Southern Histories: Public, Personal and Sacred by David Goldfield. University of Georgia Press, 2003. $24.95 — 144 pp.

Triumph Of Good Will: How Terry Sanford Beat A Champion Of Segregation And Reshaped The South by John Drescher. University Press of Mississippi, 2000. $27 — 256 pp.

In his foreward to David Goldfield’s Southern Histories: Public, Personal, and Sacred, historian Alan Downs remarks that both he and Goldfield believe that “historians... have a unique gift to offer the world outside the academy and should not be afraid to serve as advocates for change. In short, Goldfield warns, “if we do not use our craft for what we believe in, some other professionals will, for good or ill.”

This idea of historians serving as “advocates for change” — why not as advocates for the truth, if that word has any meaning anymore in the academy? why not indeed as advocates for conservatism? — is so wrong-headed, so unprofessional, and so ridiculous even to the casual observer that the reader will be torn between using this slim volume as tinder for fireplace or placing it outdoors to watch it dissolve in the elements as an ephemeral monument to human stupidity.

It is tempting to reply point by point to Goldfield’s arguments in Southern Histories, but I am limited by space: this is a newspaper and not a library. Let me instead look in a broad way at three ways in which Goldfield and his book fall flat.

First, there is Goldfield’s arrogance. In the first few pages of his book, he tells us a story of the negative reactions to a previous book he had published that attacked certain aspects of southern history. He expresses shock that organizations such as the League of the South and the Sons of Confederate Veterans disparaged his book in the newspapers and on the Internet. In his recollection of this fracas, Goldfield may strike his readers as the quintessential ivory tower academic, the good little boy who ventures out onto the playground, insults some of the other boys, and is astonished to find them charging after him. Goldfield writes of this encounter:

I could dismiss all of these charges as representative of white southerners who refused to see the obvious about the Old South, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. After all, the controversies helped book sales. However, subsequent radio call-in programs, including National Public Radio, and numerous book signings made apparent that these traditional historical perceptions are more widespread than one would think.


We get the point here: white Southerners who still want to argue the causes of the Civil War or the evils of Reconstruction should shut up and move to the back of the bus.

Goldfield also automatically assumes that “progress” is good. We never possess more than a vague idea of what Goldfield means by progress or whether we’ll ever reach an end-point in our progress; he simply invites us to sit back and enjoy the sights while he and his fellow progressives take us for a ride. His views on progress and religion are particularly amusing. Only a person who doesn’t understand faith could make a statement like “without a progressive religion there is no progressive history for the South to call its own.” Goldfield earlier points out the differences in the 19th century between Southern and Northern Protestants, stating that the Southern church emphasized personal conversion while the Northern churches emphasized the conversion of society. He then tells us that the Southern churches remain strong without asking why it is that the mainline churches of New England are much weaker than their Southern counterparts both in terms of membership and their moral influence on modern society.

Finally, Goldfield often seems incapable of keeping, to paraphrase Scott Fitzgerald, two opposing ideas in his head at the same time. He tells us on page 85 of Southern Histories of the injustice in the 1950s behind the “harvest recess” that required black schools in Eastern North Carolina to close for a certain time in September so that students could work the tobacco fields. He doesn’t ask whether the schools had begun this closure because so many students were missing classes to work in the fields. Nor did he bother to ask whether other schools, such as the white public school I attended in Boonville, North Carolina, also closed for this purpose (During my early schooling we operated half days in September so students could work). On page 14, Goldfield attacks at length the attention paid to Bedford Forrest, the southern general and ex-slave trader who later helped found the Ku Klux Klan. Goldfield attacks historian Shelby Foote and other historians for extolling Forrest as a “dashing military hero” without grasping the idea that Forrest, racist and slaveholder, was a military genius.

Goldfield ends his book with an attempt to rouse his fellow historians to join the battle to bring more change and “progress” to the South. He does not seem to understand that his ideas are fast becoming as antiquated as “Dixie” or the Stars and Bars of the Confederate flag. He does not see that television, Wal-Mart, closed mills, immigration from the North and other foreign places, and a lack of populist leadership have already begun changing the South far beyond the dreams of his limited vision.

•••

John Drescher’s Triumph Of Good Will: How Terry Sanford Beat A Champion Of Segregation And Reshaped The South was originally published in 2000, but is worth rereading in this election year. Drescher focuses on the campaign of 1960, when Terry Sandford and I. Beverly Lake, both Democrats, ran a heated primary race for the governorship of North Carolina. The southern practice of segregation came to the forefront in the South that election year, and Drescher shows us how both these men — Lake the gracious middle-aged law professor and Sanford the ambitious young politician — were drawn onto the firing line of the debate over this issue. Drescher’s biography gives us a clear and fascinating portrait of both of these candidates as well as of North Carolina politics at this time. Drescher is balanced in his views of the candidates, showing us the virtues and the flaws of both of these influential men.

Here is an excellent history of one of the most acrimonious and important gubernatorial campaigns in North Carolina history.

(Jeff Minick is a writer and teacher who lives in Waynesville. He can be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com)