Darker phases of the South

by Frank Tannenbaum

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203 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1969

Reviews

[R. Reddebrek · Rating 3 out of 5]

An attempt to grapple with the foundations of Southern society in the 1920s, it covers the Klan at its peak and its connections and support structures. The prison system and how it treats convicts, which comes with an introduction that is essentially a multipage content warning, the southern worker in the mills and on the land, and the strange racialist myths and community politics that was the framework of the South's ideology and motivational spirit, the Anglo-Saxon race.

Tannenbaum maintains a scholar's separation from his subjects, despite basing much of his conclusions on what he witnessed or heard directly from interviews. This gives it a detached tone which can come across as paternalistic and even insulting at times when it concerns human beings, but also enables him to step back from personal accounts to a bigger, more sociological view with ease.

Written in 1924 its interesting to see how his recommendations and predictions played out. Some of what he anticipates did come to pass and fulfilled some of his predictions, but others did not. I think this work should be regarded as a partial investigation and not a total summary of the South, it largely overlooked black southerners until the final chapter, which surprised me, but then its doubtful that he would've had been allowed to travel the Southern states and interview civil rights organisers or black workers, the few times he does talk about the Black population in the South its usually based off the evidence of other sources or from when he was being escorted around a prison.

Also, the way it talks about Black Americans is extremely dated, and I don't mean the passages qouting the openly racist Southern establishment.