Alfred Holt Stone (October 16, 1870 – May 11, 1955) was an American planter, writer, politician, and tax commissioner for the State of

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

. Stone was one of the oldest officeholders in Mississippi, and was noted for his racist views toward African-Americans.

Early life and career

Stone was born in

New Orleans, Louisiana New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

. He attended the

University of Mississippi The University of Mississippi ( byname Ole Miss) is a public research university that is located adjacent to Oxford, Mississippi, and has a medical center in Jackson. It is Mississippi's oldest public university and its largest by enrollment ...

, where he received an LL.D. in 1891, and an LL.B. in 1916. While there, he was a member of the fraternity of Delta Psi (also known as St. Anthony Hall). In 1928, he received an honorary LL.D. from Southwestern at Memphis. Stone worked as a lawyer from 1893 to 1932. From 1912 to 1913, he was President of the

Mississippi Historical Society The Mississippi Historical Society (MHS) is a historical society located in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The society was established in 1858 but was terminated soon after because of the outbreak of the American Civil War. It remained in hiatus u ...

, and from 1916 to 1923, he served in the Mississippi House of Representatives, representing Washington County. Stone was also appointed a research associate in economic history at the

Carnegie Institution of Washington The Carnegie Institution of Washington (the organization's legal name), known also for public purposes as the Carnegie Institution for Science (CIS), is an organization in the United States established to fund and perform scientific research. Th ...

. In 1923, Stone became one of three co-owners of the

Columbus and Greenville Railway There have been two uses of Columbus and Greenville Railway, both for the same rail line. Original Columbus and Greenville The first Columbus and Greenville Railway was formed by the sale of the Southern Railway operated Southern Railway in M ...

, and in 1932, he was named Tax Commissioner and Chairman of the Mississippi State Tax Commission, a post he held until his death in 1955. Stone was also a cotton planter at the Dunleith Plantation in

Dunleith, Mississippi Dunleith is an unincorporated community located in Washington County, Mississippi. Dunleith is approximately east of Leland. The Dunleith Plantation was located here. In the 1930s, it was considered one of the finest plantations in the Delta. ...

, and was founder of the Staple Cotton Cooperative Association, which enabled growers to sell directly to buyers. Stone was editor of the Cooperative's monthly newsletter for more than three decades.

Ideology

Between 1900 and 1909, Stone began researching people of African descent. His opinions were of

white supremacy White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...

, and would certainly be held in disrepute today. At the time, Stone wrote extensively, gave lectures at universities and professional meetings across the country, and eventually became known as an expert on the subject. Representative Benjamin G. Humphreys II from Mississippi referred to Stone during a speech in 1908 in the U.S. Congress as "perhaps the most profound student of the race question in this country to-day." Historian James G. Hollandsworth wrote, "Stone became well-known for his racial views, possibly because a majority of white people in the United States at the turn of the 20th century shared his pessimistic assessment of the capacity for people of African descent to get ahead in the world." W. E. B. Du Bois, a professor at

Atlanta University Clark Atlanta University (CAU or Clark Atlanta) is a private, Methodist, historically black research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Clark Atlanta is the first Historically Black College or University (HBCU) in the Southern United States. Fou ...

, "hated Stone and easily debated Stone's undocumented theories." Historian

Eugene Genovese Eugene Dominic Genovese (May 19, 1930 – September 26, 2012) was an American historian of the American South and American slavery. He was noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters and ...

wrote in 1974 that: "Stone's pioneer work holds little appeal to modern historians. Written from the perspective of the slaveholder, not that of the slave, it flies in the face of today's scholarship."

The Stone Collection

Although Stone's writings and speeches reflected his strong racial prejudices, his reading collection was quite eclectic, including significant writings by abolitionists and those who criticized the Southern states for disfranchising black voters. An "Alfred Holt Stone Collection" was established at the Archives and Special Collections section of the University of Mississippi's J.D. Williams Library to hold more than 3,000 of Stone's items, which include papers presented at professional meetings, census reports, speeches delivered by politicians and educators, economic assessments of countries with black populations, sermons by preachers either defending slavery or attacking it, published narratives written by slaves and freedmen, governmental reports, and a host of other sources spanning a period from the late 18th century through the first decade of the 20th century.

Early life and career

Ideology

The Stone Collection

References

Further reading