26
OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 2004 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, Inc. Contents Letter from the Editors Murder in the Classroom: Privilege, Honor, and Cultural Violence in Antebellum Louisville Ann Hassenpfiug Out of School, Out of Work: Youth, Community, and the National Youth Administration in Ohio, 1935-1943 Kevin P. Bower Resistance on the Border: School Desegregation in Western Kentucky, 1954-1964 David L. Wolfford Reviews Cover: A political cartoon entitled “The Wards’ Hardin County Announcements Jury” showing the jury for the trial of Matthews Flournoy Ward after he was acquitted of the murder of William H. G. Butler. The Filson Historical Society 3 5 27 41 63 80 SUMMER 2004

OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

  • Upload
    others

  • View
    4

  • Download
    0

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 2004

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, Inc.

Contents Letter from the Editors

Murder in the Classroom: Privilege, Honor, and Cultural Violence in Antebellum Louisville Ann Hassenpfiug

Out of School, Out of Work: Youth, Community, and the National Youth Administration in Ohio, 1935-1943 Kevin P. Bower

Resistance on the Border: School Desegregation in Western Kentucky, 1954-1964 David L. Wolfford

Reviews Cover: A political cartoon entitled “The Wards’ Hardin County Announcements Jury” showing the jury for the trial of Matthews Flournoy Ward after he was acquitted of the murder of William H . G. Butler. The Filson Historical Society

3

5

27

41

63

80

S U M M E R 2 0 0 4

Page 2: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

Contributors ANN HASSENPFLUG is Associate Professor of Educational Foundations and Leadership at the University of Akron. A native of Louisville, Kentucky, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

KEVIN P. BOWER is Assistant Professor of History at James Madison University. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Cincinnati.

DAVID L. WOLFFORD teaches at Mariemont High School in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received his M.A. in History from the University of Kentucky.

2 O H I O V A L L E Y H I S T O R Y

Page 3: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

From the Editors

‘n this issue of Ohio Valley History, we focus on questions of power in educational institutions, practices, and ideas. Who controls schools and ,universities, and for what purposes? What sorts of social relations should

those institutions promote? What should be the place of the larger community in making educational decisions? What role should local, state, and national governments play, if any? Moreover, should questions of race and class and gender bear upon educational questions and, if so, how? These are the kinds of questions our three authors address in this issue. And they are timely ques- tions. Even today we contest among ourselves about whether educators or parents, the state or local communities ought to govern our public schools, and how they should do so.

Ann Hassenpflug begins by drawing our attention to a spectacular murder case in antebellum Louisville. In 1853, when a young, rich and violent young man murdered his brother’s teacher, he inadvertently launched not only a vig- orous debate in that city about the conduct of schools and teachers, but also raised basic questions about fairness and justice amidst a new system of social and cultural relations that had come to dominate the Ohio Valley during what historians call the nineteenth-century “market revolution.”

Kevin Bower then moves us into the twentieth century, investigating what happened to those Depression-era young people in Ohio who found themselves without jobs or hope. Through the New Deal’s National Youth Administration, the federal government sought to avoid potential social chaos by implementing hundreds of local training and education projects. But they quickly ran up against a serious limitation implicit in schooling of every kind. Teachers (and the state that employs them) might educate their students, especially young working class men and women, to take up positions, both economic and social, that society and its economy cannot or will not supply.

Finally, David Wolfford examines the reluctance of many white residents of western Kentucky to give up segregation, especially segregated schools, during the 1950s and 1960s. Here the questions turn on race more than class, but the central issue still centers on a question of power. Who will control schools and for what purposes? Should the advantage that some whites enjoyed by attending segregated schools be continued or not, and who should say so-a local white majority opposed to school integration or a national majority

S U M M E R 2 0 0 4 3

Page 4: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

1

F R O M T H E E D I T O R S

favoring integration? And what role should the state play in resolving such questions?

It should be noted that two books reviewed in this issue deal with similar educational issues. Joy Ann Williamson’s Black Power on Campus explores many of the same questions raised in David Wolfford’s article, only in this case on the campus of the University of Illinois in the late 1960s. Rick Nutt’s Many Lamps, One Light: Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary documents a long-term struggle played out in the Presbyterian Church over whether fun- damentalists or modernists should control the education of future clergy.

We hope you will find these articles stimulating. Taken together, they should shed some light on the historical roots of many of the conflicts and conundrums that face all of us today when thinking about and practicing education.

4 O H I O V A L L E Y H I S T O R Y

Page 5: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

Book Reviews

Charles C. Cole, Jr. A Fragile Capital: Identity and the Early Years of Columbus, Ohio. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001. 292 pp. ISBN: 1814208533 (cloth), $46.95.

n the popular historical imagination, the story of I the “winning” of the American west is a rural sto- ry, dominated by images of individualistic frontiers- men, resolute American Indians, and rugged cow- boys. Historians have long been aware, however, that the story of the development of the west should really be told as an urban story. From Richard C. Wade writing in the 1950s through William Cronon in 1990s, historians have shown that western cities served as nodes of settlement and com- merce, and as centers of politics and culture. Wade, in particular, argued that historians should closely examine Pittsburgh, Cin- cinnati, Louisville, St. Louis and Chicago when researching the development of the trans-Appala- chian west during the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, the role of smaller cities like Columbus got lost in that focus. Charles C. Cole, Jr., has done historians a considerable service in providing us with information that allows the incorporation of Columbus into this larger story. Created by an act of the Ohio legislature in 1812, the city of Columbus went from an unbroken tract of forest to one of the Ohio Valley’s largest and most important cities in just a few decades. Relying on a large number of letters and diaries, as well as

published materials, such as government records and newspapers (mostly from the Ohio Historical Society), Cole tells the story of Columbus during the four decades following its creation. In focusing on a place, rather than a person or persons, Cole has chosen to emphasize coverage over drama.

Cole has adopted a thematic approach in chart- ing the development of Columbus between 1812 and 1852. Chapters focus on discrete topics such as economic development, transportation, educa- tion, politics, culture, religion, journalism, and the arts. He also devotes chapters to discussions of

Columbus’s experiences with the women’s movement, anti-slavery activities, and other forms of an- tebellum reform. In each of these chapters, Cole narrates rather than analyzes. For example, in the chapter on economic devel- opment he describes in detail the owners of individual businesses and how their businesses oper- ated, but he does not generalize in order to draw a collective portrait of businessmen and their activi- ties in Columbus. And although the author examines the city’s business directories, he makes no use of tax lists, and there is

almost no statistical analysis of property or persons. Therefore, Cole can only speculate about upward mobility among the citizenry and the composition and size of an obviously growing middle class.

In addition, readers may find themselves raising two other major concerns. First, it is unfortunate that Cole chose to examine only the first forty years of Columbus’s history. Had he extended his study a

S U M M E R 2 0 0 4 63

Page 6: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

B O O K R E V I E W S

bit, he could have included the place of Columbus in the Crisis of the Union. It would have been inter- esting to learn how the Republican Party took hold in Columbus and how the city’s sons experienced the Civil War. Secondly, those studying topics out- side of Ohio will lament the fact that Cole has not done more to connect the story of Columbus to the various historical literatures dealing with national developments in nineteenth-century America.

That said, Cole’s knowledge of Ohio is exten- sive, and readers interested in a deeper knowledge of the city of Columbus and a description of what happened between the 1810s and 1850s will find A Fragile Capital a valuable source of information. One therefore can easily imagine graduate students using Cole’s book as a starting point for their own examination of these and other topics in Ohio his- tory, and as a point of entry into the collections of the Ohio Historical Society. In short, Charles Cole has written a useful book that will serve Ohio historians for years to come.

Leonard J. Sadosky Iowa State university

J. Blaine Hudson. Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland. Jeffer- son, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2002. 215 pp. ISBN: 078641345X (cloth), $39.95.

ecently, scholarship on the R history of the Underground Railroad-the movement of slaves escaping north to freedom-has enjoyed a renaissance. Scholars such as David W. Blight in his book Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory (2004) have added significantly to the field, as have new studies of notable participants in

64

this movement, for example, Catherine Clinton’s Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom (2004), Kate C. Larson’s Bound for the Promise Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American (2004), and Jean M. Humez’s Harriet Tubman: The Life and Life Stories (2003). Providing a regional study of the Underground Railroad in Kentucky as well as a local study centered in and around Louisville, Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies.

J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies and Acting Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Louisville, set out in this book “to present the historical record pertaining to fugitive slaves and the Underground Railroad in Kentucky as fully and as accurately as possible, based on the available evidence.” (2) And, indeed, he has suc- ceeded. Hudson presents an impressive statistical analysis of newspaper runaway notices, and he thoroughly analyzes the autobiographical and bio- graphical recollections of many African Americans who took flight from slavery in Kentucky, accounts written down sometimes by African Americans and sometimes by the white friends of the runaways.

150 Dollars Reward,

“, -- r. ,\.

Page 7: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

~

Hudson begins this book with an introduction that reviews some of the relevant historiography, states the purpose of the study, and surveys relevant primary sources, and he follows that section with a chapter covering the physical geography of the Ohio Valley, including Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Tennessee. The next five chapters parse the evidence collected by Hudson from a wide reading in the Kentucky newspapers of the era that included hundreds of runaway slave advertisements. He then collates the information gleaned from the advertisements, “801 references to 1,196 fugitive slaves” (32 ) , as he says, using an SPSS statistical program to create a “Kentucky Fugitive Slave Data Base.” The database is the source of numerous tables scattered throughout this work as well as, one supposes, the basis of the information provided in two appendices. Unfortunately, it is not clear from the text or the footnotes how or whether other scholars can access this important database, a worrisome problem because without such access they have no way to check the accuracy of the author’s calculations.

Hudson is at his best when he recounts the escapes of slaves from

that a natural increase among slaves in the South offset the loss of fugitives. Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland will find a place in high school and undergraduate libraries that supplements the recent scholarship on the Underground Railroad in the United States as a whole, while offering a regional and sometimes local case study of runaways from Kentucky.

Thomas C. Mackey University of Louisville

bondage. These stories, some of which are well known to scholars, such as the difficulties Margaret Garner faced, and some of which are little known to historians, detail the perils, pitfalls, and possibilities facing fugitive slaves. Overall, Hudson’s work con- firms what previous scholars have argued about es- caped slaves, specifically that they were overwhelm- ingly young and male and from the border states, and that they passed through an Underground Railroad consisting of a loose network of slaves, free African Americans, and white sympathizers. Hud- son also argues that, based on extrapolations from his database, the number of escaping slaves was greater than scholars have believed previously, and

Kirk C. Jenkins. The Battle Rages Higher: The Union’s Fifteenth Kentucky Infanty. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003. 452 pp. ISBN: 0813122813 (cloth), $35.00.

ver seventy-five thousand 0 Kentuckians served in the Federal armies during the Civil War while less than thirty-eight thou- sand Kentucky men enlisted in the Confederate armies. Yet the latter enjoys the attention of historians while the former goes almost un-

noticed. First-time author Kirk C. Jenkins attempts to redress this imbalance by rescuing a few of these men in blue from obscurity.

The Fifteenth Kentucky was a volunteer regiment organized in the fall of 1861 and assigned to the Army of the Ohio (later renamed the Army of the Cumberland). When the army attempted to check a Confederate invasion of Kentucky in October 1862, the regiment received a punishing baptism of fire at Perryville. Specifically, the Fifteenth’s eighty- two men killed or mortally wounded in that battle ranks as the seventeenth highest numerical loss for any Union regiment in a single engagement. Two months later, the Fifteenth was mauled again at

S U M M E R 2 0 0 4 65

Page 8: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

B O O K R E V I E W S

Stones River, Tennessee. Then it endured a third battering (this time from their displaced Kentucky neighbors in the Confederacy’s storied “Orphan” Brigade) alongside Georgia’s Chickamauga Creek the following September, as the Southern army seized the initiative from their pursuers, sent them reeling back to the defenses around Chattanooga, and settled down for a siege. Serving in the city’s garrison force, the Fifteenth did not participate in the Army of the Cumberland’s smashing of the Con- federate position atop nearby Missionary Ridge in November. However, it rejoined the army in May 1864 for the Atlanta campaign-a one hundred mile odyssey that saw the regiment encounter the “Orphan” Brigade on a number of occasions. It participated in the sequence of battles on the out- skirts of Atlanta itself that summer, then spent the remainder of its service defending the railroad to Chattanooga before being shipped to Louisville on Christmas Day, 1864, to be mustered out.

In three years of campaigning, nine hundred six- ty-four men had soldiered in the Fifteenth Kentucky, but only one-quarter of that number remained in the ranks by war’s end. With 14.3 percent of its men killed or mortally wounded in action, only thirty-two Federal regiments experienced a higher rate of combat deaths. There is no question that the unit compiled a record in which any solder could take pride, and Jenkins does a credible job presenting that record. Military historians may quibble with his failure to grasp the nuances of certain terms (most noticeably his inaccurate use of the word “flank”), but the author has written a clear and accessible narrative. A dozen maps do an excellent job of rendering broad tactical situations intelligible while simultaneously highlighting the particular role of the Fifteenth. And the inclusion of a detailed, one hundred eighteen page biographi- cal roster will be of particular interest to persons researching individual soldiers.

As with many modern regimental histories, how- ever, one is left wondering if this work needed to be written. The Fifteenth fought hard, but their fight

can hardly be considered unique. Descendants such as Jenkins may thrill to their ancestors’ exploits, but for wider audiences the book offers little of note. The author’s perspective on the war in the west fo- cuses too much on local details to serve the interests of general history, and the experiences of the men who served in the Fifteenth Regiment are simply too commonplace to merit specific attention.

The Fifteenth deserves consideration, however, not for what its men did but for why they did it. The most notable action of the Fifteenth, for example, came not on the battlefield but in camp, when nearly a score of officers attempted to resign following news of the Emancipation Proclamation. This incident alone demonstrates that historians who reduce the war to a conflict for or against slavery need to explain the motivations of men such as these Kentuckians, many of them slaveholders who nev- ertheless had committed themselves to the Federal cause. Unfortunately, the author never steps back from the daily routine of his subject to fully con- textualize what Unionism meant in a slaveholding state, or even to show how the anti-abolition, anti- Republican sentiments of the Fifteenth compared to those of other Federal units. Thus, the author devotes chapters to rehearsing familiar accounts of battles while incidents such as the killing of five men of the regiment by Confederate guerillas after their return home receive scant attention. In sum, when authors like Jenkins complain that Kentucky’s Federal soldiers have been neglected, they need to think about why that has been so. Moreover, they need to do more than simply to reproduce well-worn battle narratives that add little to our understanding of the meaning of the lives of Civil War soldiers.

Joseph Pierro Williamsburg, Virginia

66 O H I O V A L L E Y H I S T O R Y

Page 9: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

Thomas E. Pope. The Weary Boys: Colonel J. Warren Keifer 6 the 1 1 0’’’ Ohio Vol- unteer Infantry. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2002. 183 pp. ISBN: 0873 3 87295 (paper), $16.00.

n The Weary Boys, Thomas Pope provides stu- I dents of the American Civil War with an in-depth accounting of the l l O t h Ohio Volunteer Infantry’s escapades. In doing so, the author hopes to disprove General Winfield Scott Hancock’s depiction of the l l O r h Ohio as the “Weary Boys,” and to make a case for valuing the 1 loth Ohio’s important contributions to the Union war effort.

Pope provides readers with the first detailed history ever published of the l l O t h Ohio. Taking a chronological ap- proach, the author begins with the llOth’s formation and continues with the regiment’s initial training, its first taste of combat, its transition from a group of raw recruits to sea- soned veterans, and finally, the war’s conclusion. This approach makes a great deal of sense, but unfortu- nately, Pope routinely introduces evidence from 1864 and 1865 in chapters that were to focus on 1861 and 1862. This makes it difficult for the reader to understand what life was like for the soldiers in earlier years when Pope uses evidence from later years to prove his points. In addition, most chapters have no introduction or conclusion, leaving the reader to wonder how the information presented in each chapter advances the story. The book also lacks a clear conclusion, leav- ing the reader uncertain whether or not Pope proved his point that the l l O r h Ohio did not deserve to be known disparagingly as the “Weary Boys.”

But the book does have its good points. It is based on research in the most pertinent reposi- tories, including the Ohio Historical Society, the United States Army History Institute, the National

Archives, the Library of Congress, and numerous other libraries. And, impressively, Pope exhaus- tively searched period newspapers for tidbits on the regiment. Another contribution of The Weary Boys is Pope’s inclusion of the regiment’s official roster, as compiled by Ohio’s Adjutant General’s Office be- tween 1886 and 1895. The roster provides readers with each soldier’s induction date, age upon joining the regiment, and a brief overview of each soldier’s service record, especially useful information for persons interested in genealogy. The author could have provided additional insight into the regiment by identifying its members in other records as well. Census records and personal and real property tax records, for instance, might have allowed Pope to

provide more definitive information on the type of men who served in the l l O t h Ohio.

The Weary Boys is an interest- ing story. It fills a gap in Civil War history by providing a detailed his- tory of the l l O t h Ohio Volunteer Infantry’s exploits. Genealogists especially will find the roster useful. Unfortunately, Pope fails to impart to the reader why this story is im- portant and worth telling, and he avoids entering into any of the major debates currently gripping Civil War historiography. Pope seems not to

have consulted any of the numerous significant works on Union soldiers published in the last fifty years, such as studies by Reid Mitchell, James McPherson, and Gerald Linderman. Similarly, although a significant portion of the book details the 1 loth Ohio’s interaction with Confederate civil- ians, Pope did not address issues raised in any of the major works on this topic, including those written by Charles Royster and Mark Grimsley.

Michael Mangus Ohio State University at Newark

S U M M E R 2 0 0 4 67

Page 10: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

B O O K R E V I E W S

Stephen D. Guschov. The Red Stockings of Cincinnati: Base Ball’s First All-Profes- sional Team. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1998. 151 pp. ISBN: 0786404671 (paper), $24.95.

ost Cincinnatians need little excuse to wax M nostalgic about baseball in their city. This fall, the opening of the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame at the Great American Ballpark should pro- vide ample reason for the city to reflect back once again on the glory years of one of the nation’s most storied sports franchises. Inevitably, the media will turn its attention to two moments in time-the Big Red Machine of the 1970s and the first year the Red Stockings fielded an all-professional team, 1869. If all goes according to plan, the museum will offer fans many exhibits representing these moments, as well as many others, that will complement an already rich printed literature on the Reds. Greg Rhodes, perhaps the most prolific Reds historian, is overseeing the museum’s creation. And therefore soon Stephen Guschov should also see increased interest in his work after the museum’s completion.

In The Red Stockings of Cin- cinnati, Guschov provides a fairly complete story of America’s first all-professional team. He includes brief contextual material on the development of the game, which spread nationally during the Civil War, and on the early use of paid players around the country, especially in New York, where corrupt politicians managed to place star players in bogus government jobs. Guschov also provides helpful, brief biographies of the ten men who played on the 1869 team. The longest biog- raphies are reserved for Harry Wright, the team’s captain and driving force, his brother George, the team’s best player, and Asa Brainard, the team’s pitcher. At the end of the book, Guschov offers brief

follow-ups on each player as they departed from the Red Stockings after the 1870 season. Guschov then gives a game-by-game recounting of the first season, including a nearly out-by-out retelling of a critical victory against the New York Mutuals. In doing so, Guschov evokes a growing excitement that surrounded the team as it moved through its first season undefeated. Cincinnatians gathered at the Gibson Hotel to follow away-games that were reported by telegraph. The media in other cities anticipated the arrival of the new baseball powerhouse, eager for their local teams to trip up the Red Stockings.

Guschov’s writing is clear enough, and at times very engaging, though the game-by-game account of the first season loses its punch after the author’s description of the Red Stockings’ first successful eastern road trip. Guschov’s research is good as far

as it goes, and he provides many in- teresting quotes from newspapers in both Cincinnati and the cities where the Red Stockings played. The book also contains several illustrations, mostly portraits of the players. Gus- chov, however, is a lawyer and news- paper columnist, and his affinity for the brief essay quickly becomes apparent in the organization of the book which includes twenty-seven chapters in just one hundred fifty pages. As a result, no single issue seems to receive adequate attention,

as nearly every possible topic is broached but never thoroughly investigated or analyzed.

In the end, readers may be left with the impres- sion that the Red Stockings revolutionized the game by inspiring all-professional teams around the country and in encouraging fan support of the game. Indeed, the ball club did play a significant role in the baseball’s rapid growth into the national pastime. Still, Cincinnati’s own support of the game appears less important in this telling than in others, and therefore we are left to wonder how Harry and

68 O H I O V A L L E Y H I S T O R Y

Page 11: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

George Wright could have fled the city just a year after the close of their inaugural professional season, taking apparently everything with them, including the name Red Stockings, which they kept for the Boston team they organized. One would like to know more about how Cincinnatians coped with the loss, or, even whether they understood the Red Stocking’s departure to be a loss at all.

David Stradling University of Cincinnati

Frank X. Gerrity, ed. Tuft Papers on the League of Nations, Vol. 7, The Collected Works of William Howard Taft. Athens: Ohio Uni- versity Press, 2003. 302 pp. ISBN: 0821415182 (cloth), $49.95.

is volume of the William T“ Howard Taft papers consists of speeches, newspaper articles and complementary documents produced from 1915 through 1919 that deal with the League of Na- tions. During that period, Taft, a leader of the nation’s conservative internationalists, headed the League to Enforce Peace (LEP). Founded in 1915 mostly by Republicans, the LEP advocated a world parliament, arbitration of international disputes, and collective security arrangements. Unlike Wilsonian liberals, however, the LEP also favored a long-term expansion of the United States armed forces and universal military training on the theory that peace could be insured through a policy of military strength. The LEP also opposed any formal renunciation of national sovereignty by the United States to the League of Nations, and insisted that the nation reserve the right to use force independently, stands that placed the group at odds with the Wilson administration’s views. Most of the papers in this volume consist of statements by

Taft explaining the LEP’s views on internationalism in general and commenting on Wilson’s League of Nations proposal in particular.

By far the most interesting aspect of this vol- ume is the evidence it provides of support among influential American conservatives in the early twentieth century for international arbitration as an alternative to a confrontation among the Great Powers. Equally interesting is the information presented here about how conservatives favored collective security arrangements to deter military aggression, and sought a world court to develop and

apply principles of international law to a wide range of disputes between nations. In this volume, Taft’s views (and the LEP’s) on diplomacy and international affairs are revealed to be of a moderate but conservative kind, rather than the more extreme “Old Guard” position that histori- ans usually associate with Taft and his allies. Even Taft’s statements in defense of retaining formal national sovereignty are nuanced. In response to complaints that the United States would surrender its sovereignty by joining the League of Nations, for

example, Taft firmly replied, “Sovereignty is only a matter of definition and degree.. . We need not be frightened by a definition. We agree to arbitrate; we agree to abide by the result of an arbitration. That limits our sovereignty, does it not? Is that so heinous?” (175)

Taft’s moderation on the League of Nations is- sue can also be seen very clearly in his decision to endorse the League Covenant developed at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and in his subsequent tour of the United States during which he spoke in favor of the treaty creating the League that Wilson had submitted to the U.S. Senate for its approval. Although Taft would have preferred to insert into the treaty some article or clause that would explicitly exempt the Monroe Doctrine from that

S U M M E R 2 0 0 4 6 9

Page 12: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

B O O K R E V I E W S

agreement’s reach, he nonetheless publicly stated on March 16, 1919, that if the choice were between the League treaty as submitted or insisting that it be renegotiated, “I should, without the slightest fear as to the complete safety of my country under its provisions, vote for it as the greatest step in recorded history in the betterment of inter-

Ancella R. Bickley and Lynda Ann Ewen, eds. Memphis Tennessee Garrison: The Remarkable Story of a Black Appala- chian Woman. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001. 249 pp. ISBN: 0821413740 (paper), $17.95.

national relations for the benefit of the people of the world and for the benefit of my country.” (263) One year later, Taft elaborated on that position by stating publicly that, had he been a senator in 1919, he would have voted for the League treaty as submitted, rather than permit its rejection by the Senate. (xiii) In taking that stand, Taft broke with such old Republican colleagues as Elihu Root, Philander C. Knox, and Henry Cabot Lodge.

Thus, this volume of the Taft papers provides a timely reminder of a long-stand- ing internationalist tradition among moderate conservatives in the United States. The editors and publisher also deserve commendation for presenting this material in an attractive, easy-to-read edition, which replaces an earlier volume in an edition of the Taft papers that Macmillan published in 1920, although the editors might have noted at the start of each selection where it came from rather than putting that information at the end. That quibble aside, this is a fine piece of work that scholars and educated general readers will find useful.

David Stebenne Ohio State University

uring her lifetime, Memphis D Tennessee Garrison estab- lished chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, organized Girl Scout troops for young African American girls, created a curricu- lum designed to educate children with learning disabilities, organized her own breakfast program for her needy students during the Depres- sion, served as mediator between black labor and management for U.S. Steel, and started a “Negro

Artist Series” that brought nationally and interna- tionally renowned artists to West Virginia. Through Garrison’s story we become privy to the intricacies that comprised the lives of African Americans liv- ing in the coal towns of West Virginia during the age of Jim Crow. And we come to understand how meaning can be derived from both individual and collective experiences. Garrison’s life, fascinating as the editors of this book suggest, was infused with what on the surface appear to be contradictions, but when viewed more closely serve as evidence of her ability to successfully reconcile her role in conflicting positions.

While Garrison tells her story in a very matter- of-fact way, with an air of nonchalance, she clearly possessed a keen understanding of the significance of the contributions she made as an educator, poli- tician, and community activist. But readers learn little about the emotional toll that Garrison bore as a public figure. A poignant example may be seen in her discussion of how her support of Joe Parsons, a black man running for sheriff in Keystone, West

70 O H I O V A L L E Y H I S T O R Y

Page 13: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

Virginia, led to her suspension from teaching duties for an entire year. (132) Garrison also cites other examples of retaliatory measures taken against her for violating the racial code of etiquette, but provides little insight into how she dealt with these assaults on a personal level. She makes it clear that she found much spiritual strength in her Christian faith, but who besides her mother sustained her emotionally? The editors note the existence of these silences and gaps in Garrison’s story. However, they fail to provide any context that might help in explaining these gaps, context that could have been established using interviews with Garrison’s friends and acquaintances that are printed in the epilogue of this book. Moreover, the editors did little to situate Garrison’s story within the larger context of women’s activism, as they did for the history of the state of West Virginia and Appalachia in an “Historical Afterword.”

In spite of these flaws, Bickley and Ewen have made a tremendous contribution to the study of women’s activism in general, and African American women’s activism in par- ticular. Through Garrison’s life we are given a glimpse of what activism meant to black women living out- side of urban centers, lacking ready access to human and economic resources. The editors therefore should be commended for recovering and making available the story of Memphis Tennessee Garrison. It is through our knowledge and understanding of the lives of women like Garrison that we can come to understand the social, political, and economic milieu in which racial and gender consciousness came to be created, articulated, and transformed in early twentieth century America.

Beverly A. Bunch-Lyons Virginia Polytechnic Institute &

State university

Robert K. Murray and Roger W. Brucker. Trapped! The Story of Floyd Collins. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003. 333 pp. ISBN: 0813101530 (paper), $1 1.49.

rapped is the story of an attempted rescue T from a cave in southern Kentucky in 1925 that proved to be one of the three most well-known news events in the years between World War I and World War 11. In fact, only Charles Lindbergh’s historic flight across the Atlantic in 1927 and then the subsequent kidnapping of the Lindbergh family’s baby in 1932 received more attention in the media. News reporters and radio commentators from around the country flocked to a little out-of-the-way Kentucky town to relay the ordeal in minute detail.

And what they reported was a tale about Floyd Collins, a thirty-seven year old local cave explorer, who lived for sixteen days while rescue crews fought to release him from his entrapment. He eventually died from starvation and exposure, but in the meantime, he became a folk hero to millions of followers through accounts printed in newspapers and heard on the radio. Eventually, the scene took on a carnival atmosphere that hampered efforts to free Collins from his eventual tomb. Report-

ers, photographers, law enforcement officials and rescuers mingled with crowds of curious onlookers that at one time reached close to ten thousand in number. Other problems also complicated rescue ef- forts, especially a lack of leadership, uncoordinated plans and continual confusion among would-be rescuers.

Trapped kept me on the edge of my seat. You know the ending but still read on in hopes that some miracle will happen. Just when you think all hope is lost and you come to believe the rumors of Collins death, you are jolted by the reality that he is

S U M M E R 2 0 0 4 71

Page 14: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

B O O K R E V I E W S

alive and there is hope. In short, the story of Floyd Collins and his struggle to survive is well written and well researched by men who know history and caving, and who have enriched their story with contemporary newspaper accounts and with oral history interviews done with people connected to Collins and the rescue. The book also includes a detailed description of the Sand Cave site based on the authors’ own explorations that helped them to better understand and describe the confinement of a man pinned in a crevice by rock and dirt fifty-five feet below ground. Finally, an important part of this tale revolves less around the trapped man than how the media created a national event out of a local tragedy, much as cable television news shows and tabloid newspapers still do today.

This reprinting of a book originally published in 1979 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons is well worth the read. It provides important information about a time period that should not be forgotten and makes for exciting reading as it brings this bit of history, at least, to life.

Cornelia F. Sexauer University of Wisconsin-Marathon County

Annetta L. Gomez-Jefferson. The Sage of Tawawa: Rwerdy Cassius Ransom, 1861 -1 9.59. Kent: Kent State University Press, 2002. 325 pp. ISBN: 0873387481 (cloth), $42.00.

he African American religious T experience has produced nu- merous individuals whose lives have made significant contributions to the nation. Among the more well known are Dr. Martin Luther King,

leaders was Reverdy Cassius Ransom, a highly influential cleric-activist-scholar in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC). By way of background, the AMEC was established in 1787 in response to racial discrimination at the mostly white St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Subsequently, other AMEC congregations were formed in most states with black populations.

After graduating in 1886 from Wilberforce Uni- versity in Ohio, Ransom served as a pastor in several states and eventually was elected as a bishop in the AMEC. Throughout his early years in the AMEC as a pastor, he raised an articulate opposition to the accommodation to white supremacy supported by Booker T. Washington. His support of reform efforts called at the time “social gospel” coincided with the views of Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter, highly visible secular opponents of segregation and racial discrimination. Ransom of- ten chastised fellow black clerics and others for not making the church an effective opponent of racial discrimination and an advocate for social change. Ransom’s religious advocacy coincided with his love for Wilberforce University where he finally retired and died in 1959 after serving the AMEC

as a bishop well into his nineties. His battle to keep Wilberforce University open led to part of the university be- ing controlled by the State of Ohio and eventually spun off as Central State University, an historically black public university.

Professor Gomez-Jefferson re- veals the complexities of Ransom’s life and work in the context of the inner workings of one of the oldest African American organizations, the church, that forms an integral part of Ransom’s story. But Professor Go-

the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy and the Rev- erend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Among the lesser

mez-Jefferson’s also adds her personal understand- ing of Ransom since her father, Joseph Gomez, was

known but nonetheless important black religious both an AMEC minister and bishop mentored by

72 O H I O V A L L E Y H I S T O R Y

Page 15: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

Ransom. Her introduction, for instance, informs readers that Ransom had personal flaws that she goes on to detail. In this respect, the The Sage of Tuwawu seems reasonably balanced and thought- ful. The only possible flaw in the book lies in the author’s treatment of AMEC protocols and orga- nizational processes. Readers who are not familiar with AMEC might find some of her discussions of Ransom’s interactions with other clerics to be merely accounts of administrative “turf” battles of little substance.

In sum, this work makes an important contribu- tion to the study of the African American religious and intellectual leadership in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Reverdy Cassius Ransom influenced both his contemporaries and suc- cessors in church leadership and civil rights. Black churches and their leaders like Reverdy Cassius Ran- som would prove crucial during the battles for civil rights in the years im- mediately following Ransom’s death in 1959. In this regard, Gomez-Jef- ferson provides the reader with an understanding of why the AMEC, like other denominations with large black memberships, succeeded in

Rick Nutt. Many Lamps, One Light: Louisville Presbyterian Theological Semi- nu y: A 1 SOth Anniversa y Histo y . Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans, 2002. 272 pp. ISBN: 0802839134 (cloth), $38.00.

any Lumps, One Light is a very readable, M well-researched history of the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary that traces the school’s development from its early days as an out- post of Old School Presbyterianism to its present position as a leading mainstream theological school.

The account is richly spiced with ex- amples of the ways in which broader American religious and intellectual concerns have intersected with the history of a small, but influential, institution. To read this history is to rehearse the story of the develop- ment of American theology as that development came to be experienced in the Midwest and South. Indeed, part of the significance of the story of the Louisville seminary lies in the fact that the story encompasses both the North and the South as they met in the Ohio Valley.

organizing black communities around the civil The book has many highlights. As a historian of rights agendas of the 1960s and 1970s. Annetta L. American religion whose current research centers Gomez-Jefferson has written a comprehensive and on the twentieth century, I found Nutt’s emphasis intriguing biography of an important figure in the on the recent history of the seminary particularly history of the civil rights movement. fascinating. Louisville Presbyterian Theological

Seminary resulted from the merger of two older schools that represented the Southern and North- ern branches of the Presbyterian Church. The new foundation was an attempt to create an institution that would have the strength of both of its ances- tors, while hopefully, being freed from the financial shackles that had weighed down theological educa- tion in Kentucky. In many ways, this small merged institution led the way toward the eventual reunion of the two primary wings of American Presbyterian-

John A. Hurdin Western Kentucky University.

S U M M E R 2 0 0 4 73

Page 16: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

B O O K R E V I E W S

ism in the 1980s. If the Louisville seminary, however, had been

only the product of a financial shotgun marriage, the recreated school might not have survived long enough to merit a decent burial. But Nutt carefully shows that the school succeeded, in fact, in staking out a crucial position between the two regional wings of the denomination, The skill of the school’s administrators, trustees, and faculty in finding a way to rise above the squabbles of its time also becomes apparent in the way the seminary avoided many of the passions of the modernist-fundamen- talist controversy. While the Louisville seminary remained a basically conservative institution from 1920 to 1950, its conservatism was of the type that included substantial readings from all perspectives, and in some areas, such as religious education, it often took the lead in exploring new ideas and prac- tices. Interestingly, one can see how this approach has remained important in the way in which the school handled the turbulent post-1 960 era when women and ethnic minorities struggled both to find a place in the school and to help the school define its mission anew. While these battles were fought in almost all American seminaries, the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary’s resolution of them reflected its own unique heritage and location.

Nutt’s book has a flaw common to many histories of institutions, including seminaries; he organizes his story around presidents as if they somehow represented an embodi- ment of the school’s ethos in certain periods. To be sure, the Louisville seminary has had some fine people in the office of the president, includ- ing Frank Caldwell, C. Ellis Nelson, and John Mulder, but one wonders

subject might have provided another and differ- ent perspective on the institution. It is, however, unfair to compare a book to one that might have been written. Nutt’s history is a well-researched volume that will be read and appreciated by both those within the seminary and outside it for some time to come.

Glenn Miller Bangor Theological Seminary

Bangor, Maine

Joy Ann Williamson. Black Power on Campus: The University of Illinois, 2965- 75. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. 224 pp. ISBN: 0252028295 (cloth), $34.95.

lack Power” is still a discomfiting phrase. “ B It remains so packed with emotional resonance that, now three decades after its initial use, it can be difficult to understand what is actu- ally being said when we hear those two words.

Fortunately, a generation of young scholars has begun to re-examine the Black Power era, trying to help us understand what our deep hopes or deep fears obscured at the time. Joy Ann Williamsonns Black Power on Campus is a welcome addition to that conversation, in large part because higher education proved to be one of the most important venues in which the Black Power dynamic played itself out.

Williamson@ case study of Black Power at the University of Illinois

whether the story might not have been told more effectively from another vantage point. Given the importance of theology in the school’s story, for example, one wonders if an exploration of that

reflects the tensions and changes that affected campuses across the country. After the assassina- tion of Martin Luther King, the number of African American students admitted to historically white

74 O H I O V A L L E Y H I S T O R Y

Page 17: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

colleges and universities escalated sharply. And that meant black students arrived on campuses across the country just at the moment when the nation’s discussion of racial issues had begun to be shaped by the notion of Black Power. To whites on those campuses, it often seemed as if black students con- stituted a strongly united and uniformly militant bunch. But what appeared to be solidarity from the outside could seem very different from inside the black student community. Racial cohesion proved to be a fragile thing, consensus on political means and goals elusive, although student leaders constantly worked to build cohesion (or at least the appearance of it). The difficulty of the work accounts for some of their stridency.

Williamson deftly captures the complexity of the social situation in which black students found themselves, as well as their ideological and organiza- tional responses to it. She has an equally complex view of the relationship between the university administration and black students. In fact, many in the administration at Illinois expressed a good deal of sympathy for many of goals of black students on campus. In 1968, for example, administrators proposed bringing five hundred disadvantaged stu- dents, most of them black, to campus, a far larger number than most schools proposed to recruit at the time. Nevertheless, University of Illinois admin- istrators had to placate a watchful state legislature that tended to see black students as ungrateful and unqualified. More poignantly, however sympa- thetic they may have been, administrators tended to see black students through a cultural lens that made them appear culturally deprived, a view that consistently undermined the good intentions of administrators. They, for example, could un- derstand courses in African American history as a kind of therapy for black students, but they could not understand why black students raised funda- mental questions about the curriculum as a whole and argued that the courses then available left all students ill-served. In short, although conflict over differing interpretations of social reality may have

been unavoidable, Williamson argues convincingly that students, animated by the ideas of Black Power, ultimately changed the University of Illinois for the better for everyone.

Charles Payne Duke University

Anne Braden. The Wall Between. With a new epilogue. Foreword by Julian Bond. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999. 349 pp. ISBN: 1572330619 (paper), $19.95.

Catherine Fosl. Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Jus- tice in the Cold War South. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 41 8 pp. ISBN: 0312294875 (cloth), $35.00.

hese two volumes illuminate the life of Anne T Braden, longtime resident of Louisville, and one of the outstanding leaders of the twentieth century movement for human and civil rights. Born into a family that upheld conventional notions of racial subordination, she moved far beyond those moorings, becoming a bold, determined battler against racism and segregation. Conscious of the broad context of economic and political change in which the American racial crisis was set, Anne Braden and her husband-comrade Carl, who died in 1975, committed themselves to the work of ral- lying Southern whites to support the black freedom struggle, and she continues that work today.

Catherine Fosl’s meticulously researched and eloquently written biography insightfully fuses the personal and the political, linking Anne Braden’s life to the influences exerted upon her by broader forces in the community, region, nation and indeed the world. Fosl ably depicts the Alabama and Kentucky in which Anne Braden grew to adulthood, became

S U M M E R 2 0 0 4 75

Page 18: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

B O O K R E V I E W S ~

a journalist, and came to challenge the status quo. While maintaining her independent judgment, Fosl draws Braden into the book by quoting from vari- ous oral history interviews she has given and by including a response by Braden to the biography itself. Part of the response is a comment on the author’s reference to her as a Marxist. Braden finds the reference not entirely accurate, observing that in her view a “pure” Marxist believes everything is shaped by ma- terial conditions while she holds to a dualist view that sees a separation between our physical beings and the world of spirit. Yet Braden notes that her thought has been informed by Marxism, especially regarding the view that human history has been shaped by class struggle. For Braden, changing sides in the class struggle, moving from the propertied middle class to become a champion of the interests of the oppressed, proved to be the key to the overall course of her life.

Subversive Southerner provides a stirring narrative of Braden’s role in numerous struggles, a story that tells the reader much about social change throughout the South in the last half of the twentieth century. When she came to Louisville in 1947, Braden worked with the left-leaning CIO unions of the city and she also took part in Henry Wallace’s 1948 presidential campaign. In 1951, she joined a women’s delegation that traveled to Mis- sissippi in a vain attempt to save the life of Willie McGee, a black man sentenced to death on charges of raping a white woman. And, in 1954, Anne and Carl transferred the title to a house they had bought in a previously all-white suburb to a black couple, Andrew and Charlotte Wade, who wanted better housing than was available in Louisville’s segregated

~~

black neighborhoods. An outburst of racist hysteria ensued that resulted in the bombing of the Wade family home. All this took place within days of the Supreme Court’s historic desegregation ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case. Later, the Bradens helped lay the basis for the 1963 challenge to Jim Crow laws and practices in Birmingham, Alabama, and in 1966 they were selected to be CO-

directors of the Southern Conference Educational Fund that sought to broaden support for the civil rights movement in the South and the na- tion. In subsequent years, as Fosl points out, Anne and Carl Braden actively opposed the Vietnam War, and in doing so fused their radical inter-racialism with anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist ideas and prac- tices, and they passed that legacy on to others involved in both the anti- war movement and the civil rights movement. This was important because, as Fosl stresses (drawing on the scholarship of Patricia Sullivan and John Egerton), the post- World War I1 Red Scare had, by the 1960s, throttled the black-white alliance that sprouted in the 1930s. All in all, this narrative admirably conveys the drama and significance of Anne Braden’s activism.

A reading of the Fosl biography can be enriched by turning to Anne Braden’s autobiographical The Wall Between, a memorable, splendidly

written memoir of an inspiring life. This book is a compelling blend of social history that includes an account of the personal side of Anne’s life, especially her emergence from a conventional Southern white middle class upbringing and her efforts to take up the life of a committed radical. The book captures the reality of the corroding effects of racism upon white people, but it also chronicles how Anne

76 O H I O V A L L E Y H I S T O R Y

Page 19: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

Braden was of the generation that came to adult- hood during World War 11, a war against the racist philosophy of Nazism, and like many other whites of that generation began questioning American white supremacy as a result.

The heart of the book is the story of how the Bradens facilitated the Wade family’s purchase of a home on Rone Court in the Louisville suburb of Shively. This episode exemplifies in microcosm some of the key features of the 1950s, specifically the heightened desire of African Americans to seek release from the confinement of segregated housing, the increased willingness of some whites to commit themselves to a struggle for racial equality even as McCarthyism still sought to demonize all social activism as Kremlin-inspired, and an upsurge in domestic terrorism aimed at preserving Jim Crow. It is also worth noting that in some struggles, as in the Braden case, some measure of victory was won even though the Wades, in the end, were forced to leave Rone Court. Specifically, the Kentucky statute under which the Bradens were charged with conspiring to blow up the Wade home was found to violate federal law. This struggle brought the Bradens national attention and the active support of liberals and radicals in various parts of the na- tion. Reasoning Americans recognized that Anne and Carl Braden were not violent conspirators, but rather courageous, nonviolent champions of social progress.

In a foreword to a new edition of The Wall Be- tween, Julian Bond notes that the Bradens belong to a small band of modern abolitionists willing to brave danger in pursuit of the unfinished American racial revolution. (xii) And commenting on the first edition of Anne Braden’s autobiography, Martin Luther King, Jr., declared, “I found it one of the most moving documents that I have ever read. I feel it will live to become a classic on the southern situation.” Enough said.

Herbert Shapiro University of Cincinnati

Don Heinrich Tolzmann. G m a n Heritage Guide to the Greater Cincinnati Area. Milford, Ohio: Little Miami Publishing Co., 2003. 120 pp. ISBN: 1932250077 (paper), $15.95.

his engaging and very effectively organized little T study, which the author admits is “an introduc- tion” not a “comprehensive history” (l), highlights the noteworthy people, places, and events pertaining to German-American heritage in the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area. The author is one of the most prolific and well-respected authors of German- American history and immigration. He has written numerous books including Cincinnati’s German Heritage ( 1994), Covington’s German Heritage (1998), and Ohio’s German Heritage (2002). In addition, Tolzmann has edited many other books, among them The German-American Forty-Eight- ers (1998), as well as Emil Klauprecht’s German Chronicle in the History of the Ohio Valley, and its Capital City Cincinnati, in Particular (1 992). As curator of the German-Americana Collection at the University of Cincinnati, and director of the university’s German-American Studies Program, he is well acquainted with the primary and secondary scholarly resources of the field.

Tolzmann begins this book with a chronological timeline that starts with the arrival of Major David Ziegler and other Pennsylvania German soldiers at Fort Washington in 1790. Ziegler later became the first mayor of Cincinnati. Five years later, Martin Baum, the “Father” of German immigration to the Ohio Valley, arrived in Cincinnati. The author then traces the establishment of German Protestant and Catholic churches, German Jewish congregations, and the founding of German-language newspapers. Interesting historical facts, such as the origins of the name of Cincinnati’s “ Over-the-Rhine” neighbor- hood (8), the appearance of the “first decorated Christmas tree in Cincinnati” ( lo) , the differences between the dialects of “LOW German” and “High German” (lo), and the free lunches available in

S U M M E R 2 0 0 4 77

Page 20: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

B O O K R E V I E W S

Cincinnati’s family beer gardens (18), are offered along the way. The author also documents Ger- man-American contributions to art and music, as well as those to industry and philanthropy. By 1890, fifty-eight percent of the city’s population was of “German stock” (23) and, as the author states decidedly tongue-in-cheek, therefore three years later the “average per capita consumption of beer” in Cincinnati had risen to forty-one gallons, in contrast to the national average of sixteen gallons, “just one more indication of the German flavor of the area.” (24) On a sadder note, the author details the “ Anti-German Hysteria” that accompanied World War I in Cincinnati, the economic and cul- tural consequences of Prohibition to breweries and family beer gardens, and the plight of refugees who came to the city from Hitler’s Germany.

Later in the book, Tolzmann presents a series of detailed vignettes about the people and places connected with Cincinnati’s German-American heritage. The author describes in some detail the Turnverein (or “Turners”), their motto of a “sound mind in a sound body,” and their formation of the Ninth Ohio Regiment during the Civil War. (48-50) He also includes an aptly titled “German Heritage Who’s Who,” featuring very short, one-to-two sentence descriptions of notable German-Americans in Cincin- nati, including Doris Kappelhoff (or Doris Day, as she is better known). Two chapters then detail the sites, or places, of German-Americana in Cincinnati’s vast Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, and in Covington as well. Finally, the author devotes the book’s final pages to museums, librar- ies, and German organizations. Again Tolzmann offers some fascinating details about the Turners, including the Cincinnati Turner Colonization

(93-94) In future editions, the author may wish to add

several books to his bibliography including: John E. Kleber’s (editor) The Kentucky Encyclopedia (1992); Paul A. Tenkotte’s A Heritage of Art and Faith: Downtown Covington Churches (1986); and Annemarie Springer’s electronic book, Nineteenth Century German-American Church Artists (2001) (available at http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/kade/spring- er/index.html.) Overall, this book is well-illustrated and written in sprightly prose.

Paul A. Tenkotte Thomas More College

G. C. Jones. Growing Up Hard in Harlan County. Lexington: University Press of Ken- tucky, 1985. 177 pp. ISBN: 0813190800 (paperback reissue), $1 9.95.

emoirs serve a dual role in the academic M world, as both source material for historians and literary works in their own right. Because they are expressions of personal experience, they are

always, assuming a basic honesty, useful, even if the historical content lacks precision. Such is the case in the memoir of Green C. Jones, a vivid and moving account of the author’s early life in Appalachian Kentucky during the 1920s and 1930s. The University Press of Kentucky first published the book in 1985 and has now reissued it, although with no new front mate- rial. An expanded foreword, perhaps with biographical notes on Jones, and some introduction to how and why he wrote this narrative, would have helped the reader situate the book

Society’s founding of the town of New Ulm, Min- nesota, and the Covington Turners’ opposition to temperance, the Know-Nothing Party, and slavery.

more effectively in the context of its times. Jones “grew up hard,” he tells us, through intense

physical work and in a painful family situation.

78 O H I O V A L L E Y H I S T O R Y

Page 21: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

Throughout the narrative, Jones displays consider- able earthy pride in his ability to wrestle his living out of the physical world-through farming, driving teams of mules, mining seams of coal, and, later, operating heavy machinery in construction jobs in Florida. The book opens with an evocative vignette that places twelve-year-old Jones and several other men on a wagon trail that traversed Pine Mountain in Harlan County, Kentucky. These men, including Jones’s father and brother, were moving farm goods for sale to towns and stores on the other side of the mountain. It turned out to be a grueling trip, but through it all the youngest Jones distinguished himself as an expert handler of horses and mules. That skill gained him notice from well-off storeown- ers, who convinced Jones to earn some extra cash by running moonshine to some recently opened coal camps back on the other side. Through those connections, Jones soon became known to several powerful men in the county who saw in the hard- working boy something of a prottgt.

Those connections paid off for Jones when, soon after the Pine Mountain trip, his father kicked him out of the house, forcing him to scramble for sur- vival. Jones’s cryptic depiction of his father’s actions captures some of the mystification he must have felt as a child. Jones says, “he told me I would have to be on my own.” ( 2 5 ) That experience haunted Jones his whole life, through repeated, unsuccessful attempts to repair the damaged relationship with his father. As he grew older, Jones came to understand that he was a “woods colt,” the product of an affair between his mother and another man. The man that for many years Jones had thought was his father could not accept him and “didn’t want me around him and his children.” (176)

Much of this narrative concerns Jones’s par- ticipation in the coal mining union wars that gave “Bloody Harlan” its sobriquet. By his own account, Jones became closely connected to the union leader- ship. He spied for the union, organized workers, sheltered representatives who came from outside the region, and was the victim of various assaults and

kidnappings at the hands of gun-toting company thugs. Here the history loses some of its accuracy. Jones perhaps exaggerates his own role in various union efforts, as his name does not appear in the secondary literature written by historians on the strikes. Jones also dates the beginnings of the union wars (as well as the institution of New Deal programs like the CCC) to about the time when he turned fourteen years old. Since he was born in 1913, his dating must be off by several years. He also makes no distinction between the United Mine Workers of America and the communist National Miners’ Union, both of which competed in the early 1930s for the loyalty of Kentucky miners.

Not all of the union stories come directly from Jones’s personal experience. For the early stages in the unionization conflict, at least, before he played an active role, Jones recounts happenings that he heard second and third hand. The descriptions of “roving bands of united mine workers,” for example, or “beatings and threats from the mine protection thugs,” and rapes of miners’ wives and daughters are mostly the stuff of hearsay and community talk. (47) In these sections, therefore, Jones reports not so much his own experiences as stories that had gained currency among the miners and their families during these struggles. Here he writes less as a chronicler of events that he himself witnessed than as a translator to the outside world of the common wisdom and understanding of the people with whom he lived and worked. This is not meant as criticism. We may not always have in this memoir the most precise of histories. What we do have, however, can be considered more valu- able-first-hand testimony and folk history from a man in his seventies looking back on a robust and admirable life.

Robert S. Weise Eastern Kentucky University

S U M M E R 2 0 0 4 79

Page 22: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

Announcements

he Cincinnati Heritage Program of Cincinnati T Museum Center conducts historical, cultural, and architectural tours. All tours include lunch un- less specified. All bus tours depart from the front of Cincinnati Museum Center. There are no refunds after the registration deadline. To make reservations or for more information, call (513) 287-7031.

Off the Beaten Path in Boone County, KY Thursday, July 15; 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

sample wines made at the first farm winery in Kentucky. There is some walking on uneven and unpaved surfaces.

Cost: $60 members; $65 Non-members Registration Deadline: Thursday, July 8

A Twilight Picnic in the Parks Thursday, July 22; 6 3 0 to 10 p.m.

Back by popular demand! Our progressive dinner winds through Greater Cincinnati’s most beautiful hilltop and riverside parks. Over spectacular views, a course of dinner, from soup to des- sert, will unfold at each park along the way. Your guides will present the history, landscape and architectural features of each site.

Cost: $6.5 Members; $70 Non-members Registration Deadline: Monday, July 19

Batesville and Oldenburg, IN Follow the trails of mighty mastodons, ancient buf- falo and early settlers to discover the history and beauty of Boone County. Tour the villages of Rab- bit Hash, McVille, Bullittsburg, Taylorsport and Petersburg, which dot the beautiful rolling terrain. Enjoy lunch at Big Bone Lick State Park. Visit the 1870 Dr. John Stevenson house and its attractive gardens, which were once part of a 19th-century

Saturday, August 24; 9 a.m. to 4 3 0 p.m.

Tucked in the rolling hills of southeast Indi- ana, two villages maintain their German heritage. Guided tours of Batesville and Oldenburg will

mineral spring spa resort. Pick blackberries and reveal communities that still hold tight to strong

80 O H I O V A L L E Y H I S T O R Y

Page 23: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

family values. Enjoy a buffet lunch of fried chicken with all the trimmings. Visit the 300- acre Michaela Farm, from 1854, which provides organic produce for the Sisters of St. Francis and for sale to the public.

Cost: $60 Members; $65 Non-members Registration Deadline: Friday, August 6

Buckeye Bound! The Ohio State University Tuesday, August 24; 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Explore the academic and athletic powerhouse that is The Ohio State University, one of the nation’s great land-grant schools. Hear the bells of Orton Hall, walk the Oval and tour the world-famous Ohio Stadium “Shoe,” home of the 2003 National Championship Buckeyes. Enjoy lunch at the Fawcett Center. Check out the collections at the Wexner Center, Cartoon Library and Archives, plus a few surprises tucked away on one of America’s largest and most impressive campuses.

Cost: $65 Members; $70 Non-members Registration Deadline: Tuesday, August 17

of Sears-designed homes. Tour several Cincinnati neighborhoods showcasing excellent examples. Visit select homes to inspect first hand the fine craftsmanship of this manufacturing system.

Cost: $60 Members; $65 Non-members Registration Deadline: Friday, September 3

Wineries of Greater Cincinnati Saturday, September 18; 1 to 9 p:m. ~

In the mid-1 9th century, Henry Wadsworth Long- fellow wrote “The Queen of the West in her garlands dressed,” describing Cincinnati and the vineyards covering her hillsides. Enjoy the ambience of several different wineries in the Tristate, one of which is the oldest and largest in Ohio. Savor dinner at Chateau Pomije, where you can purchase the wine of your choice as an accompaniment.

Cost: $65 Members; $70 Nonmembers Registration Deadline: Friday, September 1 0

Tour of Sears Homes Saturday, September 11; 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

A manufactured home from Sears meant quality architecture and charm during the first half of the 20th century. Hear why Cincinnati had such a wide variety

S U M M E R 2 0 0 4 81

Page 24: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

A N N O U N C E M E N T S

Fellowships and Internships of The Filson Historical Society

The Filson Historical Society invites applications for fellowships and internships.

Applications must be received by October 15, 2004.

ellowships and internships are funded by a F variety of sources. Fellowships encourage the scholarly use of The Filson’s nationally significant collections by providing support for travel and lodg- ing. Internships provide practical experience in col- lections management and research for graduate stu- dents. Fellows as well as interns are in continuous residence at The Filson. Applications are reviewed twice a year, February 15 and October 15. Appli- cants should indicate how The Filson’s collections are relevant to their research topics. Fellowship recipients will have the opportunity to present the results of their research to scholars and the general public as appropriate. For more information about fellowships and internships, application procedures, and to view The Filson’s online catalog, please visit www.filsonhistorical.org, or call 502-635-5083.

The Filson is Kentucky’s largest and oldest independent historical society with research col- lections documenting the history and culture of Kentucky, the Ohio Valley, and the Upper South. The Library and Special Collections include rare books, maps, and 1.5 million manuscripts, form- ing the best research holdings in Kentucky for the frontier, antebellum, and Civil War eras in addition to extensive collections for the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Fellowships

Master’s Thesis Fellowships Eligibility: M.A. candidate at the thesis stage Tenure of Fellowship: One week Amount of Award: $500

Note: Full support is available for one-week fellow- ships to encourage use of Filson research collections by M.A. students developing and researching thesis topics. Partial support is available for students residing in Kentucky who travel from beyond the greater Louisville area.

Filson Fellowships Eligibility: Ph.D. or equivalent, or doctoral can- didate at the dissertation stage Tenure of Fellowship: One week Amount of Award: $500

Note: Full support is available for a one-week fel- lowship period. Partial support is available for scholars residing in Kentucky who travel from beyond the greater Louisville area.

C. Ballard Breaux Visiting Fellowships Eligibility: Ph.D. or equivalent Tenure of Fellowship: One month Amount of Award: $2,000

Note: Full support for post-doctoral scholars living outside of Kentucky is available for a one-month residence. Partial support is available for scholars residing in Kentucky who travel from beyond the greater Louisville area. Applicants for Breaux Vis- iting Fellowships are automatically considered for Filson Fellowships.

82 O H I O V A L L E Y H I S T O R Y

Page 25: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

Internships

Filson Interns Eligibility: Current enrollment in or recent completion of a graduate program in history or a related field Tenure of Internship: Two semesters Amount of Awurd: $1,000 per semester

Note: Interns work with appropriate curatorial staff and faculty advisors in areas of collections manage- ment and research.

H. F. Boehl Summer Interns Eligibility: Current enrollment in or recent completion of a graduate program in history or a related field Tenure of Internship: One to three months sum- mer residence Amownt of Award: $1,200 per month

Note: Interns work with appropriate curatorial staff and faculty advisors in areas of collections manage- ment and research.

S U M M E R 2 0 0 4 83

Page 26: OHIO - The Filson Historical Societythe Kentucky Borderland supplements and expands upon these national studies and biographies. J. Blaine Hudson, Professor of Pan-African Stud- ies

A N N O U N C E M E N T S

Online Encyclopedia

The Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky is proud to publicly unveil a new website for the project, available a t www.nkyencyclopedia.org. Dave Hatter, President of Libertas Technologies in Cov- ington, Kentucky, graciously and generously devel- oped this website as his major contribution to the project. We thank him for his generosity.

On the website, you will find many useful menu items. For instance, under the menu option of “Topics,” there are 11 helpful options in the pull- down menu:

Topics by Entry Name: an alphabetical key, by Entry name, to the nearly 2,000 suggested entries so far.

Topics by County: same as above, but listed alphabetically by County. Topics by Author: same as above, but listed alphabetically by Author.

Unclaimed Topics: check this list to see if you or anyone you know would be interested in authoring any of these entries.

Criteria for Inclusion of Topics: explains the Co-Editors’ rationale for choosing entries.

Sample entries: offers Sample Entries: two at present, more will be added over time.

* Writing Guidelines. Pertinent instructions for authors of entries.

Editing Guidelines for Co-Editors, Associate Editors, and Topical Editors.

Newspaper Index: a link to the Local History Newspaper Index of the Kenton County Public Library, covering the years, 1830-1932 and 1984-present.

Journal Index: a computerized and alphabet- ized index to Northern Kentucky articles appearing from the 1950s until the present in such journals as Christopher Gist Historical Society Papers, Northern Kentucky Heritage, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Ohio Valley History, Queen City Heritage, The Filson Club History Quarterly, etc. Bibliography: a bibliographic essay to book and other resources on Northern Kentucky.

In addition to the above, you will find informa- tion on Staff, a Photo Gallery, a changing “Did You Know That?” list of tidbits, and links to News articles appearing about the encyclopedia. Please browse the website, enjoy the photographs, and let us know if you would like to be involved in the proj- ect or to offer any photographs for our use, etc.

Those interested should contact Paul A. Ten- kotte, Director, Urban Studies Institute, Thomas More College, and Co-Editor, The Encyclopedia of

Northern Kentucky, at [email protected] 859-3 84-1 772

84 O H I O V A L L E Y H I S T O R Y