Book Review: There Goes My Everything
There Goes My Everything by Jason Sokol. Published by Alfred A. Knopf. 438 pages.
$27.95
In the first chapter of his thorough, accessible book, Jason Sokol presents us with a USA where the President is considered as a dictator by some, and rights are being taken away from average Southern citizens. He's referring not to the 21st Century but the 1940s, where several white concerns (communism, Semitism, federal meddling in their affairs) intermingled with racial tension with violent results.
After two world wars where minorities had fought for the freedom of the United States only to return home and be put back 'in their place,' the South was ripe for change. The struggle for civil rights has been well documented through history books, documentaries and African American eye witness accounts, but the other, white Southern side of the story is less well-known, overshadowed by the newsreel clips that keep cropping up when the era is documented - footage of ranting supremacists and pissed-off parents yelling at their brats' new, integrated classmates.
Brooklyn-based historian Sokol cares about the white guys caught in the middle of the strife, feeling that they also have something to teach us about the period and human nature in general. In a non-judgmental and expressive manner, he examines social change through fresh perspectives, stripping away generalizations to reveal a mass of conflicting feelings, guilt, frustration and conviction among the white majority between 1945 and '75.
Sokol covers the flashpoints of the era, paying particular attention to the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act. But his book pivots on the people affected by those momentous events rather than dry historical facts. He decides that the majority of them tried to ignore historical events around them, at least in their initial stages; for example, Martin Luther King, Jr's aim to turn the city of Albany, Georgia 'upside down' was treated with scorn by the Albany Herald. 'There will be obedience to the letter of the law,' said the newspaper's editor James Gray when the Civil Rights Act was passed, 'but no subservience.'
Like the stubborn rural Caucasians in Everything, Sokol tends to repeat himself. He reiterates minor facts in each chapter, sometimes using the same turns of phrase within the space of a few pages. Other, admittedly well-known issues are glossed over. The Jim Crow laws are oft-referenced but never explained for readers new to them. The author dwells on the 'poor me' white plight for too long – it’s hard to see his subjects as victims when some of them, like the 'vulgar' Altlanta restaurant owner Lester Maddox, a 'cracker Don Quixote,' tilted so sharply against desegregation.
Sokol also expends a lot of ink on the concept that whites were being emancipated as much as their African American neighbors. Unshackled from having to treat other human beings as their inferiors, life was supposedly easier for some of pro-segregationists whose consciences were clear. But it's quite a leap from the ingrained racists mentioned at the beginning of the book to these liberated whites, with whom readers will find it difficult to sympathize.
Despite these niggles, Everything is an eloquent accompaniment to worthy but brain-suckingly dull books like Taylor Branch's At Canaan's Edge. Peppered with brutally honest-to-God characters, Sokol teaches us that even the most ignorant people couldn’t fight this tide of change, although the transformation was a slow one in some rural areas. He notes that Walterboro, SC still enforced segregation in doctors' waiting rooms in 1974, while Terrell County Medical Clinic in Georgia kept that up well into the '80s.
Readers will be left with a greater respect than ever for the determination of the civil rights supporters (regardless of their race) as the author presents some easily digestible lessons in a period of history that’s hard for some to swallow.
- Nick Smith
$27.95
In the first chapter of his thorough, accessible book, Jason Sokol presents us with a USA where the President is considered as a dictator by some, and rights are being taken away from average Southern citizens. He's referring not to the 21st Century but the 1940s, where several white concerns (communism, Semitism, federal meddling in their affairs) intermingled with racial tension with violent results.
After two world wars where minorities had fought for the freedom of the United States only to return home and be put back 'in their place,' the South was ripe for change. The struggle for civil rights has been well documented through history books, documentaries and African American eye witness accounts, but the other, white Southern side of the story is less well-known, overshadowed by the newsreel clips that keep cropping up when the era is documented - footage of ranting supremacists and pissed-off parents yelling at their brats' new, integrated classmates.
Brooklyn-based historian Sokol cares about the white guys caught in the middle of the strife, feeling that they also have something to teach us about the period and human nature in general. In a non-judgmental and expressive manner, he examines social change through fresh perspectives, stripping away generalizations to reveal a mass of conflicting feelings, guilt, frustration and conviction among the white majority between 1945 and '75.
Sokol covers the flashpoints of the era, paying particular attention to the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the Civil Rights Act. But his book pivots on the people affected by those momentous events rather than dry historical facts. He decides that the majority of them tried to ignore historical events around them, at least in their initial stages; for example, Martin Luther King, Jr's aim to turn the city of Albany, Georgia 'upside down' was treated with scorn by the Albany Herald. 'There will be obedience to the letter of the law,' said the newspaper's editor James Gray when the Civil Rights Act was passed, 'but no subservience.'
Like the stubborn rural Caucasians in Everything, Sokol tends to repeat himself. He reiterates minor facts in each chapter, sometimes using the same turns of phrase within the space of a few pages. Other, admittedly well-known issues are glossed over. The Jim Crow laws are oft-referenced but never explained for readers new to them. The author dwells on the 'poor me' white plight for too long – it’s hard to see his subjects as victims when some of them, like the 'vulgar' Altlanta restaurant owner Lester Maddox, a 'cracker Don Quixote,' tilted so sharply against desegregation.
Sokol also expends a lot of ink on the concept that whites were being emancipated as much as their African American neighbors. Unshackled from having to treat other human beings as their inferiors, life was supposedly easier for some of pro-segregationists whose consciences were clear. But it's quite a leap from the ingrained racists mentioned at the beginning of the book to these liberated whites, with whom readers will find it difficult to sympathize.
Despite these niggles, Everything is an eloquent accompaniment to worthy but brain-suckingly dull books like Taylor Branch's At Canaan's Edge. Peppered with brutally honest-to-God characters, Sokol teaches us that even the most ignorant people couldn’t fight this tide of change, although the transformation was a slow one in some rural areas. He notes that Walterboro, SC still enforced segregation in doctors' waiting rooms in 1974, while Terrell County Medical Clinic in Georgia kept that up well into the '80s.
Readers will be left with a greater respect than ever for the determination of the civil rights supporters (regardless of their race) as the author presents some easily digestible lessons in a period of history that’s hard for some to swallow.
- Nick Smith
posted by Nick Smith at
9:05 AM
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