Posted on 01/20/2006 2:50:00 PM PST by oxcart
Greetings from North Carolina, where I'm spending the next few months as a visiting fellow at something called the National Humanities Center. It's located mid-way between the three cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, which together form one of the fastest-growing communities in the United States, along with the region that includes Charlotte, the largest city in the state.
Here's an example of what is known as the "New" South, which is booming as never before. For some time economic power has been shifting in this country, away from the old, industrialised North East towards states that were once far less prosperous than they have recently become. And over the last three decades this change in the distribution of wealth resources and people has also had major implications for American politics and American government.
For much of its history, North Carolina was one of the poorest southern states. The first English settlers arrived in 1585, but they survived barely two years, and it was not until late in the 17th and early 18th centuries that immigration began in earnest. But the soil was unwelcoming, farming was hard, and the colony never achieved the level of prosperity, dominated by great plantations, that characterised neighbouring Virginia and South Carolina.
North Carolina was also backward in other ways: it was reluctant to join the American Revolution, and it was one of the last states to embrace the union after freedom from the British had been won. And although it was a slave-owning state, it was also slow to sign up with the Confederacy on the outbreak of the Civil War. But a quarter of all the southern troops who died in that conflict came from North Carolina, and by the end of the war, the state was a shambles. So, as the 20th century dawned, North Carolina was a poor and under-resourced region, where nearly 20% of whites, and nearly 50% of blacks, were unable to read.
But by then, North Carolina had become home to one major industry, and that was tobacco. In 1881, a machine was invented which could roll cigarettes automatically, and soon after Durham became a great centre of tobacco manufacture, dominated by the Duke family who established the American Tobacco Company in 1890.
They were among the largest employers in the town, they built enormous factories and warehouses, and in 1924 they endowed the local college with a massive gift of $40m, which ever since has borne the Duke name, and is now one of the best universities in the country.
There are many ironies here. The Duke family had made their money by manufacturing a product which often killed people, if consumed in sufficient quantities. Yet Duke University, which they had transformed by their benefaction, has in recent times become renowned for its medical centre, which seeks to save and prolong lives. Such can be the contradictions of capitalism and of philanthropy.
Despite the job opportunities which the tobacco industry created, for both blacks and whites, North Carolina continued to languish down to World War II and beyond. And all this time, North Carolina was a segregated state, along with the rest of the South, with separate schools and buses, and cafes for blacks and whites.
Industry collapse
It's hard to imagine that that such a state of affairs still existed within the lifetime of many Carolinans living today. But it did.
To make matters worse, from the 1980s onwards, the cigarette industry went into decline, and this took away a major source of employment. The economic base of Durham seemed on the brink of collapse, and the great tobacco warehouses now stood silent and derelict. This is hardly a cheering story, and North Carolina was hardly a cheering place when I first visited America during the early 1970s. There seemed no good reason to go there.
In fact, I only encountered the state indirectly. For one of its senators, Sam Ervin, was the chairman of the Senate Committee which was then in the process of investigating the Watergate affair, and he waged a vigorous and ultimately victorious battle against President Nixon, who sought to withhold evidence by claiming executive privilege.
The committee hearings were televised, and they were riveting daytime drama as Ervin became a national celebrity, not only for his decent and determined conduct against a crooked and conspiring president, but also for his folksy humour and pithy observations.
Yet by then Sam Ervin was becoming an example of a fast-vanishing breed: the Southern Democrat. From the early 1930s until the late 1960s, the Democratic Party had dominated American politics, after a long period of Republican ascendancy, and the architect of that dominance had been Franklin Roosevelt.
One of Roosevelt's greatest achievements had been to put together an election winning coalition of northern workers and big city bosses, along with representatives of the white, segregationist South. As such, it was a coalition that was contradictory to the point of instability, but from Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson, it was somehow held together, and Senator Sam Ervin was a quintessential example of its southern component.
No longer backward
But by the time of Watergate, something had already happened in American politics which portended the break-up of this Democratic coalition, (especially the Southern element in it) and that was the passing of the Civil Rights Act by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
Johnson's Civil Rights Act was not only overdue and admirable but a rare example of a politician doing something he believed in but which was not consistent with his own, or with his party's, political self-interest
Johnson himself was a Texan, and a product of the segregated, graft-ridden world of southern politics. Yet once he gained the White House he became persuaded that segregation had to end, and that blacks should finally receive full political rights. He duly deployed his formidable political will, and brutal operating skills, to berate, persuade and coerce a reluctant Congress into passing the Civil Rights Act. To this day, it remains one of the greatest pieces of legislation ever sponsored by an American President, and whatever Johnson's failings and errors in his mis-conduct of the Vietnam War, this measure must always stand to his credit.
Yet even as he exerted himself to secure its passing, Johnson conceded that the Civil Rights Act meant the Democratic Party would lose the American South for a generation: for while the newly-enfranchised blacks would vote Democrat, the southern whites would increasingly turn to the Republicans. And that is exactly what has happened.
One indication was that in 1972, North Carolina elected its first Republican Senator in the 20th Century. His name was Jesse Helms, and for the next 30 years he was a powerful conservative force in the nation's capital, fighting against restrictions on smoking and on guns. Today, in Washington, there's scarcely a Democratic senator from the old South left.
Johnson's Civil Rights Act was, then, not only both overdue and admirable, it was also a rare example of a politician doing something because he believed it to be right, but which was not consistent with his own, or with his party's, political self-interest.
Loft apartments
It's not only Johnson's civil rights legislation which has transformed the old South during the last 30-odd years. For at the same time, the economic balance of power in the United States has tipped away from states like Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Ohio, and towards the sunrise and sunshine states of the south and the west.
Places like North Carolina are no longer derided as marginal, backward and poor. Instead, they have become extremely attractive to young and old Americans alike; to those wishing to make their careers (and often their fortunes) in IT, or medical research or bio-technology, or to those who wish to retire from the cold North East to warmer climes. Hurricanes like Katrina notwithstanding, the major growth areas in the United States are now in places like North Carolina, and here in Durham. The once-derelict tobacco warehouses have recently been re-born as ritzy lofts (I'm living in one myself) and fashionable restaurants and boutiques.
Such prosperity has never happened in the South before of course, and as Katrina did so vividly show, this isn't true every where. The old poor South does linger, in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, and there are still substantial areas of poverty in the Carolinas and in Georgia. Be that as it may, the South is richer than it's ever been, and it's also become politically more influential as a result.
But as Johnson had both foreseen and feared, this enhanced political clout is no longer mobilised in support of the Democrats. For in recent decades the South has been a major force in the revival of the Republican Party.
One indication of this is that the Texas of Lyndon Johnson is now the Texas of George Bush and of his father. Another is that it is now scarcely conceivable that an American president could be elected who's based in the North East.
That would probably be true even if he was a Republican, and it would be still more true if he (or she) was a Democrat.
John Kerry found that out the hard way in 2004. Will Hillary Clinton be taught the same lesson in 2008? If she is, it will be one more indication that the American South has finally, peacefully and belatedly won the American civil war.
All your cotton are belong to us.
And continually labeling them as sons of the south just perpetuates an absurd myth. They are Americans, not Sons of the South.
Have a look at his FOG OF WAR movie. It is terrifying. He speaks about the loss of lives even after he knew the war was lost as if it was nothing more than a simple numbers game. It's as if he talking about how many cars did not get produced by GM because of a bad business decision. It reminds me of old Nazis talking about the extermination of jews as if it was just "one of those things."
And there you have it. LOL.
Yankees might get that demented view due to the contributions of some posters on this very site. :)
THAT is an out-of-the-box interpretation of history that rings very true to me.
I am intimately familiar with the Durham, NC (now of fashionable lofts) lauded in this piece. Here is a sad but honest fact: That community should be on fire with growth. It has wealthy and prestigous Duke University at its hip core. It has a sea of high tech research and industry all around it. It is part of a larger urban matrix which is also highly advantaged.
But Durham has a problem. It has a large black population juiced on guns, drugs, and hip-hop culture. The black leadership is largely corrupt and every community project that they touch becomes a magnet for ineptitude and graft. They are indulged by the very liberal university community that is determined to be "diverse."
The violent street cime in Durham is appalling. Teen gang-bangers are continually in the news with their killings.
In the best of all worlds, Durham's black culture should be a strength. Durham has traditionally been a center of black music and other black cultural achievements, although, to be blunt about it, those achievements look better celebrated today by a liberal community than the historical reality.
Real racism (no the modern subtle continual charge of “disrespect”), real racism, bigotry, segregation, disenfranchisement, etc., these things are a huge stain on the South and communities like Durham. Truly they had to be overcome before a bright future became even a possibility. The white people in Durham are over it. The black community is sick and cripples the town. You hear about the lofts in the tobacco factories and all. But the professional families moving into this area mostly want nothing to do with the Durham school system and its diversity.
"Durham has traditionally been a center of black music and other black cultural achievements"
Business, too. One of the larger buildings downtown was built by NC Mutual Insurance, which is one of the largest and oldest black-owned companies in the United States.
That is certainly true, along with Mechanics and Farmers Bank.
Durham is touted as a kind of black Harlem for these achievements.
I think it is a little oversold, a dressing up of black Durham via historical revisionism which is preferred to an emphasis on the current sick state of black Durham.
Yea, there were a few companies, some music, and a few black people of achievement. But the South is a big place. If this is a major center of black culture...well, a nice little historical memory but it doesn't do anything whatsoever, in my mind, to pretty up the current reality of black Durham.
It's a mixed victory.
not many realize that was once true
that's true everywhere except for crusaders
Actually, I think this trivial report from the American South was given a procative but frivilous title.
Someone else in this thread has pointed to the significance of air conditioning in the rise of the American South, which, I think, is more substantive and valid than any crap about the Civil War.
There are lots of historical forces here and most of them are not, IMHO, narrowly political or military.
Mitt will be able to tolerate that comment a lot better than what will happen to his Yanqui behind in the GOP primaries.
I just hope we don't end up with another Rockefeller Republican for the nominee.
And snotty Yankees are still just like they were 150 years ago.
We keep yer asses afloat politically....show some gratitude.
it's amazing how much has changed since my college days in the late 70s
Get real. The heat bill is cheaper in the south.
I am not sure quite what you mean here.
All the school districts in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area of N.C. are thoroughly integrated. But it is specifically the Durham system that is regarded as dominated by black culture, low achievement, discipline problems, hip-hop culture, etc. Many young professional people actively wish to support a diverse culture, in theory, but they have a look at the Durham school situation and want no part of it.
The Durham school board has been such a circus over the last couple of years that it has been written about in the WSJ. One of the members was a convicted shoplifter and completely representative of the worst of black urban culture. She is ignorant, loud, and filled with racial suspicion and animosity to which she gives full voice. If she is criticized, that is disrespecting the community, don't you know.
School board meetings repeatedly turned into shouting matches with her playing to the Jerry Springer segment of the Durham black community and them attending the meetings in the spirit of Jerry's audience.
The most ironic thing about the whole circus is that the white schoolboard members being condemned for their racist attitudes are very much liberal/progressive types.
Here in Nashville, amongst whites who can afford otherwise...only "crusaders" purposely send their kids to failing public schools for the diversity or to make a statement.
This is the state of public schools in nearly any metro district in the South.
Black families who can afford it suffer no such illusions and send their children to private schools like anyone with a brain would.
Yo! I'm down with ya, wardaddy, on all you said about culture and such.
I am in despair. My ideals -- ideals of civility and neighborliness and genteel Southern culture -- minus the racism -- are the delusions of an old fart whose time has passed. I find myself turning away from public matters and thinking more about passing my time reading history and trying to learn to cook like Julia Child.
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