Wilbur Joseph Cash (May 2, 1900 – July 1, 1941) was an American journalist known for writing ''The Mind of the South'' (1941), his controversial interpretation of the history of the

American South The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

Biography

Early life

Cash was born and grew up in the mill village of

Gaffney, South Carolina Gaffney is a city in and the seat of Cherokee County, South Carolina, United States, in the Upstate region of South Carolina. Gaffney is known as the "Peach Capital of South Carolina". The population was 12,539 at the 2010 census, with an esti ...

. He attended

Wofford College Wofford College is a private liberal arts college in Spartanburg, South Carolina. It was founded in 1854. The campus is a national arboretum and one of the few four-year institutions in the southeastern United States founded before the Americ ...

and graduated from Wake Forest College (now

Wake Forest University Wake Forest University is a private research university in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Founded in 1834, the university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina. The Reynolda Campus, the ...

) in 1922, also attending law school for a year there. During his final two undergraduate years, he served first as managing editor and then editor of the college newspaper, the Old Gold & Black. Cash left law school, declaring later that it "required too much mendacity," and taught college and high school for two years, before turning permanently to journalism and writing as his profession.

Newspaper career

From 1926 to 1928, Cash undertook several newspaper jobs: a year in Chicago writing for the now-defunct ''

Chicago Evening Post The ''Chicago Evening Post'' was a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, from March 1, 1886, until October 29, 1932, when it was absorbed by the '' Chicago Daily News''. The newspaper was founded as a penny paper during the technologi ...

''; several months with ''

The Charlotte News ''The Charlotte News'' was the afternoon newspaper in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was first published on December 8, 1888. The newspaper was eventually purchased on April 5, 1959 by Knight Newspapers, owner of its larger rival ''The Charlotte O ...

'' during which he wrote a wistful philosophical column titled "The Moving Row"; and a four-month stint during the fall of 1928 as the chief editor of a small semi-weekly newspaper in

Shelby, North Carolina Shelby is a city in and the county seat of Cleveland County, North Carolina, United States. It lies near the western edge of the Charlotte combined statistical area. The population was 20,323 at the 2010 census. History The area was originally ...

, during which Cash excoriated the

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and C ...

and the

anti-Catholicism Anti-Catholicism is hostility towards Catholics or opposition to the Catholic Church, its clergy, and/or its adherents. At various points after the Reformation, some majority Protestant states, including England, Prussia, Scotland, and the Uni ...

at work, especially in the South, against the candidacy of

Al Smith Alfred Emanuel Smith (December 30, 1873 – October 4, 1944) was an American politician who served four terms as List of governors of New York, Governor of New York and was the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party's candidate for ...

for president against

Herbert Hoover Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933 and a member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, holding o ...

. During the period of primary writing on ''The Mind of the South'' (1929 to 1937), Cash lived in

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...

in Boiling Springs and Shelby. When his contributions to ''

The American Mercury ''The American Mercury'' was an American magazine published from 1924Staff (Dec. 31, 1923)"Bichloride of Mercury."''Time''. to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured wr ...

'' ended after the passage of the ''Mercurys editorship from

H. L. Mencken Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, ...

Lawrence Spivak Lawrence Edmund Spivak (June 11, 1900 – March 9, 1994) was an American publisher and journalist who was best known as the co-founder, producer and host of the prestigious public affairs program ''Meet the Press''. He and journalist Martha Roun ...

, Cash supported himself with freelance weekly book reviews to ''The Charlotte News'' from 1935 to 1939, for each of which he received a meagre $3. The "book reviews" often became fierce analytical diatribes penetrating the mindset of

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...

under

Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

and

Fascism Fascism is a far-right, Authoritarianism, authoritarian, ultranationalism, ultra-nationalist political Political ideology, ideology and Political movement, movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and pol ...

under

Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...

while at other times exploring the South through Southern writers such as

James Branch Cabell James Branch Cabell (; April 14, 1879 – May 5, 1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and ''belles-lettres''. Cabell was well-regarded by his contemporaries, including H. L. Mencken, Edmund Wilson, and Sinclair Lewis. His work ...

Erskine Caldwell Erskine Preston Caldwell (December 17, 1903 – April 11, 1987) was an American novelist and short story writer. His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native Southern United States, in novels such as '' Tobacco Road'' (1 ...

, Lillian Smith,

Ellen Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (April 22, 1873 – November 21, 1945) was an American novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1942 for her novel ''In This Our Life''. She published 20 novels, as well as short stories, to critical ac ...

, Claude McKay,

Thomas Wolfe Thomas Clayton Wolfe (October 3, 1900 – September 15, 1938) was an American novelist of the early 20th century. Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels as well as many short stories, dramatic works, and novellas. He is known for mixing highly origin ...

, and

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most ...

. Cash also wrote occasional editorials for ''The News,'' focusing primarily on the danger of Hitler and Mussolini to worldwide democracy, a topic on which he regularly expounded from 1935 and by the late 1930s would overtake his interest in the South and further delay completion of the book. The strength of the freelance book reviews earned Cash a job as Associate Editor of ''The Charlotte News'' from October 1937 to May 1941. In that role, Cash wrote editorials on every conceivable topic and stressed the international situation. ''The Charlotte News'', which closed its doors in 1985, was at the time a lively progressive newspaper enjoying the largest circulation of any afternoon daily in the Carolinas and its broad readership expanded admiration for Cash's writing and extraordinary prescience on the developing war news out of Europe and the Pacific. His writing was considered so eerily predictive of coming events in the war that fellow staff writers at ''The News'' nicknamed him "

Zarathustra Zoroaster,; fa, زرتشت, Zartosht, label= Modern Persian; ku, زەردەشت, Zerdeşt also known as Zarathustra,, . Also known as Zarathushtra Spitama, or Ashu Zarathushtra is regarded as the spiritual founder of Zoroastrianism. He is ...

." Cash was nominated for a

Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing The Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing is one of the fourteen American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Journalism. It has been awarded since 1917 for distinguished editorial writing, the test of excellence being clearness of style, ...

in 1941 for his work during 1940 on World War II for the newspaper.

''The Mind of the South''

Frustrated with the duties at a small newspaper, Cash abruptly quit shortly after the 1928 election and began writing what would turn out to be eight articles for H.L. Mencken's ''American Mercury'' between 1929 and 1935, including the seminal piece "The Mind of the South," published in October, 1929. Cash's aggressive style owed a great deal to Mencken. Blanche and Alfred Knopf, publishers of the ''Mercury'', saw the piece, liked it, and asked Cash to write a book-length version. Thus was born the famous book. The text was delayed, much to the Knopfs' worry and frustration, for over a decade as Cash meticulously labored to perfect the work to its final conclusion in mid-1940. He received help along the way from the noted

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sys ...

sociologist, Howard Odum. On February 10, 1941, ''The Mind of the South'' was published by Knopf. The book, a socio-historical, intuitive exploration of Southern culture, received wide critical acclaim at the time and garnered for Cash praise from sources as diverse as the N.A.A.C.P., ''

TIME Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...

'', ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

,'' ''

The Saturday Review of Literature ''Saturday Review'', previously ''The Saturday Review of Literature'', was an American weekly magazine established in 1924. Norman Cousins was the editor from 1940 to 1971. Under Norman Cousins, it was described as "a compendium of reportage, es ...

'', and most Southern newspapers of note. (One note of negative criticism came from the Agrarian group out of Nashville.) ''TIME'', for instance, stated, "Anything written about the South henceforth must start where he leaves off."

In Mexico

In March 1941, largely on the strength of the critical success of the book, Cash was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

to spend a year in Mexico writing a novel, to be on the progress of a Southern cotton mill family from the

Old South Geographically, the U.S. states known as the Old South are those in the Southern United States that were among the original Thirteen Colonies. The region term is differentiated from the Deep South and Upper South. From a cultural and social s ...

into the modern era. Cash had always considered himself to be superior at writing fiction to non-fiction, as he stated in his October, 1940 application to the Guggenheim Foundation, and so he embraced the opportunity for a year to try his hand at a novel with great eagerness. Cash had made, first in 1932, then in 1936, two previous applications for Guggenheim grants: the first to have been a study of

Lafcadio Hearn , born Patrick Lafcadio Hearn (; el, Πατρίκιος Λευκάδιος Χέρν, Patríkios Lefkádios Chérn, Irish: Pádraig Lafcadio O'hEarain), was an Irish-Greek-Japanese writer, translator, and teacher who introduced the culture and ...

, to have been titled "Anatomy of a Romantic," using Hearn as an exemplar by which to study Southern romantics generally and the second to have been a study of the Nazi mindset by spending a year in Germany, a contrasting reprise of Cash's bicycle tour of pre-Nazi Europe during the summer of 1927. Likely because of Cash's lack of a published major work at the time, both applications were rejected. The third and successful application was sponsored by the Knopfs and by ''

Raleigh News & Observer ''The News & Observer'' is an American regional daily newspaper that serves the greater Triangle area based in Raleigh, North Carolina. The paper is the largest in circulation in the state (second is the ''Charlotte Observer''). The paper has bee ...

'' Editor and Guggenheim recipient, Jonathan W. Daniels, who had befriended Cash in 1938. The Fellowship carried with it great prestige at the time, Cash being placed in the select company of Daniels,

, and playwright Paul Green, as the only North Carolinians to have received the grant by 1941. Cash, with his wife of five months, Mary Ross Northrop, also a writer and contributor to ''The News'', embarked on the trip to Mexico in late May, 1941. Having been invited by

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

president Homer Rainey to provide the main commencement address to the 1941 graduating class on June 2 in Austin. Cash addressed some 1,400 graduates, focusing on the main developmental socio-psychological themes of the South through history into the modern era, titled "The South in a Changing World." Cash had long suffered from depression. On July 1, 1941, Cash feared that Nazi assassins were following him. He committed suicide in his hotel room in Mexico City.

Legacy

Two biographies have been published on Cash, ''W. J. Cash: Southern Prophet'', by Joseph L. Morrison, Knopf, 1967, and ''W. J. Cash: A Life'', by Bruce Clayton, L.S.U. Press, 1991. In 1991, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of ''The Mind of the South,'' two widely-hailed seminars on the South and the impact through time of Cash's book on the South were held at Wake Forest and at 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. ...

. Each seminar attracted numerous prominent scholars, journalists and political leaders in multi-day sessions, resulting in two published works of essays, ''W. J. Cash and the Minds of the South,'' L.S.U. Press, 1992, ed. by Paul D. Escott, and ''The Mind of the South Fifty Years Later,'' Univ. Press of Miss., 1992, ed. by Charles W. Eagles. Cash's work has been the subject of continuing debate among scholars since publication and the subject of numerous treatises in academic journals. The book has never been out of print, and a new edition was published in 1991 under the

Vintage Books Vintage Books is a trade paperback publishing imprint of Penguin Random House originally established by Alfred A. Knopf in 1954. The company was purchased by Random House in April 1960, and a British division was set up in 1990. After Random H ...

imprint of

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

. The first paperback edition was published in 1954, the same year of the landmark Supreme Court decision in '' Brown v. Board of Education'' ordering the desegregation of public schools. The book has enjoyed a wide and diverse readership through time and has often been assigned reading in course work in colleges and universities, both in and outside the South. The book had its greatest following during the 1950s and 1960s, at the height of the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United ...

. It has been praised by many scholars as the virtual bible on the origins of Southern culture and required reading for any serious student on the social history of the South and its conflicts through time. The concluding paragraph from "The Mind of the South" is often cited as a distillation of the entire book: :Proud, brave, honorable by its lights, courteous, personally generous, loyal, swift to act, often too swift, but signally effective, sometimes terrible, in its action -- such was the South at its best. And such at its best it remains today, despite the great falling away in some of its virtues. Violence, intolerance, aversion and suspicion toward new ideas, an incapacity for analysis, an inclination to act from feeling rather than from thought, an exaggerated individualism and too narrow concept of social responsibility, attachment to fictions and false values, above all too great attachment to racial values and a tendency to justify cruelty and injustice in the name of those values, sentimentality and a lack of realism -- these have been its characteristic vices in the past. And, despite changes for the better, they remain its characteristic vices today. According to the biographer Bruce Clayton, the central themes in ''The Mind of the South'' were romanticism, violence, hyperbolic rhetoric, individualism, and white racial solidarity. Class consciousness was of minor importance. Cash emphasized continuity, rather than change, and thereby downplayed the effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction and led some critics to attack his generalizations.

C. Vann Woodward Comer Vann Woodward (November 13, 1908 – December 17, 1999) was an American historian who focused primarily on the American South and race relations. He was long a supporter of the approach of Charles A. Beard, stressing the influence of unse ...

, while praising Cash's vigorous style, contends that Cash routinely ignored contrary evidence, missed the power of the southern aristocracy, downplayed blacks, and minimized the central importance of slavery. He also overemphasized the plain white farmers and the Piedmont region, as opposed to the more influential plantation owners in the Black Belt. Woodward rejected Cash's consensus thesis of unity and continuity.Woodward, 1971.

References

External links

Biography on Charlotte Mecklenburg Public Library Website
*
Old Gold and Black

's student newspaper where W. J. Cash served as editor while an undergraduate.
Wilbur J. Cash Collection
at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library,

wj.cash.org

ncpedia.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cash, W. J. 1900 births 1941 deaths American newspaper journalists 20th-century American non-fiction writers Burials in North Carolina Journalists from South Carolina People from Gaffney, South Carolina Writers from North Carolina Writers from South Carolina Wake Forest University alumni People from Shelby, North Carolina People from Boiling Springs, North Carolina 20th-century American journalists American male journalists 1941 suicides Suicides in Mexico 20th-century American male writers