March 3 - March 9

It is the middle of the semester and I am picking up where I left off towards the end of the fall. I have been doing some research on how whites viewed blacks, how whites felt about race relations and what life was like for blacks in Greenwood before and during the civil rights movement.

I never knew that Charles Darwin said that savage races (this was a phrase regularly used to describe blacks and other tribal based groups) would most likely be exterminated through the process of natural selection. I read it myself in The Descent of Man on page 193. I always thought that most of the ugliest racist propaganda came riding into town on a horse wearing a white hood with a plan for burning crosses and killing innocents. I did not know that the full title for Darwin’s seminal work On the Origin of Species was actually On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. I was sick to my stomach.

Finding this thinking in the mind of a man whose work we as a society lean so heavily on is disturbing to me. I know that a lot of the heroes of the past had problems with blacks. But it seems as if Darwin had something worse than a lack of comfort with blacks or a belief that white’s were superior, he seemed to have a scientifically based belief that we were not going to last. Lucky for me he was wrong.

I have read a little about how in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s many whites suffered from Negrophobia and they believed that blacks were akin to beasts. Who would want a beast living next door? I think some of these things will get more of my attention when the semester is over. I can only take this stuff in small doses. It is interesting, eye opening, and irritating to the soul. Each time I read one of these shocking passages it is like sustaining a blow. I need some time to recover.

I am still reading about what life was like for blacks in Greenwood. I am continuing this work so that I can further document and understand what Booker was up against and what he was living through. Some of the leaders in the white community during the 1950’s actually described the relationship whites had with blacks as harmonious! Sometimes I think this was just rhetoric to keep more liberated whites at bay. But I am sure that many of these whites were blind, or allowed themselves to believe that they were blind, to the challenges and the lack of opportunities for blacks. They believed that the blacks must be happy in their rundown houses, what would a Negro do with a big house anyway? They believed that blacks must be happy using their own substandard bathrooms and ill equipped dentists, they were used to living this way.

It reminds me of Barbara Bush’s statements on Marketplace when she was speaking about Katrina victims who were living in the Houston Astrodome. She said “and so many of the people in the area here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working well for them.” Yes, they are poor anyway so they don’t mind sharing a bathroom with thousands of other people who they don’t know. This type of thinking boggles my mind.

As far as my work goes, this first week was one of assessments. I would like to present Booker as a subject for the African American National Biography. In order to do this I need to learn a little more about the project itself, I need to identify informants who can give me a clearer view of what Booker did in the early 1960’s. I also think that some of the people mentioned in Endesha Mae Holland’s book may be useful if I can figure out how to reach them. She mentioned going to Booker’s Place many times, it seems as though it was a favorite hangout spot for her and her friends. So, this week I am going to try to make calls and contacts in an effort to come up with a short list of possible informants, I am also going to read some of the bio on the African American National Biography to make sure that Booker's story would even be a good fit, then I need to find out what their timelines/deadlines are.