Copyright Ross F. Lockridge, Jr., 1947, 1948 / All rights reserved Selected Writings From Raintree County Black had builded this republic.
Raintree County, 1948
From flashback, 1859-60, pp. 438-9
They were all
slaves, human beings whose dark skins made it legal for other
men to rule them. They were also all Christians.
There was nothing South that wasn't
impregnated with their presence. Black had builded this republic.
Black had bled and labored for White and borne the casual lust
of White so that this republic might lift its Doric columns from
the Great Swamp. Black had planted and picked the white cotton
that made White wealthy. Black had dressed the pampered bodies
of White in satin gowns. Black had built the levees that held
the dreaded river at bay. Black had bred and trained the swift
horses with which White won the stakes at New Orleans. Black
had distilled the fine whiskeys and the syrup rums that White
sipped on long verandahs. Black had picked and dried and rolled
tobacco leaf for White's long smokes. Black had dug the ditches
and tied the bales, had reared the houses and built the roads.
Black had erected the court houses and the state houses. Black
had made White strong and proud and warlike, leaders of men,
statesmen who shaped the course of empire South and West. Black
had done it all, nameless and unrewarded, and would go on doing
it, nameless and unrewarded.
So the secret of this culture,
white and proud, was that it had all been built over the stinking
marsh of human slavery. Often when Johnny was driving through
New Orleans, in a maze of old streets, he would notice green
scum in the gutters bubbling with gas. And when he had gone a
little way beyond the City, he would see, heaving up to the very
rims of the negrobuilded roads, the swamp from which the City
had been rescued. The delicate iron festoons and romantic walls
of New Orleans had in a few miles given way to Spanish moss swinging
in soft scarves from the trees. Roots of twisted willows bulged
from the unreclaimed, unreclaimable muck.
Yes, it was there always, a dark
secret. When he lay in bed at night, it throbbed in the warm
dark that settled like a mist, scented, miasmal, on the City.
Here, in the American Republic, men openly committed the darkest
of all crimes. The bought flesh lay forever beneath whiteblossoming
summer.
| The Novel | Essays | Other Writings | RL Jr. Writer's Award | Complete Contents | Book Orders |
| The Biography | Photos / Postcards | RC Source & Facsimiles | Suicide & Prevention | Movie & Score |