Portrait of a Scientific Racist Alfred Holt Stone of Mississippi James G. Hollandsworth Jr. Portrait of a Scientifi c Racist Portrait of a Scientifi c Racist Alfred Holt Stone of Mississippi James G. Hollandsworth Jr. LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS BATON ROUGE Published by Louisiana State University Press Copyright © 2008 by Louisiana State University Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing Designer: laura roubique gleason Typefaces: whitman, text; rockwell extra bold, display Typesetter: j. jarrett engineering, inc. Printer and binder: thomson- shore, inc. Frontispiece: Alfred Holt Stone, ca. 1935. Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History. library of congress cataloging- in- publication data Hollandsworth, James G. Portrait of a scientifi c racist : Alfred Holt Stone of Mississippi / James G. Hollands- worth, Jr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8071-3336-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Stone, Alfred Holt, 1870—1955. 2. Stone, Alfred Holt, 1870-1955—Political and social views. 3. Plantation owners— Mississippi—Biography. 4. Cotton farmers—Mississippi—Biography. 5. Missis- sippi. State Tax Commission—Offi cials and employees—Biography. 6. Racism— Mississippi—History—20th century. 7. Eugenics—Mississippi—History—20th century. 8. Mississippi—Race relations—History—20th century. 9. Racism—United States— Philosophy. 10. Eugenics—United States—History—20th century. I. Title. F341.S78H65 2008 305.80092—dc22 [B] 2007051856 The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. > For Anne Lipscomb Webster, who opened the door Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Abbreviations xv INTRODUCTION: The American Race Problem 1 1 20 AN ORDERLY BRAIN 2 26 ESSENTIALS OF GREATNESS 3 37 NO TWILIGHT ZONE 4 46 FOOD FOR THE HUMAN MIND 5 62 THE BUSINESS OF RAISING COTTON 6 76 CONVICTIONS OF SOUTHERN MEN 7 91 MY LIFE WORK 8 104 I AM NOT A NEGROPHOBIST 9 131 DESTRUCTIVE PROPENSITY vii CONTENTS 10 161 FRANK, WITHOUT BEING OFFENSIVE 11 185 SEVERE AND DISCRIMINATING CRITICISM 12 211 A SLAVE TO BUSINESS 13 233 IN PUBLIC DUTY 14 250 AND IN PRIVATE THINKING Appendix A: Verifi cation of Stone’s Authorship of Editorials in the Greenville Times 273 Appendix B: Verifi cation of Stone’s Annotations 276 Appendix C: Reconciling Stone’s Books with His Collections 279 Appendix D: Should the N in Negro Be Capitalized? 281 Appendix E: Stone’s Letter to LeRoy Percy 285 Bibliography 287 Index 309 Illustrations follow page 160 viii Preface I did not intend to write this book. It started out as a biographical sketch to accompany a fi nder’s aid for a large collection of material at the Missis- sippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) that I was working on. The subject, Alfred Holt Stone, was well known in the state, but not much was known about his personal life. There were two articles about Stone in the Journal of Mississippi History, one written by John David Smith that dealt with Stone’s work on the history of slavery, and another, a eulogy, written in 1955 on the occasion of Stone’s death. In addition, MDAH had the typescript of Stone’s recollections of his childhood, which he wrote when he was in his sixties, and there was also material at MDAH regarding Stone’s activities as an executive of the Staple Cotton Cooperative Association and later as Mis- sissippi’s tax commissioner. But two articles, some newspaper clippings, the typescript of his recollections, and miscellaneous documents related to his public service were the extent of what I had to work with. Although this material provided the outlines of Stone’s life and some in- formation about his childhood, it did not offer much insight in regard to more important questions concerning his racial views, particularly his mo- tivation for assembling such a large collection of material on black people. Nor were there any obvious leads as to where more information about Stone could be obtained. Stone and his wife, Mary, had only one child, a boy, who died in infancy. Consequently, there were no direct descendants to carry Alfred Holt Stone’s memory forward. In addition, I was unable to locate any of Stone’s papers, which was surprising given that Stone, of all people, would have appreciated the importance of his personal papers as a testament to his many years of public service. Nevertheless, either they had disappeared, been destroyed, thrown away, or were languishing out of mind in the attic of an unidentifi ed relative. ix