No Kings! In The Deep South - A Descendant Of A Southern Grandee And Lord Of The Manor Ignores The Irony And Protests

Brenda Harris couldn't wait for Saturday, the No Kings rally day in Coulter, Mississippi a small town not from  he Alabama border  She and Jimmie Sue Perkins had been planning the event for weeks - the signs, the placards, the sandwiches and sweet tea, the trappings and of course the invitations. 

'Why, it's just like Pilgrimage', said Jimmie Sue of the fine show the owners of White Oaks gave the visitors, dressed up in vintage antebellum hoop dresses, tressed wigs, heels, and finery.  Old Hiram Barkins looked very much the Southern grandee, elegant and imperial in his outfit, a real Cavalier. Two hundred people visited White Oaks at last year’s Pilgrimage, and this year they hoped for more. 

 

Pilgrimage was the high point of the year, a time to show off the many well-preserved and -appointed mansions of the town, many more than Columbus, nothing so grand as Natchez of course, but certainly a rival to Vicksburg and Aberdeen.  Jimmie Sue lived in Cedars, a home that had been in the Perkins family since before the Civil War.  

The Union Troops had not come this way.  Grant destroyed Vicksburg, Atlanta, and Charleston but had passed to the north of Coulter, and so the magnificent homes of the planters of the Black Prairie, those acres of rich bottom land and cotton fields were spared. 

Pilgrimage was a time of celebration of the Old South, Cavalier traditions, and a more settled, peaceful, sophisticated and cultured way of life. Thousands of visitors came to Coulter every year from every part of America, some from as far away as Oregon and Maine.  

They came not only to visit the magnificent homes of Coulter, but to enjoy Southern hospitality.  Visitors were treated royally, honored guests who chose to visit the town and the South.  

Choosing to come to Mississippi was no simple affair, since the North still condemned the entire South as an unrepentant racist, Jim Crow region whose residents still treated black people as chattel, honored soldiers of the Confederacy with statues in the town square and Stars and Bars flew in every cemetery. 

'You mustn't go there', one visitor from Pennsylvania had been told.  'A visit is tantamount to giving support to a vengeful, hateful, racist, recidivist empire'.  His Main Line neighborhood was no different than its liberal counterparts in Washington, New York, and Boston.  Residents there hated the South, spat on cars from Alabama, shouted 'Liberation Now!' at Black Lives Matter rallies, waved defaced Georgia and South Carolina flags at every car from south of the Mason-Dixon line. 

Of course Brenda knew this, and was proud of those Northerners who had defied censure and hate to visit Coulter and appreciate the grandeur that was the antebellum South.  Yes, slavery existed  then, but those African migrants who worked faithfully and uncomplainingly as agricultural workers were treated well. 

Any good capitalist knows that care and shepherding doubled when labor and capital were combined, and a slave was just that. Records from archives of White Oaks showed exactly how much was generously spent on clothing, food, medical care and shelter for the newcomers from Angola and Ghana. 

In any case, preparation for the No Kings rally reminded Brenda of Pilgrimage.  One might have expected Republican sentiments from Brenda and her colleagues.  However years of teaching at the local college, a smaller version of those Northern universities with solid progressive credentials, gave Brenda an even greater commitment to Black Restoration - the meme of the college and a sign of seriousness about the oppressed.  

She, like many Southerners , however, was conflicted.  They revered the old ways, old Southern gentility and manners, the sophistication of plantation life; but at the same time rejected their ancestors' treatment of the African enslaved.  Depending on the time and the place, Brenda changed her colors.  Pilgrimage was a time for historical pride; No Kings Day was a statement of vibrant Southern populism. 

Brenda saw no irony in the fact that she lived in Harper's Grove, a home built in 1845 by her great grandfather Aloysius, a modest home compared to White Oaks or any in Natchez, but a manor house nonetheless.  Old Aloysius, although living more quietly than his neighbors, was still one of the wealthiest men in the state and was in fact always referred to as 'a prince of a man' or 'Southern royalty' or even 'A king among mortals'.

Donald Trump was no Aloysius Harris - a man of class, culture, and fine sensibilities - but a usurping monarch, a regal poseur, a devilish imposter, and a dangerous man out to take down the bastions of democracy and replace it with his own monarchy.  As she walked down the polished mahogany staircase of her home, past the portraits of her forbears, into the grand hall, out the front portico where carriages used to come carrying fine ladies and gentlemen, and down the steps, she thought only of Donald Trump, his megalomania, his entrenched wealth, and his appetite for power. 

If the truth be known, her ancestor Aloysius was one of the most territorially aggressive, intemperate, slave-driving plantation owners east of the Mississippi.  To his credit, however, he cleared thousands of acres of cypress swamps and alligator-infested bayous to make rich, productive, arable land; and his investments fueled profitable industries along the Louisiana Gulf coast. He was indeed a king, a royal master, and an icon of the Old South. 

 

This lack of irony, perspective, or sense of balance was what characterized the modern American progressive.  A belief in the progressive canon - climate change, the supremacy of the black man, the broken glass ceiling, homoeroticism and transgenderism on an open ended spectrum - had become integral to liberal identity.

And so it was that the splendor of her antebellum surroundings, the social propriety of her forbears which excluded anyone of color, and the cotton empire of which Aloysius was king was simply an irrelevant background in her passionate defense of the black man, democracy, and an equal partnership of all Americans. 

'Isn't this fun?', remarked Jimmie Sue. 

'It's serious business', Brenda replied, although she wasn't exactly sure what to be serious about.  A few matronly ladies sitting on camp chairs along Main Street, holding No Kings signs and wearing No Kings tee shirts, and waving to cars passing along the way wouldn't do much to slow the Trump juggernaut of hatred, racism, and homophobia.  

She chased any thoughts of 'Why are we here?' from her head, fixed a loose curl on her forehead, and pitched into the sandwich-making. 

'Don't make too many more ham', said Jimmie Sue. 'You've already overdone it'; and indeed Brenda had, so preoccupied by the niggling doubts that kept popping up.  As she looked at the gables of her home, seen just beyond Main Street, on an avenue lined with live oaks, magnolias, and camelias, she dreamed for an instant of being a belle of the ball, the queen of the manor, receiving guests from Charleston, Atlanta, and Richmond. 

 

Donald Trump the king? Hardly, she admitted to herself.  Aloysius was king, royalty, monarch, and lord of all he surveyed.  Trump was a commoner, a plebian, a pedestrian lowlife, a bourgeois interloper.  What on earth was she doing here? 

But community mattered, the ham sandwiches were made, and the ladies were assembling, so despite this late, welcome epiphany, she stayed the course.  'No Kings!' she shouted to a passing Buick.