Pipeline - leaking crude oil all over Native lands - to the incarceration industrial complex that makes fortunes from the imprisonment of innocent child immigrants, there is still a hell of a lot of money to be made from inflicting injustice on vulnerable human beings. 

This is just a taste of the book, of course. I liked it enough that I think I will try to add Cather to my regular rotation of authors. Particularly now that I have her works in such nice hardbacks. This book wasn’t quite like either of the others I have read, but it shares her delightful writing, her deep empathy, and her eye for the details of what makes us human. 

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

Source of book: Borrowed from my son (who is a serious tinkerer too).

This was this month’s selection for our “Literary Lush” book club. One of the things I enjoy about this club is that I end up reading interesting books that I never would have discovered on my own. The club has usually read along with the “One Book, One Bakersfield” project sponsored by our local library. Some years, this has been a bit boring - one theory is that books have been selected partly on the basis of which authors were willing to come out and speak at an event. This one, however, was not. I was unable to attend the event, but did read the book and discuss it at our club meeting. 

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from this book. I was familiar with the rough outline of the story, but was worried it might fall into either the “isn’t Africa backward” genre or the “see, everyone can succeed if they just try” category. But this book didn’t go either of those directions. Rather, despite the use of a ghost writer (more or less), it really did tell a fascinating story - William Kamkwamba’s story. 

Kamkwamba came to fame after he built his own windmill generator – at age 14 - to bring electricity to his home. But that isn’t all that there is to the story. In fact, in some ways, it is just an incident in the broader arc. 

William starts the story with his earliest memories. He grew up in Malawi, the son of subsistence farmers. His parents had an interesting courtship story, which he tells in the first chapter. From there, they worked hard to survive and build a decent life. 

Disaster struck, however, in the form of a terrible drought and famine. This section of the book was horrifying and difficult to read. The descriptions of hunger and hopelessness, of people dying in the road, of children who starved to death and never returned to school, are the things of nightmares. It is almost surprising that William even survived it. 

There are certainly some things to understand about how the drought played out. First, it is a reminder of how fragile human existence can be. We forget that in modern first-world nations. We have the infrastructure to transport food, and the wealth to purchase it. For those who have neither, starvation is a real risk. Second, there is a contrast between the first drought (the bad one) and the second - and the difference was in the response of the government. In the first, a corrupt system denied the famine existed, sold food to other countries so the leaders could pocket the proceeds, and brutally punished those who complained. A change in leadership made a difference for the second drought. By proactively directing resources to the most vulnerable areas, a famine was avoided. It seems weird to have to say this, but humans are at their strongest when they look out for the weakest. A society or nation is only as strong as its most vulnerable point. Malawi lost tremendous ground during the first drought because of its failure to ensure that the victims of the famine survived. It literally took years - a decade even - for the communities affected to bounce back. And the promising lives lost were gone forever. 

The toll wasn’t just from deaths. The financial cost was enormous, as families sold everything they had, including seed corn, to avoid starvation. The resources of the whole community were devastated and took years to rebuild. 

Likewise, the cost to the children was incalculable. In the case of William, his chance at an education was lost for years. Honestly, had he not been “discovered” by someone with a global platform, he likely would never have finished his education. This was true for thousands of others who were not fortunate enough to get publicity. They just quietly were relegated to subsistence farming, with no chance at social mobility. 

This was another distressing reality brought to light in the book. Without the public infrastructure to provide a free public education, most children do not finish school. The entire country then suffers from a lack of educated leaders and innovators, and cannot advance. The cycle then feeds on itself. 

I was struck by some similarities to the effects of educational segregation here in the United States, as described in White Rage by Carol Anderson. (I read that concurrently with this book.) The United States lags other first world countries in education, in significant part because of its obsession with maintaining racial hierarchies and refusal to fund and support minority students. (Take a look at, say, Alabama, if you want to see true third-world education and poverty.) The US continues to shoot itself in the foot, too. As higher education costs have soared, many (most?) of my parents’ generation - who got free or very affordable college themselves - keep blaming my kids’ generation for student debt. The refusal to actually invest in education (and cull the exploding numbers of administrators) will increasingly lead to an under-educated population. And the US will fall further and further behind. (Also, keeping educated immigrants out - as in Stephen Miller’s push to severely cut back H-2B visas - will further cause educated and innovative immigrants to look elsewhere.) Hatred and xenophobia and racism hurt everyone. 

If I were to give my immediate impressions of the book, I would start with the compelling story of William’s life. Even if he had never come to unexpected fame, his story would be a good one. He is clearly an intelligent young man, with an ability to find solutions on a shoestring. How many more Williams are there in Malawi? In Africa? In America? How many of them will never have the chance to get an education, to survive childhood, or have access to the resources to make a better world? It is something worth considering. William Kawkwamba is above average, but not a once-in-a-lifetime genius. He’s someone who should, in all justice, have the chance to use his talents. And there are millions like him. We as a society and as a human race should be focused on ensuring that all of us have that chance. 

I rather enjoyed reading this one, and also the discussion we had regarding it. It is my understanding that there is a kids version too, which leaves out some of the more disturbing stuff, like William’s mom nearly dying of malaria and the dead bodies in the road. We have the full version, and I think it is fine for most kids, honestly. Kids don’t need to be protected from death and illness - they sure wouldn’t have been able to avoid it in an earlier era. I could see it making a good starting point for discussing a bunch of issues - from the importance of investment in the public sector, to the mechanics of making a generator. 

White Rage by Carol Anderson

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

This book has been on my list since just after the last presidential election. In all honestly, it has proven to be as good of an explanation for what I have seen and heard from people I know - including relatives. There was a disconcerting vibe soon after the election of President Obama among many of the white people I knew, particularly white Evangelicals of a certain age, but I couldn’t really put my finger on it. 

I recall a conversation with a man from our former church. He was (and presumably is) a basically nice guy, more reasonable than most, but with redneck roots and a deep commitment to a certain political party. I recall mentioning something about how Obama (full disclosure: I didn’t vote for Obama either time - one of my regrets) was a thoroughly decent person, probably the best human to be president during my lifetime. I mean, faithful and kind and supportive toward his wife; a loving and involved father; a man who seemed to genuinely care about others; thoughtful and informed - the sort you would love to have over for dinner.  (I was born just before Jimmy Carter was elected, so I have no memory of his time in office, although I would rank him as the best human being to be president in my lifetime, with Obama in second place.) This brought a chilly response I didn’t expect. While most white conservatives I know freely grant that Carter is a good man, even if they dislike his politics, Obama got no such acceptance. 

In contrast, I was talking with a relative in summer of 2016, and got a totally different sort of reaction to a different person. I walked out of a conversation after a different (closer) relative made a pretty nasty and xenophobic statement about refugees - that could be a whole post in and of itself: the grief I have had as a result of that discovery has been harrowing. In any event, this relative tracked me down and talked a bit. I expressed my fears (which totally came to pass) that there was literally no amount of racism and hate that would be a deal breaker for white Evangelicals. Somewhere in that conversation, this person expressed that one point in Trump’s favor was that his kids turned out well. 

To say I was flabbergasted was an understatement. Trump never raised his kids - he has repeatedly said that childrearing was women’s work. And as far as that goes, the Trump children may have inherited wealth (which is essentially the only reason anyone thinks they turned out) and appear to be every bit as racist and hateful and corrupt and vacuous as their father. 

So why did we never hear about Obama’s kids in the same way? 

Hmm. Something to think about. 

[By the way, for me, the worst thing about the Trump Era has been losing my illusions about my extended family. I really thought - or was it hoped? - that they were better than this. Apparently not.] 

Carol Anderson has a theory, and, given the many additional things I have seen and heard since the election, I think she is absolutely spot on. To wit:

After every gain that non-whites - particularly African Americans - have made, there has been a backlash of white rage, expressed primarily through the “legal” methods of power and violence. Through legislation, the courts, and other means (including open violence), whites have responded to Black ambition with hate and oppression. 

Let me be clear about one thing regarding this book: Anderson has done her research. The book is built upon literally hundreds of direct quotes from primary sources. All of the horrifying and vicious things said and done happened - there is no question of that - and this process of violent and nasty reaction against the loss of white privilege continues to today. 

The election of Trump is the most visible, but far from the only evidence of this. 

Anderson focuses on five seminal events in American history which involved African Americans making incremental strides toward full emancipation and citizenship. She then shows how these gains were attacked by the white establishment, erasing much (although not quite all) of the gains made. 

These events were, in historical order: (1) The abolition of slavery following the Civil War, (2) The “Great Migration” of blacks out of the South during the early 20th Century, (3) Brown v. Board of Education, (4) The Civil Rights Acts, and (5) The first black president. In each case, the gains were followed by a paroxysm of white rage and successful efforts to limit and reverse the gains. 

There is way too much in this book to try to detail here - you really need to read it for yourself. Here are some highlights. 

First, Anderson puts her finger on the key fact: 

“The trigger for white rage, inevitably, is black advancement. It is not the mere presence of black people that is the problem; rather, it is blackness with ambition, with drive, with purpose, with aspirations, and with demands for full and equal citizenship. It is a blackness that refuses to accept subjugation, to give up.”

I hear this echoed today - it’s mostly dog whistles now, but in the era of Trump, it has been more explicit. “I don’t wish minorities ill - I just don’t want them in my neighborhood and in my kids’ schools.” It’s the whole “uppity negro” and “entitled immigrants” thing once again. 

In fact, the most shocking part about the book to me was just how much the exact same arguments - literally the exact same words - were used in 1865, in 1915, in 1947, in 1966, and in 2019. Nothing. Has. Changed. We are still racist AS FUCK in this country. 

That’s not to say that nothing at all has changed. Clearly, progress has been made, although not in a linear manner. Every “whitelash” has been only partly successful, and anti-racist people of good will have and continue to push back. With their - our - efforts over the centuries, the arc of the moral universe may be long but it has been bent toward justice, as Unitarian minister Theodore Parker said in 1853. (MLK, among others, would borrow this quote in the decades to come.) Things have changed for the better, and with the efforts of people of good will today, they can further change for the better. 

We have a lot of work to do, clearly. 

Here is a quote from the Louisiana Constitutional Conference in 1865. Having lost the civil war, those in power were determined to keep the black population subjugated:

“We hold this to be a Government of white people, made and to be perpetuated for the exclusive benefit of the white race.” 

This was no outlier, either in place (most of the South adopted similar terms, and the North enforced de facto Jim Crow) or in time (the obvious ongoing voter suppression laws openly targeting black and other minority voters.) Or the lovely rhetoric about how “they” (minorities and immigrants) are taking what belongs to the “real Americans” (white Americans.) Again, when it comes to attitudes, not much has changed. 

The book spends a good bit of time on education - with good reason. That particular issue has been a sore point for white rage ever since blacks were first enslaved. First with the prohibitions on teaching slaves to read. Then, with the opposition to schools for the children of freed slaves. Obviously, the opposition to the desegregation of schools after Brown. Ever heard of “segregation academies”? Or how about the founding of the Religious Right for the purpose of keeping certain “christian” colleges segregated? Or the way we continue to use neighborhood de facto segregation to keep our schools mostly segregated now. 

This is not an accident. The ongoing efforts to ensure that whites get a superior education are intentional and have a specific purpose. As Anderson puts it:

As in most oppressive societies, those in power knew that an educated population would only upset the political and economic order. 

Anderson returns to this idea later as an explanation for why the United States has such a massive education gap that puts it below other first world (and some third world) nations. 

Although I was familiar with some of the history in this book, I was a bit surprised by the details of the Great Migration - particularly the many laws aimed at preventing blacks from leaving the South and seeking a better life. They were literally criminalized for trying to leave. (Hey, there is a good bit of an echo in our own time’s xenophobic opposition to immigration. Can’t have those uppity folks trying to better themselves…) 

Again, this response was triggered by black success. Any black person or family who got too “uppity” was a target for violence. (I recommend Black Boy (American Hunger), The Devil in the Grove, Strange Fruit, and Remembering Jim Crow for more on this.) Anderson quotes a former sharecropper, Ned Cobb, as pointing out, “They looked hard, didn’t stop lookin...they didn’t like to see a nigger with too much; they didn’t like it one bit and it caused ‘em to throw a slang word about a ‘nigger’ havin all this, that, and the other. [Whites] hated to see niggers living like people.” 

Again, you hear the exact same thing now - about how “those people” get benefits that white people don’t. (Personal experience in my legal practice, by the way.) 

Then - as now - there was a huge irony in the fact that those who most loudly boosted “capitalism” were the same ones who were most panicked about the migration. 

City councils, state legislators, and police forces were determined to punish those, who, in a capitalist economy, offered African Americans a better employment opportunity. 

Ditto today, with those most panicked about “socialism” rallying around tariffs and immigration restrictions to (supposedly) protect the deserving “real Americans” from actual competition. Again, racism is the common thread. 

There is a particularly harrowing legal case in the chapter on the Great Migration. An educated and successful African American physician dared to purchase a home in a white neighborhood in Chicago. The white citizens came to shoot and burn him out. He and some friends and relatives stood their ground - and shot back. He was charged with murder (among other things) for defending his right to stay in his own home. 

The case was picked up by the NAACP, who hired as part of the team, a very familiar lawyer: Clarence Darrow.

Now, let me be clear about this. In the Fundie culture I was raised in, Clarence Darrow was considered the epitome of evil. I mean that literally. The Fundie A Beka curriculum we used for history tarred him as one of the most evil men of all time, and an example of all that was wrong with the modern age. If you didn’t guess why, it was because he was on the “wrong” side of the Scopes trial. Darrow defended the school teacher who violated state law by teaching Evolution. Looking back, of course, it is easy to see the case in a very different light. It has been a long time since I believed in the Young Earth Creationist bullshit, but I also understand better (as a lawyer) what Darrow’s point was. Simply put, Darrow advocated for the freedom of the teacher to actually teach science, not religious dogma. Subsequent experience has shown that the one thing religious Fundamentalism fears more than anything else is that their cherished dogmas might have competition. And that rational minds, when given the choice between reality and perceived theological needs (to borrow from Peter Enns), might choose historical and scientific truth instead of dogma. In this particular case, Darrow was a serious badass, eventually winning an acquittal. Suffice it to say that over the course of my nearly twenty years in legal practice, I have come to appreciate Darrow (and Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Thurgood Marshall) as the giants of jurisprudence that they were. 

Once again, this issue of intimidation of African Americans for daring to live in white neighborhoods is still with us. Obviously, the phenomenon of “white flight” continues to be a thing. I know a lot of people who have left California to move to whiter states - often intentionally. I have heard a lot lately about “everybody wants to leave California” and “California’s traditional middle class has left.” Nice bit of coding for what has really happened: California has become “majority minority”: there are more non-whites here than whites, because of non-white immigration and white flight. I personally like it here. I mean, we have a huge issue with housing affordability (the legacy of Prop 13 and restrictive zoning), but the diversity is wonderful. 

How about another issue which has been in the news, but is absolutely nothing new? “School vouchers” have been a big thing in homeschooling and Fundie circles for a few decades. The basic idea is that students would get vouchers to spend on private (and religious) schools, rather than public schools. In practice, there are huge problems with this idea, among them the way that whites tend to locate said private religious schools in places that lower income people (and minorities) can’t easily get to. 

But I was rather surprised to find that the idea itself goes back to...wait for it....the South in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education. Faced with a mandate to integrate schools, Southern states literally shuttered their public schools and provided white families with vouchers to segregated private schools. 

Say what? 

Yes, this actually happened. Rather than share with non-whites, they chose to end public education. 

Needless to say, this was a bit eye-opening. I mean, I understood the racist impulse behind the push for vouchers, having grown up in a minority-dominated neighborhood and having heard far too much about how the “wrong sort of kids” were in public schools. But to see it in black and white - the obvious straight line between Jim Crow and Betsy DeVos - it made my blood run cold. It is becoming increasingly impossible to deny that the Religious Right is truly the latest iteration of the Klan. 

And another link is in tactics. In the wake of Brown, one strategy that the Southern states took was to pass clearly unconstitutional laws, over and over and over, in order to tie up the resources of civil rights groups fighting them. This was (and is) a complete abuse of the legal system and process. But doesn’t it sound familiar? 

Yes. Yes it does.

Because the EXACT SAME TACTICS are used by the anti-abortion industrial complex. And you know, it is the same people too. Not much has changed. 

Anderson makes an intriguing point when it comes to the aftermath of Brown. Since that decision, a tremendous amount of energy and effort and emotion has been poured into keeping schools segregated. And, naturally, to ensure that African Americans and other minorities are not given full and equal education. What has been the result? 

Well, there remains a HUGE racial education gap in the United States. That’s not good. But also, the United States fell behind other countries in education. 

The refusal to implement Brown throughout the South even in the face of Sputnik -- not only as the law or as simple humanity might have dictated but also as demanded by national interest and patriotism -- compromised and undermined American strength. 

Once, 40% of the world’s scientists and engineers resided in the US, it is down to below 15%. And, it is safe to say, our current anti-immigrant policies and vicious hatred are likely to push future intellectuals to less bigoted countries. We have and are continuing to commit intellectual suicide to preserve our racism. 

Now, of course, we deny any such racism. (Even as it becomes more and more obvious in the age of Trump.) Anderson spends a number of pages detailing how after the Civil Rights acts were passed, the rhetoric shifted from obvious racism to dog whistles. Basically, nobody wanted to admit being in the Klan (although that has shifted since Trump), so code words were used to preserve systemic racism. I can think of so many code words I inadvertently heard - and used myself (sorry!) in my teens and twenties. “Thug.” “Urban.” “Slum dweller.” “Strapping young buck.” Damn, that’s embarrassing. As is hearing the same whistles from my extended family and members of my former faith tradition. It is one thing to kind of live in those polluted waters, and another to see the actual history behind the terms - and the way that the same rhetoric has just been masked to avoid the obvious racism. Only to return in full force once Trump “made racism great again.” 

I want to end with a final bit on voter suppression. One of the things that really changed my mind on politics was the obvious attempts by certain Republican dominated states to disenfranchise black voters. And I mean literally studying how groups voted and targeting changes to the law to make it harder for blacks to vote. 

Anderson gives a good history of the Voting Rights Act (of 1965), and exactly what it accomplished. Prior to the passage of the act, a mere 6.7 percent of adult African Americans were registered to vote. A mere three years later, due to the changes brought by the act, that number rose to 59.4 percent. 

Holy shit. 

And this was mirrored throughout the South. The Voting Rights Act made a world-changing difference. 

And it has also been followed by a concerted effort to roll back the protections, naturally. This gained momentum after the election of Barack Obama. That election revealed an inconvenient truth: the voting populace was becoming less white - and younger. And the non-white and younger voters were NOT voting for Republicans. 

While that reality could have -- or more to the point should have -- signaled an opportunity for the GOP to reexamine its platform, the sclerotic hardening of the “conservative” notions that moved the Republican Party from centrist right to right-wing made it increasingly difficult if not impossible to adapt the GOP’s policies to address the overriding concerns of this wave of newly engaged voters. 

So, being unable to adapt to changing times without pissing off the old, white, bigoted, Evangelical base, the GOP had to resort to voter suppression. (Which at minimum flipped the Georgia Senate race.) With a demographic apocalypse at hand, the only thing left for the GOP is open and flagrant vote suppression. That’s all they have. As the Boomers die off, and the country continues to shift to younger and browner citizens, the GOP has nothing left to offer. It has gone so far to the right during my lifetime as to lose my vote. A mere 17% of young Californians are registered Republican. (Thanks in large part to the debacle of Prop 187. It is easy for non-Californians to forget that California was a Republican-leaning purple state for most of my life. In the aftermath of Prop 187, even white voters fled the GOP.) Most likely, the GOP has 20 years to continue its voter suppression efforts or it will have to change or die. Unfortunately, it has successfully packed the Supreme Court, and the forces of racism will, as they did at various points in our history, be able to sustain racist policies. (These sad episodes are detailed in the book. Plessey v. Ferguson is just one in a line of shameful decisions.) 

There is insufficient room in this post to really get into the details, but the careful targeting of voter laws is so obviously about keeping the “wrong” people from voting. Namely, minorities and impoverished people. But mostly minorities. It is flagrantly obvious. Seriously, get the book for this part alone. 

In the end, this book left me with some conflicted feelings. On the one hand, it is depressing to see the sordid history. The United States is so very fucked up, and has been since the beginning. Our national sin is racism, and we continue to return to our vomit, as the good book has it. Furthermore, given the GOP packing of the courts, the return to open racism under Trump, and the lessons of history, it is obvious that we are in for a rough stretch. And by “we,” I probably should mean “non-whites.” We are in the middle of a paroxysm of white rage right now, a whitelash against Obama and demographic change a changing America. “Make America Great Again” is nothing more than a call to return to a time when women and n----rs knew their place, a cry of rage by whites at the very idea that they might have to make room at the table. 

On the plus side, though, progress has continued despite white rage. The good people of the world have continued to push for positive change, and it has come, incrementally. I hope I live long enough to see another era, when the damage from this one has been undone and we can move forward again. There are positive signs. In the previous iterations of white rage, racist bigots were the majority. I am not sure that is the case anymore. Trump is the second president in the last three to win without a majority of votes - and that despite the suppression of black votes. White Evangelicalism, the biggest incubator of racist hatred, is on the decline - this is, in my view, their last gasp of rage before their decline into cultural and political irrelevance. When the Boomers stop writing checks, we will see mass bankruptcy among churches and para-church hate groups. Yes, this will likely take a few decades - I will be an old man - but we can do it. 

As I noted above, this book is thoroughly researched and footnoted. Prepare to have your idols thrown to the ground, from Lincoln to Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt to Eisenhower to your favorite modern conservative politicians. White Supremacy is endemic to our nation, and inescapable in our history. Until we truly confront that reality - and repent - we will continue to suffer the devastating effects of that poison. 

I am putting this book on my list of suggestions for those who, like myself, are working to detox from a lifetime of immersion in toxic politics and theology. 

***

If you haven’t read it, the Washington Post article which sparked the book is fantastic. 

***

Just a reminder: Roy Moore, that darling of white Evangelicals, in an address to a religious conference, that the Voting Rights Act (and the Civil Rights Act) were America's biggest mistake. And people wonder why I left that cesspit? Or why Evangelicals are viewed with contempt by those outside the bubble? Take a look in the mirror...

The Stories of Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

I don’t entirely remember how this book got on my list, but I suspect it was off of a “Latinx Book List” of some sort. I make a concerted effort to read diversely, and that includes seeking out books outside the white, male, Anglo-American, and straight world. Not that there is anything specifically wrong with old dead white guys - and goodness knows, as a lover of classic literature, I read plenty of them as well - but a variety of voices is necessary, particularly if one reads to expand one’s universe. Part of this diversity involves reading books which were not originally written in English. If you count live theater and poetry, this is my 10th book this year that is in translation. 

Since I don’t remember exactly where I got the recommendation, I am also unsure exactly why this book, of Allende’s books. It is a collection of short stories told, Scheherazade style, by a character in one of her other books. That said, it stands alone just fine, as far as I can tell. Perhaps it would be enriched by knowledge of the title character, but the stories are enjoyable on their own.

There are a total of 23 stories, plus a brief prologue. For the most part, they are stories about women and sex. Well, that fails to cover it, somehow. Perhaps they are about the relationship between women, female desire, sexuality, power, violence, class, and society. All of the above, wrapped up together. The setting is an unnamed South American country (or countries - the settings seem pretty varied), likely based on Chile, where Allende was raised, or Peru, where she was born. Or both. The politics are unfortunately recognizable, although these too vary. The autocratic dictator, born out of a revolution, figures prominently. And also colonialist rulers, corrupt bureaucrats, bandit kings, and more. The time frames are rarely actually stated, but the specifics of life indicate that the stories may well span the entire 20th Century. 

The women certainly form the center of all the stories. Men may be main characters, but they turn out to orbit around the women. The men may have the power, but women find ways to survive, to assert their humanity even as it is being dismissed. 

The woman who “sells words” as talismans, essentially, who falls in love with the rebel leader, El Mulato, and draws him with “Two Words,” the title of the story. The woman, who, having given birth to two gravely disabled children with her husband, has two healthy children as the result of an affair she keeps secret until the very end of her life. The wife of a foreign diplomat who runs off with the dictator, then disappears from society (and him) in his abandoned vacation villa. The creative prostitute who saves a small fortune servicing (well, mostly manipulating) the workers on a remote plantation, then retires and abscondes with the first man who proves to be her equal. There are darker stories too, about a deaf child stolen from his parents by fraud - and their quest to find him. The women seduced and abandoned. The holocaust survivor who tries in vain to save a young girl trapped in a lahar. In all of these, Allende skillfully evokes the emotions of the characters, the time and place of the setting, and the visceral feel of the narrative. 

I was particularly struck by the way Allende writes female desire. Here in Western culture of the last few hundred years, we have this idea in our consciousness that females either don’t desire sex for its own sake, or only in the context of “committment” (meaning marriage), or that they trade it for “committment,” meaning a promise to financially support her. (Which is different from prostitution solely in the length of the contract…) This wasn’t always so. Previously, it was believed that females were sexually insatiable, and that men were the rational ones. Exactly why this changed is not entirely clear, although there are a few theories floating around which might be at least partial explanations. However it happened, the expectation currently is that women have the responsibility to preserve their “purity,” and police the boundaries of a romantic relationship. Males, meanwhile, are expected to push those boundaries. And if they succeed, it is generally considered the woman’s fault. (That’s your quick summary of the purity culture I was raised in, although my dad at least made it clear that women could and did enjoy sex - my sex ed was vastly better than average.) Oh, don’t forget that applied to white women. Women of color were assumed to be seductresses, sexually insatiable, which is why a white man could rape them with impunity…

Allende, on the other hand, treats female sexuality much the same as our culture treats that of men. Women are fully sexual in these stories, often from a young age. They make their choices (some good, others questionable), and live with the consequences. (The men often avoid the consequences for a while - just like in real life - but are often bitten in the butt later.) I would also say that this book is another point in favor of my belief that women, on average, tend to write better sex scenes than men. My theory on this is that because of the combination of toxic masculinity in our culture, and the fact that human reproduction doesn’t require female pleasure, men are not as observant of the details and emotions which make a scene actually sexy, rather than just...awkward. Just a theory. 

The messiness of life, love, and relationships is on full display in these stories. Whether tragic, humorous, poignant, or horrifying, Allende’s stories let their characters be complex, human, and unpredictable. 

I think this book was a good introduction to Isabel Allende, and I intend to read more of her books in the future. 

Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith

Source of book: I own this.

This was my selection for Banned Books Week. It took longer than a week, but I did start it during Banned Books Week. 

Just as a reminder, I use the week to read books which have been banned, which means that a government has outlawed sale, publication, or possession of the book. I do not count challenged books - those which citizens or parents have sought to keep out of school curricula or libraries. This isn’t because I think challenges are uninteresting, but because I wanted to focus my once-a-year project on those where the power of the state was employed in censorship. I believe that is a different level from a challenge. After all, any library has limited space and budget, and decisions must be made. (Personally, I would have preferred an extra - and local - copy of The Rest is Noise rather than one of the 20ish copies of Eat, Pray, Love.) Likewise, students can only study so many books, and the choice of which to study is a judgment call.

Here are my past selections, plus the introduction to Banned Books Week.

Thoughts on Banned Books Week

Areopagitica by John Milton (2011)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (2012)

The Quest for Christa T. by Christa Wolf (2013)

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (2014)

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (2015)

July’s People by Nadine Gordimer (2016)

Into the River by Ted Dawe (2017)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

***

“BANNED IN BOSTON!” is now a bit of a badge of honor, and it has a long history. Strange Fruit may not have been the first work that the overzealous Boston city officials (influenced by Anthony Comstock and his eponymous law), but it was the first number one bestseller to be banned in Boston. 

Strange Fruit was ostensibly banned due to references to sex - which are both crucial to the meaning of the book and handled in a tame manner by today’s standards - but everyone knew the real reason it was banned: the book is about a forbidden sexual and romantic relationship between a white man and black woman. In the Jim Crow South, this was literally illegal at the time the book was written - and was considered immoral and scandalous even in the North. 

It took me a while to get into the book, mostly because the first 50 or so pages jump around in time a lot. We know very early in the book what has happened: Tracy Deen has gotten Nonnie Anderson pregnant, and she is happy about it. Smith then fills in the backstory of both families. Nonnie Anderson is an elegant and educated young African American woman. Her family is well respected (after a certain fashion), and Nonnie turns everyone’s head. Her sister, the stolid and responsible Bess, can’t understand why Nonnie still works as a maid, rather than go north with their brother Ed, who has gotten a white-collar job. Nonnie claims to just not be ambitious, but the real reason is that she loves Tracy Deen.

Tracy is the feckless son of the local white doctor (the black doctor, Sam, figures prominently in the book as well - he is the best and most complex character in the book, in my opinion.) As we learn, when Nonnie was age 6, she was saved from a sexual assault by a group of white boys by Tracy. This is a moving incident, because the boys assume that Tracy “owns” Nonnie, and that is why they leave her alone. The idea that raping a black child was wrong never occurs to them. 

In fact, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that many - maybe most - of the white men in town have had sex with black girls and women. Some of them openly keep a black woman as a concubine. (“That’s the bible word for it,” Tracy says.) 

Tracy is, despite his inability to figure out what he wants to do with his life (other than that he hates his dominant and controlling mother), isn’t a bad guy. He and Nonnie do eventually become sexual, coming together occasionally in their teens and then after she returns from college, and he from World War One. It is in their 20s that she gets pregnant - to his surprise - he figured that a college educated woman would somehow just know how not to get pregnant. (He’s not the sharpest tool, but, to be fair, men didn’t really learn about female bodies at that time. Information on contraception was still illegal to distribute in Georgia.) 

This pregnancy, naturally, causes no end of trouble. 

In a perfect world, Tracy and Nonnie would marry, and probably have a happy life together. Tracy actually considers taking her to France, where interracial marriage was accepted. But he has no nerve, no career other than his parents’ attempt to get him to take over the family store or the old farm. Nonnie doesn’t seem to know exactly what she wants. It is implied that she would accept being his concubine, but we never really know her thoughts on this. She is too smart to think he will marry her, and she never asks him to. 

Tracy is pressured by his family to finally “go straight,” which means joining the church, getting married, and settling down. The preacher (a complex character who combines some good traits with the wrong kind of pragmatism) tells Tracy that most men have had “nigger girls,” but that God wants him to repent of that and marry a virginal white girl. Tracy’s mom has the perfect one picked out. Tracy isn’t attracted to her, but he can’t tell his mother no. 

In an attempt to both “go straight” and settle things for Nonnie, he borrows a large sum of money from his mother (no questions asked), and tries to bribe Nonnie to marry the Deen family cook, Henry (who was Tracy’s childhood companion), and Henry to marry her. Henry doesn’t want to - he is in love with Dessie - but he can’t talk back to a white man in public. 

The meeting with Nonnie goes even worse: Tracy ends up hitting and raping her as a thoroughly unconstructive way of attempting to compartmentalize his relationship with her as “she’s only a nigger - they manage.” Meanwhile, Ed overheard the conversation with Henry, and when he sees that Nonnie is traumatized, he shoots and kills Tracy in the dark. 

With Sam’s help, Ed is rushed back to New York before the body is discovered in the woods. Henry is blamed for the death, and despite the efforts of Mr. Deen and the local factory boss (another complex and semi-decent character), is taken from jail and lynched. 

Billie Holiday claimed that Lillian Smith named the book after her song about lynching of the same name. Smith never confirmed this, and said that she meant “strange fruit” to mean the way humans, black and white, are twisted and damaged by America’s racist culture, rather than a literal reference to lynched bodies hanging in trees. It sure seems as if there was an intentional connection. 

There is lot to unpack from this book. The summary of the plot fails to capture all of the different facets of Southern Jim Crow culture - Smith grew up in the South, and portrays the culture with accuracy and detail. It is an unsparing portrait, painting the many ways in which the underlying belief in the superiority of white-skinned people warps and damages and destroys. 

Smith does not go easy on the role of religion. This part of the book was spookily familiar in the Trump era, where the Ku Klux Klan is again in open collaboration with white religion. It is no surprise that Smith deftly exposed the hypocrisy of Southern religion. As a young adult, she rejected religion, in part because of her experience with the double standards of the Southern church. In addition, Smith was outspoken in favor of civil rights for minorities - and also for women - both of which positions made her unwelcome in church. 

If that weren’t enough, Smith was lesbian in an era when it was even more taboo than racism. She lived with her partner, and the two of them published a magazine together. As their letters (discovered after their deaths) made clear, however, they were more than business partners. Lesbian themes make it into Smith’s books, including this one. Tracy’s younger sister (the one who seems made to succeed - and who is one of the very few truly progressive characters in the book) has a naked female figure in her drawer, and a relationship with another woman in town is hinted at, although not expressly stated. 

Another controversial theme in the book is abortion. Tracy and Bess and others wish Nonnie would just make the issue go away by quietly aborting the pregnancy. The local black herbal healer can get her some herbs, or she can go to the city and see a doctor there. But it isn’t just Nonnie. A 14 year old white girl gets pregnant from a young white boy, and her father goes to Dr. Deen to beg that he perform an abortion. There is an extended internal monologue where Dr. Deen wrestles with his conscience. What is most devastating about this is that he is clear that he would do the abortion without question if she had been raped or if the father was black. But, because it was consensual and the father is white, he can’t bring himself to do it, although part of him wishes he could. He ends up referring them to a city doctor. 

I noted above some of the more complex and conflicted characters. One of them is the newspaper publisher, Prentiss Reid, who has to keep his progressive ideas to himself or go out of business. It is an uncomfortable compromise - one made necessary by the culture of racism. He is also one of the few openly non-religious characters. He delivers this zinger to the daughter of the mill boss (who is more genuinely progressive):

“You’ve got it wrong, haven’t you? What they want you to do, my dear, is sponsor religion, not practice it. Don’t let your conscience mix you up. If you practiced the teachings of that man Jesus here in Maxwell, we’d think you were crazy - or communist. Don’t make any mistake about it--be damned embarrassing.” 

Not much has changed, alas. Try to actually practice the teachings of Christ these days, and you will, like me, be asked to leave the church. Know what else hasn’t changed? Religious views of gender and race. As Preacher Dunwoodie tells Tracy:

“On this earth, there’s two worlds, man’s and woman’s. Now, the woman’s has to do with the home and children and love. God’s love and man’s. The man’s world is--different. It has to do with work. Women teach us to love the Lord, and our children, and the we build the churches, don’t we, and we keep them going….Now, when a man gets over into a woman’s world, he gets into bad trouble. He don’t belong there...Too much love makes you soft.” 

He goes on to explain that being a good Christian means very different things for men and women. And yep, I feel like I have heard this sermon more than once. 

Tracy is susceptible to this sort of thing, of course, and finds himself trying to justify abandoning Nonnie. 

It’s like an obsession. Seems true to you, but everybody says it isn’t. You can’t love and respect a colored girl. No, you can’t. But you do. If you do--then there must be something bad wrong with you. It’s like playing with your body when you were a kid. You had to touch yourself. It felt good. It was good. But everyone told you it wasn’t good. Said it would drive you crazy or kill you. Decent people didn’t do it. Well...you did. You did it and liked it. And felt like hell afterward. You’d outgrown that. Now the preacher said time to outgrow this other. Past time. 

It’s this sort of gaslighting that characterizes so much of religious teaching about sex, of course. But in the American version, the sexual puritanism and the racism are one and the same. They are inseparable. Tracy never does get over Nonnie, as much as he tries. 

You’d think God wanted to play a fine joke and had made Nonnie. Here, He said, is a woman any man would love and be proud of. She has everything you could desire. But you can’t have her. No. You can have sips and tastes, but you can’t have her. And you’ll be ashamed and sneak around and feel nasty...That’s the price you have to pay--for the sips. 

Well...white men had paid it before. And thought it cheap. Guess he could too. 

This casual disrespect for the humanity of non-whites permeates the culture in the book. Even the “good guys” accept white supremacy at some level - nobody can escape it. Ms. Sadie, who is horrified by the way white men treat blacks, still thinks that “the entire Negro race was a mammoth trick which nature had played on the white race.” 

There is another great line about Mrs. Stephenson, who is quietly a loving and gracious person - but one who was strangely detached. 

You had a queer feeling about it--as if Mrs. Stephenson had died some time when nobody was noticing and now nothing was left of her but good deeds blooming like little flowers on her grave.

I want to return a bit to the role of religion as shown in this book. Preacher Dunwoodie shares something with modern preachers: he wants to save the “respectable” sorts. Meaning the wealthy, who will keep the church in business. All the Tracy Deen’s of the world are nice and all, and it is a good thing to save the mill hands, but what he really wants - and how he knows God is blessing his ministry - is for the “prominent citizens” to return to the church. And my goodness is this still true. I firmly believe one of the reasons my former pastor couldn’t do the right thing - even a little thing like keeping hate groups out of the church - is that certain prominent (and tithing) members were the driving force behind it. Address the white supremacist beliefs, and he would have lost some of his financial base. It’s that simple. 

But white supremacy goes deeper than money in religion, then and now. There is a chilling scene when the lynching party sets out. Smith makes it clear that the point isn’t justice - it is putting the “nigger in his place.” And lynching, just like our current cruelties toward brown-skinned people, is driven by a weird religious feeling. Smith describes it thus:

And sometimes there was laughter, or drawled words of voices not unkind in sound and not without humor; but eyes were hard and hating as they hunted a black victim to sacrifice to an unknown god of whom they were sore afraid. 

There is so much fear in white religion in America. A desperate fear of outsiders, of people who are different, whether racial minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ people, atheists, and especially people who don’t vote for Trump. Lillian Smith is on to something here - they seem eager to sacrifice other humans to an unknown god who they cannot name, but who terrifies them. Every time you see a brutal and cruel separation of immigrant families, children in cages, another African American murdered by the cops, or another gay or transgender person denied housing or a job - well, you are seeing a human sacrifice to a terrifying god that Evangelicals cannot name, even to themselves. 

Near the end, even as he realizes he can’t really publish an anti-lynching article, Reid thinks to himself of the core problem. 

That’s the South’s trouble. Ignorant, Doesn’t know anything. Doesn’t even know what’s happening outside in the world! Shut itself up with its trouble and its ignorance until the two together have gnawed the sense out of it. Believes world was created in six days. Believes white man was created by God to rule the world. As soon believe a nigger was as good as a white man as to believe in evolution. All tied up together. Ignorance. Scared of everything about science, except its gadgets. Afraid not to believe in hell, even. Afraid to be free. 

You can perhaps put “Evangelicalism” in for “South,” and “White Republican Americans” for “white man.” It’s the same thing today. Walled up in its own bubble of fear and ignorance and hate. It has been nearly three years since I left that cesspit, and as time goes by, I am ever more thankful I got out. 

This wasn’t an easy book to read. There is so much darkness in the human heart, and so much destruction caused by racism and hate. And religion, then and now, seems all too eager to feed the hate. This book is well worth reading, though, and shines an uncomfortable light on the dark realities of our culture. 

***

My wife found this book for me used. This hardback was the 13th printing (copyright 1944) Inside are a few notes by the previous owner, Kae Bell, and an inscription from the person who gave the book to her, apparently in 1944.

 Click to expand. The inscription appears to read "To Kae "44 from Bobby and Jan."

 

"Good comparison of life of a white & negro - so different? Afraid not. Damn these prejudices."

"Life goes on....... with or without the necessary corrections --"

***

Take it away, Billie Holiday:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant South

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth

Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck

For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop

Here is a strange and bitter crop