FASCINATING DIXIE DISCUSSION AND REFLECTIONS -- THESE PAST FEW DAYS IN IDAHO

FASCINATING DIXIE DISCUSSION AND REFLECTIONS -- THESE PAST FEW DAYS IN IDAHO  (OCTOBER 28 2013)

The latter part of our just passed previous week was an especially pleasant period.  A young woman of North Carolina background traveled the long trail from the University of Mississippi, Oxford, into our humble living room up here on the edge of Pocatello.  Her focus is documenting, via film and principal figures, the always fascinating complex of historical and contemporary Southern culture, with emphasis on social justice movements, the nature of the people -- pro and con -- involved thereof, the continuing flow of racism and its collateral reactions (some of this including white guilt) -- both old-time and newly garbed.  

I spoke, in the context of interview, for over five hours on one day and more than eight on another -- much of this on the deeper wells and springs of the sociology of the always fascinating land Down Yonder -- where the ethos of folk societies (gemeinschaft) continues to prevail despite  growing urbanization and some industrialization.  As we traveled along, I found myself admitting, and readily so, that I am my own version of Agrarian at heart, obviously very much minus, of course, the tinges of racism and exploitation that characterized that older traditional school of Southern analysts and writers.  

Much of this involved the still murky and mysterious Mississippi, but a fair part also centered on my knowledge of the quite comparable Northeastern North Carolina Black Belt.  There was something of my early and formative years -- with other organizing locales of mine around this country as comparative points. Native matters, of course, entered our colloquy as did militant Labor.  Since this scholar interviewer is well versed in her topical focus -- and had read much of my considerable stuff -- all of this moved rapidly and smoothly and fully along.  My good spouse of now almost  53 years, Eldri, contributed solid and worthwhile thoughts and assessments.

Personally, I am far more interested in the written and oral first hand and primary accounts of those who actually lived and participated in living, breathing "situations" -- especially those involving social justice struggle -- than I am in secondary approaches.  Even trained historians, with the best of motives, can never match the "real thing" and sometimes stumble -- and more popular writers frequently, however unwittingly, propound significant errors.  Ten years before the New Left historians discovered the old-time Industrial Workers of the World, I was a 21 year old who, in the context of mutual happiness, listened avidly, for several weeks, to the stories of a number of old time IWW Wobblies gathered in an old hall in Seattle.  The memories of many of them were as keenly sharp as my own is to this very moment.

My interviewer came in the final days of an unusual stretch of clear skies and moderate temperatures in Idaho. Rain and some snow are now at hand.  Before she left, she filmed much of that on our household walls: some paintings (mostly by my father), Native arts and crafts, my old and very red IWW membership card that I took out in Seattle at the beginning of 1955 and continued for some years.  That, now framed and protected by a sheet of plastic, is a favorite of many visitors.  It also consistently reminds me of my continuing tie to that very unique frontier syndicalist faith that birthed in the American West.

And, as always, this most enjoyable and quite productive experience yet again showed both Eldri and myself that we will never, ever,  be able to "escape" the hold of Dixie.

Hunter Bear

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

Check out our massive social justice website
www.hunterbear.org  The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm

See our very full COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
page -- with a great deal of practical material:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm

See WITCH HUNT STUFF on our website (a number of pages 
including FBI, Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission):
http://hunterbear.org/a_bizarre__1979_fbi_smear_effort.htm

See my  new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book," 
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000 word
introduction by me. This page lists many reviews.
And this book is also an activist's how-to manual: 
 http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm   

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm:
(Photos)