There Goes My Everything

by Jason Sokol

During the civil rights movement, epic battles for justice were fought in the streets, at lunch counters, and in the classrooms of the American South. Just as many battles were waged, however, in the hearts and minds of ordinary white southerners whose world became unrecognizable to them. Jason Sokol's vivid and unprecedented account of white southerners' attitudes and actions, related in their own words, reveals in a new light the contradictory mixture of stubborn resistance and pragmatic acceptance-as well as the startling and unexpected personal transformations-with which they greeted the enforcement of legal equality. "From the Trade Paperback edition."

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, American History, Politics, Cultural Studies, American

ebook

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Teri · Rating 4 out of 5]

“You’ve got to open the wound and clean it before it can heal,” James Prince reflected. “It’s as if we’ve had this open gash on the arm for 40 years and have done nothing but put a bandage on it.”

This is a book about racism. It is a different viewpoint of the Civil Rights movement from 1945 through 1975. Jason Sokol takes a look at how white southerners changed, or not, during this tumultuous time in American history. Many white southerners had very strong and direct viewpoints on race relations and many would not budge. There were those, though, who listened as Martin Luther King, Jr. and his followers marched through the streets, as students went to luncheonettes for sit-ins, as busing was protested. Their eyes were opened, sometimes slowly, but they did open.

The issue of racism was always there and is still seen in some parts today. In some southern towns, race relations are like a festering wound that will not heal. It is a subject not often discussed for fear of retribution from those whose beliefs are staunchly holding on to old segregationist ideology. Prince's analogy of the wound that will not heal until it is opened and cleaned still holds true today, in some parts of southern America.

This book takes a look at the history of those beliefs and the people who continued to fight for segregation and those that fought for desegregation and equal rights for all people. Sokol covers the battles of politicians fighting against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, desegregation, and voting rights, as well as following some ordinary citizens who fought to keep their businesses and restaurants segregated. There are those who willingly desegregated and others that were forced to integrate but would find new ways to draw racial lines. Sokol also revealed who truly seemed to change and see that we're all equal people deserving of the same human and civil rights.

I have read and studied many books on American Civil Rights. This book is one that should be read and discussed. Sadly, racism is not dead and it is important to continue fighting for equality for all.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a little wary of this book, because "white studies" can sometimes be code for, let's say, unsavory things. But this book is far from that. It's slightly sympathetic to the fact that the Civil Rights Movement changed life drastically for *everyone* in the South, both black and white, but it's not sympathetic to racist beliefs. It's not condescending to them, either- most images we have of white people during the Civil Rights Movement is that they were deluded or violently against civil rights. And yes, many people were against integration in any form and they did hold beliefs that were delusions (i.e., that black people were perfectly happy under Jim Crow). But, there were also a significant proportion of white people who just went with the changes without a fight. They may not have been proponents of civil rights, but when change came, they changed with it.

This is a story that has not been told. The book covers some of the usual story arc of whites during the Civil Rights Movement (i.e., Bull Connor, George Wallace, others who reacted violently to the idea of integration), but it also tells the story of people who may not have *wanted* integration, but accepted it as inevitable and accepted it with a reasonable amount of grace. It raised questions that I had not considered. For instance, if you were a white parent when schools were being integrated, and there were other white parents who were vociferously against integration, to the point of forming mobs at the schools and shouting or hurling things at kids who went into those schools (both black *and* white), do you keep your kids home? Do you send them to school even though they have to walk through that mob? Do you send them, even if it means you'll have rocks thrown at your house and harassing phone calls that the police won't do anything about? Even if it means you may lose your job or be forced to move away? What do you do in that situation? Some parents did send their kids and their kids faced a fair amount of pressure. Some parents looked at the situation, and even if they personally did not have a problem with integration, they kept their kids home out of fears for their safety. Having read about what happened to families that did send their kids to the first integrated schools, I'm not wholly sure I blame the parents who decided to keep their kids home (I do blame the people who formed the mobs and did the harassing, though).

In other words, the Civil Rights Movement was complicated for everyone and this book demonstrates that aptly. It was an interesting read and I'd recommend it.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where most books on the civil rights upheavals of the 50s and 60s focus on the major episodes in the movement, Jason Sokol has managed to tell the story from a slightly different point of view. There Goes My Everything tells the story of the civil rights movement in the South from the aspect of the ordinary people it affected. Without losing the importance of what these events meant to black people, Sokol does a compelling job of showing the internal changes it caused in the generation of white people who suddenly found their world turned upside down. This was an enlightening look at both groups in a truthful and factual way.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book came out in 2006, but it is newly relevant in this age of state legislatures passing bills against "divisive concepts' and critical race theory. There's a lot of rich material here about how white Southerners reacted to the Civil Rights Movement, using letters to the editor, unpublished news pieces from the Newsweek archive of reporting on the South in the Civil Rights era, and of course, a variety of oral history interviews. The final chapter, on the efforts of white Southerners to escape the history of slavery, violence, and segregation ends with a comment from Curtis Tate, quoted by Ginger Thompson in the New York Times, 'They are the ones who can't handle the truth...Isn't it the same for all Black people, that we have to be careful to make white people comfortable?" That observation rings especially true today.

[Joe Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a difficult but necessary read. It covers the 1945-1975 period of the American south. I was born in north Florida in 1973. My childhood was tainted with the echoes of this period. My elementary/middle/high school education was impacted by the old south. It has taken me a lifetime to start coming to terms with the horrors of the past and guilt of white society. Watching America 2016-present, I fear we have not even begun to come to terms with our nations original sin of slavery.

It is difficult to have hope.

[Daniel Burton-Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sensitive treatment of a previously ignored topic.

[Debbie Howell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-researched, well-written book about the impact of the Civil Rights movement on white Southerners. Encompasses post-WWII through the 1970s. At the height of the Civil Rights movement, I was an elementary-school-age kid in the South, aware of big events in the news and their occasional impact on my life. For instance, my first-grade teacher in Alabama warning us kids not to go to Selma because bad things were happening there, and as a 10-year-old in Memphis our Easter clothes shopping trip being cut short because Martin Luther King had been shot just a short distance away. But I didn't have real understanding of what was going on. This book deals with the obvious changes in the South--integration of restaurants, schools, the opening of the political process to blacks--things I was too young to experience the before-and-after of in a big way. But the author also deals with the more broad yet subtle change that I can relate to more--the ongoing struggle to get beyond the (important) surface changes to the actual "How do we live with each other in this new society?" Most books I've read on the Civil Rights era focus on the black community and the most racist whites. Sokol has also included the broader white community that was repelled by the worst racist displays, yet also was bewildered, confused, and threatened by the changes and turmoil going on. I think he did a good job of describing the atmosphere in the South of that time, and while he gives no clear answer about the impact of the Civil Rights movement on white Southerners, I think that's correct--the impact varies greatly among people there, and the jury's still out on how blacks and whites will learn to live with each other on equal terms.

[Mdm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid reporting on underreported stories of integration, often from the "white southerner" perspective. In depth on school integration cases from the 70s. Glossing of all the major achievements of the Civil Rights movement that are covered elsewhere. A great thesis for a book, well executed.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is a really compelling, empathetic, and revealing history, but I do have my critiques. This is a social and cultural history of ordinary white people in the time of civil rights. Sokol argues that our histories of this era focus on activists, politicians, police, and other dramatis personae that don't get us at the experiences and reactions of the majority of white people who were somewhere between the Klan and Hodding Carter (a progressive MIssissippi newspaper editor).

Sokol presents an incredibly rich portrait of how whites dealt with the massive changes of this era in their daily lives, profiling schools, businesses, work, and just daily interactions. He shows how many white people had internalized the cultural assumptions that upheld JIm Crow: black people were basically happy with their lot, they couldn't handle much more, and they weren't as smart and capable as white people. Whites believed they knew and understand "their Negroes." When they started to rise up, many contended that they must be doing so because of outside agitators, whether that be Yankees, liberals, or communists. They were often genuinely shocked and angered to see that black people were not in fact happy with a second-class existence.

The major theme of this book is variety: white people reacted in almost all conceivable ways to Jim Crow. The hardcore segregationists were a relative minority. Most whites were fine with segregation, but they weren't willing to defend it to the expense of all other goals. For example, after Brown v Board there was massive resistance to the integration of schools as well as violent attacks on civil rights workers. But when it became clear that the federal government, or in many cases city govts like CHarlotte, would really enforce integration and other civil rights measures, many whites decided that it was better to have open and integrated schools (sometimes on a token level) or to flee into private segregation academies. Others were so alienated by the ugly violence and racism of ardent segregationists that they became more open to civil rights and integration. Others believed that the wave of the New South was business, tech, industry, cities, etc, and that this meant putting the nearly feudal Jim Crow system behind them. There were all kinds of motives and reactions, with grudging and partial acquiescence being something of a median.

Sokol is more empathetic to southern whites than most historians might be. I don't think he whitewashes the virulence of Jim Crow racism though. He also makes clear that power in most places remained in white hands, especially in an economic sense. Nonetheless, I think Sokol sometimes downplays the degree to which white people restructured economic and political life to hang on to power and restrain change as much as possible: voting for segregationist or race-baiting president, gerrymandering districts to dilute the black vote, massive white flight in cities like Atlanta, and a desire to be wink-winked at about race by politicians for decades. So overall, the thesis of accommodation and acquisence holds up more on the personal level of people treating each other more respectfully, sharing public spaces, etc than it does for who holds power and resources in society.

Lastly, I thought this book could have been about 25 pages shorter. Sokol repeats his arguments a lot, and many of the stories illustrated the same point repeatedly. It makes for a fairly long read and time investment for something that could have been more effectively told. Still, it is excellent as immersive and empathetic history, and it reflects what would have been a massive amount of research by Sokol. it is also on a crucial topic (white reactions to black politics) that we are still grappling with today.

[Mark Greenbaum · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is part of my continuing effort to gain a better understanding of the America I inhabit. It is a deeply thoughtful study of the reaction of whites to the civil rights movement, and its mining of exclusively primary sources without accompanying commentary or slanted political tone gives it absolute legitimacy. This is a book that you come away from with an enhanced comprehension of your world through its history, which strikes me as great praise, especially for something written by an academic. But therein too is the book's main flaw, which is that it was clearly a doctoral thesis, and Sokol did not take the appropriate time to add a greater degree of organization and structure so to make the text more digestible (though, he is an excellent writer, and while the prose isn't a novelist's, it is imminently readable for a layman). Sixty-page chapters with few sectional breaks makes digesting glacier-sized parts a challenge.

[Bexan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such an important book! I very much enjoyed it, although I thought the last chapter needed a bit more refining to make the point Sokol was trying to make.
Overall, however, I think that this is a very good work that underlies how the south changed under the Civil Rights Movement. Our history of the movement is dominated by the dual poles of the segregationist klans man and the African American communities brave stand, and while this is true, this movement ignores the white people who were not active segregationists but were still racists. The type of person who hated MLK, but thought that the Birmingham bombing was an atrocity. These people didn't go away, and they are the people who ultimately caused integration to work, even with the apprehension, if not revulsion, that they felt at this state of affairs. They aren't GOOD people, but they are a group of morally complex individuals who have to be understood to get an understanding as the south was and is.

[Ray Higgins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This detailed the social changes that were at work in the Southern United States after WW II. African American veterans, many who were recognized for their valor and courage in combat, were returning to civilian life after military service. The equal treatment (for some, more equal than for others) that they saw while serving was very different to what they faced in the Jim Crow era of the South of the time.

While some Southerners received the returning GI's and were thankful for what they did overseas, (no matter what the color of their skin was) others were anticipating that the accepted social behavior of the South would continue. The book provided both sides of the issue.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some people can adapt and some people can even change and evolve, but there are others trapped in living a lie, bound by their own irrational hate and fear.
The chapter about school integration included some fascinating white people. I also learned a lot from the chapter about barbecue(!).
Most disturbing is how quickly and suddenly we seem to have fallen back. When W was president, people like Trent Lott had to apologize and even step down from leadership positions for failing to learn the lessons of the Civil Rights movement and now 15 years later you have a Republican party openly fighting for voter suppression. But I do not despair... they are outnumbered and we shall overcome.

[Christine VanDoren Peters · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has been on my to read list for far too long and I am so glad that I read it. It is meticulously researched and very analytical while at the same time remaining very readable. I live in a historically racially divided city and this reading brought many nagging issues I have noticed to full front.

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the idea of this book, and there were a few tidbits that I found particularly interesting. But in the end, I found the book a bit too academic for what I was looking for or what I was expecting, so I gave up on it.

[Eileen Lightbody · Rating 5 out of 5]

A side of the Civil Rights movement we don't often consider.

[Jennifer Cain · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing book that gives great insight into the mind of the Southerner during the Civil Rights movement.

[Michael Frost · Rating 2 out of 5]

Much too academic... could learn something from Isabel Wilkerson about merging deeper human stories into the narrative.

[Thijmen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, but meanders a lot + lacks a clear conclusion.

[Nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay. Very very long chapters made it a bit of a drag.

[Charles Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of the civil rights movement is often told from the point of view of the courageous African-American men and women who rose up against Jim Crow and wiped out de jure discrimination. But in There Goes My Everything, the young historian Jason Sokol looks at the struggle from the point of view of white Southerners. He explores what he calls “the ambiguous contours of change,” the way the near-monolithic opposition to desegregation and racial equality was pulverized over the course of three decades. It’s a story in which all sorts of white Southerners – from violent bigots to grandstanding politicians to ordinary people caught up in the turmoil – are given voice, in an attempt to document what Mr. Sokol sees as “a revolution in consciousness.”

The book starts with a look at the paternalistic Southern myth that black people had a childlike contentment with their subjugation. Southerners came to believe that “outside agitators” and “communists” were somehow to blame for the unexpected passion for equality that those once-docile blacks exhibited. (The assumption was not limited to the South, as Mr. Sokol points out: A Gallup poll in 1965 revealed that about three-fourths of all Americans believed that communists had at least “some” involvement in the civil rights movement.) White Southerners also clung to what Mr. Sokol calls “a peculiar notion of individual freedom” -- their freedom to discriminate, in essence the freedom to deprive others of their freedom. As one white man put it, “if the time comes when the white people can no longer choose their friends, associates, or customers, then that will be true discrimination.”

There Goes My Everything is a richly documented, often compellingly dramatic narrative, whose strength is its absence of polemic. It shows how white Southern attitudes were at once complex and fragile – even those of such celebrated hard-line segregationists as George Wallace and Lester Maddox. It’s not that Mr. Sokol is sympathetic to bigots, but that he understands their humanity, that the roots of hatred and ignorance can be deep and obscure. It’s a book that celebrates a change brought about by striking at those roots.

Yet the book also serves as a reminder that although the naked racism of the period has dwindled, its eradication has not been complete. The de facto discrimination that replaced legal discrimination can be just as pernicious. Mr. Sokol tells, for example, how in November 1960, New Orleans responded to judicial pressure by desegregating the schools in one of its poorest districts: the Ninth Ward, which was then home to many poor whites. The ugliness of the white resistance to the court order – mobs spewing hate at black children – shocked the country. The book not only records the voices of the protesters, but also tells us of the trials faced by the few whites who, out of conscience or simply because they couldn’t afford to send their children to private schools, tried to go along with the desegregation order.

In the end, whites fled the Ninth Ward, leaving its schools as segregated as before. And most Americans forgot about the district for the next 45 years, until it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, and the government’s neglect of its poor black residents made headlines. The story of the Ninth Ward suggests that although Mr. Sokol’s book is about the transformation of the white South from bigotry to tolerance, William Faulkner got it right when he wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

[Alh]

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the sections where this book hits its stride, it’s an ambitious and brilliant peek into the complexities of being a white southerner during the civil rights movement. The book’s biggest strength is Dr. Sokol’s ability to delve into this topic and neither apologize for nor demonize white southerners. Instead he works to understand them and put their struggles into context (and largely succeeds). That said, the book’s wildly inconsistent in writing and organization, and even, at times, research. While some of the chapters come together (see the chapters on education and the 1964 Civil Rights Act), in others Dr. Sokol seems a bit over his head. It’s understandable, given the massive amount of material covered, but it also makes about half the book a chore to read. My feeling is that the problems of this book are largely due to Dr. Sokol’s inexperience (frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn this book was his dissertation). It’s an ambitious book, one that would likely be entirely different if written by someone a decade or two into his career. Part of me hopes Dr. Sokol himself may, at some point, revise and streamline this book. Even if he doesn’t, I plan to keep my eye out for future books: the strongest sections of this book are tremendously well written and researched, and if he continues to build in that direction, he’ll be a welcome new voice in American history. Quasi-recommended.

[David Lucander · Rating 4 out of 5]

This ambitious book is the Civil Rights-era equivalent to Edgerton's book on the Roosevelt era, "Speak Now Against the Day." The two texts share many qualities. Sokol's book reads like an encyclopedic and authoritative tome. As such, it can be a little repetitive. Like Edgerton, and all good historians, Sokol also points towards exciting new fields of study. The reactions of common whites are so often overlooked in studies of the Movement, and it's something my students often want to know more about. The South produced tactful segregationists like Laurie Pritchett and blunt bigots like Bull Connor, but Sokol goes beyond the police and politicians to tell the story of how regular whites reacted to the Movement. Chapter 4 is a highlight, it discusses how white restauranteurs and patrons responded to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

[Cheryl Kuhl-paine · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a white woman raised in Kentucky during the 80s and 90s, there were a lot of omissions and straight up lies in my education concerning race and the Civil Rights Movement. This book is excellent for explaining where those ideas came from, and why the adults in my life --people I admired and sometimes loved, and who had taken on the responsibility of raising and/or teaching me-- were comfortable teaching me those ideas.

This is a history book but it's also making an argument. It's not a school history textbook that tells you how it is and expects you to just believe it; it makes a claim and then gives multiple examples to support that claim. It'll come off as repetitive.

[Jo-Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provided me with tremendous insight into aspects of the Civil Rights movement that, as a Canadian and as peripherally informed on the struggle in the South, I did not understand. Like most people I find the treatment of African Americans in that time to be disturbing and repugnant. I will not say that my country is exempt from systemically racist behaviour; we have our own troubled history. I think the message that I've gotten from this volume is how deep feelings run when we perceive our way of life as threatened; this fear and resistance can give way to dreadful consequences. Sokol has done me and others a great favour in enlarging our understanding of this complex time.

[Jessica Leight · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had a great deal to offer but suffered a bit in the delivery. The structure was oddly frustrating. First, the chapters seemed very long and not particularly focused; it was not always obvious what differentiated one from the other. Second, at times the book seemed like a very lengthy string of interesting anecdotes or historical vignettes. Third, some of these vignettes were repeated. A better book would have been more streamlined and more clearly subdivided; still, the author is undoubtedly filling a niche, as most of the material about white reactions to the civil rights movement was completely new to me.

[Ben Vance · Rating 5 out of 5]

An incredibly well researched book on the views of southern whites during the civil rights era. It manages the difficult task of being empathetic without being sympathetic to those fighting against civil rights. The author lets the subjects speak for themselves does a good job of highlighting how they experienced the changes around them without defending their views.

Perhaps the scariest part was the section of integration at schools and universities. It’s sobering to read stories of riots on campus and remember many of those perpetrators are still alive and voting.

[Gary Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must have recommended this book to friends a hundred times. The author is no apologist for racism, but he explores a little-understood facet of the white southern psyche: what were they afraid of, and how were those fears overcome? An interesting aspect of his journey through the civil rights era is the recognition that the more rapidly an area of the south embraced some degree of civil rights, the more it prospered.

[Jennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting perspective on the civil rights era in the South. It's a bit repetitive, but it reads clearly, and I really appreciated the insight. I feel I have a better understanding of the point of view that was resistant to change. I definitely recommend it.

And, as a proofreader, I must say that it's very clean; only a few errors.