This innovative study re-examines the dynamics of race relations in
the post--Civil War South from an altogether fresh perspective:
field sports.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, wealthy
white men from Southern cities and the industrial North traveled to
the hunting and fishing lodges of the old Confederacy -- escaping
from the office to socialize among like-minded peers. These
sportsmen depended on local black guides who knew the land and
fishing holes and could ensure a successful outing. For whites, the
ability to hunt and fish freely and employ black laborers became a
conspicuous display of their wealth and social standing.
But hunting and fishing had been a way of life for all
Southerners -- blacks included -- since colonial times. After the
war, African Americans used their mastery of these sports to enter
into market activities normally denied people of color, thereby
becoming more economically independent from their white employers.
Whites came to view black participation in hunting and fishing as a
serious threat to the South's labor system. Scott E. Giltner shows
how African-American freedom developed in this racially tense
environment -- how blacks' sense of competence and authority
flourished in a Jim Crow setting.
Giltner's thorough research using slave narratives, sportsmen's
recollections, records of fish and game clubs, and sporting
periodicals offers a unique perspective on the African-American
struggle for independence from the end of the Civil War to the
1920s.
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