AMERICAN STUDIES jOURNAL Number 45 Summer 2000 American Race Relations ISSN: 1433-5239 Editor's Note Lutherstadt Wittenberg, June 2000 Tentative themes and deadlines for article submissions are as follows: Dear Readers, Native Americans (no. 46) (Wimer 2000) The American Studies journal, founded in 1983 as the American deadline: 1 September 2000 Studies Newsletter and published by the Deutsche Gesellschaft American Youth Culture (no. 47)(Summer 2001) fur Amerikicanische Studien, is currently published under the deadline: 15 January 2001 editorship ofthe Center for U.S. Studies at the Stiftung Leucorea, The American Civil War (no. 48)(Winter 2001) Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. The American deadline: 1 September 2001 Studies journal seeks to promote an understanding of the breadth Conservatism and the New Right in the U.S. (no. 49) of American history and culture through cross-disciplinary (Summer 2002) articles, informative essays, book reviews and pedagogical deadline: 15 January 2002 articles. The University; Anniversary Issue for the University of Wittenberg (no. 50)(Winter 2002) The journal actively solicits submissions of articles reaching deadline: 1 September 2002 across the academic spectrum. Submissions and inquiries should Non-Profit Organizations (no. 50) be directed to the Editor. Submissions are not restricted in deadline: 15 January 2003 length, but should follow the general guidelines of typed, double-spaced, in 12 point courier font and Chicago style Once again, the American Studies journal welcomes endnotes. Please include a copy of the submission on disk as submissions from teachers and scholars. Submissions may be well as a hard copy. Submissions may also be simply e-mailed to academic articles on a range of topics within the broad umbrella the editor. ofAmerican Studies or related to teaching. The journal also seeks reviewers of books in the fields of J. Kelly Robison history, literature, political science, American studies and Editor, American Studies journal teaching methodology. Again, book review length is not Center for U.S. Studies/ Leucorea Foundation restricted. Lutherstadt Wittenberg lmpressum Herausgegeben im Auftrag des Zenrrums fur USA-Srudien, Srifrung Leucorea an der Martin-Lurher-Universirar Halle-Wittenberg von J. Kelly Robison Redakrion: Yvonne Walter Druck: Regional Printing Center, Manila ISSN: 1433-5239 Redakrionsadresse Zentrum fur USA-Srudien, Sriftung Leucorea an der Martin-Lurher-Universirar Halle-Wittenberg, ZU:;J.ILS CollegienstraRe 62, 06886 Lurhersradr Wittenberg, Fax: (03491) 466223, E-Mail: [email protected] Homepage: hrtp:l/www.zusas. uni-halle.de/asj The American Studies Journal is published semi-annually. The subscription rare is DM 15 (postage and handling included). Subscrib­ ers from outside the European Union must add DM 10 for extra postage. If you would like to receive more than one copy, add DM 2 for each additional subscription. Prepayment is required. Please transfer your remittance to Zentrum fur USA-Srudien, Account Number 26212, Sparkasse Wittenberg, BLZ 805 501 01. Payment by check cannot be accepted. Bildnachweise: Estate ofWinold Reiss: 40, 42; Georgia Historical Quarterly: 6; Library of Congress: 14; National Archives: 28; New York Public Library: 41; USIS: 12, 20, 23, 29, 55; Yvonne Walter: 22; Vintage Books: 34 2 AS] 45 (SUMMER 2000) I I AMERICAN STUDIES jOURNAL Number 45 Summer 2000 American Race Relations 4 The Construction of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips's Interpretation of Slavery by John David Smith 10 Disfranchisement: The Political System of White Supremacy by Manfred Berg 1 8 Public Perception of the Past in the American South: A Paradigm Shift by Melton McLaurin 2 6 'Brothers' in Arms: Race Relations in the Vietnam \Vttr by Petra Feld 3 2 The Visible Hand of Negrotarians in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man by Amy Carreiro 3 8 jim Crow and American Modernism: Suppressing the Urge to Be All a Nation Can Be by Madeleine Hirsinger Carr 44 L1. Cuchi Moya!"- Star Trek's Native Americans by Katja Kanzler 5 1 Asian Americans and American Immigration and Naturalization Policy by Yvonne Walter Resources 57 Further Readings 59 Internet Resources Classroom Clips 6 0 Are US. Schools Really Violent? by Leslie J. Herring 61 Spring Brings More Than Flowers to School Plans by Connie Cook 62 Brody Middle School Responds to a Question of Violence by Trish Johnson 6 3 Documents AS] 45 (SUMMER 2000) 3 The Construction of Ulrich Bonnell Phillips's Interpretation ofSlavery john David Smith Among American historians of the first half of the result, Phillips understood well the tensions and twentieth century, Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (1877- pressures of the petit-bourgeoisie in the New South. 1934) ranked far and away as the leading authority From his youth, he identified with and romanticized on African-American slavery. In many ways Phillips the elite planter class of the Old South. This bias symbolized the changes that occurred within the circumscribed his later interpretations of slavery and historical profession during the Progressive Era. 1 the South. 3 A native of Georgia, Phillips looked upon his No matter their exact economic status, Phillips's region with affection and sought to defend it from parents were affluent enough to send him to Tulane attacks by neoabolitionist historians. In doing so, Preparatory School in New Orleans and the University Phillips was largely responsible for establishing of Georgia, where he earned an A.B. in 1897, and an Southern history as a research field. Trained in the A.M. in 1899. While working on the latter degree, "scientific" historical methodology of his day, Phillips Phillips attended the 1898 summer term at the broke fresh analytical ground in social and economic University of Chicago where he took classes with history. He ultimately surpassed all other historians Turner. Researching political parties in antebellum of his generation in the appreciation and use of Georgia, Phillips found inspiration in Turner's plantation records and other manuscript materials. emphasis on economic determinism and regionalism, Similarly, as a conservative on the race question and his vision of the frontier as a "process," and his insights member of the white Southern intellectual elite, into American sectionalism. For more than three Phillips had few rivals. Although he repeatedly decades the Turner-Phillips relationship matured into professed "objectivity," Phillips could escape neither one of mutual admiration. the anti-black prejudice of the Jim Crow era nor his inherited perception of blacks and other working class Phillips completed his education at Columbia peoples as inferiors. Following in the footsteps of his University, where he earned his Ph.D. under William mentor and friend Frederick Jackson Turner, early in Archibald Dunning in 1902. Phillips's dissertation, his career Phillips applied Turner's geographic and "Georgia and State Rights," won the Justin Winsor economic determinism to the study of slavery and Prize and subsequently was published by the the South. By the time of his death in 1934, Phillips American Historical Association. From 1902-1908 had considerably expanded his outlook and had come Phillips served on Turner's staff at the University of to view slavery, as well as the entire span of Southern Wisconsin, where he published widely, including the history, as falling within the broad realm of social path breaking History of Transportation in the Eastern history. Cotton Belt to 1860 (1908) and fifteen articles. In these years Phillips also labored in the cause of Phillips was born in 1877 in the West Georgia Progressive reform. Phillips's early writings dealt with town of LaGrange, near the Alabama border. His hitherto unexplored economic themes-the un­ father was of yeoman stock, but his mother, whom profitability of black slave labor and slavery's ill effects Phillips considered his foremost inspiration, had a on the Southern economy. plantation background. My recent research in local sources-newspapers and archives in Troup County, His reputation soared so quickly that in 1908 Georgia-suggests that previous scholars have Phillips received a professorship at Tulane University. overstated both the low economic status of Phillips's During his four years at Tulane, Phillips continued father, and the elite origins of his mother. Phillips's his on-going task of researching plantation records, father was in fact a middle-class merchant and his census data, and other primary sources. In 1909 he mother descended from mid-sized planters. 2 As a edited Plantation and Frontier, a rich two-volume 4 AS] 45 (SUMMER 2000) compendium of excerpts from planters' diaries, to the cnt1c1sms of slavery and the South by travelers' journals, and merchants' account books. Northern, neoabolitionist writers. Phillips was Because of his continued scholarly productivity, in convinced that unlike himself, who had lived and 1911 Phillips was lured to the University of Michigan. labored among blacks, these historians comprehended During his eighteen years at Michigan, Phillips neither the South nor its inhabitants. And Phillips established himself as the foremost student of remained forever confident that he understood blacks. Southern history. These were his most fruitful years. His prejudice was in fact strengthened by the attitudes Based upon a group of manuscripts that he assembled of Turner and Dunning towards blacks as well as by and edited, The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, the Jim Crow ethos of his adulthood. Phillips