The Rural Face of White Supremacy

by Schultz, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780252029608
• ISBN10: 0252029607
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-03-30
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

Mark Schultz entered rural Hancock county expecting to confirm the standard expectations about race relations in the South, an area characterized by lynchings, segregation, and black poverty. What he found undermined and confounded his sweeping assumptions about the ostensibly "solid" South.The Rural Face of White Supremacy is a detailed study of the daily experiences of ordinary people in rural Hancock County, Georgia. Drawing on his own interviews with over two hundred black and white residents, Schultz depicts the rhythms of work, social interaction, violence, power, and paternalism in a setting much different from the more widely studied post-bellum urban South.By acting on the basis of personal rather than institutional relationships, Schultz argues, Hancock County residents experienced more fluid interactions and more freedom than their urban counterparts had. This freedom created a space for interracial relationships that included mixed housing, midwifery, church services, meals, and even common-law marriages.These relationships, both intimate and hierarchical, and marked by personal, sexual, and economic violence, were far more complex than the conveniently efficient and modern ideal of Jim Crow.

Author Biography

Mark Schultz is an associate professor of history at Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	ix
Preface	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
Introduction: A Place in Time	1	(12)
1. "Friendship Was Better Than Money"	13	(31)
2. The Other Rural Workers: Landowning and Working for Cash	44	(22)
3. Beyond Segregation: The Outlines of Interracial Social Relations in Rural Hancock	66	(31)
4. The Solid South and the Permissive South	97	(34)
5. Race, Violence, and Power in a Personal Culture	131	(44)
6. Paternalism and Patronage: Public Power in a Personal Culture	175	(30)
Epilogue: The Rise of "Public Work"	205	(20)
Appendix A: Methods	225	(10)
Appendix B: Interviews	235	(4)
Notes	239	(56)
General Index	295	(8)
Interviewee Index	303