David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "segregation"
Driving the King
DRIVING THE KING is primarily about an attack on the stage while Nat King Cole was performing in his home town of Montgomery, Alabama. A man is about to bash Nat’s head in with a pipe when his boyhood friend Sergeant Nat Weary, recently returned from WWII, comes to his aid, using the microphone as a weapon.
The white man is sentenced to three years working on a cattle ranch, a walk-in-the-park compared to what Weary got. He got ten years at a maximum facility where he chopped Kudzu plants, among other indignities. The charge was inciting a riot.
The main problem I had with the book was that Nat King Cole is such a bland character. The last time I checked his daughter was still alive, and there’s plenty of information out there, newspaper clippings and otherwise, about one of the greatest singers America ever produced. All we learn here is that Nat could’ve been a pro baseball player; he could pitch with both hands, due to his piano playing ability.
Ravi Howard centers on three other incidents in the book: the Montgomery bus strike and the Nat King Cole TV show, which he apparently financed himself due to his inability to find a sponsor. It was fifteen minutes long. I remember it, but I don’t remember it being that short. It was the first time a black man had his own television show. The third involves Nat King Cole’s return to Montgomery to finish what he started, put on a show for his people. That’s the trouble with using real life characters in fiction. This never happened. Yes, there was an attack, but Nat never performed in the South again.
Howard also centers on another real person, Almena Lomax, who covered the bus strike for her newspaper in Los Angeles, where Weary had moved after he got out of jail. We see the editor of the newspaper delivering her own papers , which is where Weary met her. There’s also a very short glimpse of Martin Luther King, more of a walk-on than anything.
Nat Weary also has a love life. He originally took his girlfriend Mattie to the show; they were planning on getting married, but when he got his jail sentence he cut off their relationship. There was always the chance his sentence might be extended in the Jim Crow South, and he wanted her to have a life. One of the conflict situations is when they meet again after he gets out. Actually they meet twice, once in Los Angeles and in Montgomery, and Mattie is married with a couple of kids. Meanwhile Nat has started a new relationship with a singer looking for her big break; she works part-time at a diner.
Ravi Howard is an established writer; he was a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PenAward; he is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other kudos. Ravi can do better than this; he already has with is first novel, LIKE TREES, WALKING. Fictionalizing a national icon is a hard enough challenge, but you’ve got to do him justice.
The white man is sentenced to three years working on a cattle ranch, a walk-in-the-park compared to what Weary got. He got ten years at a maximum facility where he chopped Kudzu plants, among other indignities. The charge was inciting a riot.
The main problem I had with the book was that Nat King Cole is such a bland character. The last time I checked his daughter was still alive, and there’s plenty of information out there, newspaper clippings and otherwise, about one of the greatest singers America ever produced. All we learn here is that Nat could’ve been a pro baseball player; he could pitch with both hands, due to his piano playing ability.
Ravi Howard centers on three other incidents in the book: the Montgomery bus strike and the Nat King Cole TV show, which he apparently financed himself due to his inability to find a sponsor. It was fifteen minutes long. I remember it, but I don’t remember it being that short. It was the first time a black man had his own television show. The third involves Nat King Cole’s return to Montgomery to finish what he started, put on a show for his people. That’s the trouble with using real life characters in fiction. This never happened. Yes, there was an attack, but Nat never performed in the South again.
Howard also centers on another real person, Almena Lomax, who covered the bus strike for her newspaper in Los Angeles, where Weary had moved after he got out of jail. We see the editor of the newspaper delivering her own papers , which is where Weary met her. There’s also a very short glimpse of Martin Luther King, more of a walk-on than anything.
Nat Weary also has a love life. He originally took his girlfriend Mattie to the show; they were planning on getting married, but when he got his jail sentence he cut off their relationship. There was always the chance his sentence might be extended in the Jim Crow South, and he wanted her to have a life. One of the conflict situations is when they meet again after he gets out. Actually they meet twice, once in Los Angeles and in Montgomery, and Mattie is married with a couple of kids. Meanwhile Nat has started a new relationship with a singer looking for her big break; she works part-time at a diner.
Ravi Howard is an established writer; he was a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PenAward; he is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other kudos. Ravi can do better than this; he already has with is first novel, LIKE TREES, WALKING. Fictionalizing a national icon is a hard enough challenge, but you’ve got to do him justice.
Go Set a Watchman
I wouldn't say GO SET A WATCHMAN is a rejected manuscript the author never would have wanted to publish, but it does need an edit, and it obviously got one. The result was TO KILL A MOCKINBIRD, and it was exponentially better.
The problems start when twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise returns from New York City to Maycomb for a two-week visit, as she does every year. The real Scout, Harper Lee, actually worked in New York as an airline clerk before her success as a novelist. The Supreme Court has just ruled on Brown vs. The Board of Education, and her relatives, including Atticus are not acting like they did when she was growing up. The Tom Robinson case is even mentioned, and that Atticus is not this Atticus. Uncle Jack is more of a featured character in this novel; he's a retired doctor who lives in his own world. He tries to explain to Jean Louise what is going on.
No only does the story need editing, but the writing could use some work. In one scene Scout is attending his first dance. Henry Clinton, a senior has asked her. She thinks it was Jem's idea, but he already has a crush on her. Anyway, Scout refers to the principal as Miss Muffett; she's really referring to Mr. Tuffett. Either that or she got confused during the first draft. We have all had nicknames for our principal, but Miss Muffett just doesn't work. Perhaps Old Lady Tuffett would have made her intentions more clear.
Calpurnia makes a brief appearance as well. At times she's the same old house keeper and substitute mother for Scout and Jem. She still calls Jean Lousie “Baby,” but at other times she looks straight through Jean Louise as if she's not there. You see, her grandson, Frank, is in trouble with the law. He ran over the town drunk and was arrested for manslaughter. Henry Clinton, Atticus's law partner, doesn't want to take the case. Atticus does want the job, to convince him to plead guilty and keep the NAACP lawyers from getting him off. Doesn't sound like Atticus, does it?
The ending is another disappointment. Not only is the Frank conflict go unresolved, but we get a bunch of hooey about how Jean Louise must learn to stand up to Atticus, and he's proud of her when she does. But the race question goes unanswered. I just thought it was unrealistic.
I have taught TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD sixteen times over my teaching career and never got sick of it. I was even criticized for not switching to another book. But I never found one that was half as good, and that includes some of the classics. After reading GOD SET A WATCHMAN we should all realize that we're dealing with one hell of a revisionist, or her editor was another Maxwell Perkins.
The problems start when twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise returns from New York City to Maycomb for a two-week visit, as she does every year. The real Scout, Harper Lee, actually worked in New York as an airline clerk before her success as a novelist. The Supreme Court has just ruled on Brown vs. The Board of Education, and her relatives, including Atticus are not acting like they did when she was growing up. The Tom Robinson case is even mentioned, and that Atticus is not this Atticus. Uncle Jack is more of a featured character in this novel; he's a retired doctor who lives in his own world. He tries to explain to Jean Louise what is going on.
No only does the story need editing, but the writing could use some work. In one scene Scout is attending his first dance. Henry Clinton, a senior has asked her. She thinks it was Jem's idea, but he already has a crush on her. Anyway, Scout refers to the principal as Miss Muffett; she's really referring to Mr. Tuffett. Either that or she got confused during the first draft. We have all had nicknames for our principal, but Miss Muffett just doesn't work. Perhaps Old Lady Tuffett would have made her intentions more clear.
Calpurnia makes a brief appearance as well. At times she's the same old house keeper and substitute mother for Scout and Jem. She still calls Jean Lousie “Baby,” but at other times she looks straight through Jean Louise as if she's not there. You see, her grandson, Frank, is in trouble with the law. He ran over the town drunk and was arrested for manslaughter. Henry Clinton, Atticus's law partner, doesn't want to take the case. Atticus does want the job, to convince him to plead guilty and keep the NAACP lawyers from getting him off. Doesn't sound like Atticus, does it?
The ending is another disappointment. Not only is the Frank conflict go unresolved, but we get a bunch of hooey about how Jean Louise must learn to stand up to Atticus, and he's proud of her when she does. But the race question goes unanswered. I just thought it was unrealistic.
I have taught TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD sixteen times over my teaching career and never got sick of it. I was even criticized for not switching to another book. But I never found one that was half as good, and that includes some of the classics. After reading GOD SET A WATCHMAN we should all realize that we're dealing with one hell of a revisionist, or her editor was another Maxwell Perkins.
The Blood of Emmett Till
Timothy B. Tyson is a visiting professor of American Christianity and Souther Culture at Duke and an adjunct professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina, among other impressive positions.
Tyson studied the Emmett Till murder and did the last interview with Caroline Bryant, the Mississippi woman whom Emmett supposedly assaulted in some manner.
During Roy Bryant and J.W. Millan's trial, she testified that he had physically touched her and asked her for a date, then “wolf whistled” at her after he left the store, and she went to her car to get a gun. During Tyson's interview she said some of her testimony wasn't true and that the boy didn't deserve what happened to him. The affront may have been as innocuous as putting the money in the palm of her hand, rather than laying the money for his purchase on the counter as most Mississippi blacks knew to do in the presence of a white clerk.
About three-quarters of the way through the book we get Tyson's interpretation of what really happened. Emmett was never castrated, as some rumors claimed, but he was beaten with a .45 for hours by several men, including Roy Bryant's brother-in-law, then shot behind the ear by one of the other men. Again rumors claimed that the boy didn't go down easily. He talked back and goaded his tormentors, but that's rather hard to believe after he'd been repeatedly hit in the head with a heavy hand gun. Then the men tied a cotton gin vent to his neck with barbed wire and threw his body in the river.
The Mississippi Underground, consisting of several NAACP members and several ministers scoured the immediate area for possible witnesses and several agreed to testify, which was a death sentence in the Old South. One had heard Emmett howling from the beating and identified J.W. Millan when he came out of the barn to get a drink of water. Reverend Moses Wright, Emmett's uncle, and Emmett's mother also testified. According to Tyson, the prosecutor did everything he could to convict the two men, and the judge was fair beyond the call of duty, considering where the trial was held. Ten farmers and two businessmen found Bryant and Millan not guilty.
We also learn that, following WWII, businessmen and professionals throughout the South formed a coalition to deal with returning black soldiers who may have been expecting better treatment, considering they were willing to give up their lives fighting for their country. They expected “peckerwoods” like Bryant and Millan to do their dirty work for them. This explains a lot as I've recently read Harper Lee's early draft of TO KILL A MOCKINGWORD, which was released as a separate novel. Atticus Finch is portrayed as one of these professional men.
Towards the end of the book, Tyson makes a connection between the fifties when Emmett was murdered and the 21st Century when white supremacists are “still killing Emmett Till.” He mentions Black Lives Matter and the murder of nine church-going blacks in Charleston, South Carolina, by an avowed white supremacists. He does mention Michael Brown, but, curiously, he doesn't say at thing about the young boy with the toy gun that looked like the real thing who was summarily shot by a police officer, whom, I believe, got off Scott free. I also expected to hear something about the Freedom Riders and the murder of three of them in the same general area. I guess Tyson didn't want to wander too far astray from the Emmett Till murder.
Tyson studied the Emmett Till murder and did the last interview with Caroline Bryant, the Mississippi woman whom Emmett supposedly assaulted in some manner.
During Roy Bryant and J.W. Millan's trial, she testified that he had physically touched her and asked her for a date, then “wolf whistled” at her after he left the store, and she went to her car to get a gun. During Tyson's interview she said some of her testimony wasn't true and that the boy didn't deserve what happened to him. The affront may have been as innocuous as putting the money in the palm of her hand, rather than laying the money for his purchase on the counter as most Mississippi blacks knew to do in the presence of a white clerk.
About three-quarters of the way through the book we get Tyson's interpretation of what really happened. Emmett was never castrated, as some rumors claimed, but he was beaten with a .45 for hours by several men, including Roy Bryant's brother-in-law, then shot behind the ear by one of the other men. Again rumors claimed that the boy didn't go down easily. He talked back and goaded his tormentors, but that's rather hard to believe after he'd been repeatedly hit in the head with a heavy hand gun. Then the men tied a cotton gin vent to his neck with barbed wire and threw his body in the river.
The Mississippi Underground, consisting of several NAACP members and several ministers scoured the immediate area for possible witnesses and several agreed to testify, which was a death sentence in the Old South. One had heard Emmett howling from the beating and identified J.W. Millan when he came out of the barn to get a drink of water. Reverend Moses Wright, Emmett's uncle, and Emmett's mother also testified. According to Tyson, the prosecutor did everything he could to convict the two men, and the judge was fair beyond the call of duty, considering where the trial was held. Ten farmers and two businessmen found Bryant and Millan not guilty.
We also learn that, following WWII, businessmen and professionals throughout the South formed a coalition to deal with returning black soldiers who may have been expecting better treatment, considering they were willing to give up their lives fighting for their country. They expected “peckerwoods” like Bryant and Millan to do their dirty work for them. This explains a lot as I've recently read Harper Lee's early draft of TO KILL A MOCKINGWORD, which was released as a separate novel. Atticus Finch is portrayed as one of these professional men.
Towards the end of the book, Tyson makes a connection between the fifties when Emmett was murdered and the 21st Century when white supremacists are “still killing Emmett Till.” He mentions Black Lives Matter and the murder of nine church-going blacks in Charleston, South Carolina, by an avowed white supremacists. He does mention Michael Brown, but, curiously, he doesn't say at thing about the young boy with the toy gun that looked like the real thing who was summarily shot by a police officer, whom, I believe, got off Scott free. I also expected to hear something about the Freedom Riders and the murder of three of them in the same general area. I guess Tyson didn't want to wander too far astray from the Emmett Till murder.
