OHIO VALLEY HISTORY

A Collaboration of The Filson Historical Society, Cincinnati Museum Center, and the University of Cincinnati. VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 3 • FALL 2005 OHIO VALLEY EDITORIAL BOARD HISTORY STAFF Compton Allyn Christine L. Heyrman Joseph P. Reidy Editors Cincinnati Museum Center University of Delaware Howard University History Advisory Board Wayne K. Durrill J. Blaine Hudson Steven J. Ross Christopher Phillips Stephen Aron University of Louisville University of Southern Department of History University of California California University of Cincinnati at Los Angeles R. Douglas Hurt Purdue University Harry N. Scheiber Joan E. Cashin University of California Managing Editors James C. Klotter Ohio State University at Berkeley John B. Westerfield II Georgetown College The Filson Historical Society Andrew R. L. Cayton Steven M. Stowe Bruce Levine Miami University Indiana University Ruby Rogers University of California Cincinnati Museum Center R. David Edmunds at Santa Cruz Roger D. Tate University of Texas at Dallas Somerset Community Zane L. Miller Editorial Assistant College Cathy Collopy Ellen T. Eslinger University of Cincinnati Department of History DePaul University Joe W. Trotter, Jr. Elizabeth A. Perkins University of Cincinnati Carnegie Mellon University Craig T. Friend Centre College University of Central Florida Altina Waller James A. Ramage University of Connecticut Northern Kentucky University

CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER THE FILSON HISTORICAL BOARD OF TRUSTEES SOCIETY BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Chair David Bohl Steven R. Love President George H. Vincent Ronald D. Brown Kenneth W. Love R. Ted Steinbock Past Chair Otto M. Budig, Jr. Craig Maier Vice-President H.C. Buck Niehoff Brian Carley Jeffrey B. Matthews, M.D. Ronald R. Van Stockum, Jr. John F. Cassidy Shenan P. Murphy Vice Chairs Dorothy A. Coleman Robert W. Olson Secretary-Treasurer Jane Garvey Richard O. Coleman Scott Robertson Henry D. Ormsby Dee Gettler Bob Coughlin Yvonne Robertson David L. Armstrong R. Keith Harrison David Davis Elizabeth York Schiff Emily S. Bingham William C. Portman, III Diane L. Dewbrey Steve C. Steinman Jonathan D. Blum Treasurer Edward D. Diller Merrie Stewart Stillpass Sandra A. Frazier Mark J. Hauser Charles H. Gerhardt, III James L. Turner Margaret Barr Kulp Leslie Hardy Secretary Thomas T. Noland, Jr. Francine S. Hiltz Martiné R. Dunn Barbara Rodes Robinson David Hughes H. Powell Starks President and CEO Robert F. Kistinger J. Walker Stites, III Douglass W. McDonald Laura Long William M. Street Vice President of Museums Orme Wilson III John E. Fleming Director Mark V. Wetherington

Ohio Valley History (ISSN Louisville, Kentucky, 40208. nati. Cincinnati Museum History. Back issues are $8.00. 746-3472) is published in Editorial Offices located at Center and The Filson Historical For more information on Cin- Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louis- the University of Cincinnati, Society are private non-profit cinnati Museum Center, including ville, Kentucky, by Cincinnati Cincinnati, Ohio, 45221-0373. organizations supported almost membership, visit www.cincymu- Museum Center and The Filson Contact the editorial offices entirely by gifts, grants, sponsor- seum.org or call 513-287-7000 or Historical Society. Periodical at [email protected] or ships, admission and member- 1-800-733-2077. postage paid at Cincinnati, [email protected]. ship fees. For more information on The Ohio, with an additional entry Ohio Valley History is a col- Memberships of Cincinnati Filson Historical Society, at Louisville, Kentucky. laboration of The Filson Histori- History Museum at Cincinnati including membership, visit www. Postmaster send address cal Society, Cincinnati Museum Museum Center or The Filson filsonhistorical.org or call 502- changes to The Filson Historical Center, and the Department of Historical Society include a 635-5083. Society, 1310 S. Third Street, History, University of Cincin- subscription to Ohio Valley

© Cincinnati Museum Center and The Filson Historical Society 2005.

OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Volume 5, Number 3, Fall 2005

A Journal of the History and Culture of the Ohio Valley and the Upper South, published in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky, by Cincinnati Museum Center and The Filson Historical Society. Contents

Hope and Humiliation: Humphrey Marshall, the Mountaineers, and the Confederacy’s Last Chance in Eastern Kentucky Brian D. McKnight 3

Addition through Division: Robert Taft, the Labor Vote, and the Ohio Senate election of 1950 Michael Bowen 21

“Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around”: Berea College’s Participation in the Selma to Montgomery March Dwayne Mack 43

A Whole New Ball Game: Sports Stadiums and Cover: Cumberland Gap, ca. 1862. The Urban Renewal in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Filson Historical St. Louis, 1950-1970 Society Aaron Cowan 63

Reviews 87

Announcements 110

F A L L 2 0 0 5 1 Book Reviews

Wayne Winkler. Walking Toward the Sunset: Monatan Indians of Virginia. The other tri-racial The Melungeons of Appalachia. Macon, Georgia: group was an admixture of Portuguese soldiers Mercer University Press, 2004. 304 pp. ISBN: who garrisoned the Spanish forts in seventeenth- 0865549192 (cloth), $34.00. century South Carolina upcountry, their African slaves, and Native Americans. Not surprisingly, olonial America was born of the struggle be- whites discriminated against them once society Ctween Native Americans who fought to retain encroached on their isolation. Rather than accept the land, and Europeans who sought to conquer the “Negro” designation, the Melungeons subse- it. The emergence of slavery built upon African quently refused to attend segregated schools, and labor heightened concerns about racial control, they used their various origin legends to “prove” to and the practical necessity of being able to identify white authorities that they had no African “blood” who was African embedded the in order to avoid discrimination. “one drop” rule into American By the 1950s, the Melungeons racial stratification. Alongside joined their Appalachian neigh- the conflict over the politics of bors by migrating to Midwestern domination, however, a significant industrial cities where they finally degree of biological fusion also oc- escaped the “stain” of race. Al- curred between Europeans, Native ways insisting on their whiteness, Americans, and Africans. Scorned the migrants’ children often knew by the dominant society, and often little or nothing about their ances- by some within their own ethnic try. But their need to know their groups, tri-racial people often own heritage has spurred a new isolated themselves on the remote interest in establishing the real regions of the backcountry. Soci- origins of the Melungeons. ety identified them by unflattering The First Union, or gathering, of names that the people themselves people of Melungeon heritage was resented. Such is the case of the held at Wise, Virginia, in 1997, Melungeons who, for two hundred and several have followed since. years, lived in the relative isolation An organization and website has of mountainous Hopkins County, Tennessee. been established to facilitate research and share The origin of the term itself is lost in obscurity, information. Current research into Melungeon as is the history of the people. Multiple theories of origins has caused a significant controversy between their origin have been propagated, some fanciful, amateur Melungeon researchers attempting to es- others plausible but impossible to prove. Winkler tablish their own heritage and professional scholars thinks it is most likely that the Melungeons evolved less inclined to embrace legends as evidence. Re- from a merger of two groups, one composed of Eu- cent Melungeon DNA samples have demonstrated ropeans and possibly blacks, who mixed with the that the group carried some of the genetic markers

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Mark W. Mehrer. Cahokia’s Coun- tryside: Household Archaeology, Settlement Patterns, and Social Power. Dekalb: Northern Illinois Univer- sity Press, 1995. 230 pp. ISBN: 0875805655 (paper), $32.00.

Rinita A. Dalan, George R. Holley, William I. Woods, Harold W. Watters, Jr., and John A. Koepke. Envisioning Cahokia: A Landscape Perspective. Dekalb: Northern Illinois Univer- sity Press, 2003. 251 pp. ISBN: found among Iberian, African, and Native American 0875805949 (paper), $29.50. populations. To his credit, Winkler, who is himself of Melungeon ancestry, recognizes his African line ahokia’s Countryside and Envisioning Cahokia of descent. He also acknowledges that, like most Cargue that landscape and the built environment “white” African Americans who “pass” into main- should be considered critical components of Mis- stream society, Melungeons refused to recognize sissippian social and political development in the their African descent to avoid the social penalties American Bottom region of Illinois. They differ, of racism. Melungeons have always identified however, in how each develops a landscape point themselves as white, and generally married people of view and employs it to understand Cahokia, the society recognized as white. Consequently, as Win- largest and most complex pre-Columbian polity in kler observes, over time “they became ‘whiter’—but North America. Mississippian peoples were a farm- never white enough to completely avoid the hostility ing society, known for building mound complexes, and suspicion of their Caucasian neighbors or the and are often described as having been chiefdoms. epithet ‘Melungeon.’” (247) However, merely calling a polity a chiefdom says Although not a scholarly book, Walking Toward little about how complex a given society might have the Sunset is an excellent case study been. To preface this discus- of how fiction, legend, genealogy, and sion, it should be noted that history can be employed in the construc- studies of the Cahokia region tion of a tri-racial identity in a racist have been rife with faction- society. Use of the extensive existing alism, and researchers have literature on race is weak in this book, come to no agreement about and the author cites numerous web the complexity of the Cahokia sources, the authority of which is open polity. Scholars, in fact, have to question. On the whole, however, divided into two major camps, Walking Toward the Sunset is probably one often labeled minimalist, the most objective treatment available and another sometimes called on the tri-racial group known as the exaggerationalist. The two Melungeons. volumes under review reflect this division. Mehrer’s book Ronald L. Lewis has been claimed by the mini- West Virginia University

88 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY malists while the Dalan volume changing social conditions. I find should find favor with those who more problematic the interpreta- seek to attribute greater complex- tion of these data, as well the ity to the Cahokia polity. In both problem in linking the data to the texts, the authors bring a wealth theoretical questions raised in the of data to the table in support of early part of the book, and in the their arguments. However, differ- conclusion. Of particular concern ences emerge both in the evaluation is Mehrer’s assertion that since of that data and in the theoretical people living in rural farmsteads positions taken by the authors. were (allegedly) self sufficient, they In Cahokia’s Countryside Mark therefore possessed as much social Mehrer utilizes data from sev- power as those living in the mound eral FAI 270 excavations (federally centers. In so saying, he assumes funded excavations along a high- that since storage became more way corridor) to build a model of private and less communal after Mississippian society, as he states, the rise of Cahokia, farmers were focusing especially on households as reflected in therefore independent of the centers. It is not clear their material remains. Basically, he argues that to me why private storage negates other possibili- increasing social complexity should be reflected in ties, such as people tithing as a family group, or the built environment and in physical evidence of that people might have been actively hiding materi- craft production. While Mehrer presents important als to avoid tithing. It is also somewhat troubling data on changes in household storage through time, that all of the ethnographic analogies provided to the volume was written over a decade ago, and ex- bolster the analysis have been derived from societ- cavations and publications since then have greatly ies that would all be considered less complex than changed many scholars’ understandings of the rural the Cahokia polity. In short, Cahokia’s Country- landscape. New studies have also provided a more side should be appreciated as an early attempt to sophisticated landscape and spatial theories upon integrate landscape and spatial analysis into an which to draw. For example, much of Mehrer’s archaeological analysis. argument is predicated on the disappearance of In the past decade, however, the use of land- village life outside mound centers during the rise of scape and spatial theory in archaeology has gained Cahokia. While this was state of the art knowledge greater currency and seen much refinement. The at the time of publication, we now know that there basic notion that spatial organization reflects social were multiple villages in the hinterlands during the organization has been tempered with more attention decades under discussion. to recursive, active, and ever changing relation- Mehrer’s book opens with some background and ships between people and places—a point made history of previous investigations, moves to a chap- in the volume by Rinita Dalan and her coauthors. ter on the theoretical foundations of his research, Envisioning Cahokia provides a stronger theoreti- and then presents data and conclusions at length. cal foundation for the study of Cahokia through, The strength of this book lies in the data itself, as the authors state, investigating relationships where Mehrer condenses and analyzes information between people and land. Utilizing remote sensing, derived from material remains located in storage geophysical techniques, and available excavation pits. He suggests correlations with pit types, loca- data, the authors examine the Cahokia site focus- tions, and material remains that are suggestive of ing especially on the construction and maintenance

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let the data speak for themselves. The data presented here elegantly make the point that the construction of mounds and plazas was exceedingly complex, requiring advanced planning and intricate engineer- ing knowledge. They also remind us that maintenance would have been a very salient issue, meaning that construction was never really complete. This is information that should profoundly alter future discussion and evaluations of Cahokia, as well as of an ancient city. The authors then contextualize other Mississippian centers. Also welcome this information, utilizing a landscape point of in this volume is the invitation extended to readers view strongly informed by geographers, as well as to not only see Cahokia, but to let ourselves fully including some much needed observations based experience Cahokia. on common sense. It should be pointed out that the authors do preface their discussion by pointing Susan M. Alt out the current ambiguities in claiming a landscape University of Illinois, Urbana perspective. Most striking in this volume is the sense the authors convey of the massive alterations made to the physical landscape by the people of Cahokia. L. Scott Philyaw. Virginia’s Western Visions: While the size of Cahokia which is at least five times Political and Cultural Expansion on an larger than any other pre-Columbian settlement in Early American Frontier. Knoxville: Uni- North America has always been a subject of inter- versity of Tennessee Press, 2004. 212 pp. est among scholars, far too many researchers have ISBN: 1572333073 (cloth), $33.00. failed to evaluate what this size differential would mean on a day to day basis. Dalan et al., however, nce all the world was Virginia.” So (in its provide thoughtful analysis on the nature of size. “OT-shirt paraphrase, at least) wrote eigh- For example, they point out that the sprawl of teenth-century Virginia planter William Byrd II. (ix) Cahokia meant that all people there would not And so, most aptly, begins this slender volume on interact on a day-to-day basis. Moreover, there are an immense topic—the “western visions” of early human limits to the ability to see and hear events Virginia’s leadership. The first royal charter had in very large spaces. The authors then remind projected a Virginia stretching from “Sea to Sea” us that such things do matter, and alter the lived (xvii), an open-ended westward-looking formula- experience. Here, then, we have an evaluation of tion that would strike chords in Virginia’s leaders the lived environment that seeks to determine not from John Smith to Thomas Jefferson. And Phily- only how people created landscape but also how aw’s topic is as large in implications as in geography. the landscape shaped peoples’ lives. “Examining western policies and the presumptions For more than a century, archeologists have and attitudes” behind them gives us “a glimpse into waged a never-ending battle over “how complex” [the] anticipated future.” How Virginia’s leaders the Cahokia polity could have been. Dalan et al. “expected their society to evolve,” in other words, do not explicitly answer this question, but rather can reveal the most central mechanisms both of

90 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY early Virginian society and, given Virginia’s ambi- bors unreliably Virginian, retrenched and redefined. tions and influence through the first decades of the Virginia must be a slave-owning, tobacco-growing republic, of early American society as well. (x) commonwealth. And thus Virginia’s grand western Virginia’s colonial leaders expected to replicate vision was lost. Tidewater-and-English culture as they extended This little volume covers a great expanse of settlement into that vast, unknown, but so promis- space and time, but its social territory is limited: ing interior. Beginning in the late seventeenth cen- “Virginia’s western visions” are explicated from tury, once the unsettled Chesapeake had stabilized the point of view of the elite leadership (a source- enough to make a “realm of gentlemen” possible dictated limitation regretted by the author). Also, as (1), this expectation was at first to a remarkable the title implies, the orientation of this work is one- degree fulfilled. Even when Scots-Irish and Ger- way, running always from east to west. But these man settlers poured into the Shenandoah Valley, limitations have their advantages, too, allowing the attenuating Anglo-Tidewater cultural influence, author to construct a coherent and persuasive nar- eastern gentry leaders kept control by willingly rative screen onto which both present readers and extending Virginia’s polity, county by new county. future scholars can project other players with other Mid-century brought new challenges, as Virginia’s views. I fall into visual imagery here, as Philyaw leadership struggled for imperial policies that often does, too, but his text does not actually help would keep western lands safe for settlement and us envision “Virginia’s western visions.” (An ex- speculation. For a while the “paradise” of limitless cellent visual complement to this volume would be Virginia rule and riches seemed “lost.” (64) Indeed, David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly’s Bound the Proclamation of 1763 putting an imperial ban Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement, a on further expansion is emblematic, but Virginia’s catalog for a Virginia Historical Society exhibit, speculator-policymakers also worried about the republished in 2000.) irrepressible masses of migrating squatter-settlers. Often, in defining their fields of study, historians The Revolution freed Virginia to press west again, of early America have drawn their own Proclama- rapidly establishing and surveying huge new coun- tion Line down the spine of the Appalachians, ties. But at the same time, she ceded much of her treating what went on east and west of the line unmanageably vast western land to the new United as part of distinct historical traditions. Philyaw States, and “Virginia gentry willingly turned to instead follows the western visions of his subjects, the national government to address their frontier drawing and shifting boundaries only as they did. concerns.” (119) This was a natural and favorable The result is a history that sheds new light both on convergence, since the new national government Virginia backcountry studies and on early Virginia was so strikingly manned by westward-looking in general. In this sense, we haven’t seen such a clear Virginia gentry like Jefferson and Washington view since Thomas Perkins Abernethy’s Western themselves. Lands and the American Revolution (1937). And Nevertheless, Virginia’s western hegemony was for western readers (that is to say, Ohio Valley read- on the wane. Her trans-Appalachian offshoots ers!), Philyaw offers a chance to contemplate their refused to replicate Tidewater ways, rejecting slav- own histories afresh in larger contexts—colonial, ery (North of the Ohio), proving unsatisfactory as continental, imperial, national—back when “all the Indian-haters (French-settled Illinois country), and world was Virginia.” flirting with the Spanish government (Kentucky). And back in Virginia, ultra-traditional gentry lead- Marion Nelson Winship ers, who were finding even their own western neigh- Virginia Commonwealth University

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Michael A. Lofaro. Daniel Boone: An prone to sharing. (36) More often, however, the American Life. Lexington: University author provides his reader with tidbits of informa- Press of Kentucky, 2003. 216 pp. ISBN: tion that have no clear link to an argument, – for 0813122783 (cloth), $25.00. example, when he dispels the myth of Boone’s teeto- talism by noting that he once purchased two quarts n John Ford’s classic The Man Who Shot Liberty of rum (40), or that the grandfather of Abraham IValance, gunslinger Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) Lincoln “may have been in the party” that blazed shoots the outlaw in order that the educated and the trail to Boonesborough in 1779. (109) civilized lawyer Ransom Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart) The tendency to offer anecdotes and information can get the girl and become a U.S. without an interpretive framework Senator, bringing law and order to becomes most serious when the the West, if not American civiliza- author writes long narratives of tion as a whole. At its best, Michael significant events, such as the kid- Lofaro’s Daniel Boone: An Ameri- napping and subsequent return of can Life develops a similar theme a slave in 1782 (119), or Boone’s in the life of the frontiersman. Full own capture and escape from the of artfully woven vignettes, stories Shawnee in 1798. (Ch. 7) These and anecdotes, the book seems to stories give Lofaro an opportunity support a vague Turnerian notion to engage the slavery issue, or to of Boone as spearheading a civiliz- discuss Native American cultural ing process (echoed in the book’s clashes with European American title) that eventually leads to his intruders, especially over use and downfall. But while this material misuse of the land. Other stories is lively and colorful, the book as about Boone’s wife or daughter a whole will be disappointing to also ought to raise questions about academics. The author’s immense women and gender. In most cases, efforts to reveal details of Boone’s however, the author leaves to the life result in satisfying stories, but reader the work of identifying the the stories are overshadowed by significance of events described in a lack of consistent effort to ex- the book, but without the complete plore the significance of that life in evidence available to the author. American history. The persistent reader will find Lofaro begins by describing some rewards in the book’s final Boone’s various roles in Kentucky four chapters in which Lofaro in- during the Revolutionary Era—en- terprets Boone’s life as Turnerian trepreneur, explorer, army officer tragedy. The author argues that and elected representative. Occa- Boone’s great knowledge of the sionally we are provided a conclu- frontier and his skill in cutting new sion or hypothesis as to the mean- trails, founding new towns, and ing or significance of the events that brokering treaties with local Na- unfold before us. For instance, the author writes: tive Americans was matched by the frontiersman’s “Perhaps, the recent experience of the France and own mistakes in surveying and his ineptitude in Indian War” made the people in Kentucky more the courtroom. Eventually, the land into which he

92 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY invested so much of his life was wrenched away sculptor worked from a plaster cast of Floyd’s skull from him through lawsuits. This irony is worth and jaw made in 1900 and from black and white the wait, but the theme could be made much more photographs. Floyd’s body today lies under the Sgt. explicit earlier in the book, perhaps foreshadowing Floyd Monument on Floyd’s Bluff on Sioux City’s the contrast with Boone’s success in forest skills as south side. About 6’ 2” tall and weighing between a young man compared with his failure in formal 180 and 200 pounds, Floyd was one of the “Nine education. (Ch. 1) young men from Kentucky.” Handpicked primar- There are also problems with Lofaro’s poorly ily by Clark, these men were used to rugged living conceived method of citing evidence. Endnotes are in harsh frontier conditions. One of the first per- referenced only by the first phrase of the sentence manent members of the Corps of Discovery, Floyd rather than by a superscript number, requiring a joined the Army at the Falls of the Ohio River on great deal of effort on the part of a reader to track August 1, 1803. Ninety-nine days after setting out down quotations and sources of other information. from Camp Dubois, he died on August 20, 1804, The bibliography, in contrast, is organized and apparently of a ruptured appendix. expansive, and in combination with the engaging Lewis and Clark weren’t the only ones who kept prose makes this volume valuable for historians diaries on the expedition. A few enlisted men did, of Kentucky and the Trans-Appalachian frontier. upon direction of the expedition’s co-leaders, and Because the book lacks an argument, however, Floyd was one of them. Likely his journal accom- Daniel Boone: An American Life should be read panied the returning party in the spring of 1805 in conjunction with other histories of the Kentucky and somehow found its way to Floyd’s relatives in frontier in order to better understand the period, Kentucky. Reuben Gold Thwaites discovered it in the place and the man. 1893 among the papers of Dr. Lyman C. Draper at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, where Corey Smith it resides today. Versions of the journal were Wartburg College published in 1894 (Butler edition, 1905 (Thwaites edition), and most recently in 1995 (Moulton edi- tion). Now comes another rendition of Floyd’s journal, edited by James Holmberg. This one, James J. Holmberg, editor. Exploring however, includes a fasci- with Lewis and Clark: The 1804 Journal nating first—a facsimile of Charles Floyd. Norman: University of of the individual pages of Oklahoma Press, 2005. 105 pp. ISBN: the sergeant’s diary. This 080613674x (cloth), $45.00. feature allows the reader to see Floyd’s handwriting he Hamilton Boulevard exit on I-29 in and to follow along with TSioux City, Iowa, leads to, among other Holmberg’s transcription. attractions, the Sgt. Floyd River Museum and According to Moulton Welcome Center. Inside is a life-size manne- (vol. 9, p. xvii), Floyd filled quin of Sgt. Charles Floyd, the only member most of his small notebook of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to die on by the time of his death. the journey. The bust is a forensic reconstruc- The notebook had marbled tion completed shortly before Floyd’s remains paper over the covers that were buried for the fourth and final time. The has been brilliantly repro-

F A L L 2 0 0 5 93 BOOK REVIEWS

duced in this fac- is lost in these editorial differences. simile edition. I read Floyd’s entries with a view to determin- The book is laid ing whether I could notice any deterioration in out in two sec- the sergeant’s handwriting from the initial entry tions, a lengthy on May 14, 1804, to the final one on August 17. introduction titled There appears to be a little deterioration on the last “The Life, Death, two days, days that included the return, trial, and and Monument punishment of Private Moses Reed for desertion. of Charles Floyd” Except for entries on these two days, I did not notice and “The Journal any decline. From just a close look at his writing of Sergeant Charles style, Charles Floyd strikes me as an American sol- Floyd.” An ex- dier who fulfilled his duty throughout. Perhaps this panded updating facsimile edition is as much of a lasting monument of Holmberg’s ar- to this “young man of much merit” as is the one ticle that originally hundred foot stone obelisk in Sioux City. appeared in the August 1996 edition of We Pro- ceeded On, the scholarly introduction includes a George D. Berndt brief biography of Floyd prior to the Kentuckian’s Missouri National Recreational River enlistment, an overview of his duties and experi- ences on the expedition, his death, as well as the de- velopment of a lasting monument to Floyd in Sioux City. As for the journal pages themselves, they Herbert Woodward Martin and Ronald are printed on the left-hand page with Holmberg’s Primeau, eds. In His Own Voice: The Dra- transcription and extensive annotations printed on matic and Other Uncollected Works of Paul the right-hand page. Laurence Dunbar. Foreword by Henry Floyd’s entries are short and factual. In com- Louis Gates, Jr. Athens: Ohio University paring Holmberg’s with Moulton’s transcriptions, Press, 2002. 315 pp. ISBN: 082141422-4 one notices slight differences, primarily in editorial (paper), $22.95. style. For example, in the first line that Floyd wrote, Holmberg chose to capitalize “Monday,” whereas uring the past twenty-five years numerous Moulton did not. Here I would defer to Moulton. Dvolumes have been published on the writ- A few lines later, Holmberg transcribed the primary ings and legacy of Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first watercraft as “Batteow” whereas Moulton read it African American poet to achieve both national as “Batteaw.” In reading Floyd’s script, it is plain and worldwide acclaim. In 1971, for example, that both spellings are equally valid. Those readers Addison Gayle’s Oak and Ivy and Dudley Randall’s who have access to the different versions of Floyd’s The Black Poet cast Dunbar as a forerunner of the journal will no doubt succumb to the temptation to Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the Black compare transcriptions. At times, Floyd crossed out Arts movement of the 1960s. A decade later, both a word, words or a phrase that he had just penned. Tony Gentry, in Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Henry In producing as literal a transcription as possible, Louis Gates, Jr, in The Signifying Monkey, echoed Holmberg uses “strike throughs” to replicate similar characteristics about Dunbar. Even many of Floyd’s practice. Moulton indicates these deleted today’s contemporary African American poets and words or phrases with brackets. But again, nothing writers, such as Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni,

94 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Etheridge Knight, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker, passion, potency, and impact of the works of Paul have noted that they were greatly influenced by the Laurence Dunbar. The editors use both previously works of Dunbar. In one aspect, the volume under known and newly discovered literary pieces to review here is a testimony to that fact. highlight various dimensions of Dunbar’s work In His Own Voice editors Herbert Woodward that most people have failed to recognize. Without Martin and Ronald Primeau enable us to experience question, the authors should be commended for the more complex, subtle, and witty side of Dunbar such a meticulously researched and carefully crafted as a “dramatist” through numerous previously in- volume. Nevertheless, there are some shortcomings. accessible literary works. (xxiv) More specifically, One weakness is that the different sections of the the editors proclaim that this volume rests on the volume are unevenly organized in length. Secondly, notion that Dunbar, if nothing else, was a great the movement from a chronological to thematic ap- “short-story writer and essayist.” (xxiv) Martin and proach, at times, is confusing to the reader. Despite Primeau’s volume is divided both chronologically these minor shortcomings, however, this volume and thematically into four distinctive sections. In adds much to and deepens our understanding of part one, the editors place Dunbar’s writings in the Dunbar as the greatest African American poet prior context of his life. Here we see how Dunbar’s abili- to the Harlem Renaissance Era. ties to produce plays and songs such as “Herrick,” “The Gambler’s Wife,” “Dream Lovers,” and “In Eric Jackson Dahomey” underscore his exceptional command Northern Kentucky University of the literary concepts of “irony and nuance.” (3) In part two, the editors showcase fifteen previously unknown essays by Dunbar including “Dickens and Thackey,” “England as Seen by a Black Man,” “The Tammy Horn. Bees in America: How the Tuskegee Meeting,” and “The Leader of His Race.” Honey Bee Shaped a Nation. Lexington: These essays criticize the “double-standards” of the University Press of Kentucky, 2005. 352 United States’ criminal justice system and emerg- pp. ISBN: 081312350x (cloth), $27.50. ing class divisions in the African American com- munity with the rise of Booker T. Washington, as o much depends on the tiny but industrious well as various other issues that shaped the lives of Shoney bee. In California, for instance, the many Black Americans during the late nineteenth $1.5 billion almond industry could not survive and early twentieth centuries. Here Martin and without the pollination services provided by the Primeau conclude that these works “provide even state’s 500,000 bee colonies. Indeed, to produce more evidence of Dunbar’s life-long commitment California’s enormous almond crop, growers must to the politics, religion, art, and customs of the call upon the assistance of Montana and Dakota African American community over a hundred years beekeepers who truck in another 500,000 colonies ago.” (165) Finally, parts three and four contain every February and March. At the height of the numerous previously published essays, articles, annual almond bloom, fully two-thirds of America’s short stories, and poems written by Dunbar but not commercial bee colonies are deployed throughout published in book form. According to Martin and California’s 500,000 acres of almond orchards. Primeau, these works powerfully illustrate Dunbar’s While the almond provides the most dramatic ex- “own distinctive artistic Vision.” (215) ample, it is not the only farm product that requires Martin and Primeau’s In His Own Voice is an the aid of the honey bee to achieve commercial exceptional collection that succinctly captures the yields. Across the nation, bees pollinate over one

F A L L 2 0 0 5 95 BOOK REVIEWS hundred crops that generate a com- the bellows bee-smoker (1873). bined annual value of up to $15 bil- As Horn succinctly observes, lion. This essential work is not done “These four inventions—essen- for free. Farmers have to rent the tially unchanged—remain the services of the bees, and the insects’ pillars that support the beekeeping human keepers often earn more industry.” (124) from such rentals than they do from As long as Horn sticks to the honey or beeswax production. Api- history of beekeeping, Bees in culturists in California, America’s America remains a clearly written, top honey producer, grossed nearly well researched, and sharply fo- $62 million from pollination rent- cused work. Unfortunately, Horn als in 2002, compared to $52 mil- has larger ambitions that are never lion from honey and beeswax, and precisely defined. According to another $5.5 million from the sales her subtitle, Horn wants to move of queens and bulk bees to fellow beyond the history of apiculture beekeepers. As these figures indicate, apiculture has to explain “how the honey bee shaped a nation.” evolved into a big business whose industrial-sized Her introduction declares, “This book is about how scale dwarfs anything imagined back in 1621, when the honey bee has been perceived in America and English colonists in Virginia imported the first bees how those perceptions have changed as the country into North America. developed through the centuries.” (17) Indeed, The fascinating story of beekeeping’s rise from sometimes she seems primarily interested in looking its very modest beginnings is well told in Tammy at how the bee and the beehive have been variously Horn’s Bees in America. Divided into six chrono- employed in art, literature, and politics as meta- logically arranged chapters, Horn’s book traces phors designed to symbolize and promote social the long evolution of American apiculture and values such as thrift and productive labor (though focuses upon the key personalities who shaped oddly she never mentions cooperation). While oc- and promoted the industry. Chief among these casionally interesting, Horn’s frequent forays into was Lorenzo Langstroth (1810-1895) of Ohio, a cultural history greatly detract from the quality of Congregationalist minister, educator, and pioneer her book. Each time she leaves the terra firma of apiarist known today as the “Father of Modern beekeeping, Horn loses focus as she breathlessly Beekeeping.” In 1851, Langstroth’s astute observa- strives to record every mention ever made about tions led to his invention of an improved moveable bees, no matter how minor or insignificant. Con- frame hive. Unlike the primitive “bee gums” and sequently, her prose often dissolves into rambling straw skeps that they rapidly replaced, Langstroth’s rectangular bee boxes with removable internal frames allowed beekeepers to extract honey and wax combs without actually destroying the hives and losing the bees. Langstroth’s ingenious design made large-scale and continuous production pos- sible and thereby triggered a technological revolu- tion. In rapid succession, apiculturists in America and Europe developed the wax comb foundation (1857), the centrifugal honey extractor (1865), and

96 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY and confused outpourings of disconnected trivia. central Wyoming and named Diplodocus carnegii, Abrupt transitions, non sequiturs, and repeated in the donor’s honor. Casts of the original, kept in sentences abound. So too do the factual errors that the Carnegie-financed museum in Pittsburgh, went mar her efforts to place apiculture within the larger to the British Museum, as well as museums in Ger- contexts of American history. many, France, Spain, and even Argentina. Although Horn displays a great deal of obvious An important figure throughout the book is Wil- enthusiasm for her subject, Bees in America too liam J. Holland, Carnegie’s trusted curator of his often reads like a rough draft that cries out for dinosaur museum and overall director of various rigorous editing. A narrower focus on the history expeditions sent to dig up fossilized remains. As of beekeeping would have produced a much better Rea depicts him, Holland is a complex figure who book. developed a world-wide reputation in paleontol- ogy even though it was not his academic specialty. Michael Magliari Holland feuded with competing dinosaur schol- California State University, Chico ars and took on the trustees of the University of Wyoming who sought to keep dinosaurs found in their own backyard from being exported to distant Tom Rea. Bone Wars: The Excavation and museums. His creative efforts at using public land Celebrity of Andrew Carnegie’s Dinosaur. laws benefited Carnegie’s cause. His relations with Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, subordinates also often proved difficult. A succes- 2004. 288 pp. ISBN: 0822958465 (paper), sion of scholars, including the self-taught William $16.00. Reed who left the University of Wyoming to go to work for Holland and the Carnegie Museum, left uring the last half of the nineteenth century, after power struggles with Holland, or perhaps after Dthe international public became captivated by finally suffering enough from personal slights Hol- discoveries of dinosaurs, the largest beasts that ever land administered, seemingly without realizing it. roamed the earth. Some of the most But Holland’s importance to the di- important discoveries of fossilized nosaur work continued. He outlived dinosaur bones were made in the Carnegie and continued his boss’ American West, although Tom Rea’s wishes when it came to developing lively account of the “dinosaur busi- the dinosaur collections. ness” includes chapters on finds in One fascinating theme running Patagonia, Antarctica, and elsewhere throughout the book is the intense in the world. This book, however, academic rivalry among the vari- focuses primarily on the critical role ous scientists intent on establishing played by Pittsburgh-based million- claims to prime dinosaur digs. aire Andrew Carnegie in furthering Also interesting are their efforts to scholarship on dinosaurs. Carnegie theorize on how the dinosaurs once had another motive for supporting lived, often in opposition to the as- such research besides an increase in sumptions made by skeptical fellow knowledge. He wanted to have casts academics. As Rea describes it, the made of the largest of the dinosaurs dinosaur-hunting business created and give them to world leaders. In all, nine casts intense competition among American universities were made of the biggest dinosaur, found in south- and museums. Rea’s book does an excellent job

F A L L 2 0 0 5 97 BOOK REVIEWS of identifying the key players and explaining their immigrants as a way to facilitate a Klan takeover of motivations. the Indiana Republican Party and the state govern- While the sub-title implies that the book is about ment. Most authors writing about this period focus just one dinosaur—Andrew Carnegie’s giant Di- on Stephenson and the Klan’s corruption, making plodocus, it is far more. Rea has written a gripping African Americans passive or irrelevant. What this account of the early evolution of dinosaur study. It is book does differently is to analyze African Ameri- a readable, fascinating account of scientists making can actions, and to effectively underline the tragedy discoveries and theorizing, but also participating in of apathy and the Republican Party’s dismissal of intricate games of politics and even intrigue. Not African Americans. only will the book be of interest to western history The African American struggle with immigrants, readers, but also to those interested in scientific unions, and housing also illuminates larger struggles discovery and the enduring attraction of dinosaurs nationwide. The author especially focuses on the to the public. nuances of this economic wrestling match, includ- ing the role of block busting and other tactics that Phil Roberts favored immigrants over African American, docu- University of Wyoming menting an environment in which African Ameri- can strivers were constantly pushed back while immigrants became “assimilated.” These strivers kept fighting to find both employment and dignity, Emma Lou Thornbrough. Indiana Blacks usually by identifying with “white” values, decrying in the Twentieth Century. Edited and with “underclass” behavior, and utilizing a combination a final chapter by Lana Ruegamer. Bloom- of education and non-competition. ington: Indiana University Press, 2000. 290 Perhaps the most important contribution of pp. ISBN: 0253337992 (cloth), 27.95. this work is Thornbrough’s description of the convoluted process involved in school segregation. ndiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century is an Administrators did not systematically segregate Iexcellent work of state history. Focusing on urban urban and rural schools. Instead, they created a centers in Indiana, it illustrates the economic, social, complex patchwork of segregation by school and and political treatment of African Americans in this within schools, or segregation by training only. The time period. This book discusses ac- author gives a detailed and sophisti- commodation, rural African Ameri- cated analysis of how progressivism, cans’ competition and assimilation Booker T. Washington’s industrial with urban African Americans, education movement, accommoda- adjustment to urbanization, depres- tion, economic discrimination, and sion, the Klan, uplift, and political fear shaped haphazard segregation apathy. The book’s most interesting patterns, and determined the type chapter focuses on African American of education African Americans political apathy. It shows how the found available to them in Indiana focus of many African Americans school systems. This chapter should on economic survival limited their be prescribed reading in schools of opposition to the Klan. The chapter education, and also in entry-level also documents attempts by the Klan African American studies classes. to fan African American antipathy to In short, a mix of “elevating” im-

98 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY migrants, business concerns, competition, and pseudo-scientific ideas about race combined to limit Selika M. Ducksworth-Lawton African American educational opportunities. In University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire this Indiana was not unique. Other northern state civil rights leaders ran into the same problems and resistance in school desegregation. In this book, Thornbrough is particularly good Thomas E. Wagner and Phillip J. Obermiller. at dealing with the delicate dance of negotiation, African American Miners and Migrants: The accommodation, and striving that characterize the Eastern Kentucky Social Club. Afterword middle class African American community through by William H. Turner. Urbana: Univer- the 1950s. She grasps how the subtle complexities sity of Illinois Press, 2004. 158 pp. ISBN: of human interaction, personality, and perception 0252071646 (paper), $20.00. influence institutions. But a few weaknesses mar the work. Rural African Americans receive much ith a bold magisterial stroke, African Ameri- less notice in this work, because of the lack of Wcan Miners and Migrants has enhanced our sources and numbers. The work also has very few understanding of African American everyday living details about the lives of individual working class and black community-building efforts in coal min- African Americans. While discrimination among ing towns in the twentieth century. In a thoroughly draft boards and home front support are discussed, researched and elegantly written book about the the impact of National Guard and other military struggles of black Appalachian migrants in the experiences on Indiana African Americans receives towns of Benham and Lynch between 1910 and rather superficial attention. This is probably be- 1970, Thomas E. Wagner and Phillip J. Obermiller cause the work itself is a survey, and this is an area examine the creation and development of the East- in history that has received very little attention. ern Kentucky Social Club. In doing so, the authors Also, the author’s style is very formal. A little more raise some provocative questions regarding con- oral history from working class individuals would struction of model coal towns in the Appalachian have made for a more interesting book. The last region, the inner workings of black coal mining chapter, written posthumously by Lana Ruegamer, communities, and the struggle to preserve collective Thornbrough’s editor, is very different in tone, de- memory in similar industrial settings. tail, and analysis from the rest of the book. This Focusing on the commemorative activities of reviewer can’t complain too much about the differ- black Kentucky migrants who hailed from Harlan ence, because finishing a book for someone else is County, Wagner and Obermiller contend, “The a truly difficult enterprise. members of the Eastern Kentucky Social Club have This work would be good for an upper division chosen not to disown their roots in Harlan County or graduate class in history, or for serious research- but to celebrate them.” (2) Indeed, slavery, the ers. It is not accessible enough, in writing style or creation of Appalachian coal towns, recruitment lexicon, for most general readers. For someone of African American newcomers to Benham and knowledgeable in African American history, this Lynch, and the all-encompassing influence of the would be an excellent addition to a historical col- coal companies in the Black Mountain communities lection. Overall, Thornbrough’s well-written, dense provide the context for the opening chapters dealing account of the African American urban experience with African American strategies of self-empower- in Indiana in the twentieth century should be con- ment and institution building in Eastern Kentucky. sidered a good contribution to the field. According to the authors, corporations like Interna-

F A L L 2 0 0 5 99 BOOK REVIEWS tional Harvester and United States Steel developed young adulthood between 1940 and 1960. Indeed, company towns in Harlan County out of necessity it was the vitality of a cohesive community and the rather than as a carefully planned metropolitan collective will to pass its memory on to successive area. The towns were also created as a way of generations that impelled young African American maintaining paternalistic control over every aspect migrants like Armelia Moss, Della and Willie Watts, of black life from the provision of housing, utili- Andrea Massey and Gean Austin who left the Ap- ties, and company stores, to the creation of social palachian region for midwestern and northeastern institutions. By the 1930s, mine operators in Harlan cities to seek each other’s company in 1967. Reflect- County had adjusted their strategies of control from ing on the club’s significance, the authors compare paternalism to welfare capitalism in order to meet the development of Benham and Lynch as model challenges wrought by fundamental changes in the towns with recently formed company cities and American economy, as well as to stave off a threat conclude that “the Eastern Kentucky members were posed by class conscious workers and trade unions important participants in an evolutionary process of in the coalfields. All the while, relations between corporate social and physical planning that can be black and white miners in these towns fluctuated in traced from Harlan County in the early twentieth tandem with struggles between coal operators and century to Scott County in Kentucky in the early organized labor in the region. However, as Wagner twenty-first century.” (116) and Obermiller point out, African Americans were Overall, this study has considerable strengths but by no means passive in this process, employing a it also invites criticism as well as a host of intriguing vast repertoire of survival strategies that range from questions. Perhaps Wagner and Obermiller’s thesis adopting pragmatic stances toward company town would have been more persuasive had they fully life, to union organizing, to finally migrating from considered how class-consciousness and gender the Black Mountain area to urban communities relations in Benham and Lynch framed the recol- when the economies of the coal towns began to lections of Eastern Kentucky Social Club members. spiral downward. For instance, how did intra-racial class cleavages in By challenging the conventional characteriza- the company towns shape the collective memories tions of black life in coal towns during the period, of club members? Or, to what extent did gender Wagner and Obermiller complicate and extend our conventions in Benham and Lynch inform the mem- knowledge of the Appalachian region, especially ories of EKSC members? These are minor quibbles, when they explain how black mining families and however. African American Miners and Migrants is communities shaped the parameters of their experi- a valuable addition to the fields of African American ences in Benham and Lynch. For example, although history, labor studies, and oral history. International Harvester and United States Steel em- ployed welfare capitalism not for “the betterment Robert F. Jefferson of workers and their families” but to advance their Xavier University own cause, black mining families and communities in the area took advantage of the modern infrastruc- ture produced by welfare capitalists to provide a better way of life for their offspring. And, in turn, better housing and health care, company stores, schools and churches, and recreational facilities in the towns formed the social foundations for East- ern Kentucky Social Club members who reached

100 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Bruce M. Meyer. The Once and Future is the dream and justification for labor unions, such Union: The Rise and Fall of the United as the United Rubber Workers. Meyer characterizes Rubber Workers, 1935-1995. Akron: the URW as a democratic union in its inception and University of Akron Press, 2002. 450 pp. throughout its history, with a consistently strong ISBN: 18844836852 (paper), $27.95. and healthy interplay between line workers and leadership. Thus he describes the URW as often kron is to rubber and tires what Detroit is to battling on two fronts. On the one side, he finds the Athe American automobile industry. Or perhaps union in conflict with the tire and rubber companies, we should say Akron once was to rubber and tires and on the other, he chronicles an ongoing battle what Detroit once was to the American automobile for democracy within the union itself. Meyer nar- industry—the creative and command center, as well rates these struggles clearly, sometimes dramatically, as the location of the major assembly lines that put skillfully weaving personal interviews with almost the United States on wheels. In the process, the au- seventy of the labor and industry participants in tomotive industry and its vital suppliers, such as the URW history into his story. It is doubtful there tire companies of Akron, became—and remain—the will be another work on the URW that utilizes the most important production indus- personal dimension as well as this try of the United States. A study one does. of workers in America’s rubber In times of prosperity, this dual- industry then should be considered ity in focus and experience proved a a valuable, even vital, element in great, perhaps decisive, strength in our understanding of the saga and URW external struggles. But in the struggles of the auto industry, so period of auto and rubber industry dynamic and often so turbulent. decline from roughly 1980 onward, Indeed, Meyer’s study should fas- it caused faltering and uncertainty cinate readers on two levels. The during some critical negotiations first is its textual thesis, an excellent with tire and rubber companies, and detailed narrative of the human such as Bridgestone/Firestone. This drama involved in the creation of leads us to the second, more subtle, the United Rubber Workers Union aspect of this work. The subtext (URW), and its sixty-year struggle to this reviewer discerns in Meyer’s insure rubber workers a reasonable work shows how globalization has share of the fruits of their labor. On thrown not only the economy, but a second level, there is a very power- also the overall enterprise of eco- ful subtextual thesis. Meyer’s data nomic democracy into turbulence. and narrative reveal a deep crisis This new form of economic chaos in the structure of industry in the bears an uncanny resemblance to United States that, along with agri- the conservative economist Joseph culture, did so much to democratize Schumpeter’s classic formulation of American prosperity—although, the renewal of capitalism as “cre- in the perspective of this reviewer, ative destruction.” Unfortunately, Meyer did not set out with this sec- the destruction has been far more ondary goal in mind. evident than any new industrial The democratization of prosperity creation.

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Meyer clearly describes the impact of globaliza- competitive advantage in many areas. Meyer’s tion on the tire and rubber industry. On the posi- account would have been better contextualized tive side, the influence of foreign companies such as with explicit consideration of these factors. All in Michelin accelerated the introduction of radial tires all, however, this is a readable, sometimes deeply to American automobiles, making the traditional moving account of the history of the URW. It will bias-ply tires and the factories producing them ob- be difficult to surpass. solete. So far we have some creative destruction. But globalization has also brought about a sur- James R. Anderson render to foreign capital and companies, especially Michigan State University Japanese (Bridgestone) and French (Michelin) of all but two of the American companies which intro- duced and led the rubber tire industry for so long. Richard G. Zimmerman. Call Me Mike: A The result has been that American labor no longer Political Biography of Michael V. DiSalle. negotiates with American industry for American Kent: Kent State University Press, 2003. jobs and American prosperity. American tire and 322 pp. ISBN: 0873387554 (cloth), rubber plants now operate mostly as pawns on a $32.00. chessboard where foreign managers, shareholders, and governments control the major moves. This his brisk biography of Ohio’s sixtieth governor, brings us to the deep question lurking in Meyer’s Tby a veteran chronicler of the Statehouse and narrative: If unions exist for the democratization U.S. Capitol, helps explain the adage that Ohio’s of American prosperity, can unions or the Ameri- voters elect Democrats as adds to governor to do can companies whose products they make, survive those things GOP governors fail to do—then, after continued globalization as presently one term, irately retire said Demo- exercised? Or will globalization crats. DiSalle, son of Italian immi- “democratize deprivation and ex- grants, only the second Catholic to ploitation?” The evidence Meyer hold “supreme executive power” in adduces is suggestive and troubling, Ohio, was governor from 1959 to but not conclusive, and this com- 1963. He moved into the Governor’s ment is no criticism. Mansion after a long apprenticeship The book is not without its flaws. in Toledo municipal politics and a Surprisingly, there is no discussion brief, thankless, but made-the-best- whatever of the importance and of-it career as a federal price regula- long-range influence of the Taft- tor for President Truman during the Hartley Act in blocking and under- Korean War. mining of union advancement. Also, DiSalle’s parents haled from the there is almost no discussion of the mid-Italy province of Abruzzi. They highly disruptive influence of the Vietnam War on emigrated separately to New York, and after marry- U.S. industry in general and labor-management ing, they moved to Toledo. The DiSalles’ exertion relations in particular. Finally, the author has little and thrift, Latinate echoes of Horatio Alger, meant to say about the non-creative destruction wrought son Michael obtained legal training at Georgetown in the 1970s by inflation—averaging over seven per University in an era when even old-stock Americans cent per year for the decade—that created havoc in seldom attained such schooling. In Washington, Mi- U.S. industry, and gave foreign enterprise a huge chael DiSalle met his future wife, Myrtle England,

102 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY a fellow Catholic, whose roots were in Louisiana. woeful state services. By the time DiSalle’s governorship ended in 1963, According to Zimmerman, DiSalle’s tender the marriage, Zimmerman records, had deteriorated conscience about the death penalty turned voters into a kind of cold war. Michael and Myrtle DiS- against him. Though Ohio executed six convicts on alle permanently separated soon after, seemingly DiSalle’s watch, six others eluded the electric chair not because of specific conduct—DiSalle’s zesty (not imprisonment) because of his mercy. DiSalle’s womanizing surfaced only after the separation—but reservations about capital punishment may be more because Mrs. DiSalle may have tired of the role of salient than ever: Early in 1963, DiSalle’s GOP suc- political spouse. cessor, James A. Rhodes, permitted only two execu- After mid-Depression service in the Ohio House tions, not one, as Zimmerman asserts, and Ohio of Representatives, Michael DiSalle landed a Toledo didn’t execute another prisoner until 1999. But City Council berth and eventually a mostly ceremo- an Ohio majority still surely supports the penalty. nial role as mayor. (Toledo had a city manager.) In the end, tax increases, legislative wrangling and Zimmerman argues the mayoralty pushed DiSalle splits within the Ohio Democratic ticket probably into the spotlight. But even before that DiSalle did more to doom DiSalle’s re-election than Death had come to the public’s attention when as a city Row clemency. An incumbent governor who wins councilman in 1945 he organized a Labor-Man- renomination by barely fifty percent of his party’s agement-Citizens Committee that aimed to lessen primary vote, as DiSalle did in 1962, is likely des- labor-capital rancor in a rollicking CIO town. tined for defeat in November. Moreover, then as Zimmerman also suggests that backing by Toledo’s now, Ohio voters are often won over by Republican newspapers—then, as now, owned by the Block “low tax” rhetoric and concomitant, if unvoiced, family—played a role in making the mayoralty more low-service results. Predictably, Rhodes, after prominent than its powers justified. After DiSalle clubbing DiSalle for tax-increases, didn’t repeal failed to capture a congressional seat in 1946 or a any of them. U.S. Senate nomination in1950, he bravely accepted Zimmerman’s book fills a yawning gap in the Harry Truman’s invitation to become federal price literature. It also suggests other profitable explo- controller. Failed Senate (1952) and gubernatorial rations, such as the perceived clout of Ohio news- (1956) bids followed. paper publishers with governors and legislators. In 1958, Republican blunders in Columbus Zimmerman’s study is an enterprising, enthusiastic ushered DiSalle (and the first Democrat-run Ohio and telling tale of a governorship that manifested General Assembly since 1949-1950) into the many political dilemmas that bedevil Ohio yet Statehouse. Lunatic rightists—even then the bane today, and to a certain extent helps explain those of Ohio’s GOP—pushed an anti-union open-shop dilemmas. (“right to work”) initiative onto the state’s 1958 ballot. The resulting labor mobilization, Ohio’s Thomas Suddes biggest since the 1930s, spurred voters to replace a Ohio University dithering Republican governor, C. William O’Neill, with DiSalle. DiSalle then sought to rewrite Ohio’s utility rate-making law, taking on the state’s electric and telephone companies (along with insurers, the most rapacious lobbies in Columbus). The utilities bested the governor. DiSalle was more successful in fattening state revenues to improve, if only slightly,

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Daniel J. Leab. I Was a Communist for The Cvetic who emerges from this book lacks the FBI: The Unhappy Life and Times of any redeeming features. Leab depicts him as a Matt Cvetic. University Park: Pennsylvania liar, philanderer, deadbeat dad, and alcoholic who State University Press, 2000. 184 pp. ISBN: once pummeled his sister-in-law badly enough to 0271020539 (cloth), $30.95. hospitalize her and who suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness. The foundation upon which Cvetic n his 1956 work The Crucial Decade—a “first built his fleeting stardom—seven years of work for Idraft of history” that still holds up well—Eric the FBI during which time he infiltrated Pittsburgh’s Goldman noted that the McCarthy years were a Communist Party—was largely a sham. Leab time when “on all levels of society, the ill-tempered, reveals that Cvetic found out little about the pur- the mean, the vicious in human beings pushed to ported secret activities of American communists and the fore.” That observation explains about as well that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover fired him because as possible why an odious creature of his erratic behavior in early 1950. like Matt Cvetic was able to attain, Hoover did, however, arrange for however briefly, celebrity status Cvetic to appear before the House in America and with it the power Committee on Un-American Activi- to destroy people’s lives. Cvetic, ties and, as Leab puts it, “otherwise Daniel Leab concludes, “was very to cash in on his years of undercover much a man of his time,” and Leab’s work.” (27) In the event, Cvetic slim but meticulous examination of cashed in more handsomely than both the man and the time makes the Bureau had anticipated. He plain that the postwar Red Scare made dozens of appearances before commonly dubbed McCarthyism various committees and fingered catapulted Cvetic from his proper about three hundred people as com- obscurity to a position of wholly munists, attracting massive press undeserved prominence. (57) attention. The Saturday Evening In a different era, Matt Cvetic Post ran a three-part series detailing never would have commanded respect and applause Cvetic’s (mostly fictional) exploits; Warner Brothers from the American media and Washington’s elite. bought the film rights and in 1951 released “I Was Even among the disreputable crew of professional a Communist for the FBI” which portrayed Cvetic anti-communists who named names for congres- as single-handedly saving Pittsburgh from the Red sional committees and security agencies in the late Menace; and the Ziv Company produced a radio 1940s and early 1950s, Cvetic cut an unimpressive series with the same title that ran for seventy-eight figure. He lacked Whittaker Chambers’s gravitas, episodes and enjoyed one of the biggest budgets Elizabeth Bentley’s idealism, Louis Budenz’s indus- of its day. Cvetic earned hefty lecture fees, made try, and above all Harvey Matusow’s self-reproach. numerous radio broadcasts, and even managed a Unlike Matusow, who recanted his testimony and respectable run for Congress. From 1951 to 1955, apologized for the suffering he caused, Cvetic never he was one of the most admired men in America. experienced any pangs of conscience. His only re- Herein lies for Leab the true tragedy of the Cvetic gret, often voiced, was that he had not “taken better story—“that the standards of American society care of Matt”—that to say, obtained greater finan- had become so twisted that a Cvetic becomes a cial reward for his service as an FBI informant and hero.” (135) Cvetic won renown at a time when subsequent career as a government witness. (95) carnage in Korea, Soviet H-bomb tests, and seem-

104 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ingly daily crises over “hot spots” like Berlin and Redevelopment is a study of the arrival of profes- Taiwan lashed American anti-communism into a sional sports in Columbus, Ohio, and the sequence fury and fueled the hunt for subversives throughout of events that led to the construction of two sports the country. By the mid-1950s, however, the panic arenas in that city’s downtown. In the mid-1990s, of the early cold war years had receded and Cvetic Columbus’ political and business elite (known col- found it difficult to stay in the spotlight. His former lectively in the city as “the Titans”) campaigned for boss, Hoover—fed up with Cvetic’s increasingly a new publicly-funded downtown arena to attract bizarre testimony—put a stop to his appearances a National Hockey League team, as well as a soc- before HUAC and other committees. Cvetic faded cer stadium to keep the fledgling Columbus Crew, from the headlines, tried unsuccessfully to launch a Major League Soccer franchise, in town. Besides a comeback by shilling for Billy James Hargis’s bringing Columbus increased media attention and Christian Crusade, and died in 1962, his fifteen prestige, the Titans also hoped that these profes- minutes of fame a reminder of the irrationality that sional sports facilities would revitalize a dilapidated pervaded the United States at midcentury. Leab’s section of downtown. The proposal for a sales tax treatment of this sad, seedy figure, while unsparing, increase to fund the development was opposed by is fair, and enhances our understanding of what a diverse coalition of fiscally conservative Republi- Richard Fried has unimprovably termed America’s cans, Libertarians, liberal Democrats, preservation- nightmare in Red. ists, and NIMBY-minded urban residents. Despite a multi-million dollar advertising cam- Seth Jacobs paign by the Titans, Columbus voters soundly Boston College defeated the issue. Surprisingly, this did not signal the end of the city’s professional sports aspirations. With the dream of being a major-league city quickly vanishing, Nationwide Insurance, long a major Timothy John Curry, Kent Schwirian, player in Columbus downtown development, is- and Rachel A. Woldoff. High Stakes: Big sued a proposal to build the $125 million arena Time Sports and Downtown Redevelop- without any direct public expense. The soccer team ment. Columbus: Ohio State University owners also managed to find private investment for Press, 2004. 199 pp. ISBN: 0814251250 their stadium. When the Columbus Blue Jackets (paper), $22.95 hockey team opened their first season in ports stadiums have become a cure-all for the ills the fall of 2000, the Sof the American city. In recent years, an almost authors assert that symbiotic relationship has developed between pro- the city’s arenas fessional sports team owners and city politicians, were a “win-win” with teams promising jobs, urban revitalization and for all involved. tourist dollars in exchange for free (i.e., taxpayer- The teams played funded) stadiums costing hundreds of millions of to sold-out crowds, dollars. The clamor for such stadiums has drowned the city leaders got out the voices of economists who almost universally a revitalized Arena insist that stadiums are an unwise and unprofitable District, and tax- use of public funds. payers carried none High Stakes: Big Time Sports and Downtown of the financial bur-

F A L L 2 0 0 5 105 BOOK REVIEWS den. The authors suggest that this could serve as they failed to produce the revitalization of the entire a model for other cities seeking the revitalization downtown that advocates had envisioned. High and prestige of professional sports stadiums with- Stakes is thus both a success story and a cautionary out draining public coffers. In the closing chapter, tale. Urban planners and concerned citizens every- they contrast the Columbus experience with recent where would do well to consider its arguments. publicly-funded stadium developments in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. Aaron Cowan Curry, Schwirian, and Woldoff deftly maneuver University of Cincinnati through the complex mix of municipal politics, entrepreneurship, investment, marketing and pub- lic relations that all play a part in a massive urban redevelopment project. The reader gains a clear Mary Ann Wynkoop. Dissent in the Heart- understanding of the power players in Columbus, as land: The Sixties at Indiana University. well as the tactics and motivations of their opposi- Bloomington: Indiana University Press, tion. Newspaper accounts provide the bulk of the 2002. 232 pp. ISBN: 0253341183 (cloth), credited source material for the book, though the $49.95. authors note in the appendix that they also utilized official documents and personal interviews to get n Dissent in the Heartland, Mary Ann Wynkoop the “inside story” on the Columbus arena project. Iargues that the protest movement of the 1960s This personal connection to the actors, however, was not solely driven by elites from campuses on the proves to be both a strength and a weakness, as the east and west coasts. Rather, she suggests that the narrative sometimes becomes overly detailed. Also, movement evolved as a groundswell throughout the a more thorough treatment of the historical connec- nation, including the heartland. Basing her research tion between sports and the American city would primarily on newspaper accounts and personal have been helpful here, and would have placed the interviews with student activists and university ad- Columbus experience in a broader historical con- ministrators, Wynkoop effectively supplements her text. Furthermore, while the authors assert that work with documentation from FBI files showing they desire to reach a broad audience, a significant the government’s response to protests at Indiana portion of this work is devoted to academic theory. University. The result is a detailed story of how IU They interpret the events in Columbus through an students pushed for change on issues ranging from “ecology of games” theoretical model, which may campus rules to wages for university maintenance be of interest to scholars of sociology but is largely workers to American policy in Vietnam. unnecessary for the non-specialist. Wynkoop organizes the first four chapters chron- Curry, Schwirian and Woldoff effectively argue ologically to describe the events at IU through the for an alternative to the current trend of building 1960s and punctuates the book with an epilogue stadiums at taxpayer expense, and criticize the explaining how the sixties movement carried over extensive power that professional sports teams into the early 1970s. The book also includes topi- increasingly hold in cities’ public dialogue. They cal chapters on civil rights, women’s issues, and the also warn that stadium redevelopment projects, counterculture. Wynkoop notes that IU activism however they are funded, can seldom deliver on all really came alive between 1965 and 1967 when that they promise. Though the Nationwide Arena both liberal and conservative student organizations and Columbus’s new soccer stadium brought new successfully rolled back in loco parentis rules on development to areas directly adjacent to them, campus curfews and dress codes. Since many of

106 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY did not immediately give dissidents all of the rules changes they demanded in 1966, by 1968 they had at least abolished curfews for female students and restrictions on male visitors in women’s dorms. Wynkoop points out that IU administrators and students managed to avoid violent confrontations seen elsewhere in the country, and it would have been interesting to explore why this was the case. Could the violent confrontations elsewhere in the country have created the opposite effect at IU? The splintering of the movement presented another opportunity for additional examination. Why did so many groups form, and could they these rules applied particularly to females, women’s have accomplished more had they worked together rights were at the heart of campus activism. Such more effectively? Describing how the New Uni- dissent grew into protests regarding the Vietnam versity Conference (NUC) became popular when War between 1967 and 1969 as IU students con- the Students for a Democratic Society collapsed in fronted campus recruiters for government and hopeless factionalism in 1969, Wynkoop says the corporations associated with the war. IU faculty NUC “addressed the needs of more mature students members got into the act as well, forming an anti- and professionals who were becoming increasing war group and pressing for the addition to the disillusioned with . . . the revolutionary rhetoric of curriculum of African American ethnic studies and younger radicals.” (148) This raises an intriguing for more female professors. issue. How did the maturity of the participants One example (of many) of IU students initiating (or lack thereof) affect the proliferation of causes dissent—found in the opening chapter—describes and organizations and their ability to unite? While protests regarding the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, these are difficult questions to answer, the author’s an event not normally associated with 1960s ac- insights would have been interesting, given the tivism. Wynkoop uses this episode to point out amount of research she did on the topic. All in that the movement was not limited to those with all, however, Dissent in the Heartland is well-re- liberal views, noting that it helped IU become the searched, rich in detail, and supports its thesis quite birthplace of the Young Americans for Freedom, successfully. a conservative student group. Nevertheless, this issue led IU students opposing Cold War policy Larry W. Blomstedt in Cuba to carry their message across the country. Texas A&M University Occurring well before the free speech protest at the University of California-Berkeley campus, this event effectively supports Wynkoop’s thesis that protest did indeed spring directly from the heartland. While the book richly describes what happened at IU in the sixties, the author’s analysis of some of the events seems sketchy. One theme worth ex- ploring in more depth would be the flexibility of IU administrators. While the university’s authorities

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