mother.
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Williams was a slave preacherâs son who ran away from a country home to Atlanta as a small boy, became a preacher himself, and in 1894 had no better prospects than the pastorate of the eight-year-old Ebenezer Baptist Church, which had only thirteen members and a tiny, incomplete, heavily mortgaged building, against which the bank was threatening foreclosure. * Accepting the challenge, Reverend Williams mounted a series of revivals and other fund-raisers that paid off the mortgage. His recruits quickly pushed the membership above one hundred, so that the church began looking for a larger property. He attended college in his spare time, married Jennie Parks, and otherwise acquitted himself as a worthy Morehouse man. By 1900, Ebenezer was prosperous enough to swallow up a larger church by buying its building, which was threatened with foreclosure. A few years later, Reverend Williams himself was able to give his only child, Alberta, then a toddler of three, a Ricca & Son âupright grand pianoâ for her lessons.
His successes over the next dozen years went against the larger tides of the early progressive era, when Social Darwinism was rising to full strength in American politics. For race relations, this meant a rush backward, as whites in the South and North generally agreed that there were more important things to do in the world than to contend with each other over the status of the Negro, which was then fixed by science as lowly. By concerted agitation and widespread violence, Southern whites had revolted against the political structure of Reconstruction, first establishing that Negroes would not be allowed to dominate any legislative body by numerical majority. From there, a march by degrees eliminated Negroes from governing coalitions, then from the leverage of swing votes on issues that divided the whites (such as populism and the recurring proposals to ban the sale of alcohol), and finally from any significant exercise of the vote.
Northerners acquiesced in the renewed hegemony of Southern whites. The reigning idea was that racial quarrels, while accomplishing nothing since the Civil War, had interfered with business, diverted reform campaigns from more productive fields, and hindered Americaâs new efforts to win a commanding position in the battle for global influence. Indeed, some liberals spoke of racism as the linchpin of the progressive movement, meaning that progress could be made only when white supremacy mooted the race question in politics. Old pro-abolitionist journals like the Atlantic Monthly published articles on âthe universal supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon.â Best-selling books of the time included Charles Carrollâs The Negro, A Beast , published in 1900 by the American Book and Bible House in St. Louis, and Robert W. Shufeldtâs The Negro, A Menace to American Civilization , published in 1906. Thomas Dixonâs The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan was published in 1905, and ten years later became The Birth of a Nation , the feature film whose stunning success established Hollywood and motion pictures as fixtures of American culture.
In Washington, the last Negro congressman was sent home to North Carolina in the spring of 1901. When President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House later that year, Democrats denounced the President on the front pages for nearly a week. Political professionals, reported The New York Times , faulted the President because he âdid not reflectâ before making the move. Even Rooseveltâs defenders tended to see the controversy in the light of the new era. âThe sun shines on the American citizen, down to the heathen Chinese,â a New Yorker wrote to the Times , âand Godâs glories cannot be hid from a poor outcast negro, whom God sent into the world for the wise and just to civilize.â That same year, manager John McGraw tried to
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Williams was a slave preacherâs son who ran away from a country home to Atlanta as a small boy, became a preacher himself, and in 1894 had no better prospects than the pastorate of the eight-year-old Ebenezer Baptist Church, which had only thirteen members and a tiny, incomplete, heavily mortgaged building, against which the bank was threatening foreclosure. * Accepting the challenge, Reverend Williams mounted a series of revivals and other fund-raisers that paid off the mortgage. His recruits quickly pushed the membership above one hundred, so that the church began looking for a larger property. He attended college in his spare time, married Jennie Parks, and otherwise acquitted himself as a worthy Morehouse man. By 1900, Ebenezer was prosperous enough to swallow up a larger church by buying its building, which was threatened with foreclosure. A few years later, Reverend Williams himself was able to give his only child, Alberta, then a toddler of three, a Ricca & Son âupright grand pianoâ for her lessons.
His successes over the next dozen years went against the larger tides of the early progressive era, when Social Darwinism was rising to full strength in American politics. For race relations, this meant a rush backward, as whites in the South and North generally agreed that there were more important things to do in the world than to contend with each other over the status of the Negro, which was then fixed by science as lowly. By concerted agitation and widespread violence, Southern whites had revolted against the political structure of Reconstruction, first establishing that Negroes would not be allowed to dominate any legislative body by numerical majority. From there, a march by degrees eliminated Negroes from governing coalitions, then from the leverage of swing votes on issues that divided the whites (such as populism and the recurring proposals to ban the sale of alcohol), and finally from any significant exercise of the vote.
Northerners acquiesced in the renewed hegemony of Southern whites. The reigning idea was that racial quarrels, while accomplishing nothing since the Civil War, had interfered with business, diverted reform campaigns from more productive fields, and hindered Americaâs new efforts to win a commanding position in the battle for global influence. Indeed, some liberals spoke of racism as the linchpin of the progressive movement, meaning that progress could be made only when white supremacy mooted the race question in politics. Old pro-abolitionist journals like the Atlantic Monthly published articles on âthe universal supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon.â Best-selling books of the time included Charles Carrollâs The Negro, A Beast , published in 1900 by the American Book and Bible House in St. Louis, and Robert W. Shufeldtâs The Negro, A Menace to American Civilization , published in 1906. Thomas Dixonâs The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan was published in 1905, and ten years later became The Birth of a Nation , the feature film whose stunning success established Hollywood and motion pictures as fixtures of American culture.
In Washington, the last Negro congressman was sent home to North Carolina in the spring of 1901. When President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House later that year, Democrats denounced the President on the front pages for nearly a week. Political professionals, reported The New York Times , faulted the President because he âdid not reflectâ before making the move. Even Rooseveltâs defenders tended to see the controversy in the light of the new era. âThe sun shines on the American citizen, down to the heathen Chinese,â a New Yorker wrote to the Times , âand Godâs glories cannot be hid from a poor outcast negro, whom God sent into the world for the wise and just to civilize.â That same year, manager John McGraw tried to
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