asfoxseesit
About Me
- Name: foxofbama
Born May 18, 1953; got saved at Truett Memorial BC in Hayesville, NC 1959. On rigged ballot which I did not rig got Most Intellectual class of 71, Gaffney High School. Furman Grad, Sociology major but it was little tougher than Auburn football players had Had three dates with beautiful women the summer of 1978. Did not marry any of em. Never married anybody cause what was available was undesirable and what was desirable was unaffordable. Unlucky in love as they say and even still it is sometimes heartbreaking. Had a Pakistani Jr. Davis Cupper on the Ropes the summer of 84, City Courts, Rome Georgia I've a baby sitter, watched peoples homes while they were away on Vacation. Freelance writer, local consultant, screenwriter, and the best damn substitute teacher of Floyd County Georgia in mid 80's according to an anonymous kid passed me on main street a few years later when I went back to get a sandwich at Schroeders. Had some good moments in Collinsville as well. Ask Casey Mattox at www.clsnet.org if he will be honest about it. I try my best to make it to Bridges BBQ in Shelby NC at least four times a year.
Thursday, April 04, 2024
Tuesday, April 02, 2024
MAGA Underbelly, guest blog
David Strain teaches college in Arkansas. He goes by the Family Dollar Fuhrer. Some of this is a little strong but written with affection and frustration with many dear to us all who got caught up in MAGA. But God Damn the venal folks who are playing them in Jesus name, like Fox at Five, Yellowhammer News in Bama, Jeffress at FBC Dallas and the staff at FBC Spartanburg who ought to know better. And their theologian in residence at NGU Tony Beam . And the Heritage Foundation
AT THE PIFFLE HOUR . . . .
Thursday, February 29, 2024
In the Blood with the Jordans of North Alabama and the Silent Cavalry of the Civil War
Like a lot of the country I was not familiar with Sacred Harp singing till I saw the Oscar award winning movie Cold Mountain. Mark Morgan had read the book by Charles Frazier in which Lucas Black of Moulton Alabama Starred. He had key scenes around the Battle of Petersburg in the Civil War where the voices of the Ivey Family of Henegar come in strong on the soundtrack with the Idumea ( 47 on the bottom) which boisterously raises the existential question "And Am I Born to die, to lay this body down."
I was near perfect attendance at Pine Grove and the July 4 singing in Henegar for 15 years after. At one point as my Grandfather Jordan taught school at Pine Grove about a crow fly of a mile and a half from the house, I asked the legendary Bud Oliver if any of my grandfather or Mother's generation were singers. He said yes your Grandfather Jordan brother Roscoe, Uncle Rock , came to a lot of singings but like you, Fox, he couldn't sing worth a darn. We called him "Cake' cause he came for the food.
My Mother's cousin Eulene Reed of Lookout Mtn and the Sacred Harp community told me a fascinating tale about seven years ago about a near lynching and almost murder on Lookout Mountain Mtn . You can see the place where it almost all went down from the porch of the House I lived in for thirty years on land that was in the family since the 1930s. My Grandfather was born in the vicinity in 1881 and his father John Sanders Jordan and brother and JS brother Henry Rufus both fought for the Union during the Civil war.
Eulene's great Grandfather didn't believe in Slavery. The Home Guard in South DeKalb County came to his house down around the curve if you take a right at the ST Reed Place top of Lookout Mtn looking for him. He got word and wandered out into a cornfield. The HG got his wife and took her to the barn and threw a rope over an eave and noosed her hangin. She told em they could hang her till she died but she wasn't gonna help em in the least.
They did discover somehow he had ran into the cornfield and they shot it up pretty good but never saw him. I guess they ran out of ammo. Story was later he got to the brow and hollered to kin he made it alive.
Eulene is one of his direct descendants.
She said a retarded son was born soon after the incident. Her ggrandfather went to the neighbor in the confederate and told him if he didn't apologize for noosing up his wife and the resulting injury to his newborn he was gonna kill him if he didn't get on his knees and pray for forgiveness.
They both had a salvation moment in that ordeal and Eulene's Great Grandfather became a Baptist Preacher.
This story told to Eulene by Barrett Ashley is extra mustard for me at least in Augusts when I sing at Pine Grove, especially the verse of my friend Sam Hodges Great great great Grandfather Fitzpatrick, a Rebel of Crawford County Georgia, whose dying words from injuries in the Battle of Petersburg Va near the end of the war, were from the Sacred Harp hymn Jesus can make a dying bed, soft as downy pillows are.
"such are the chips through which defining traits marinate across generations of families that don't quite buy into the commanding culture. It's a mysterious process, difficult to calibrate, and especially daunting when it comes to rescuing unheralded difference makers from the scrap bin of history."
Ed Bridges, a graduate of Marshall Frady and my Furman University, was the state archivist for Thirty years in Montgomery. He wrote the Bicentennial history of the state and has thrity grand pages on the Civil War and Reconstruction in his book. He has a great summation of the claims of groups like the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy which were taught in the public schools of Alabama and across the nation up until just a few years ago. I think the following quote should be memorized by all honors students across the state. Bridges lists four errant claims taught by the sophomoric he says: " Although specific historical examples could be produced to support each of these claims , taken as a whole they amounted to a rewriting of history that distorted it fundamental ways. Ed Bridges page 159
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Column for Gaffney's Cherokee Chronicle
A Rafael Perez had a collumn in the Jan 30 Cherokee Chronicle of my hometown of Gaffney South Carolina. I do not know Mr. Perez on any family name like that but I have been away for some time.
Perez column was an assault of the capacity of Joe Biden to succeed himself as President.
Monday, January 22, 2024
George Singleton: The Dogs Keep Barking, but the Caravan Moves On
I attended the authors confab at the Greenville SC Co Library Jan 20 before Henry's BBQ and the Fuman basketball game versus WCU. My friend Ron Rash was on panel with Furman alum George Singleton and a Ms Franks who is writing a novel about Copper Hill NC. She says should be out in a couple years. I'm excited about it.
Somewhere I rubbed Singleton the wrong way. There were two George Singleton's of the mid 80s grads of Furman, the writer and the basketball player. Singleton the baller was scouted heavily for the NBA
The writer has been published in the New Yorker, the Atlantic and other lofty climes. He's not Marshall Frady FU 63, but neither am I.
After 45 minutes of a well moderated panel conversation with a lot of jocularity--I think you can find it online as was live streamed--I got the first question in the remaining 15 minutes. I said George my Dad was a Baptist minister and I remember about ten years ago in the Furman magazine you had a quip about some kid on your hall at Furman who repeatedly tried to tell you about Jesus and save your soul. By your own testimony your are somehing of a functional alcoholic and I just wonder if on occasion you second guess yourself and thought about forsaking the notoriety and yearn to have spent your days more quietly as a Baptist Deacon in some small Upstate SC town you often ridicule.
He called me out and said Your Stephen Fox aren't you. I asked what does it matter , you are on the panel and I am not, but yes I am that Stephen.
I thought he had a good answer referencing somebody who said the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.
George, a Furman grad, now teaches at the Methodist school, Wofford, in Spartanburg SC, a town he shares with Trey Gowdy.
Then I asked Rash a question about Cormac McCarthy. Wanted his take on Hal Crowther's view Cormac McCarthy coulda mined East Tennessee more before he moved South west. After the program and a visit to another room with up and coming Upstate authors, I caught Rash in the hall with his wife as they were leaving. Turns out wife Caroline is from Belton Honea Path where she mighta known Lillian Ashley but I didnt have presence of mind to ask. Told Ron the Fox Store frequented by Lester Ballard in Cormac McCarthy's Child of God was actual store owned by the sons of my Grandfather's Fox's first cousin near the Walden's Creek UMC in Wears Valley Tennessee outside Pigeon Forge down the road from Chinkey Pen where Cousin Marshall Fox was cut behind the knee and bled to death in 1907. His grave is in the church cemetery.
Friday, January 05, 2024
Howell Raines says North Alabama Union soldiers lit the first matches to burn Atlanta. Makes Bama Senator Katie Britt laughable with Trump endorsement.
About 3 15 Jan 5 I was on the air with Paul Finebaum to talk about Howell Raines new book Silent Cavalry about the soldiers from North Alabama who fought with the Union in the Civil War. My Great Grandfather Jordan was among them. A Hundred Years ago his son, My Grandfather born in 1881, ran as a Lincoln Republican for School Supe in Dekalb County , Alabama and was soundly defeated .
Friday, December 15, 2023
Rabbit trails of Furman's Tainted Legacy
A version of this blog condensed and edited is in the hopper to be published late January 2024 in the Baptist progressive quarterly Christian Ethics Today. Pat Anderson FU 65 is the editor
In March of 2000 Furman Political science Proff Jim Guth had piece in the Christian Century coming to the defense of Bob Jones University, five miles across the north side of town, in Greenville SC. Bush 43 was running for President and made national news that spotlighted BJU history as racially exclusive. Now his daughter Karen (FU 2001) who first came to national attention with her essay in the Century Claims on Bonhoeffer, is gaining further notoriety with her book The Ethics of Tainted Legacies. Both were active in FBC Greenville a key congregation in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship where Mr Guth and wife remain active.
For purposes of this review I want to double down on the pages in Tainted Legacy dealing with Guth's spotlight on Furman's past with Slavery and its time with the SC SBC.
In mid 20th Century Furman was fifty percent Southern Baptist student population and existed in the Textile Culture of the Piedmont Carolinas and North Georgia. Roger Milliken was deep in the politics of Goldwater, Nixon and Strom Thurmond. It was Mr Charles Daniel for whom the Chapel and Dining Hall at Furman are named who introduced Milliken to Strom Thurmond in 1956.
Nixon slept in the Daniel Home in 1962. The mansion is now the home of Furman Presidents and has been for some forty years now.
. Mr Daniel died in 1965. Early in the Nixon Presidency he nominated Furman Alumnus Judge Haynsworth for a seat on the Supreme Court. In a bitter ordeal the nomination failed and some Furman folks of that era most likely among others Herman Lay of the potato chip and Pepsi fortune among them. A dorm remains named in Haynsworth honor at Furman
Haynsworth ruled in favor of Milliken textiles in one of the most famous labor cases in 20th Century. The Darlington SC plant voted to go Union and Haynsworth was in the negative. Mr. Milliken stretched the case out over a couple decades never paying a cent.
Rocky Purvis in the 80s became a trustee and one of fundamentalist thorns in the side of the Furman presidency of John Johns. Rocky was raised in Darlington where his father was long time pastor. His brother Paul was Furman SGA President early nineties.
It is almost a for certain a coincidence but would make a good novel if the Purvis assault on Furman was stoked by lasting resentment of the Haynsworth ruling. Furman Chaplain Pitts rode with Trustee Hartness of Pepsi Cola to Union SC in the heart of the Furman SC SBC tumult to beg Rocky to call off the dogs.
About 25 years ago Dr. Jim Guth confided in me his second year at Furman 1973, Milliken tried to place Gary North, the right wing Christian reconstructionist and key member of the Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson Council for National Policy on the Furman faculty . He was to teach economics and Politics. North came to campus and given a hearing with several faculty and shown the door. To my knowledge Millken was satisfied and continued to make donations to Furman in scholarships and other ways.
Milliken son Roger Jr and I were good friends the summer of 1970 working in a Gaffney Peach Shed. Public reports are Roger Jr donated a quarter million dollars to Obama in 2012.
Recently deceased Furman Chaplain Jim Pitts was engaged for a half century with Furman. He shared reservations with me about the focus on Joseph Vaughn, Seeking Abraham initiative and the statue of two years ago erected on campus in his honor as the first person of color to enroll and graduate from Furman. Pitts knew Vaughn and said Joe would not have sought this attention.
Furman religion department Helen Lee Turner and Sam Britt joined to contribute a tribute to Pitts in the collection Walk With Me in honor of his passing in late 2021 . It is a chapter I challenge all folks of influence in the Furman community to read , especially administration, folks in communication and Trustees.
Conceding Furman long ago became no longer an institution whose main purpose was to train future Baptist preachers, but protests since then have rewritten our history. Quoting: "We have picked over our predecessors in a manner that is not only impious, but also hypocritical. we have reimagined an origin story that has emphasized the failures of Furman's founders and overlooked even their meager virtues. But the Longevity of any community requires learning how to live with the dead, which includes those flawed souls who erred, but who, by the grace of God still fashioned a place of learning, a place wherein we all remain both saints and sinners". End quote
Furman's Seeking Abraham initiative that looks at the slave holding of Furman's founders says nothing about the climate Furman lived in during the latter part of Jim Crow. In 1956 WA Criswell spoke to the Pastor's conference in Columbia SC and said such things as I wouldnt let my daughter within two city blocks of a big black buck; and you wouldn't call a chigger a chiggerow now would ya. The next day Strom Thurmond had him speak to a joint session of the SC legislature. Just ten years later Gordon Blackwell became the President of Furman on the condition it integrate. It did so with Joe Vaughn against the wishes of the SC SBC.
And as late as 1972 Gone with the Wind was shown to a packed house of students and Greenvillians at Furman's McCallister Auditorium. I may talk about this at some length later in a sequel to this blog re Tim Alberta's new book on Evangelical Extremism and how the super Trumper Robert Jeffress now carries on in the Criswell tradition at FBC Dallas Texas.
I have come to disagree in part with Pitts re the statue and its annual commemoration. I participated in the annual march from the Chapel to the Library in honor of Vaughn and the statue. Seeing for the first time the report of Seeking Abraham, Furman's concerted effort to deal with the slaveholder founder and apologist Richard Furman, and others, alongside Furman historian Courtney Tollison Hartness 20 page piece on Furman and SC Baptists I now see the whole matter in bigger picture. Tollison piece from her U South Carolina dissertation titled Seeking Excellence, makes it clear without Vaughn pivotal sixties President Gordon Blackwell would've never become the President. As key moment against the wishes of the SC SBC with the national fundamentalist takeover of the SBC to follow soon, it was too much for Furman to be bothered with and ties were severed in 1992.
The fall 2023 edition of the Furman alumni magazine gives Guth and her book a short promotional saying this: "Constructing a typology of responses to compromised thinkers, traditions and institutions, she demonstrates the relevance of of age old debates in Christian theology for those who confront legacies tarnished by the traumas of slavery, racism and sexual violence.
Scotty Bryan had some interesting remarks in her final opinion piece as editor of the Furman Paladin as she graduated the spring of 2023
Scotty Bryan : Looking at past editions of The Paladin, I understand why student journalism matters in the long run. These articles are a record of campus life at Furman, and in some cases, the only existing record of certain information. Articles from decades ago, like the “Furman Vows to Fight Baptists” front page framed in the newsroom, preserve the voices of students who have long since graduated and provide a snapshot of a campus that looked and felt drastically different. This history is engrained in the framework of our institution and is worthy of being documented. Revisiting these articles makes us invested.
While Guth mentions her alma mater Furman in passing re institutional tainted legacies, her focus is on Georgetown and its history with slavery. Her individual explorations focus on Bill Cosby and Howard Yoder. In a footnote she compares Yoder to King about whom she says she is often asked. Guth's response: " the sexual violations of over 100 women (Yoder) and consensual sex outside marriage are different types of violation. Some legacies are more tainted than others"
Of King I think the best answer is that of Marshall Frady (FU 63, a Baptist preacher's son) in his magnificent short bio of King in the Penguin series of a couple decades ago: "while evil can wear the most civil and civil and rectitudinous certitude , good can seem blunderbous and uncertain shockingly wayward , woefully flawed like one of Graham Greene's dissolute shabby, God haunted saints. And the ful dodied reality of King should finally tell us, beyond all the awe and celebration of him, is how mysteriously mixed, in what torturously complicated forms, our moral heroes--our prophets--actually come to us.
What follows are notes to be explored in a sequel or two for this post.
Jill Lepore and Gus Niebuhr spotlight the role of religion in America s political twist and turns.
Marty Cohen's book Moral Congress takes a thirty page spotlight on SC's fourth US Congressional district. It follows the influence of fundamentalism of Bob Jones and North Greenville college that Helped Trey Gowdy primary a a conservative Republican in 2010 Tea Party surge
Current Congressman William Timmons is a product of Christ Church Episcopal school in Greenville and George Washington University. His name is on a plaque in the Furman basketball arena that is named for his extended family.
With Lee Atwater's memo as prextext he is as venal as the slave holding network Furman now shames and regrets as its founding culture. Timmons could not flourish without the complicity of the network of developers, attorneys and financiers of the Destination City and its Big Steeple churches.
At a hundred dollars Karen Guth's Cambridge book is a little pricey for individual acquistion. But it should be in every Church Library that leans forward for its stoke of valuable and timely conversation. Look for at least one possibly two sequels to this blog