Black Elitismand the Failureof Paternalismin PostbellumGeorgia: The Case of Bishop Lucius HenryHolsey By GLENN T. ESKEW DURING THE SPRINGOF 1858THE METHODIST CHURCH IN ATHENS,GEORGIA, sponsoreda week-longrevival exclusively for the slave and freeblack populationof the city.The warmMay nightsfostered the religious fervorof thecrowd gathered in thechurch to hearthe two circuit riders who had been sentto Athensby theplantation missions board of the southernMethodist church. A youngfree black ministerwho would laterhave his own illustriousand controversialcareer, the Reverend HenryMcNeal Turner,preached to the congregation.His powerful voice struckthe innermost souls ofmany worshipers, and by theend of theweek nearlyone hundredpeople had been convertedto Christand hadjoined theMethodist church. On thelast day of the revival a whiteevangelist, the Reverend W. A. Parks,delivered the Sundaysermon. At the end of the service,after mostof thecongregation had departed,a sixteen-year-oldslqve tarried nearthe altar, struggling "in an agonytoo greatto describe."Noticing thatthe youngman had remainedbehind, Parks announced to those leaving,"Brethren, I believe God willconvert this boy right now. Let us gatheraround him and prayfor him!" As the crowdsurrounded the youngmulatto slave, the minister intoned to God to save his soul. The object of thisattention later recalled, in thestereotypical language of religiousautobiography, that the "Lord rolled the burden of sin from my heartand heaven'slight came shiningin. 0 whata happyboy I was!" Tearscoursed down the cheeks of the convert as he lookedinto the face of theevangelist, pointed his forefingerupwards, and said, "Brother, whenyou getto heaven,and theblessed Lord places a crownon your head,I will be one starin thatcrown."1 ' The chapter"Lucius HenryHolsey: The Slave Who FoundedA College," in Michael L. Thurmond,A Story Untold: Black Men and Womenin AthensHistory (Athens, Ga., 1978), MR. EsKEwis a doctoralcandidate in theDepartment of Historyat the UniversityofGeorgia and an Albert Einstein Institution Fellow. THE JOURNALOF SoUTmHRNHISTORY Vol. LVIII, No. 4, November1992 63 8 THE JOURNALOF SOUTHERN HISTORY The youngmulatto slave, Lucius HenryHolsey, laterbecame a bishopin theColored Methodist Episcopal (CME) Churchin America andfrom this lofty position articulated a plantation mission ideology of paternalismas thebest method for improving the situation of his fellow blacksoutherners. He believedthat by being "Christianized" and "civi- lized," blacks would be assimilatedwith whites. As long as whites treatedhim with a degreeof respect, Holsey accepted the hegemony of planters;but in thelate 1890s,when they adopted a new racial code thattreated him like commonblack folk, he abandonedhis hopes for assimilationand advocated black nationalism. Holsey's transformation suggestshow one memberof the aristocracyof color respondedto whatRayford W. Logan called the"nadir" of black America.As Jim Crow erodedthe paternalism that supported a three-tieredsystem of race relations,members of themulatto elite apparently withdrew into theirown closed communities,migrated North, or passed forwhite. Those who remainedopenly in the Southcast theirlot withAfrican Americans.By 1920, when Holsey died, a rigid black-whiteline dividedthe nation as neverbefore.2 originallysuggested the subject of thisessay. The sourceson Holsey are scarce.Many original manuscriptswere destroyed in August1968 in a firethat razed Haygood Memorial Hall on the Paine College campusin Augusta,Georgia. Much of thematerial used by JohnBrother Cade in his sympatheticaccount of Holsey's life,Holsey-The Incomparable(New York, 1964), was destroyedatthat time. Lucius Henry Holsey,Autobiography, Sermons, Addresses, and Essays(2d ed.; Atlanta,Ga., 1899), includessermons and essays collectedfrom among his worksand apparentlywritten between 1873 and 1898,although they are all undated.Several of theessays werewritten as speechesmade before the general conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.A limitededition of Holsey's brief autobiographical sketch and a newintroductionby Paine College ProfessorGeorge E. Clary,Jr., recently appeared as L. H. Holsey,The Autobiography of BishopL. H. Holsey (Keysville,Ga., 1988). The accountof Holsey's conversionis takenfrom Holsey,Autobiography, 18; quotationsare fromAlfred Mann Pierce, A Historyof Methodism in Georgia(Atlanta, Ga., 1956), 132-33,and originally appeared in William Pope Harrison,ed., The GospelAmongthe Slaves (Nashville,Tenn., 1893; rpt.New York,1973), 350-53, see also 384- 88 in Chap. 18, "Testimonyof ProminentFreedmen"; Mungo MelanchthronPonton, Life and TimesofHenry M. Turner(Atlanta, Ga., 1917;rpt., New York,1970), 155-5 8; andfor a discussion ofthe revival and Turner's impression of Athens see StephenWard Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turnerand African-American Religion in the South (Knoxville, Tenn., 1992), 27-30. The author thanksNuman V. Bartley,W. FitzhughBrundage, Sheree H. Dendy, Eugene D. Genovese, WilliamF. Holmes,John C. Inscoe,Virginia Kent Anderson Leslie, William S. McFeely,August Meier,and BennettH. Wall fortheir helpful comments. 2 Historianstend to agreewith C. VannWoodward's analysis of a "capitulationto racism" as arguedin his seminalwork, The Strange Career ofJim Crow (New York,1955), butthe black elite'sresponse to the"nadir" remains an openquestion. In his book TheNegro in American Life and Thought:The Nadir, 1877-1901 (New York,1954), Rayford W. Logan describes"The Nadir UnderMcKinley," 79-96. Fora discussionof postbellum paternalism see GeorgeM. Fredrickson, TheBlackImage in the White Mind: The DebateonAfro-American CharacterandDestiny, 1817- 1914 (New York,Evanston, San Francisco,and London,1971), especiallyChap. 7, "The New Southand theNew Paternalism,1877-1890," 198-227. In The Crucibleof Race: Black-White Relations in the AmericanSouth Since Emancipation(New York and Oxford,1984), Joel Williamsoncharacterizes three strains of whitethought on race-conservative,liberal, and radical-that vied fordominance in theSouth during this period. Between 1897 and 1907 the radicals held sway over the region instigatinglynchings and otherforms of violentracial BISHOP LUCIUS HENRY HOLSEY 639 Bornnear Columbus, Georgia, in 1842,Holsey was theson of his whitemaster, James Holsey. He rememberedhis "aristocratic"father as a gentlemannof classical education,dignified in appearanceand mannerof life"who couldneither black his own bootsnor saddle his own horse.With muted contempt, Holsey added that his father"never married,but mingled, to some extent, with those females of the African race thatwere his slaves-his personalproperty." These includedhis mother,Louisa, a beautifulwoman of "pureAfrican descent." She was an "intenselyreligious woman, a most exemplaryChristian" who belongedto theMethodist church.3 In 1848 Holsey's fatherdied, and Holsey became the propertyof his whitecousin, T. L. Wynn,who livedin Sparta,in HancockCounty, Georgia. Holsey's whiteancestors had lived in Hancock County,and thusthe slave grew up among relatives.Holsey served Wynn as a bodyservant until 1857, when his dyingtwenty-six-year-old master asked Holsey to choose his next ownerfrom between two of Wynn'sintimate friends. Holsey selected RichardMalcolm Johnston, a planter and teacherin HancockCounty who hadjust accepteda professorshipat FranklinCollege in Athens.4 oppression.In his NewPeople: Miscegenationand Mulattoesin the United States (New Yorkand London, 1980), Williamsonanalyzes the antebellum three-tiered system of race relationsthat createda separatesphere for free blacks-often mulattoes-between the larger slave and white worlds.He describesthe disintegration ofmulatto society and the emergence of rigid segregation at theturn of the century. In theclassic Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915: Racial Ideologies in theAge ofBooker T. Washington(Ann Arbor, Mich., 1963), 161-255,August Meier suggests thatthe black minditself divided over the issue betweenthe conservative ideas of Booker T. Washingtonand theradical challenge of W. E. B. Du Bois. JohnDittmer, Black Georgiain the ProgressiveEra, 1900-1920 (Urbana,Chicago, and London, 1977), suggeststhat the black nationalismof Holsey and Turneroffered a thirdsolution in additionto thosepresented by Washingtonand Du Bois, especiallyfor the black "poorand uneducated,who had littleconcern forphilosophies of accommodationor protest"(p. 177); and WillardB. Gatewoodnotes in Aristocratsof Color: The Black Elite,1880-1920 (Bloomingtonand Indianapolis,Ind., 1990), Chap. 11, thatthe black elite's responseto JimCrow varied. 3Holsey,Autobiography, 9. 4CharlesHenry Phillips, The Historyof the Colored MethodistEpiscopal Church in America... (Jackson,Tenn., 1898; rpt.,New York, 1972), 213; ElizabethWiley Smith,The Historyof Hancock County,Georgia (Washington,Ga., 1974), II, 90, 97; BusterW. Wright, Burialsand DeathsReported in the Columbus (Georgia) Enquirer, 1832-1872 ([Columbus,Ga.], 1984),221; andRhea CummingOtto, 1850 Censusof Georgia, Hancock County (Savannah, Ga., 1980), 18,41; fora descriptionof Hancock County see JamesC. Bonner'sessay, "Profile of a Late AntebellumCommunity," in Elinor Miller and Eugene D. Genovese,eds., Plantation, Town, and County:Essays on theLocal HistoryofAmerican Slave Society(Urbana, Chicago, London, 1974), 29-49; JohnWilliam Gibson and WilliamHenry Crogman, Progress ofa Race,or theRemarkable Advancementof theAmerican Negro ... (Atlanta,Ga., 1902; rpt.,Miami, Fla., 1969), 532-34, mentionsWynn's owning Holsey's mother. For information on thewhite