gram drawn primarily from NormannThomas’s Socialist Party platform, withnsome infusions of communist doctrine.nThey promoted economic and socialnjustice in a very agrarian and conservativenpart of the country, where men oftennreacted violently to challenges to theneconomic and racial order. The alliancenbetween radical Christianity and socialismnhas continuing relevance even today,nwhen peasant-based underdevelopednsocieties are threatened by that samenalliance. Howard Kester, to be sure,nnever formed such a linkage entirely.nEven at that time he realized that thencommunists were simply seeking tonmanipulate Southern racial tensions forntheir own purposes, and his experiencesnwith them in organizational politicsnbrought him to distrust the communistsnquite co^^^y, no matter how closely hisnpolitical ideals seemed to coincide withntheirs. Still, Kester and many of hisnassociates undoubtedly shared the viewnexpressed by the theologian Harry F.nWard in Our Economic Morality (1929),nwherein he argued that there was inncapitalism “an irreconcilable antagonismnto the ethic of Jesus.” When Christianntheologians use Christian ethics tonnegate the capitalist economic stmcture,na powerful alliance between Christiansnand Marxists can come into being. Indeed,naround 1940 one of the mostnradical of the Southern Christiannreformers, Claude Williams, foundednthe People’s Institute of AppliednReligion for the express purpose of bringingnSouthern fundamentalist Christiansnto a Marxist interpretation of the Bible:n^ ^nhe presented Christ, Dunbar writes, asnthe “leader of an underground guerrillanmovement known as ‘The Way of Righteousness’nwhich, when victorious, wouldnusher in an age of brotherhood andnplenty.” In short, the members of thenSouthem radical movement envisioned ancommonality of purpose between Christianitynand communism on the ethicalnplane, if not on the meuphysical level.nBut then metaphysics no doubt countednfor very little with them.n1 he Southern radicals also managednto synthesize opposites in their politicalnprogram, which sought to apply socialistnprinciples and the ideals of unionismn—which were developed originally fornthe industrial proletariat^to the situationnof poor Southern sharecroppers.nWhen sharecroppers were being evictednfrom their homes, it was easy to persuadenmany of them to “strike,” but thensocialist principle of the abolition ofnprivate property found litde enthusiasmnamong people whose chief desire in lifenwas to obtain land of their own. Consequently,nthe program of the SouthernnTenant Farmers’ Union called for, if notnownership, then the guaranteed use ofnland: one resolution passed by thenorganization held that “actual tillers ofnthe soil [should] be guaranteed possessionnof the land, either as working farmnfamilies or co-operative associations ofnsuch fami families, so long as they occupynand use the land.” Also, Agrarianismnwould have nationalized allnfarmland except for farms of fewer thann160 acres, and those managed by pro-nnnducers’ cooperatives and by local governmentsnin accordance with the propernprinciples.nIt is worth noting that the mainnoutline of this “socialist” program for annAgrarian Southern society coincidednclosely with the political platforms of thenEast European Agrarian parties, whichnenvisioned an economy based on privatenfamily farms and cooperatives. Some ofnthese parties actually came to power betweennWorld Wars I and II; e.g., thengovernment of Alexander Stambolinskinin Bulgaria from 1920 to 1923. MostnAgrarian movements developed in totalnignorance of one another, Kester and hisnassociates seem to have known nothingnabout European Agrarian efforts,nalthough they watched the Soviet “experiment”nwith great interest. If life werenlogical, one would imagine that thenradical American Agrarians would havenwelcomed East European Agrarianismnhad they known of it.nAs isolated as radical Agrarianism maynhave been in the South, it did have somenpowerful national supporters. Amongnthem were Secretary of AgriculturenHenry Wallace, Alger Hiss, also in thenAgriculture Department then, and,nlater, Eleanor Roosevelt, After the outbreaknof the Second World War, thenAgrarian protest subsided; by the time ofnthe Congressional investigations of thenlate 1940’s and early 1950’s its leadersnwere mere shadows of their foriner selves.nTheir ideas, however, live on.nIf the angle of vision in Against thenGrain is that of the social rgdicals of then1930’s (to his credit, Dunbar does notnbludgeon readers with his own sympathies),nthe perspective oi AmericannJourney is that of the standard liberal ofnthe 1980’s. That perspective emergesnmost clearly in Reeves’s inclination to seenracism as the most important determinant^indeed,nalmost the sole determinant—ofnAmerican social development.nHe does display a certain intellectualnflexibility though, and occasionally henapproaches the insight offered by EdwardnBanfield in The Unheavenly City—nthat the real division in society runs alongn^ ^ H H 3 1nFcbrttai»yl983n