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Bittersweet Legacy: The Black and White 'Better Classes' in Charlotte, 1850-1910
Bittersweet Legacy is the dramatic story of the relationship between two generations of black and white southerners in Charlotte, North Carolina, from 1850 to 1910 - a time usually characterized as racially antagonistic. Janette Greenwood describes the interactions between black and white business and professional people - the "better classes," as they called themselves.
The black members of this class were born in slavery and educated in freedmen's schools; they came of age in the 1880s with high expectations of being full-fledged members of New South society. They defined themselves against what they called the "masses" of the black community, and their alliance with their white counterpart helped shape their outlook.
Greenwood argues that concepts of race and class changed significantly in the late nineteenth century. Documenting the rise of interracial social reform movements in the 1880s, she suggests that the black and white "better classes" briefly created an alternative vision of race relations. But this alliance disintegrated under the pressures of New South politics and the rise of a new generation of leaders, leaving a bittersweet legacy for Charlotte that would weigh heavily on its citizens well into the twentieth century.
Bittersweet Legacy paints a surprisingly complex portrait of race and class relations in the New South and demonstrates the impact of personal relationships, generational shifts, and the interplay of local, state, and national events in shaping the responses of black and white southerners to each other and the world around them.
The black members of this class were born in slavery and educated in freedmen's schools; they came of age in the 1880s with high expectations of being full-fledged members of New South society. They defined themselves against what they called the "masses" of the black community, and their alliance with their white counterpart helped shape their outlook.
Greenwood argues that concepts of race and class changed significantly in the late nineteenth century. Documenting the rise of interracial social reform movements in the 1880s, she suggests that the black and white "better classes" briefly created an alternative vision of race relations. But this alliance disintegrated under the pressures of New South politics and the rise of a new generation of leaders, leaving a bittersweet legacy for Charlotte that would weigh heavily on its citizens well into the twentieth century.
Bittersweet Legacy paints a surprisingly complex portrait of race and class relations in the New South and demonstrates the impact of personal relationships, generational shifts, and the interplay of local, state, and national events in shaping the responses of black and white southerners to each other and the world around them.
334 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1994
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October 11, 2020
An in-depth piece of work whose thesis is on the relationship between Charlotte’s black and white middle classes (the “better classes”) that led to social reforms in Charlotte in the post-Reconstruction period. The book doesn’t fit neatly within the points it is trying to prove and while that may not be a good read for some, I think Janette Thomas Greenwood’s detailed research of Charlotte’s class formations offers incredible insights into Charlotte’s development from a backwater into a New South city.
The late 19th century was an incredibly turbulent time in America with unrest sparked by the vast economic inequality of the Gilded Age. In Charlotte, the paternalistic, church going mission of the white better classes met common cause with the Black better classes to reform what they viewed as the grotesque unwashed qualities of members of the manufacturing elite as well as each race’s working class masses. They aimed to do this through the work of the Church and prohibition.
Yet, the Panic of 1893 reveals in Greenwood’s book the limits to the interracial relationship of the better classes. As working class parties fuse with Republicans across North Carolina for significant gains, the white better classes find themselves aligning with the manufacturing elite to protect their own economic interests while engaging in campaigns of white supremacy. The terror invoked on the black community by groups like the Young Democrats in Mecklenburg County clears the way for disenfranchisement and Jim Crow laws. The Republican Party, wishing to distance itself from their image as the “Black Man’s party” essentially abandons their commitment to racial equality in the South. In the end, the white better classes find a home in Democratic politics and “scientific” Social Darwinism that reinforces their disconnect with the Black better classes. The Black better class, without political enfranchisement, decides to tend to the economics of their community.
The short epilogue of this messy work explaining fluid allegiances and antagonisms concludes that despite the disenfranchisement of Black Charlotteans at the beginning of the 20th century, the gains made in the Civil Rights Movement in the City were wrought by the children and grandchildren of the Black and white better classes. Greenwood vindicates the reformism that the white better classes sought through paternalism and the Black better classes sought through respectability via examples of a quiet desegregation and an acceptance of busing throughout the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools system.
Yet, if anyone should know that the picture of Civil Rights in Charlotte is a little more complicated than this narrative, it should be Greenwood. She spent a whole book writing about how material circumstance shifted interracial alliances throughout an incredibly fraught period of time. It’s this historical view of Charlotte as a place where the interests of a paternalistic middle class essentially “did the right thing” that papers over some of its more memorable crimes. Greenwood does mention Dorothy Counts but it’s seen as a later victory for the temporary alliances of post-Reconstruction. There’s no mention of the bombings of the Alexanders’ home and how the resulting anger led to more militant calls for desegregation. And there is no mention of the urban renewal destruction of neighborhoods that were prominent in the formation of the Black better class: Brooklyn and Second Ward.
Despite its simplistic and overly optimistic conclusion, Greenwood provides an incredible recounting of Charlotte at a pivotal point in its time. The explanations of class formations across race provide a foundation for how the city not only functioned then but how it also functions now.
The late 19th century was an incredibly turbulent time in America with unrest sparked by the vast economic inequality of the Gilded Age. In Charlotte, the paternalistic, church going mission of the white better classes met common cause with the Black better classes to reform what they viewed as the grotesque unwashed qualities of members of the manufacturing elite as well as each race’s working class masses. They aimed to do this through the work of the Church and prohibition.
Yet, the Panic of 1893 reveals in Greenwood’s book the limits to the interracial relationship of the better classes. As working class parties fuse with Republicans across North Carolina for significant gains, the white better classes find themselves aligning with the manufacturing elite to protect their own economic interests while engaging in campaigns of white supremacy. The terror invoked on the black community by groups like the Young Democrats in Mecklenburg County clears the way for disenfranchisement and Jim Crow laws. The Republican Party, wishing to distance itself from their image as the “Black Man’s party” essentially abandons their commitment to racial equality in the South. In the end, the white better classes find a home in Democratic politics and “scientific” Social Darwinism that reinforces their disconnect with the Black better classes. The Black better class, without political enfranchisement, decides to tend to the economics of their community.
The short epilogue of this messy work explaining fluid allegiances and antagonisms concludes that despite the disenfranchisement of Black Charlotteans at the beginning of the 20th century, the gains made in the Civil Rights Movement in the City were wrought by the children and grandchildren of the Black and white better classes. Greenwood vindicates the reformism that the white better classes sought through paternalism and the Black better classes sought through respectability via examples of a quiet desegregation and an acceptance of busing throughout the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools system.
Yet, if anyone should know that the picture of Civil Rights in Charlotte is a little more complicated than this narrative, it should be Greenwood. She spent a whole book writing about how material circumstance shifted interracial alliances throughout an incredibly fraught period of time. It’s this historical view of Charlotte as a place where the interests of a paternalistic middle class essentially “did the right thing” that papers over some of its more memorable crimes. Greenwood does mention Dorothy Counts but it’s seen as a later victory for the temporary alliances of post-Reconstruction. There’s no mention of the bombings of the Alexanders’ home and how the resulting anger led to more militant calls for desegregation. And there is no mention of the urban renewal destruction of neighborhoods that were prominent in the formation of the Black better class: Brooklyn and Second Ward.
Despite its simplistic and overly optimistic conclusion, Greenwood provides an incredible recounting of Charlotte at a pivotal point in its time. The explanations of class formations across race provide a foundation for how the city not only functioned then but how it also functions now.
Displaying 1 of 1 review