Charles W. Eagles. Outside Agitator: Jon Daniels and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 2000. xi + 335 pp. $24.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-8173-1069-1.

Reviewed by George Baca

Published on H-South (May, 2002)

Up From Romanticism: New Histories of the On August 16, 1965, Tom Coleman, a ffty-two Civil Rights year old white Alabaman shot Jon Daniels, an Thirty-fve years after the passage of the Civil Episcopal seminarian from New Hampshire. The Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of stories of these two men and the local historical 1965, scholars are gradually moving away from context of Lowndes County, Alabama--an impov‐ romantic narratives of the Movement to more ju‐ erished black belt agriculture area that remained dicious examinations of the history of African a hotbed of resistance even after the 1965 voting Americans' struggle for Civil Rights. Gone is the rights act--provide the plot and setting for Eagles' idealistic optimism that the passage of Civil Rights provocative narrative that sheds light not only on legislation would erase the color line. Instead, this Civil Rights activist, but also on the social con‐ scholars are beginning to explore how such legis‐ text that produced such intense reaction to inte‐ lation has redrawn the color line and reconstitut‐ gration throughout the South. His analysis, more‐ ed racial subordination through the principle of over, illuminates a local struggle for civil rights at racial equality.[1] The emergence over the past the same time that the Federal government was decade of this more critical reading of the Civil gradually consolidating the Movement within the Rights Era has led historians to turn their atten‐ bureaucratic institutions of the State. tion away from romantic narratives of national Tom Coleman's slaying of Jonathan Daniels events and charismatic leaders to focus on un‐ occurred one week after the passage of the 1965 known fgures, little known events, and local so‐ Voting Rights Act and the Watts Riot in Los Ange‐ cial history. In the sprit of this revisionist thrust in les, yet garnered scarce national attention, over‐ the study of the history of the Civil Rights era, the shadowed as it was by the racial strife emerging University of Alabama Press has reissued Charles in northern and western cities. Eagles' study W. Eagles' important study of the killing of a civil makes an important contribution to Civil Rights rights worker in Alabama. literature as he illuminates the shifting contours H-Net Reviews of racial politics at the dawn of the post-segrega‐ ffty-eight percent of its households had no auto‐ tion era. mobile, only twenty percent had telephones, and "Bloody Lowndes County and an Outside Agi‐ only half had indoor toilets, sewers, or septic tator" tanks (pp. 108-9). In the frst chapter Eagles describes the life Chapter six describes Stokely Carmichael's ef‐ history that led Jonathan Daniels, a seminarian forts to augment the local civil rights movement from Keene, New Hampshire to answer Martin in Lowndes County following the slaying of the Luther King's call to all clergy to protest the civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo on March 22, bloody confrontation between Alabama State po‐ 1965. Jon Daniels was inspired by Carmichael's lice and civil rights activists on the Edmund Pettus courageous drive to desegregate this county, noto‐ Bridge. Daniels stands apart from the stereotypi‐ rious for its hostility toward any attempts to cal "liberals" and "hippies" invading the South in change the customary segregation. Daniels chose support of the freedom struggle. Apart from being to work in Lowndes County, therefore, because it a graduate of the VMI, Daniels, up to a week be‐ "ofered him the greatest challenge for Christian fore deciding to join SCLC in Alabama, defended witness and the best opportunity for existential Bishop Charles C.J. Carpenter's position that Epis‐ action and meaning" (p. 32). While in Lowndes copalians outside of his diocese were not welcome County, Daniels worked exclusively with blacks, to work for civil rights in Alabama. primarily on SNCC projects that focused on voting rights. He was involved in organizing mass meet‐ A combination of mainstream democratic ings, voter registration, integration of the local of‐ ideals, existential philosophy, and a fairly conser‐ fces of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's agri‐ vative interpretation of Episcopalian doctrine mo‐ cultural stabilization and conservation service, tivated Daniels to participate in the Movement. and in encouraging local blacks to end racial seg‐ After the events of "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, he regation in the schools. became convinced that participation in the Selma protest meant that he had "found the existential Daniels' work in Lowndes County culminated opportunity that he had been looking for--a in an aborted demonstration in Fort Deposit, the chance to create his beliefs and become his real largest and most commercially developed town in self through action" (p. 38). the county. On August 14, three days following the Watts Riot, SNCC workers helped Lowndes ac‐ In each succeeding chapter Eagles deepens tivists organize a demonstration in Fort Deposit. the narrative to elaborate the social and political All of the protesters were arrested, including context in which Daniels' activism grew in order Daniels and Stokely Carmichael and jailed for six to understand how white southerners could view days. Upon release, Daniels ventured to a small him, and other civil rights workers, as an "outside grocery store to buy refreshments for his fellow agitator." Such contextualization includes a thor‐ activists as they awaited transportation out of the ough examination of the history of the civil rights county. His exchange of words with Tom Coleman, movement in Selma (chapter two), the social his‐ a 52 year old government employee, ended in a tory of "bloody" Lowndes County (chapters three shotgun blast to Daniels' chest. and four), and the development of the Lowndes County's local movement to end segregation Eagles' narrative is innovative in the way he (chapter fve). Lowndes County, which after the relates Daniel's biography to that of his killer. In‐ Civil War had become the center of the South's pe‐ stead of representing Daniels' death as the tragic onage system (p. 97), continued to be one of the ending of a heroic act, in chapters seven and eight poorest counties in the nation during the 1960s as he delves into Coleman's biography to seriously

2 H-Net Reviews consider white culture in this impoverished black "The literature on the movement now needs belt community. Coleman's biography adds tex‐ ... to be invigorated by new works that will chal‐ ture and dimension to the Lowndes County's po‐ lenge the established chronology, add greater de‐ litical economy highlighting as it does the inter‐ tachment, and correct the imbalance now pervad‐ connection between local customs of race rela‐ ing the scholarship. The innovation may come tions to economic forces that developed from the from the imaginative monographic work, new post-slavery peonage system. Such a perspective syntheses, and more likely, from new bold recon‐ expands analysis of "race" to include the topic of ceptualization of the movement's history (empha‐ "whiteness" and the contradictory feelings and sis added)."[2] sentiments whites expressed in the face of chang‐ Bold new reconceptualizations of the Move‐ ing patterns of race relations in the South. It ment's history, and I should add, the study of would have been easy to represent "the white "race" and racism, could come from the insights of community" monolithically in order to beatify Jon scholars of nationalism and state formation found Daniels (which the Episcopal Church did). Instead in the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and of getting a picture of the typical southern com‐ historiography outside of the United States. Over munity's resistance to racial change, we see some‐ the past three decades, students of nationalism thing that is atypical in Lowndes County. have applied the analytic concepts of ethnicity, "Reconceptualizing Civil Rights' History" nation, and the State to understand "race" as a In Outside Agitators, Eagles' innovative use of framework of ranked categories within social hi‐ the social history of Lowndes County uncovers erarchies. Accordingly, racism is not a contradic‐ important details of a little known story in a for‐ tion in "America," instead it is part of the practical gotten place that nonetheless challenges conven‐ logic of the modern nation-state. Studies of Ameri‐ tional views of the Civil Rights Movement. More‐ can racial politics could therefore beneft from over, his depiction of this event, at a momentous the insights of work done on such subjects as juncture in American history yields important in‐ communalism in India, Mestizaje in Latin Ameri‐ sights into the transformation of the civil rights ca, regionalism in Europe, and ethnic confict in struggle from a movement to a federal institution. Sri Lanka, to name only a few examples.[3] The problem is that Eagles did not use his empiri‐ A related shortcoming of the text is that Ea‐ cal fndings to challenge preexisting interpreta‐ gles does not analyze the changes in racial politics tions of the struggle for racial justice and the func‐ outside of the narrative of progress. Thus he ac‐ tion of race in national politics. counts for changes in the racial patterns since the Perhaps part of the problem derives from fall of Jim Crow by profering the view that the how American historians generally have framed lives of African Americans have "improved" be‐ research on racial matters by the assumption that cause of community action and federal spending. racism in the United States is a contradiction in We cannot adequately sum up the changes in American values. Such a view resonates with African American lives over the past three American political culture in that it sees racism as decades as merely improvement. Relations of the exception (e.g. America's Dilemma or This power and the Federal State have been trans‐ Country's Unfnished Business) that proves the formed by a new regime of race relations man‐ rule of American Exceptionalism. Accordingly Ea‐ agement. Therefore civil rights laws have recon‐ gles' innovative research begs for new conceptual fgured racial patterns in terms of important frameworks. Or, in Eagles own words, in a recent changes in the U.S. political economy. review article:

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By merely labeling these changes as improve‐ co: An Anthropology of Nationalism (Minneapo‐ ment, we have no analytical purchase on the type lis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001); Bruce of changes that have occurred, the efects of such Kapferer, Legends of People, Myths of State: Vio‐ transformations, and the limitations of the legal lence: Intolerance, and Political Culture in Sri system that distributes rights according to racial Lanka and Australia (Washington, DC: Smithsoni‐ categories. Moreover such labels do not grapple an Institution Press, 1998); Brackette F. Williams, with the important question of class politics with‐ Women Out of Place: The Gender of Agency and in the categories of "white" and "black" communi‐ the Race of Nationality (New York: Routledge, ties. We must begin to analyze how national struc‐ 1996). tures of power use minority-majority power dy‐ namics to retain contradictions in the idea of the nation within a coherent political structure. This view could transcend American political mytholo‐ gy and challenges us to think about how Civil Rights Legislation has reconstituted rather than erased racial subordination. Notes [1]. See Tali Mendelburg, The Race Card: Cam‐ paign Strategies, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001) for an analysis of how politicians, since the fall of Jim Crow, use the principle of racial equali‐ ty to make subtle appeals to race in order to mobi‐ lize voters. See Robert Smith, We Have No Lead‐ ers: African-Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996); Cathy Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics (Chica‐ go: University of Chicago Press, 1999), and Adolph Reed, Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999) for three diverse interpre‐ tations of how the federal institutions have re‐ drawn the color line over the past thirty years and the important role of black leadership in these new confgurations. [2]. Charles W. Eagles, "Toward New Histories of the Civil Rights Era," Journal of Southern Histo‐ ry, (November 2000), 843. [3]. See Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering the Partition: Violence, Nationalism, and History in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Claudio Lomnitz, Deep Mexico, Silent Mexi‐

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Citation: George Baca. Review of Eagles, Charles W. Outside Agitator: Jon Daniels and the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama. H-South, H-Net Reviews. May, 2002.

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