Essay on "The Briar Patch"
by Robert W. Watson
(27 October 2001)

In 1985, Robert Penn Warren became the first American poet laureate. Born in Guthrie, Kentucky, Warren was a talented scholar who found chemistry boring, but the classes of John Crowe Ransom and Donald Davidson exciting. While as a student at Vanderbilt University, Warren was one of the Fugitive Poets, and later became a Rhodes Scholar. Warren taught at Louisiana State University and at Yale University. Perhaps Warren's best known book is All the King's Men, but he was a poet above all else and is anthologised as much as John Crowe Ransom. Some of his many volumes of poetry include Incarnations and Audubon: A Vision. An excellent volume of Warren's poetry is Selected Poems of Robert Penn Warren. Also worthy to be read are Warren's essays in Democracy and Poetry.

The essay, "The Briar Patch," which is his contribution to I'll Take My Stand was repudiated by Warren in his later works, Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South and The Legacy of the Civil War. I suspect however that Warren's "retraction" was due to his being accepted by the Northeastern establishment, and he did not want to jeopardise his being in good standing with the elite. According to the earlier Warren, the blame for any racial antagonisms in the South was the doing of Yankee policies during and after Reconstruction. One can understand why Warren would soften his views regarding the "Negro question," but his repudiation must fail to be both credible and sincere. Therefore, we should look at "The Briar Patch" at face value, since this essay reflects what Warren believed before his rise to fame, and in 1930, it represents his opinion regarding the issue of Southern race relations.

It ought to be clear that it is impossible to discuss Southern history apart from the common influence of all Southerners, regardless of colour or creed. The Southern culture is a blend of the best of these influences, and we Southerners have become a better people for it. The peace and tranquillity of our Southern nation and communities have always been disturbed, not from those inside, but from those outside our borders. The tragedy of Reconstruction has taught us that when men without Christian scruples are in power, God cannot work in the land. Yet every Southerner, slave or free, black or white, shared in the same defeat, the same sorrow, and the same humiliation, a common store of memories that should have been shared with each other and with every subsequent generation. The tragedy of the twentieth century has been the unwillingness, for the most part, of the black Southerner to actively preserve his rich inheritance of these common memories experienced by all Southerners. In that he has lost his roots in Africa, and now ignores his history at the South, the black Southerner is truly a man without a nation. He has become a citizen of an empire, which will not, nor cannot help him.

In The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), James Weldon Johnson makes the observation that while the Yankee has an abstract "love" for the Negro as a race, he has "no particular liking for individuals of the race." On the other hand, Johnson points out that "Southern white people despise the Negro as a race, and will do nothing to aid in his elevation as such; but for certain individuals they have a strong affection, and are helpful to them in many ways. With these individual members of the race they live on terms of the greatest intimacy." Furthermore, Johnson claims that this "affectionate relation between the Southern whites and those blacks who come into close touch with them has not been overdrawn even in fiction." Johnson's words reminds us of the Lord's parable of the two sons, one who said that he would do his father's bidding, but did not; the other son said that he would not do what his father requested, but repented and did accomplish what his father wanted. Like the latter son who did the will of his father, the Southerner does more for mankind by developing personal relationships, regardless of race or creed, rather than if he were to have some all encompassing abstract "love for mankind" like the sentimental elite.

Like all Yankee myths, the officially approved history of Southern race relations is cast in the fine tradition of the hyperbole, which makes the righteous North to be the paragon of reasonableness and toleration, and the wicked South to be the enclave of bigotry and sadism. I do not wish to offer examples and counter-examples of the above allegations, because such a discussion proves nothing. The human experience includes the entire spectrum between kindness and cruelty, and examples of both can be shown to exist anywhere in the world at any time. The purpose of my critique is to state Warren's observations and to attempt to apply them today, if possible.

Before the war, the best solution that North and South could offer regarding the issue of slavery was a gradual emancipation. But always contingent upon the slaves' freedom was a return to Africa or a deportation to Central America. It was not slavery that bothered the white American society; it was the free Negro. Colonisation was supported by "philanthropists" and most national leaders, including Abraham Lincoln. The South had the largest abolitionist society in the land, the American Colonisation Society, having a limited success with its colony in Liberia, the capitol being Monrovia, named after President James Monroe. But typical of all do-gooder schemes, which are always dictated by the white elite (see Brown v. Board of Education for details), the blacks were not given any opportunity to direct their own destiny. Most blacks, some removed from Africa by three generations, did not like the scheme at all. For good or for ill, the United States was their home. According to Warren, "Here they knew where they stood; the jungle, though not many generations behind, was mysterious and deadly."

With the end of the shooting, the War between the States continued nevertheless against the Southern people. It is hard for many of us today to understand the feelings of the Southern people, both black and white, when the slaves were freed en masse. Booker T. Washington expresses this thought well in his autobiography, Up from Slavery: "The wild rejoicing on the part of the emancipated coloured people lasted but for a brief period, for I noticed that by the time they returned to their cabins there was a change in their feelings. The great responsibility of being free, of having charge of themselves, of having to think and plan for themselves and their children, seemed to take possession of them....Was it any wonder that within a few hours the wild rejoicing ceased and a feeling of deep gloom seemed to pervade the slave quarters?" A wonder, indeed.

Warren states, "The negro [sic] was as little equipped to establish himself in [American society] as he would have been to live again, with spear and breech-clout, in the Sudan or Bantu country." While it is true that the freedman was not completely lacking in skills, he nevertheless lacked the tools with which to use those skills, i.e., land and equipment. In addition to this, the freedman discovered that he had political power, but he did not benefit directly from it; the black voter became a pawn to be used by the Republicans. Had the ex-slaves learned statesmanship rather than being taught the worst of politics by their new masters at the North, including corruption and oppression, the race relations in the South may have faired better after Reconstruction.

However, during Reconstruction, the Negro as politician taught the white Southerner that blacks could not be trusted. Regarding this point, Warren says the freedmen by obeying their Northern masters harmed themselves considerably. By oppressing the white Confederates who were defeated, demoralised, and humiliated, the black politicians blundered. According to Warren, "Instead, they sadly mortgaged his best immediate capital; that capital was the confidence of the Southern white man with whom he had to live. The Civil War had done much to show the negro's [sic] character at its best, but, so short is human memory, the Reconstruction badly impaired the white man's respect and gratitude." Since 1880, the attempt to regain this respect for the race has been the burden of Southerners, both black and white.

According to the historians, with the "stealing of the election" in 1876 by the Republicans, the Southern politicians gave an ultimatum to their Northern colleagues by announcing that the Southern people were tired of the Radical Reconstruction, were arming themselves, and were ready to fight for independence again, because the situation could not be worse. In a protracted meeting at the Wormley Hotel in Washington, D.C., the politicians worked out a deal that allowed Rutherford B. Hayes to be president and the South was no longer under the occupation of alien troops, and thus ending Reconstruction.

However, before this meeting, there were the workings already behind the scene by the industrialists, who were firmly jerking the chains of the politicians by this time in history. There was an element in the South called the "New Departure" Democrats, who were more kin to the Republican businessman than the Democrat politician. In the "Compromise of 1877," a gentlemen's agreement was made among men of a kindred spirit; that is, they had a love for money. The Southern industrialists were ready to concede the election to Hayes, so long as the carpetbaggers leave the South, and the South gets a share of governmental appointments, a couple of seats on the cabinet, and money for "public works" projects, i.e. Southern railroads. The Wormley Hotel affair was merely a front for what had already been determined by the industrialists.

This gentlemen's agreement existed fairly well during the rest of the nineteenth century until World War I. Implicit in the above deal, the central government would offer no interference to the South's handling of "it's Negro problem," so long as the South did not squawk too much about tariffs. When the last of the carpetbaggers sneaked out of the South under cover of darkness in 1877, the Southern blacks were at the mercy of the white Southerner, and it was now payback time. "Jim Crow" laws were passed, and voting rights were curtailed by literacy tests and poll taxes. The right to vote had long been seen as a magic talisman that somehow ensured the prevailing of truth, justice, and the "American way." Even Booker T. Washington put a lot of faith in the ability of the vote as a means to elevate the freedman, so long as he could exercise political good sense as a voter.

Thus, the question of how should the freedman be educated was raised. For the Radical Republicans, the answer was easy: the blacks were to be trained to be loyal Republicans and to hate all Southern white folks. But with the demise of the Freedmen Bureau schools, minds with loftier ideas had to provide an answer. Actually, the question referred to all children in the South, and is still a valid one today: "What do we expect when we educate our children?" It should be understood that after the war, the South had very little money to spend on education, regardless of the colour of the student. Washington's Tuskegee Institute is the work of a great Southern educator, whose philosophy is simple: "Any man, regardless of colour, will be recognised and rewarded just in proportion as he learns to do something well--learns to do it better than some one else--however humble the thing may be." Here is education in its broadest sense. To be educated does not require a classroom with a governmental "expert" in charge of it. Learning to do a task well is all that is required in order to receive respect.

As a high school student in 1967, I attended an all-white high school near Cleveland, Ohio. Every year, the community had a "battle of the bands," where our marching band would compete with four other bands from nearby schools, except for one. One school from the eastside of Cleveland was always invited to the "battle." The westside schools had white students and the eastside schools had black ones. [While the South was being forced to desegregate in 1967, segregation was alive and well in Cleveland.] Every year, the black marching band (it did not matter which black school was invited) would win the competition. Every note, every step, and every move expressed by those black musicians revealed volumes of the pride for their community. As we watched these students perform, there was definitely a collective admiration felt by all of the spectators for the skill and talent displayed on the field. These young folks learned "to do it better than some one else."

Instead of a classical education, Booker T. Washington opted to give technical and social skills for black people in the Alabama school. With these skills, the graduates would fill positions in the Southern factories or return to the farm, becoming a blessing to their communities as skilful, knowledgeable neighbours. Warren states, "the negro [sic] has demonstrated his capacity to achieve a certain degree of happiness and independence on the land, and there is every reason to expect that the process will be accelerated from year to year." If only this statement proved to be correct. Unfortunately, Warren was no prophet. During the Great Depression, thousands of black farmers left the land hoping to find work in the cities. During World War II, millions of blacks left the South and went to the North in order to work in the factories there. In spite of this exodus, as late as 1960, ninety-seven percent of all black farmers lived in the South. After arriving in the cities, the blacks realised that they had been betrayed again. Instead of finding work, the black labourers were used as a club to keep the white union labourers in line. The pool of willing black workers became an available army of scabs and strike breakers. Each passing year the mass of black citizens become more perplexed and desperate in their urban surroundings that seldom can be called a community of neighbours, who share a commonality of purpose. When fifty percent of prison inmates are black, when seventy percent of black children are illegitimate, when forty percent of all abortions are performed on black women, and when a black man is more likely to be a victim of another black, a thinking person should question whether the egalitarian policies of the central government since 1865 have not gone awry just a bit.

Warren concludes his essay with the following challenge: "If the Southern white man feels that the agrarian life has a certain irreplaceable value in his society, and if he hopes to maintain its integrity in the face of industrialism or its dignity in the face of agricultural depression, he must find a place for the negro [sic] in his scheme." Until a certain dignity can be restored to the honourable work of the small farmer, Americans, both black and white, will continue to think that a return to agriculture is a return to slavery. Yet, a man who cultivates five acres of land that belong to him is a truly free man, unlike the corporate employee who is subject to losing his paycheque at any moment at the whim of his master. The answer to all of the social problems faced by black Americans is the same solution for all Americans: "Return to the soil, and let every man sit beneath his own vine and under his own fig tree."