Ivey Lawrence Sharpe

Why, you might ask, is a person who lives in Minnesota worried about the story of a small county in North Carolina? It has to do with a folk song about a lynching in that county. I wanted to understand the county better -- and see if there was more to be learned about the lynching.

As it turns out, the book does print the song about the lynching of Alec/Alex Whitley, but it has nothing to add to it, and it doesn't provide much background that I could use. What's missing? The answer is, although this calls itself the "Story" of Stanly County, you shouldn't fool yourself into thinking it's a "History."

A better description of the book might be an almanac. There are lists of towns, of businesses, of churches. Sometimes there are a lot of details about these places, sometimes very little; clearly much depends on whatever source material author Sharpe found. And on what he was interested in. Sharpe was a retired Methodist minister, and he devotes an, er, unholy fraction of this book to churches, parishes, and clergy. Obviously these things were very important to the people of Stanly County, but they way the information was presented did not really give any sort of understanding of religion in the area; it was just a long, tedious list. Very few of the items in here are processed and evaluated. It's like we're reading a bunch of old press releases.

And it was quite obvious that it was compiled by a southern man born in the early twentieth century and not quite caught up with the late. This is particularly obvious when it comes to race relations. Sharpe is not an extreme racist; he seems to want us to know that he believes in equality. But he also makes so many condescending and dated remarks about Blacks that it is obvious that his inner thoughts do not fully match his aspirations. At times it makes his words uncomfortable to read.

All of this makes it hard to say whether this is a good book or a bad. As reading material, it's absolutely awful, even if you ignore the fact that it was typed rather than typeset and is hard on the eyes; it's just too dull. As history, it's hard to use, because it has no index, so even if there is historical content to be found, it's hard to find it. On the other hand, it does document most of the important places, and many of the important people, in a part of North Carolina that doesn't get a lot of attention elsewhere. I didn't get much use out of the book, but I got some, and the same is likely to be true of you if you want to know more about the people, places, and economics of Stanly County.… (mere)