Race against Time: Culture and Separation in Natchez since 1930

Abstract

Race against Time is an important addition to the body of local studies of the civil rights movement. Site of the classic 1941 community study by Allison Davis et al., Deep South, Natchez, Mississippi, has also been home to an unusual conjunction of Old and New South sensibilities and institutions. The Natchez Pilgrimage, organized by elite women in the 1930s, is famous for its displays of mythic images of the Old South, with its tours of antebellum mansions and its Confederate Pageant, which included a tableau of happily singing slaves. But also dating to the 1930s was significant industrial development, including large, unionized factories. Jack E. Davis's analysis of the pilgrimage is a starting point for his distinctive emphasis on “culture” as key factor in the maintenance and defense of segregation. Specifically, on the basis of extensive interviews, Davis argues that whites saw segregation as necessary to protect their “own” culture from an inferior “black” culture, identified with loose morality and laziness; he insists that these fears of cultural degradation were sincere, rather than a cover for other motives. Perhaps even more than in other places, a benign view of southern history played a key role in white cultural values and reinforced illusions that theirs was a truly harmonious society, because this view was literally put on stage and became a significant component of the local economy. Other factors muted African American dissent: elite blacks feared violence or loss of their own privileges, and the factories, though segregated, provided good jobs for many blacks.