DIVINE DISCONTENT: NATHAN CARTER NEWBOLD, WHITE LIBERALS, BLACK EDUCATION, AND THE MAKING OF THE JIM CROW SOUTH
Abstract
In the first half of the twentieth century, a small but vocal group of white southerners believed it possible to protect the flanks of the South's caste system by dampening black impatience with Jim Crow. Nathan Carter Newbold, a white racial moderate and State Agent for Negro Education, became a leading voice for the 'equalization without social equality' movement. Newbold believed blacks accepted the separation of the races as natural and beneficial to both, but they also expected whites to deliver equality of opportunity. The failure to meet this responsibility led blacks to engage in political and judicial activism. This 'Divine Discontent,' as Newbold called it, would one day lead to an upending of the New South's orderly race relations.