The Courthouse Ring: Atticus Finch and the Limits of Southern Liberalism

Malcolm Gladwell is kicking my ass in this week's New Yorker - some of the best analysis I've seen in recent memory.

The character of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird was based on Alabama governor Jim Folsom, and I would love to get a DU Alabamian's take on Gladwell's thesis that both fell painfully short of advancing the cause of southern blacks:

"Finch will stand up to racists. He’ll use his moral authority to shame them into silence. He will leave the judge standing on the sidewalk while he shakes hands with Negroes. What he will not do is look at the problem of racism outside the immediate context of Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Levy, and the island community of Maycomb, Alabama.

Folsom was the same way. He knew the frailties of his fellow-Alabamians when it came to race. But he could not grasp that those frailties were more than personal—that racism had a structural dimension. After he was elected governor a second time, in 1955, Folsom organized the first inaugural ball for blacks in Alabama’s history. That’s a very nice gesture. Yet it doesn’t undermine segregation to give Negroes their own party. It makes it more palatable. Folsom’s focus on the personal was also the reason that he was blindsided by Brown. He simply didn’t have an answer to the Court’s blunt and principled conclusion that separate was not equal. For a long time, Folsom simply ducked questions about integration. When he could no longer duck, he wriggled. And the wriggling wasn’t attractive. Sims writes:



http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/10/090810fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=1

It made a point, but, I believe missed another. The novel was written to demonstrate some truths about the south in that period. Racism was evident, of course. The Atticus Finch character was not a full blown civil rights advocate, but that wasn't the point. He was, at least, fair, and gave blacks a shot. He lost in this particular case, and understood why he lost.

It was a portrait, not a polemic. It had a good effect by being that accurate portrait, rather than preaching.

but Gladwell touched on the uneasy feeling I also got at the end of the film (and book) when Finch cut corners to substitute his brand of justice.

He's supposed to be a lawyer, and it kinda leaves law out of the picture.

The book clearly demonstrated that the black man was innocent and that a jury of his non-peers found him guilty. He then bolted and was killed. Not untypical for the period and the place. It was a portrait of what was going on then, even when a reasonable man acted as a defense attorney for a black man.

At the end, the Boo Radley deal demonstrated another oddity of the period. A mentally ill white man would get a pass on killing another white man, since it was an iffy sort of situation involving the defense of a young white kids. So, the dead guy fell on his knife (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

Like you, I saw the essential difference between the handling of a white man and a black man in that 1950s south. It was a masterful presentation of those differences, and it had an impact on public thought at the time.

A portrait, not a polemic. A polemic would have affected nothing. The novel had the intended effect, I think...by portraying the reality of the small town south, but without preaching. Atticus Finch was not that slimy governor, but he was also not fully awakened. That would take years, and still hasn't happened fully.

I don't think the purpose of the article was to hammer TKAM, but to point out the real-life limits of what liberalism could accomplish. For Jim Folsom those limits cost him his career.

Under George Wallace's administration Finch probably would have been run out of town.

Wallace was a pragmatic politician who understood the plight of blacks in Alabama.

Jim Folsom was, perhaps, a budding liberal of sorts, but overall was not a great man. He was, in fact, a typical Southern politician, buttering his bread on both sides most of the time. He was less toxic than some others, but still not a fellow you'd want to buddy up to, I'm sure.

He figured in the "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" film as a model, I believe.

Dragging the deep South kicking and screaming into more or less equal rights for all took a lot of "outside agitators" and some courage on the part of a couple of Presidents. I was down there in the early 60s working on civil rights issues and a young kid, and it was an ugly situation that literally scared the crap out of me. I joined the USAF just days before the Selma marches, so I missed a lot of what ensued. I had a draft notice in hand, and made a decision.

Notice any similiarities with this Town Hall/Obama "monkeying around" with healthcare bullshit? That's scaring the crap out of me.

Otherwise, the timescale is only a historical, rather than personal, perspective.