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Hicks was one of the historians of Populism, who saw its culmination in the Democratic Party of the Progressive Era, so this makes complete sense. These tended to predominate until the 1970s, which turned from electoral politics to mass organization as a focus. ML On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 9:09 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > ******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > ***************************************************************** > > The University of California at Berkeley’s John D. Hicks, best known for > his study of the Populist Movement, described slavery in his advanced > textbook, A Short History of American Democracy (1943) as "By and large … a > distinct advance over the lot that would have befallen him [the slave] had > he remained in Africa." Besides, Hicks suggests, where else could a people > so untutored enjoy picnics, barbecues, singing, and dancing? The slaves’ > "devotions [religion] were extremely picturesque, and their moral standards > sufficiently latitudinarian to meet the needs of a really primitive people. > Heaven to the Negro was a place of rest from all labor, the fitting reward > of a servant who obeyed his master and loved the Lord. … [C]ohabitation > without marriage was regarded as perfectly normal, and a certain amount of > promiscuity was taken for granted. Slave women rarely resisted the advances > of white men, as their numerous mulatto progeny abundantly attested." > Berkeley’s history department recalls Hicks’s enormous influence, classes > with over 500 students, and the impossibility of estimating "the number of > students whose knowledge of American history has been built on the Hicks > histories, but it is certainly an immense number." > > That such rabid fiction could pass for history in 1943, or at any other > time, still leaves me reeling. But such textbook "history" continued, > largely ignoring the work of prodigious African American scholars like John > Wesley Cromwell, George Washington Williams, Carter G. Woodson, and W.E.B. > Du Bois, until the 1960s when new generations of black and white scholars > transformed our understanding of the American past, and the place of race > in it. > > The way we teach history remains as lifeless as John Brown's body. > > full: https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Scholars-Sustained- > White/243053 > _________________________________________________________ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/opt > ions/marxism/markalause%40gmail.com _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
