Husband.Father.Teacher
I serve as a Professor of History and Southern Studies in the College of Liberal Arts at Mercer University (Macon, GA). Besides teaching, I serve as editor of the Journal of Southern Religion. A decade long research and writing project published in 2017, Richmond’s Priests and Prophets: Race, Religion, and Social Change in the Civil Rights Era examines religious responses in Richmond, Virginia, to the political movement know as Massive Resistance. At the moment I am also working on a project that explores Martin Luther King, Jr.’s relationship to the Vietnam War. Another interest of mine examines how automobiles changed the American South. When I am not teaching or working on projects, I enjoy traveling with my family and going on long backpacking trips or kayaking.
In 2010, I received the College of Liberal Arts’s Spencer B. King’s Excellence in Teaching award.
I also have two blogs that feature both personal and professional pieces.
Dr. Thompson:
I was watching CSPAN’s “Lecture In History” and your course “Slavery and Religion” and felt compelled to comment on several points.
(1) When you put forth the question with respect as to why Southern slaveholders could not or did relate the situation in of the Hebrew slaves in Exodus as being relative to the enslave Africans and African-Americans, a young lady responded “because the slaves in Exodus were White”.
Seriously?
First, I cannot find a single reference to the Hebrews as being identified as being “White” in the book of Exodus.
Second, if we are to believe the evidence contained in the archeological record, the ORIGINAL Hebrews came from a region in Africa in what now constitutes the modern-day nation-states of Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia.
(2) The reason, I believe, that the slaveholding class could not and did not see the comparison of the Hebrew slaves in Exodus with the African and the African-American slaves in the Americas did not even have to rise to the supposition that, as you indicated, the slaveholders saw themselves —White people— in the story of Exodus as they were the descendants of those who “escaped the ‘slavery’ of the English Crown”: the slaveholders simply had no intention of even attempting to see a connection or a parallel between the Hebrew slave in the book of Exodus and the African and African-American slaves in the Americas.
The young lady in your class that aired on CSPAN should have been corrected – And her comment should not have gone unchallenged.
You are a remarkable Academician and scholar and if I am ever in a position to take a course you are teaching, I will avail myself of that opportunity.
Very Respectfully,
Daran Barfield
I am sorry the lecture cuts a slice out of a sixteen week course that explores the nuances of race theory and the ways that Americans have made interpretive moves with scripture to make sense of the world they inhabited. In this case, the question was relevant since by 1830 evangelicals had successfully built the case for teaching slaves Christianity. Earlier slaveowners would care less about Exodus, but by the time of Nat Turner slaveowners were open to teaching slaves Christianity. As this happened, Christian slaveowners became aware of the power of Exodus for slaves. The tension for slaveowners was apparent and I wanted students to engage that tension. My technique in class is to address where students may misunderstand material over the course of the next fews classes rather than directly comment on their wrong answers.