Crump Plantation

            For centuries, America and the West have been propagating a socially constructed white supremacy.  The grounds for “whiteness” have varied over the years as has the level of systematic oppression enforced by whites in power.  The early 20^th century in America, known as the Jim Crow era, was one of several climactic periods in the history of “white supremacy.”  It was during this period that the “plantation mentality” informed the attitudes towards white supremacy.

In Memphis, a city rooted in agrarianism up until the last quarter century, the Jim Crow era represented the validation of the secondary effects recalled from the slavery era just 50 years previous.  While blacks could no longer work at the hands of whites as property, they could legally be lynched without cause, brutally beaten by police, or unjustly removed from their job under Jim Crow laws.  Despite efforts at unionization, black political organization, and interracial Populism, for all intents and purposes, the plantation still existed in Memphis during the Boss Crump regime period.  Boss Crump, though not always in the spotlight, was the “plantation owner” generating profits from his self-designed system of power and governance.  The poor migrant black population served as interchangeable “slaves” fueling the Memphis economy in cotton mills and shipyards.  Boss Crump was one of the more benevolent plantation owners as he kept his “slaves” healthy enough and secure enough to be productive workers.  Under his regime, black schools, social clubs, and businesses developed and prospered.  However, Memphis Police, made up of middle-class whites, served as “overseers” punishing any lower-class black who stood in the way of Boss Crump’s larger political objectives. 

Although the Crump “Plantation” was racially motivated on the surface, his regime was very much grounded in class.  Poor whites were pitted against poor blacks in the arms race for “equity” in schooling, job availability, and access.  However, true to the master narrative of “White Supremacy,” poor whites emerged victorious thanks to “Presidents, university professors, and the mass media constructing white supremacy as a good thing, and ‘social equality’ or integration, as dreadful evil” (Honey 17).  Contrary to the Antebellum Era, some blacks known as “the talented tenth” were able to reach middle-class economically and assume power amongst a separated black society in 20^th century Memphis.  However, there was deep class divide amongst all blacks.  The “talented tenth” advocated for and partnered with Boss Crump for business and civility in exchange for mobilizing less educated black voters to elect Crump’s puppets to political office.  Nonetheless, there were many, especially those who were daily battling the violent oppression and brutality of Crump’s “overseers” who retaliated with militancy and protest with hopes of creating change in their society.  Students at LeMoyne Owen were major parts of this militancy in the Jim Crow era.

Are students in our era fulfilling the role of “conservative integrationists” or “radical militants” concerning the issues that plague our generation?  Should we be doing more of one or the other?  What issues will historians be writing about in 100 years that required a Movement?