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Dewey W. Grantham, William Louis Poteat: A Leader of the Progressive-Era South. By Randal L. Hall. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000. x, 262 pp. $34.95, isbn 0-8131-2155-8.), Journal of American History, Volume 88, Issue 3, December 2001, Pages 1113–1114, https://doi.org/10.2307/2700486
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This impressive biography is the first comprehensive study of William Louis Poteat, a notable Baptist leader, educator, and social reformer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author suggests that Poteat, more than any other individual, “personified” North Carolina progressivism. The North Carolinian was identified with a broad range of social reforms, including the abolition of child labor, the regulation of railroads and utilities, support of public education, and the adoption of statewide prohibition. Poteat is depicted as a progressive who sought to promote chang e within orderly Christian channels. He “spoke as a member of the elite, but his was a voice of gentleness, of nurturing concern, of quiet reasonableness in a harsh age of exploitation and insensitivity.”
Poteat was not a systematic thinker, and he minimized his own internal struggle between modern and traditional thought. Indeed, he usually tried to avoid fundamental chang e. His thinking about contemporary race relations was revealing in this respect. While working with such reform organizations as the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, he denied full citizenship to blacks. His willingness to promote better race relations was never permitted to endanger racial integrity or racial segregation. The influence of southern tradition in Poteat's life is evident in his commitment to religion as a moral absolute, in his respect for high culture and learning, and in his belief in order and hierarchy. Yet this remarkable man was also able to absorb “dramatic modernizing disruptions” such as evolutionary biology, professionalization and specialization, and the moral relativity of the twentieth century.
