Reasons for Daniels's father's opposition to black political power
Daniels explains his father's fears about black domination stemming from Reconstruction-era racialized politics. Daniels's grandmother's experiences as Wilson, North Carolina, postmistress heightened his father's anti-black sentiments.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Jonathan Worth Daniels, March 9-11, 1977. Interview A-0313. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JONATHAN WORTH DANIELS:
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Never ridden a horse. So he led the parade in a little surrey.
[Laughter]
Wilson was no horseback riding place much, and they were poor
people. His father was killed on a ship full of non-combatants by some
irregular Texas troops when he was going back to Washington. And all
through my father's life there were certain people who tried to
stigmatize him by saying that his father was a buffalo. A buffalo, as
you know, was the same as a copperhead in the North. And some years
later we had some stories about some people down in eastern North
Carolina, which were not very kind stories in the sense that
, and the family found a document showing that
Josephus Daniels, Sr. had been given a pass to trade within the occupied
zone, to try to prove that he . But a great many
of his friends and his mother's and father's friends came forward and
said he was not an active buffalo. She became postmistress in Wilson,
however, because she was the only literate white person they could find
who hadn't given aid or comfort to the Confederacy, and served that for
many years. In fact, unconsciously, I think that
may have entered into my father's strong feeling about black domination
in the South at one time. He began to edit, as a young man, a very
violent Democratic newspaper in Wilson. And at that time there was a
black congressman.
- CHARLES EAGLES:
-
George White?
- JONATHAN WORTH DANIELS:
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I think so, but you'll have to check that. Who got father's mother
removed as postmistress. And he had to go to White to try to get her
reinstated; I don't think White ever did. Remember in that period of his
boyhood Vance was campaigning against Settle for governor in eastern
North Carolina. And he got up to speak, and there was just a vast crowd
of blacks. And Vance said, "I feel like a grain of rice in a
bushel of rat turds."
[Laughter]