There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975 Book

I was a little wary of this book, because "white studies" can sometimes be code for, let's say, unsavory things. But this book is far from that. It's slightly sympathetic to the fact that the Civil Rights Movement changed life drastically for *everyone* in the South, both black and white, but it's not sympathetic to racist beliefs. It's not condescending to them, either- most images we have of white people during the Civil Rights Movement is that they were deluded or violently against civil rights. And yes, many people were against integration in any form and they did hold beliefs that were delusions (i.e., that black people were perfectly happy under Jim Crow). But, there were also a significant proportion of white people who just went with the changes without a fight. They may not have been proponents of civil rights, but when change came, they changed with it.

This is a story that has not been told. The book covers some of the usual story arc of whites during the Civil Rights Movement (i.e., Bull Connor, George Wallace, others who reacted violently to the idea of integration), but it also tells the story of people who may not have *wanted* integration, but accepted it as inevitable and accepted it with a reasonable amount of grace. It raised questions that I had not considered. For instance, if you were a white parent when schools were being integrated, and there were other white parents who were vociferously against integration, to the point of forming mobs at the schools and shouting or hurling things at kids who went into those schools (both black *and* white), do you keep your kids home? Do you send them to school even though they have to walk through that mob? Do you send them, even if it means you'll have rocks thrown at your house and harassing phone calls that the police won't do anything about? Even if it means you may lose your job or be forced to move away? What do you do in that situation? Some parents did send their kids and their kids faced a fair amount of pressure. Some parents looked at the situation, and even if they personally did not have a problem with integration, they kept their kids home out of fears for their safety. Having read about what happened to families that did send their kids to the first integrated schools, I'm not wholly sure I blame the parents who decided to keep their kids home (I do blame the people who formed the mobs and did the harassing, though).

In other words, the Civil Rights Movement was complicated for everyone and this book demonstrates that aptly. It was an interesting read and I'd recommend it.