Notes

Chapter 1. Seeing: Our Current Moment

  1. 1. Walter Shurden, Not an Easy Journey: Some Transitions in Baptist Life (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2005), 137–39.
  2. 2. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1987), 382.
  3. 3. United Methodist Communications.
  4. 4. Cyprian Davis, The History of Black Catholics in the United States (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 28.
  5. 5. Ibid., 35.
  6. 6. Lawrence E. Lucas, Black Priest, White Church: Catholics and Racism (New York: Random House, 1970; Trenton, NJ: First Africa World Press, 1992), 15–16.
  7. 7. See Morrison, 1948. As I noted in The End of White Christian America, “Charles Clayton Morrison presided over a series of editorials addressing America’s religious future: an eight-part series by field editor Harold Fey in 1944–1945 titled, ‘Can Catholicism Win America?,’ and a sixteen-part series he penned himself in 1946 titled, ‘Can Protestantism Win America?’ The articles formed what was essentially a single long-running argument that Catholicism threatened not only Protestantism but also democratic governance.” See Robert P. Jones, The End of White Christian America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), 63.
  8. 8. Slavoj Žižek, “A Permanent Economic Emergency,” New Left Review, no. 64 (July/August 2010, https://newleftreview.org/issues/II64/articles/slavoj-zizek-a-permanent-economic-emergency.
  9. 9. Jones, The End of White Christian America.
  10. 10. See PRRI 2018b. Here and throughout the book, when I’m writing about demographic data, the term “white” refers to “white, non-Hispanic” respondents. Most scientific public opinion surveys, including those conducted by PRRI, ask respondents separate questions about race (for example, white, black, and so on) and ethnicity (for instance, Hispanic origin). Therefore, respondents can identify for example as white and Hispanic, or black and Hispanic. For analytical purposes, I follow the general social science practice of allowing ethnicity to trump race. In other words, if a respondent identifies as both “white” and “Hispanic,” they are counted as “Hispanic” in the analysis.
  11. 11. Merle Black and Earl Black, The Rise of Southern Republicans (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2003).
  12. 12. National Exit Polls, 2000–2016.
  13. 13. Chris Moody and Kristen Holmes, “Donald Trump’s History of Suggesting Obama Is a Muslim,” CNN online, last modified September 18, 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/18/politics/trump-obama-muslim-birther/index.html.
  14. 14. John Eligon, “Hate Crimes Increase for the Third Consecutive Year, F.B.I. Reports,” New York Times, November 13, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/us/hate-crimes-fbi-2017.html.
  15. 15. SPLC 2019a. Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) online, “Hate Groups Reach Record High,” accessed February 19, 2019, https://www.splcenter.org/news/2019/02/19/hate-groups-reach-record-high.
  16. 16. ADL 2019b. Anti-Defamation League (ADL) online, “Hate on Display Hate Symbols Database,” accessed September 28, 2019, https://www.adl.org/hate-symbols?cat_id%5B146%5D=146.
  17. 17. PRRI 2018a. See Pew Research Center online, “An Examination of the 2016 Electorate, Based on Validated Voters,” last modified August 9, 2018, https://www.people-press.org/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters.
  18. 18. See Pew Research Center. I should flag one caveat for these election findings. The Pew Research Center report found white evangelical support for Trump to be 77 percent, slightly lower than the exit polls, largely due to variances in third-party-candidate voters. Pew also found that white religiously unaffiliated voters supported Clinton over Trump by a margin of 62 percent to 26 percent. This reflects a more than 30-percentage-point difference between white religiously unaffiliated voters and the nearest subgroup of white Christian voters.
  19. 19. Jones, 2018.
  20. 20. Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul (New York: Crown, 2016).
  21. 21. Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Public Life (New York: Free Press, 1994).
  22. 22. James Baldwin, “On Language, Race, and the Black Writer” (1979), in The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, ed. Randall Kenan (New York: Vintage Books, 2010), 140–44.
  23. 23. James Baldwin, “The White Problem” (1964), in The Cross of Redemption, 93.
  24. 24. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 4–5.
  25. 25. Ibid., 5–6.
  26. 26. Lucas, Black Priest, White Church, 15–16.

Chapter 2. Remembering: Christianity as the Conductor of White Supremacy

  1. 1. Glenn M. Linden, Voices from the Reconstruction Years, 1865–1877 (New York: Harcourt Brace/Cenage, 1998), 205.
  2. 2. Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (New York: Nation Books, 2016), 252.
  3. 3. Richard Rubin, “The Colfax Riot,” The Atlantic, July/August 2003.
  4. 4. Ibid.
  5. 5. W. E. B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (New York: Free Press, 1935), 30.
  6. 6. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Lynch Law in Georgia: A Six-Weeks’ Record in the Center of Southern Civilization, as Faithfully Chronicled by the “Atlanta Journal” and the “Atlanta Constitution” (Chicago: Chicago Colored Citizens, 1899), https://www.loc.gov/resource/lcrbmrp.t1612/?sp=1.
  7. 7. Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (New York: Random House, 2002), 5.
  8. 8. Ibid., 13.
  9. 9. Donald G. Matthews, At the Altar of Lynching: Burning Sam Hose in the American South (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 158.
  10. 10. Ibid., 160.
  11. 11. Edwin T. Arnold, What Virtue There Is in Fire: Cultural Memory and the Lynching of Sam Hose (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2019), 102.
  12. 12. Matthews, At the Altar of Lynching, 1.
  13. 13. Atlanta Constitution, April 23, 1899.
  14. 14. DuBois, 1961.
  15. 15. Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown.
  16. 16. Samuel S. Hill Jr., Southern Churches in Crisis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966).
  17. 17. John Lee Eighmy, Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Attitudes of Southern Baptists (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1972).
  18. 18. Carolyn Renée Dupont, Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1975 (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 7.
  19. 19. A. James Fuller, Chaplain to the Confederacy: Basil Manly and Baptist Life in the Old South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000).
  20. 20. See ibid., 277. Throughout this section, I am indebted to the work of A. James Fuller, professor of history at Indianapolis University, who has written the only scholarly biography of Basil Manly Sr.
  21. 21. Ibid.
  22. 22. Ibid.
  23. 23. Ibid., 291.
  24. 24. Ibid.
  25. 25. Benjamin F. Riley, History of the Baptists of Alabama (Birmingham: Roberts and Son, 1895), 278–80.
  26. 26. Fuller, Chaplain to the Confederacy, 292.
  27. 27. Ibid.
  28. 28. Ibid., 293.
  29. 29. Ibid.
  30. 30. Ibid., 294.
  31. 31. Ibid., 295.
  32. 32. Ibid.
  33. 33. Ibid., 1.
  34. 34. Ibid.
  35. 35. Bill Prochnau, “The Tale of a Pulitzer, a Paper, a Family,” Washington Post, April 25, 1983, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1983/04/25/the-tale-of-a-pulitzer-a-paper-a-family/2440bfeb-b772-4612-8a10-d0432844673c/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.87bcd4d68461.
  36. 36. Dupont, Mississippi Praying, 114.
  37. 37. David R. Davies, “The Civil Rights Movement and the Closed Society, 1960–1964” (presented to the American Journalism Historians Situation, Roanoke, Virginia, October 6–8, 1994).
  38. 38. Kathy Lally, “A Journey from Racism to Reason,” Baltimore Sun, January 5, 1997.
  39. 39. Carter Dalton Lyon, Sanctuaries of Segregation: The Story of the Jackson Church Visit Campaign (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017), 179.
  40. 40. Jackson (MS) Daily Journal, “Greeting for Negro,” September 12, 1962.
  41. 41. “Mississippi Mix? Ross Says ‘Never!’,” editorial, Jackson (MS) Daily News, September 14, 1962.
  42. 42. Lally, “A Journey from Racism to Reason.”
  43. 43. Richard Pearson, “Segregationist Governor Ross Barnett Dies at 89,” Washington Post, November 8, 1987.
  44. 44. Dupont, Mississippi Praying, 115.
  45. 45. John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 139.
  46. 46. Editorial Board, “Mississippi Mix? Ross Says ‘Never’!” Jackson Daily News, September 14, 1962.
  47. 47. Lyon, Sanctuaries of Segregation, 14.
  48. 48. Ibid., 14–15.
  49. 49. Ibid., 15.
  50. 50. Ibid., 254.
  51. 51. Charles Marsh, God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
  52. 52. Dupont, Mississippi Praying, 116.
  53. 53. Lyon, Sanctuaries of Segregation, 28.
  54. 54. Ibid., 13.
  55. 55. Ibid., 61.
  56. 56. Ibid., 63.
  57. 57. Ibid., 64.
  58. 58. Michael Dorman, “Who Killed Medgar Evers?,” New York Times, May 17, 1992, https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/17/magazine/who-killed-medgar-evers.html.
  59. 59. Ibid.
  60. 60. Curtis Wilkie, Dixie: A Personal Odyssey Through Events That Shaped the Modern South (New York: Touchstone Books, 2002), 104–5.
  61. 61. Charles W. Eagles, The Price of Defiance: James Meredith and the Integration of Ole Miss (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 333.
  62. 62. There have been four failed attempts to remove “Go Mississippi” as the official state song: Senate Bill 2960 (2000): “An Act To Designate New Official State Song ‘Mississippi;’ And To Repeal Chapter 654, General Laws, 1962, Which Designated The Song ‘Go, Mississippi,’ As The Official State Song,” sponsored by State Senator William Gardner Hewes; Senate Bill 2217 (2003): “An Act To Adopt New Official State Song; ‘My Home Mississippi,’ ” sponsored by State Senator Delma Furniss; Senate Bill 2177 (2015): “An Act To Authorize Two Official State Songs, Keeping The Existing Song, ‘Go, Mississippi,’ And Adding ‘My Home Mississippi,’ ” sponsored by State Senator Robert L. Jackson; and Senate Bill 2178 (2015): “An Act to adopt ‘My Home Mississippi’ As The Official State Song,” sponsored by State Senator Robert L. Jackson.
  63. 63. Arielle Dreher, “How Integration Failed in Jackson’s Public Schools from 1969 to 2017,” Jackson Free Press, November 15, 2017, https://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2017/nov/15/how-integration-failed-jacksons-public-schools-196/, accessed November 25, 2019.
  64. 64. I have supplemented my memory from 1985 with samples of Gooch’s testimony available on YouTube (https://vimeo.com/100670017) and in his autobiography, I’m Free.
  65. 65. Southern Baptist Convention, “Resolution on Racial Reconciliation on the 150th Anniversary of the Southern Baptist Convention” (Atlanta, 1995), www.sbc.net/resolutions/899/resolution-on-racial-reconciliation-on-the-150th-anniversary-of-the-southern-baptist-convention.
  66. 66. Gustav Niebuhr, “Baptist Group Votes to Repent Stand on Slaves,” New York Times, June 21, 1995, https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/21/us/baptist-group-votes-to-repent-stand-on-slaves.html.
  67. 67. Ibid.
  68. 68. Associated Press, “Baptist Leader Criticizes Trayvon Martin Support.” Newsday (Long Island, NY), April 14, 2012. https://www.newsday.com/news/nation/baptist-leader-criticizes-trayvon-martin-support-1.3660945
  69. 69. Michelle Boorstein, “Richard Land: A Southern Baptist Warrior Bids Goodbye to Washington,” Washington Post, August 10, 2012, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/richard-land-a-southern-baptist-warrior-bids-goodbye-to-washington/2012/08/10/d0f92880-e186-11e1-98e7-89d659f9c106_story.html?utm_term=.260959399a9c.
  70. 70. Albert Mohler, “The Heresy of Racial Superiority—Confronting the Past, and Confronting the Truth,” Albert Mohler online, last modified June 23, 2015, https://albertmohler.com/2015/06/23/the-heresy-of-racial-superiority-confronting-the-past-and-confronting-the-truth.
  71. 71. Ibid.
  72. 72. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Report on Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Seminary (Louisville, KY: Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2018), http://www.sbts.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Racism-and-the-Legacy-of-Slavery-Report-v4.pdf.
  73. 73. Ibid.
  74. 74. Ibid., 2015.
  75. 75. Ibid.
  76. 76. Jason Fowler, “Broadus, John Albert, (1827–1895), Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Archives online, accessed May 17, 2019, https://archon.sbts.edu//?p=creators//creator&id=7.
  77. 77. Adelle M. Banks, “Southern Baptist Seminary Denies Request for Reparations,” Religion News Service online, last modified June 5, 2019, https://www.baptiststandard.com/news/baptists/southern-baptist-seminary-denies-request-for-reparations/.
  78. 78. King, 1957.
  79. 79. Wolfgang Saxon, “Obituary: Cardinal O’Boyle of Washington, Liberal Who Espoused Orthodoxy,” New York Times, August 11, 1987, https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/11/obituaries/cardinal-o-boyle-of-washington-liberal-who-espoused-orthodoxy.html.
  80. 80. See United States Catholic Conference 1961, 205–206. While the bishop’s letter laid important theological groundwork, it was ambiguous about concrete actions. For example, it called for “prudence” among Catholics, charging them to “seize the mantle of leadership from the agitator and the racist,” and it warned that “changes in deep-rooted attitudes are not made overnight.”
  81. 81. Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: The Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright, 2018), 104.
  82. 82. Ibid., 103–4.
  83. 83. Ibid., 85.
  84. 84. Abigail Perkiss, “Shelley v. Kraemer: Legal Reform for America’s Neighborhoods,” Constitution Daily online, last modified May 9, 2014, https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/shelley-v-kraemer-legal-reform-for-americas-neighborhoods.
  85. 85. Ibid., 105.
  86. 86. See Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church online, cbpcstl.org. The Presbytery retained the property, redesignated it a mission church to African Americans, and appointed a new pastor, Reverend William Gillespie, who served the church for fifty-three years until his retirement in 2009.
  87. 87. Akilah Johnson, “The Forgotten Riot That Sparked Boston’s Racial Unrest,” Boston Globe, June 1, 2017, https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/06/01/the-forgotten-protest-that-sparked-city-racial-unrest/0ry39I37z87TwdBfrqUnTP/story.html.
  88. 88. W. E. B. DuBois, The Correspondence of W.E.B. DuBois, vol. 1, ed. Herbert Aptheker (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts, 1997).
  89. 89. Rothstein, The Color of Law, 26–27.
  90. 90. Ibid., 105–6.
  91. 91. Lucas, Black Priest, White Church, 71.
  92. 92. Ibid., 45–46.
  93. 93. Ibid., 43–44.
  94. 94. Rothstein, The Color of Law, 104.
  95. 95. Ruth Rejnis, “Priests Renew Charge of Racism Against Archdiose,” New York Times, May 14, 1972, https://www.nytimes.com/1972/05/14/archives/priests-renew-charge-of-racism-against-archdiocese.html, accessed November 26, 2019.
  96. 96. Martin Luther King Jr., “The Christian Way of Life in Human Relations, Address Delivered at the General Assembly of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.,” St. Louis, December 4, 1957, in The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., vol. 6: Advocate of the Social Gospel, September 1948–March 1963, ed. Clayborne Carson et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
  97. 97. Bryan N. Massingale, Racial Justice and the Catholic Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2018), 55.
  98. 98. Ibid., 61.
  99. 99. Ibid., 62.
  100. 100. Ibid., 68.
  101. 101. Ibid.
  102. 102. Ibid., 69.

Chapter 3. Believing: The Theology of White Supremacy

  1. 1. Romans 8:28 (King James Version).
  2. 2. Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in Why We Can’t Wait, repr. ed. (New York: Signet Books, 1964; Boston: Beacon Press, 2011). Citations refer to the Beacon edition.
  3. 3. Glaude, Democracy in Black, 37.
  4. 4. The Green family are avid supporters of President Trump, and the museum opening included a controversial private gala the evening before at the Trump International Hotel.
  5. 5. Veronica Stracqualursi, “Museum of the Bible Offers Revelations, Faces Controversy as It Opens,” ABC News online, last modified November 18, 2017, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/museum-bible-faces-revelations-controversy-opens/story?id=51194500.
  6. 6. Gordon Haber, “Investigating the Hobby Lobby Family: An Interview with Candida Moss and Joel S. Baden,” Religion & Politics, last modified November 8, 2017, https://religionandpolitics.org/2017/11/08/investigating-the-hobby-lobby-family-an-interview-with-candida-moss-and-joel-s-baden.
  7. 7. Ibid.
  8. 8. Ibid.
  9. 9. PRRI, 2015.
  10. 10. Anti-Defamation League, Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2018 (Washington, DC: ADL online, 2018), https://www.adl.org/media/12480/download.
  11. 11. Weiyi Cai and Simone Landon, “Attacks by White Extremists Are Growing. So Are Their Connections,” New York Times, April 3, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/03/world/white-extremist-terrorism-christchurch.html.
  12. 12. Fuller, Chaplain to the Confederacy, 213.
  13. 13. Ibid.
  14. 14. Ibid.
  15. 15. Ibid., 116.
  16. 16. Ibid., 118.
  17. 17. Ibid.
  18. 18. Ibid., 214.
  19. 19. Ibid.
  20. 20. Ibid., 215.
  21. 21. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845; electronic ed., Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1999), https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/douglass.html.
  22. 22. Ibid., 120–21.
  23. 23. Ibid., 51.
  24. 24. Ibid., 54.
  25. 25. Ibid.
  26. 26. Ibid., 55.
  27. 27. Ibid., 79.
  28. 28. Ibid., 77–78.
  29. 29. Ibid., 308.
  30. 30. Ibid., 310.
  31. 31. Samuel S. Hill Jr., et al., “The South’s Two Cultures,” in Religion and the Solid South (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972), 36.
  32. 32. Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865–1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980), 7.
  33. 33. Ibid., 69.
  34. 34. Ibid., 75.
  35. 35. Ibid., 11.
  36. 36. Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 33.
  37. 37. George Marsden, Religion and American Culture (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990).
  38. 38. Scofield did serve in the Confederate army but deserted and took the oath of loyalty to the Union so that he could pass into civilian life behind Union lines; and although he was ordained, there is no record of his completing theological training beyond attending Bible conferences. Nonetheless, he was a shrewd self-promoter who exerted enormous influence through his reference Bible, which he also leveraged into a lucrative correspondence course business. See Jean D. Rushing, “From Confederate Deserter to Decorated Veteran Bible Scholar: Exploring the Enigmatic Life of C. I. Scofield, 1861–1921” (unpublished master’s thesis, East Tennessee State University, 2011).
  39. 39. C. I. Scofield, The Old Schofield Study Bible, KJV, Classic Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
  40. 40. PRRI 2014. Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), “Believers, Sympathizers, and Skeptics: Why Americans are Conflicted about Climate Change, Environmental Policy, and Science,” November 21, 2014, accessed September 28, 2019, https://www.prri.org/research/believers-sympathizers-skeptics-americans-conflicted-climate-change-environmental-policy-science/.
  41. 41. Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith, 47.
  42. 42. Romans 3:23 (King James Version).
  43. 43. Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
  44. 44. King, “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
  45. 45. Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action,” American Sociological Review 51 (1986): 273–86.
  46. 46. Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith, 76.
  47. 47. Ibid.
  48. 48. Ibid., 79.
  49. 49. Ibid., 78.
  50. 50. Michael O. Emerson and James E. Shelton, Blacks and Whites in Christian America: How Racial Discrimination Shapes Religious Convictions (New York: New York University Press, 2012). Note that Emerson and Shelton did not break out the views of white Catholics separately in their study.
  51. 51. Ibid., 178.
  52. 52. Ibid.
  53. 53. Ibid.
  54. 54. See Amy Held, “Maryland Gets Closer to Retiring State Song That Calls Northerners ‘Scum,’ ” NPR online, last modified March 18, 2018, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/16/594305719/maryland-gets-closer-to-retiring-state-song-that-calls-northerners-scum. I am leaving aside the divisive debates about “limited” versus “unlimited” atonement, whether Jesus died for all people or only for an elect subset of people. These are essentially questions of human agency. While what I have presented is more representative of the unlimited atonement conception, the focus on a personal relationship with Jesus remains, whether one actively chooses or comes to the realization that one has been chosen to be among the elect.
  55. 55. William Paul Dillingham, Dictionary of Races or Peoples: Reports of the Immigration Commission (Washington, DC: United States Printing Office, 1911).
  56. 56. Michael Duffy, “Jerry Falwell: Political Innovator,” Time, May 15, 2007, http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1621300,00.html.
  57. 57. Randall Balmer, “The Real Origins of the Religious Right,” Politico, May 27, 2014, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-707133.
  58. 58. Matt Stearns, “Jerry Falwell Brought Religious Conservatives into US Politics,” Mercury News (San Jose, CA), May 16, 2007, https://www.mercurynews.com/2007/05/16/jerry-falwell-brought-religious-conservatives-into-u-s-politics.
  59. 59. Paul Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities Among Southern Baptists, 1865–1925 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 22.
  60. 60. Anthony E. C. Wallace, Religion: An Anthropological View (New York: Random House, 1966), 30.
  61. 61. Wilson, Baptized in Blood, 41.

Chapter 4. Marking: Monuments to White Supremacy

  1. 1. Alice M. Tyler, A Souvenir Book of the Jefferson Davis Memorial Association and the Unveiling of the Monument (Richmond, VA: Whittet and Shepperson, 1907), https://archive.org/details/cu31924030945020/page/n6.
  2. 2. Ibid.; Wilson, Baptized in Blood, 119.
  3. 3. Wilson, Baptized in Blood, 133.
  4. 4. Scott Dance and Michael Dresser, “Senators Pass Bill Stripping ‘Maryland, My Maryland’ of ‘Official’ Status,” Baltimore Sun, March 18, 2018.
  5. 5. In Lost Cause groups, Maryland was considered a kind of honorary Confederate state. The UDC Catechism for Children contains clarifying questions about Maryland’s liminal status: “[24] Did Maryland take any part in the cause of the South? Yes, most valiant part, furnishing many regiments of men and other aid for carrying on the war, and those who gave this aid endured persecution and imprisonment by the Federal authorities, as well as from those at home who opposed secession. Maryland was only kept in the Union by force” (Stone, 1904). The state of Maryland itself adopted “My Maryland!” as the official state song in 1939. Eight separate legislative attempts to revoke the song’s status failed. In 2018 a compromise was reached that reclassified the song as the “historical” state song rather than as its “official” one. The University of Maryland band also regularly played “My Maryland!” at football games, a practice that ended only in fall 2017, in response to the violent white nationalist riots in Charlottesville, Virginia. See Held, “Maryland Gets Closer.”
  6. 6. Karen L. Cox, Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 61.
  7. 7. Ibid., 63.
  8. 8. Tyler, A Souvenir Book of the Jefferson Davis Memorial Association.
  9. 9. Ibid.
  10. 10. Wilson, Baptized in Blood, 29.
  11. 11. Mrs. W. S. Humphreys, “Children at Dedication of Monument,” Confederate Veteran 17:6 (June 1909), 266.
  12. 12. Cox, Dixie’s Daughters, 65.
  13. 13. Ibid., 68.
  14. 14. Ibid., 93.
  15. 15. “Chapter Report from Greenville, Virginia,” Confederate Veteran 40, no. 5, May 1932.
  16. 16. Cox, Dixie’s Daughters, 156.
  17. 17. Urofsky 2006, 83.
  18. 18. Ibid., 84.
  19. 19. Cox, Dixie’s Daughters, 158.
  20. 20. Ibid., 158.
  21. 21. Debra McKinney, “Stone Mountain: A Monumental Dilemma,” Southern Poverty Law Center, Intelligence Report, no. 164, Spring 2018, 18–22.
  22. 22. Cox, Dixie’s Daughters, 29.
  23. 23. SPLC 2019b. Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) online, “Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy,” accessed February 1, 2019, https://www.splcenter.org/20190201/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy. 
  24. 24. Cox, Dixie’s Daughters, 30; SPLC 2019a.
  25. 25. SPLC 2019b, “Whose Heritage?”
  26. 26. Cox, Dixie’s Daughters, 137.
  27. 27. Ibid., 137.
  28. 28. Ibid., 138.
  29. 29. Methodist Episcopal Church, The Catechism of the Methodist Episcopal Church: Numbers 1, 2, and 3, in One Volume, Designed for Consecutive Study in Sunday Schools and Families (New York: Carlton and Phillips), 1855.
  30. 30. Caroline Branch Stone, The UDC Catechism for Children (Galveston, TX: United Daughters of the Confederacy, 1904).
  31. 31. Ibid.
  32. 32. Wilson, Baptized in Blood, 51–53.
  33. 33. Ibid., 25.
  34. 34. Calder Loth, Windows of Grace: A Tribute of Love. The Memorial Windows of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Richmond, VA (Norfolk, VA: Teagle and Little, 2004).
  35. 35. Luke 2:29–32 (King James Version).
  36. 36. John M. Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 2005), 8.
  37. 37. Ibid., 9.
  38. 38. Ibid., 10.
  39. 39. Ibid., 16.
  40. 40. Yoni Appelbaum, “Why Is the Flag Still There?,” The Atlantic online, last modified June 21, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/why-is-the-flag-still-there/396431.
  41. 41. James Foreman Jr., “Driving Dixie Down: Removing the Confederate Flag from Southern State Capitals,” Yale Law Journal 101, no. 2 (November 1991).
  42. 42. Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag.
  43. 43. “Platform of the States Rights Democratic Party, August 14, 1948.” Political Party Platforms, Parties Receiving Electoral Votes: 1840–2004. The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/platform-the-states-rights-democratic-party#axzzliGn93BZz, accessed December 1, 2019.
  44. 44. L. Tuffly Ellis, ed., Texas State Historical Association, The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 83 (July 1979–April 1980), http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101207/, accessed May 06, 2015, 34–35.
  45. 45. Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag, 174.
  46. 46. Frances Stead Sellers, “The Confederate Flag: A 150-Year Battle,” Washington Post, October 15, 2018.
  47. 47. Coski, The Confederate Battle Flag.
  48. 48. Ibid.
  49. 49. Stead Sellers, “The Confederate Flag.”
  50. 50. Elliot Kleinberg, “How Confederate Flag Grew Famous—Hint: It Wasn’t During Civil War,” Palm Beach (FL) Post, June 22, 2015, https://www.palmbeachpost.com/article/20150622/NEWS/812031630.
  51. 51. Brett Bursey, “The Day the Flag Went Up,” South Carolina Progressive Network online, accessed July 12, 2019, http://www.scpronet.com/point19909/p04.html.
  52. 52. Nick Corasaniti, Richard Pérez-Peña, and Lizette Alvarez, “Church Massacre Suspect Held as Church Grieves,” New York Times, June 18, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/us/charleston-church-shooting.html?module=inline.
  53. 53. Rebecca Hersher, “What Happened When Dylann Roof Asked Google for Information About Race?,” The Two-Way (blog), NPR online, last modified January 10, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/10/508363607/what-happened-when-dylann-roof-asked-google-for-information-about-race.
  54. 54. Frances Robles, “Dylann Roof Photos and a Manifesto Are Posted on Website,” New York Times, June 20, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/us/dylann-storm-roof-photos-website-charleston-church-shooting.html.
  55. 55. Alex Ward, “Charleston Shooting: Dylann Roof’s Stepmother Defends ‘Smart’ Boy ‘Drawn in by Internet Evil,’ ” Independent (UK), June 21, 2015, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-stepmother-of-dylann-roof-defends-the-smart-boy-she-raised-having-been-affected-by-internet-evil-10334590.html.
  56. 56. Dylann Roof, personal journal, cited as government “exhibit 500” in trial. Posted online at Scribd, accessed September 28, 2019, https://www.scribd.com/document/335820753/Dylann-Roof-s-jailhouse-journal#fullscreen&from_embed.
  57. 57. Ibid., 5.
  58. 58. Ibid., 32.
  59. 59. Ibid., 19.
  60. 60. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, “ELCA Presiding Bishop to Attend Funeral in Charleston, S.C.,” press release, June 25, 2015, https://elca.org/News-and-Events/7757.
  61. 61. Elizabeth A. Eaton, statement issued by Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, June 18, 2015, http://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/long_season_of_disquiet_letter.pdf.
  62. 62. Ibid.
  63. 63. Lenny Duncan, Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2019).
  64. 64. Ibid., 15.
  65. 65. Ibid., 39.
  66. 66. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, “ELCA Presiding Bishop Issues Pastoral Message on Racism and White Supremacy,” press release, September 13, 2019, https://www.elca.org/News-and-Events/8005.
  67. 67. Ibid.
  68. 68. Ibid.
  69. 69. Ibid.
  70. 70. Abbey Phillip, “Why Bree Newsome Took Down the Confederate Flag in S.C.: ‘I Refuse to Be Ruled by Fear,’ ” Washington Post, June 29, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/06/29/why-bree-newsome-took-down-the-confederate-flag-in-s-c-i-refuse-to-be-ruled-by-fear/?utm_term=.cd871de7e0d5.
  71. 71. Elahe Izadi and Abbey Phillip, “South Carolina House Votes to Remove Confederate Flag from Statehouse Grounds,” Washington Post, July 9, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/07/09/south-carolina-house-votes-to-remove-confederate-flag-from-statehouse-grounds/?utm_term=.54052d49734d.
  72. 72. Stephanie McCrummen and Elahe Izadi, “Confederate Flag Comes Down on South Carolina’s Statehouse Grounds,” Washington Post, July 10, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/07/10/watch-live-as-the-confederate-flag-comes-down-in-south-carolina/?utm_term=.150871d7f92b.
  73. 73. Marianne Edgar Budde, Randolph Marshall Hollerith, and John Donoghue, “Announcement on the Future of the Lee-Jackson Windows,” Washington National Cathedral online, last modified September 6, 2017, https://cathedral.org/press-room/announcement-future-lee-jackson-windows.
  74. 74. C. Michael Hawn, “History of Hymns: ‘In Christ There Is No East or West,’ ” Discipleship Ministries, United Methodist Church online, last modified June 18, 2013, https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-in-christ-there-is-no-east-or-west; Emily Cochrane, “National Cathedral to Remove Windows Honoring Confederate Generals,” New York Times, September 6, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/us/politics/washington-national-cathedral-stained-glass-confederate-lee.html.
  75. 75. Ned Oliver, “St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Discusses Confederate Imagery,” Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch, August 23, 2015, https://www.richmond.com/news/local/city-of-richmond/st-paul-s-episcopal-church-discusses-confederate-imagery/article_fda4f734-e732-5c7f-bbe3-5f66flf09cb3.html.
  76. 76. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church online, “History and Reconciliation Initiative (HRI),” accessed July 13, 2019, https://www.stpaulsrva.org/connect/hri.
  77. 77. David Paulsen, “Cincinnati Cathedral Drafts Plan to Study Removing Memorials to Confederate Figures,” Episcopal News Service, September 13, 2017, https://www.episcopalchurch.org/library/article/cincinnati-cathedral-drafts-plan-study-removing-memorials-confederate-figures.
  78. 78. Sheila Vilvens, “A Year After Charlottesville: Confederate Symbols Wear Out Welcome at Ohio Cathedral,” Cincinnati Enquirer, August 10, 2018, https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/local/ohio/a-year-after-charlottesville-confederate-symbols-wear-out-welcome-at-ohio-cathedral/95-582469557.
  79. 79. Ned Oliver, “Congregation Once Led by Robert E. Lee Votes to Remove His Name from Their Church,” Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch, September 18, 2017, https://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/congregation-once-led-by-robert-e-lee-votes-to-remove/article_30d0557f-c3c0-5be2-8a28-308159dd662c.html.
  80. 80. See Boorstein, “Richard Land.” The interpretation that the name change was a reluctant shift for the congregation is also supported by the description of the decision on the church’s website: “On September 18, 2017, the Vestry voted to restore our name to Grace Episcopal Church. The Vestry is currently exploring meaningful and significant ways to continue to honor Lee.” See Grace Episcopal Church online, accessed July 13, 2019, http://www.graceepiscopallexington.org/about.html.
  81. 81. Elahe Izadi, “New Orleans to Remove Four Major Confederate Monuments,” Washington Post, December 15, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/12/17/new-orleans-to-remove-four-major-confederate-monuments/?utm_term=.a7e945019a6a.
  82. 82. Mitch Landrieu, In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History (New York: Viking, 2018), 163.
  83. 83. “Confederate Monuments,” Confederate Veteran 1, no. 1, January 1893.
  84. 84. Izadi, “New Orleans.”
  85. 85. Landrieu, In the Shadow of Statues, 191.
  86. 86. Ibid., 3.
  87. 87. Ibid., 195.
  88. 88. Mitch Landrieu, “Mitch Landrieu’s Speech on the Removal of Confederate Monuments in New Orleans,” New York Times, May 23, 2017, 163, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/opinion/mitch-landrieus-speech-transcript.html.
  89. 89. Landrieu, In the Shadow of Statues, 195.
  90. 90. SPLC 2019a.
  91. 91. Landrieu, In the Shadow of Statues, 3.

Chapter 5. Mapping: The White Supremacy Gene in American Christianity

  1. 1. See Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen, Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 70. Throughout this chapter, the term white refers to white, non-Hispanic respondents. All of the questions used for indexes and modeling in this section come from PRRI’s 2018 “American Values Survey.”
  2. 2. Acharya, Blackwell, and Sen use two questions from the CCES, averaged together, to measure “racial resentment.” The wordings of these questions are as follows: (1) “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for Blacks to work their way out of the lower class;” and (2) “The Irish, Italians, Jews, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.” See Acharya, Blackwell, and Sen, Deep Roots, 59. Both questions were included in PRRI’s 2018 “American Values Survey,” and I have incorporated both into my own Racism Index analysis.
  3. 3. Ibid., 5.
  4. 4. Ibid., 52.
  5. 5. Ibid., 70.
  6. 6. Ibid., 75.
  7. 7. Robert P. Jones and Robert Francis, “The Black and White of Moral Values: The Complex Relationships Between Religious Attendance and ‘Moral Values’ Among White Evangelicals and Black Protestants,” in Faith and Race in American Political Life, eds. Nancy Wadsworth and Robin Jacobson (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press), 2012.
  8. 8. PRRI 2018a. Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), “Partisan Polarization Dominates Trump Era: Findings from the 2018 American Values Survey” (October 29, 2018), accessed September 28, 2019, https://www.prri.org/research/partisan-polarization-dominates-trump-era-findings-from-the-2018-american-values-survey/.
  9. 9. Ibid.
  10. 10. PRRI, 2016b. “The Divide Over America’s Future: 1950 or 2050?: Findings from the 2016 American Values Survey” (October 25, 2016), accessed September 28, 2019, https://www.prri.org/research/poll-1950s-2050-divided-nations-direction-post-election/. 
  11. 11. PRRI 2018a. Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), “Partisan Polarization Dominates Trump Era.”
  12. 12. Ibid.
  13. 13. PRRI 2018c. “Americans Differ on Participation of Male, Female Athletes in Team Sports: Findings from the 2018 Sports Poll” (January 25, 2018), accessed September 28, 2019, https://www.prri.org/research/americans-differ-on-participation-of-male-female-transgender-students-in-team-sports/.
  14. 14. PRRI 2018a. Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), “Partisan Polarization Dominates Trump Era.”
  15. 15. Ibid.
  16. 16. I’m grateful to the following colleagues who gave me feedback and advice on the analysis in this chapter: Melissa Deckman, professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at Washington College and author of Tea Party Women: Mama Grizzlies, Grassroots Leaders, and the Changing Face of the American Right (New York: New York University Press, 2016); Christian Scharen, vice president for applied research at Auburn Seminary and author of Fieldwork in Theology: Exploring the Social Context of God’s Work in the World (Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2015); Natalie Jackson, director of research at PRRI; and Jioni Palmer, senior director of communications and external affairs at PRRI. I am especially grateful for the assistance of two colleagues, Juhem Navarro-Rivera, political research director and managing partner at Socioanalitica Research, and Paul Djupe, associate professor of political science at Denison University and coeditor of The Evangelical Crackup?: The Future of the Evangelical-Republican Coalition (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2018). Dr. Navarro-Rivera assisted with overall analysis, the construction of an initial set of regression models, and final checks of the results. Dr. Djupe helped develop the final set of regression models and charts, made vital contributions to the analysis, and used his skills in R to create compelling data visualizations. I am deeply grateful to each of these insightful scholars and professionals for their assistance in helping me develop a complex analysis into a narrative for a general audience. Of course, I alone take responsibility for the interpretations and conclusions in this chapter.
  17. 17. To cope with the difficulty of asking respondents direct questions about sensitive topics such as racism, social scientists have developed techniques—none of them perfect, to be sure—that capture negative racial or racist attitudes without labeling them as such. Because these questions are oblique rather than direct attempts to measure sensitive attitudes, multiple questions are typically combined into a composite scale, which is more reliable. This is the technique I have used to develop the Racism Index. In the social scientific literature this approach is often discussed as measuring a respondent’s latent level of “racial resentment” or “symbolic racism.” Given the breadth of the scale here, I have opted for the more straightforward “Racism Index.” For the history of these scales and the challenges of obtaining accurate measurement of racial attitudes among whites, see especially Michael Tesler and David Sears, Obama’s Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). See also Sears and Patrick J. Henry, “The Origins of Symbolic Racism,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85, no. 2 (2003): 259–75; Sears and Donald R. Kinder, Racial Tension and Voting in Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of California, 1971); and Kinder and Sears, “Prejudice and Politics: Symbolic Racism Versus Racial Threats to the Good Life,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40, no. 3 (1981): 414–31.
  18. 18. Since some questions had different scales, they were all recoded to run from zero to one before combining. The full scale ran from 0 to 1, but effectively cut off at 0.8 (very few people resided in the 0.8–1.0 range). Therefore, the final scale was truncated at 0.8 (respondents with higher scores were recoded) and then recalibrated to run from 0 to 1 for ease of analysis. Cronbach’s alpha, a measure of internal consistency that is scaled from 0 to 1, is high (0.91) for the Racism Index, indicating the component questions are closely related as a group. Typically, statisticians look for a Cronbach’s alpha score of 0.80 or higher for confirmation that the questions are tapping into an underlying conceptual dimension.
  19. 19. See appendix A for the output of all five multivariate regression models.
  20. 20. See appendix B for the list of all questions included in the Immigration Index.
  21. 21. For the statisticians among my readers, this is my attempt to explain in plain language what statisticians call “marginal effects”: the measure of how much the dependent variable (for example, a white Christian identity) shifts according to a one-unit change in the independent variable (the Racism Index), while holding all other variables in the model constant.
  22. 22. The predicted probability for all white Christians is significantly higher than the individual subgroups because it is picking up combined effects for white evangelicals, white mainline Protestants, and white Catholics. As the regional analysis demonstrates, the effects are roughly cumulative for all white Christians because the subgroups are distinct from one another in membership and are dominant in different regions of the country.
  23. 23. Note that the statistical significance of the RI impact on white religiously unaffiliated identity (p < 0.17) falls below the level of statistical significance that is present for all the other findings in this chart, meaning that we are only roughly 80 percent confident that the six percent difference is distinguishable from no effect. That estimate should be considered suggestive and interpreted with some caution; the most conservative interpretation would be that the RI has no effect on white religiously unaffiliated identity. By contrast, all other findings in the chart showing the relationships between the RI and white Christian identities are strongly significant at the 95 percent confidence level.
  24. 24. Notably, the addition of statistical controls has a strong effect on the magnitude of the relationship between the RI and white Christian identities. Before the model controls are applied, the relationship between the RI and white evangelical Protestants is stronger than the relationship between the RI and white mainline Protestants. But with controls in place, these differences completely disappear; the RI has about the same relationship with both white Christian identities. Increasing the RI to its maximum value makes a respondent nearly one-quarter more likely to be either white mainline Protestant or white evangelical Protestant. In other words, the initial differences observed between white evangelical and white mainline Protestants were almost completely attributable to other attributes, such as political partisanship and regional distribution. But once these differences are accounted for and held constant in the model, it becomes clear that the presence of white supremacist DNA is equally detectable in both.
  25. 25. The most serious analysis suggesting that church attendance mitigates racism and anti-immigrant attitudes has been conducted by Emily Ekins. Drawing on data from the Voter Study Group, Ekins argued: “These national surveys find that Donald Trump voters who attend church regularly are more likely than nonreligious Trump voters to have warmer feelings toward racial and religious minorities, to be more supportive of immigration and trade, and to be more concerned about poverty. These data are important because they demonstrate that private institutions in civil society can have a positive effect on social conflict and can reduce polarization.” See Emily Ekins, Religious Trump Voters: How Faith Moderates Attitudes About Immigration, Race, and Identity, Public Opinion Brief No. 2 (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, February 5, 2019), https://www.cato.org/publications/public-opinion-brief/religious-trump-voters-how-faith-moderates-attitudes-about). While a full analysis of Ekins’s argument would be out of place here, one of the biggest missteps in her analysis is her reliance on feeling thermometer scores to measure attitudes toward African Americans. My analysis above shows that feeling thermometers are unreliable as a means of measuring racist attitudes. White evangelicals, for example, simultaneously report warm feeling thermometer scores toward African Americans while scoring high on the Racism Index.
  26. 26. More precisely, the error bars denote the range in which the mean of ninety-five out of a hundred samples (given a 95 percent confidence level), drawn from the same population distribution, would be likely to fall.
  27. 27. Note that we would not expect the predicted probabilities to be equal in magnitude when the direction of the analysis is reversed. This is principally because each of the white Christian identity variables is dichotomous—a respondent either is or is not a member of that category—while the Racism Index is a continuous scale variable. In the first step in the analysis, we are predicting how much a shift from 0 to 1 on the RI independently increases the likelihood of white Christian affiliation. In the second step, we analyze the relationship in the other direction; we are predicting how much a particular white Christian affiliation is likely to independently increase a score on the RI.
  28. 28. Moreover, even after adding an additional control variable to the model for race (in other words, a switch for white vs. nonwhite), the predictive relationship between white Christian identity and racist attitudes remains significant at the 95 percent confidence level. When a control variable for race is added to the model, the percent increase in racist attitudes associated with white Christian identity drops only modestly, to 5 percent for white evangelical Protestants, 4 percent for white mainline Protestants, and 5 percent for white Catholics.
  29. 29. Acharya, Blackwell, and Sen, Deep Roots, 7.
  30. 30. Michael Ruane, “Slave’s Daughter Who Helped Open the African American Museum Dies at 100,” Washington Post, August 30, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/slaves-daughter-who-helped-open-the-african-american-museum-dies-at-100/2017/08/30/2e4bc0ac-8d9d-11e7-91d5-ab4e4bb76a3a_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.aaf0c084e5a9.
  31. 31. Acharya, Blackwell, and Sen, Deep Roots, 11.
  32. 32. Ibid., 214.
  33. 33. Ibid.
  34. 34. The authors do give brief attention to the establishment of “segregation academies,” the all-white schools that quickly sprouted across the South in the wake of federal mandates for school desegregation. But the authors don’t strongly tie the “segregation academies” to their sources, which were primarily white Christian churches.

Chapter 6. Telling: Stories of Change

  1. 1. DeNeen Brown and Cleeve R. Wootsen Jr., “Trump Ignores Backlash, Visits Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and Praises Civil Rights Leaders,” Washington Post, December 7, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/12/09/amid-backlash-trump-set-to-attend-private-gathering-as-civil-rights-museum-opens-in-mississippi/?utm_term=.34f1080cf8f9.
  2. 2. Suzi Parker, “African-Americans’ Heritage Set in Stone,” Christian Science Monitor, June 20, 2001; SPLC 2019a.
  3. 3. Simon Romero, Manny Fernandez, and Mariel Padilla, “Massacre at a Crowded Walmart in Texas Leaves 20 Dead,” New York Times, August 3, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/el-paso-shooting.html.
  4. 4. Jackie Rehwald, “On 112-Year Anniversary of Springfield Lynchings, Memorial for Victims Is Planned,” Springfield (IL) News-Leader, April 12, 2018, https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/2018/04/12/112-year-anniversary-springfield-lynchings-memorial-victims-planned/504031002.
  5. 5. Steve Pokin, “In 1996, Hillcrest Students Decided Two Lynched Men Deserved a Grave Marker,” Springfield (IL) News-Leader, December 19, 2017, https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2017/12/19/pokin-around-1996-hillcrest-students-decided-two-lynched-men-deserved-grave-marker/963085001. There were eighteen indictments, but only one person was brought to trial and he was acquitted. The impact on the African American community was dramatic. The African American community in Springfield quickly went from approximately 20 percent to 2 percent; today the city remains 96 percent white.
  6. 6. Equal Justice Initiative, “The National Memorial for Peace and Justice,” EJI online (https://eji.org), accessed November 1, 2019.
  7. 7. H. Lewis Batts and Rollin S. Armour, History of the First Baptist Church of Christ at Macon (Macon, GA: First Baptist Church of Christ, 1991), 76.
  8. 8. Michael Pannell, “Northridge Aims at Grace as It Continues to Serve Those Around It,” Macon Telegraph, January 4, 2018, https://www.macon.com/living/religion/article192900159.html.
  9. 9. H. Lewis Batts and Rollin S. Armour, History of the First Baptist Church of Christ at Macon (Macon, GA: First Baptist Church of Christ, 1991).
  10. 10. Rosalind Bentley, “Two Churches Began in Slavery; Today They Are Reckoning with That Past,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 17, 2017, https://www.ajc.com/news/local/two-churches-began-slavery-today-they-are-reckoning-with-that-past/myC4MryHYSCazPUQALYmtK.
  11. 11. Ibid.
  12. 12. Reverend James Goolsby and Reverend Scott Dickison, interview with author, October 17, 2018.
  13. 13. Ibid.
  14. 14. Ibid.
  15. 15. Bentley, “Two Churches Began in Slavery.”
  16. 16. Goolsby and Dickison, interview, October 17, 2018.
  17. 17. Bentley, “Two Churches Began in Slavery.”
  18. 18. Ibid.
  19. 19. Scott Dickison, interview with author, August 12, 2019.
  20. 20. Batts and Armour, History of First Baptist Church, Macon, 39.
  21. 21. Ibid.
  22. 22. Scott Dickison, “Learning How to Confess,” sermon delivered at First Baptist Church of Christ, Macon, GA, March 13, 2017.
  23. 23. Batts and Armour, History of First Baptist Church, Macon, 47.
  24. 24. Ibid., 58.
  25. 25. Ibid., 48.
  26. 26. Ibid.
  27. 27. Scott Dickison, “Testimony to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, 2019 General Assembly,” unpublished sermon, Atlanta, June 19, 2017.
  28. 28. Ibid.
  29. 29. Dickison, interview, August 12, 2019.
  30. 30. Cathy Logue, interview with author, August 22, 2019.
  31. 31. Dickison, interview with the author, August 12, 2019.
  32. 32. Ibid.
  33. 33. See Public Religion Research Institute, “The 2016 American Values Atlas” map for a full breakdown of denominational affiliation, PRRI online, accessed September 28, 2019, http://ava.prri.org/#religious/2016/States/denomination/m/US-MN. PRRI 2016a.
  34. 34. United States Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1920 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1921), 35; Public Religion Research Institute, “The 2018 American Values Atlas,” PRRI online, accessed September 28, 2019, https://www.prri.org//american-values-atlas//#0. PRRI 2018b.
  35. 35. Robin Washington, “The Legacy of a Lynching: A Memorial, a Pilgrimage, a Reconciliation,” The Marshall Project, last modified May 3, 2018, https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/05/03/the-legacy-of-a-lynching.
  36. 36. Michael Fedo, The Lynchings in Duluth, 2nd ed. (Saint Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2016).
  37. 37. James Fallows and Deborah Fallows, Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America (New York: Pantheon Books, 2018).
  38. 38. Erika Doss, Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 310.
  39. 39. Monica Davey, “Letter from Duluth: It Did Happen Here, the Lynching That a City Forgot,” New York Times, December 4, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/04/us/letter-from-duluth-it-did-happen-here-the-lynching-that-a-city-forgot.html.
  40. 40. Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial Inc. Board of Directors, “Election Day Statement,” press release, 2012.
  41. 41. Washington, “The Legacy of a Lynching.”
  42. 42. Ibid.
  43. 43. Ibid.
  44. 44. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (New York: Dial Press, 1963), 101–2.
  45. 45. William H. Moon is recorded on a payroll that specifies his service under a Virginia militia regiment under the command of Captain William Lang in 1779.
  46. 46. By 1805, the Georgia government had completely seized all Creek land east of the Ocmulgee River, which runs through Twiggs and Bibb Counties, the two counties where my family has lived since the late 1790s. The first land lottery in 1805 featured two-hundred-acre tracts of land. Beginning in 1820, Revolutionary War veterans such as William H. Moon were eligible for two tickets, increasing their odds of winning land.
  47. 47. “Parting of Cable Results in Death of Isham Andrews,” Atlanta Constitution, September 20, 1920.
  48. 48. I should note that I have no evidence for this story other than my great-uncle’s account. No account of a second accident at the John Sant & Sons Mine appears in the Atlanta Constitution through the fall of 1920. It’s not unlikely, of course, that the death of an African American worker would have been less newsworthy than the death of a white supervisor.

Chapter 7. Reckoning: Toward Responsibility and Repair

  1. 1. Bentley, “Two Churches Began in Slavery.”
  2. 2. Adelle Banks, “Reparations Fund Announced by Va. Seminary with Buildings Constructed by Slaves,” Religion News Service, September 10, 2019, https://religionnews.com/2019/09/10/reparations-fund-announced-by-va-seminary-with-buildings-constructed-by-slaves/, accessed December 1, 2019.
  3. 3. Mohler, “The Heresy of Racial Superiority.”
  4. 4. John McArthur, “The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel,” accessed September 2, 2019, https://statementionsocialjustice.com.
  5. 5. Eugene Scott, “Slavery Has Always Been at the Intersection of Race and Politics. Now It’s Front and Center in the Political Conversation,” Washington Post, August 29, 2019, https://beta.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/29/slavery-has-always-been-intersection-race-politics-now-its-front-center-political-conversation.
  6. 6. Bob Smietana, “Eric Metaxas on Trump, Bonhoeffer, and the Future of America,” Religion News Service, September 27, 2019, https://religionnews.com/2019/09/27/eric-metaxas-on-trump-bonhoeffer-and-the-future-of-america.
  7. 7. Bentley, “Two Churches Began in Slavery.”
  8. 8. Dickison, “Testimony to Cooperative Baptist Fellowship,” June 19, 2017.
  9. 9. Dickison., interview with author, August 12, 2019.
  10. 10. Ibid.
  11. 11. Genesis 4:8–9 (King James Version).
  12. 12. Genesis 4:10–11 (King James Version).
  13. 13. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century white Christian theology, the “Curse of Cain” and “Curse of Ham” stories were both used to justify the superiority of white Europeans and the enslavement of dark-skinned Africans. In the “Curse of Ham” story in Genesis 9:20–27, there is no reference to a “mark,” but Ham is cursed and fated to be “a servant of servants.” These stories were sometimes interpreted together, with a claim that Ham married a descendant of Cain, thereby linking the “curse” of dark skin with servitude, and they were sometimes simply conflated.
  14. 14. James Baldwin, “The Price May Be Too High,” New York Times, February 2, 1969.
  15. 15. Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 40, 66.
  16. 16. Baldwin., “The Nigger We Invent,” in The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, ed. Randall Kenan (New York: Vintage Books, 2010), 113.
  17. 17. Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 91.
  18. 18. Jones, The End of White Christian America; Jones, “Finding a Dignified End for White Protestantism,” Reflections: A Journal of Yale Divinity School (Fall 2017), https://reflections.yale.edu/article/reformation-writing-next-chapter/finding-dignified-end-white-protestantism-robert-p-jones.
  19. 19. James Baldwin, “Speech from the Soledad Rally,” in The Cross of Redemption, 122.