"My ancestors did more than coexist with this institution and draw monetary gain from it. They endorsed it, they embraced it, they celebrated it, they destroyed a hallowed political union to protect it, and they launched what turned out to be the most blood-drenched war in American history to defend it. And with racial segregation, my parents' generation, and my generation, did much the same thing- no secession and civil war this time around, but blood was shed over and over again as the terror of lynching gripped the South in the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. And the Jim Crow laws and institutions built by that turn-of-the-century generation, the generation of "Radical racism," were passed down as immutable folkways and endured into my own generation."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesWilliams College facultyWoodberry Forest School alumni
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
p. 160
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_B._Dew
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Charles B. Dew
Charles B. Dew (born 1937) is an American author and historian, specializing in the history of the Southern United States and the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era. He has published three books, one of which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He is the Ephraim Williams Professor of American History at Williams College.
8 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Charles B. Dew →
Related Quotes
"Pop's sense of right and wrong was much more of a secular than a religious matter. As a boy, he had been a regular at…"
"Woodberry Forest School is a stunningly beautiful place located in the rolling Virginia Piedmont just outside the sma…"
"In some ways, I did a lot of growing up during my time at Woodberry. Mandatory evening study halls, supervised by mas…"
"It is still not easy for us white southerners to come to grips with our collective blindness to these evils, but it s…"
"I have an exercise that I ask the students in my History of the Old South course to undertake toward the end of the s…"
"It is a sordid tale, all of this, spanning centuries and generations, but we are not doomed by it. We can do better, …"
"Charles B. Dew is Ephraim Williams Professor of American History at Williams College and the author of the Fletcher P…"
"Scientific education is catholic; it embraces the whole field of human learning. No student can master all knowledge …"
"Honest investigation is but the application of common sense to the solution of the unknown. Science does not wait on …"
"Years of drought and famine come and years of flood and famine come, and the climate is not changed with dance, libat…"