Questioning the roots of racism

SALISBURY —Last week, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi introduced Salisbury resident and author Gene Dattel to a crowd of well-wishers at a book-signing in New York City. In the governor’s opening remarks he said of Dattel’s newly published book, "There will be people who won’t like it. There will be people who’ll take sides. But it [the subject matter] needs to be said."

Richard Sylla, professor of economics at the Stern School of Business at New York University, who also spoke, noted that, "It will be controversial. And to paraphrase Alexander Hamilton, it tells the American people what they need to know — not what they want to hear."

The book is "Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Cost of Economic Power." Dattel will discuss the book Saturday, Oct. 24, at 4 p.m., at the Scoville Memorial Library.

What started in some ways as a history of cotton — one of the world’s most important commodities from the late 1700s to the early 20th century — evolved into a treatise on the state of America’s race relations and the ways that the cotton industry and slavery are inextricably intertwined.

In a recent interview with The Journal, Dattel said, "The legacy we have today of an African-American underclass and a segregated urban landscape are directly tied to the beginnings of our history —not the civil rights movement as many people like to think."

Dattel has lived in Salisbury since 1992, but he is a son of the South, having grown up in the Mississippi Delta. When he enrolled at Yale as a freshman in 1962 he was the only Mississippian in his class. In a course on American history he was frequently challenged by his classmates to "explain" the South’s racism. Those thought-provoking discussions became the basis of his research, which continued for the next 45 years.

Dattel’s home library contains more than 700 volumes, all related in some way to the various elements of his book — its subject being so vast and complex that Sylla noted in his introduction that only Dattel, with his background in international banking, economics and finance, and growing up in the South as a third-generation cotton-farming family, could bring it all together and synthesize the various elements into a cohesive whole.

The sweep of the book covers the years from 1780 to 1930, but his talk on the Oct. 24 will bring listeners up to date as he ties all the threads together.