Chief Lieutenant

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Recommended: Booker t Washington's influence

In A Chief Lieutenant, Jackson recovers the lived experience of oppression in Mississippi during the early-twentieth century. While cognizant of the extraordinary brutality that lay beneath the legal apparatus of segregation, he focuses upon the constraints institutionalized racism imposed upon a black middle class that nevertheless strove to make Mound Bayou a haven. His depiction of Charles Banks, an admiring one, confirms historian Robert Kenzer's observation that successful African Americans in the South "were forced to live very public lives in which they faced constant scrutiny not only from other blacks but also from whites."[2] As for Mound Bayou, it is worth remembering that those who fought for African American empowerment saw black enterprise as the foundation of "racial uplift." As Jackson notes, Booker T. Washington wrote extensively about Banks and his labors within the Mississippi Delta. "As I look at it," Washington observed, "Mound Bayou is not merely a town; it is at the same time and in a very real sense of that word, a school. It is not only a place where a Negro may get inspiration, by seeing what other members of his own race have accomplished, but a place, also, where he has an opportunity to learn some of the fundamental duties and responsibilities of social and civic life."[3] Rich in detail, insight, and thoughtful speculation, Jackson's volume insists that Banks and Mound Bayou are worthy subjects in their own right.

A Chief Lieutenant is organized thematically, with the first two chapters covering the early life of Charles Banks and the history of Mound Bayou. Banks, born in 1873, attended Rusk University between 1887 and 1890. After serving as a federal census enumerator, Banks opened a general mer...

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...between Banks and Washington was reciprocal. Far from being a political machine that dispensed patronage, Tuskegee depended upon the successes of Banks and others to maintain its image. Filled with detail and insight, A Chief Lieutenant is a worthwhile volume for scholars interested in African American or southern history. Scholars in the history of education as well as those in business history will find the book rewarding.

Banks died at age fifty in 1923, the same year as the Rosewood massacre in Florida. Just before his death, the precipitous crash in the price of cotton, from eight-five to eleven cents per pound, brought foreclosure to many black enterprises in Mound Bayou. Even the reincarnated Mound Bayou State Bank closed in 1922. Following Booker T. Washington's death in 1915, the Tuskegee Institute never regained the voice in national affairs it once had.

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