W. J. Cash
Encyclopedia
W.J. Cash, or Joseph Wilbur Cash, (May 2, 1900 - July 1, 1941) was an American
author and journalist known primarily for his works about the American South.
He graduated from Wake Forest College (now Wake Forest University
) in 1922, and attended 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.
, 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
, during which Cash excoriated the Ku Klux Klan
and the anti-Catholicism at work, especially in the South, against the candidacy of Al Smith
for the U.S. Presidency against Herbert Hoover
.
During the period of primary writing on The Mind of the South (1929 through 1937), Cash lived with his parents, first in Boiling Springs and then in nearby Shelby, N.C. When his contributions to the The American Mercury
ended after the passage of the Mercury's editorship from H. L. Mencken
to Lawrence Spivak, Cash supported himself with freelance weekly book reviews to The Charlotte News from 1935 through 1939, for each of which he received a meagre $3. These "book reviews" often became fierce analytical diatribes penetrating the mindset of Nazism
under Hitler and Fascism
under Mussolini, while at other times exploring the South through Southern writers such as James Branch Cabell
, Erskine Caldwell
, Lillian Smith
, Ellen Glasgow
, Claude McKay
, Thomas Wolfe
, and William Faulkner
. During this period 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 beginning in 1935, a topic which by the latter thirties 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 through May, 1941; in this role, Cash wrote editorials on every conceivable topic, stressing 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."
Cash was nominated for a Pulitzer prize
for editorial writing in 1941 for his work during 1940 on World War II for the newspaper.
, publishers of the Mercury, saw the piece, liked it, and asked Cash to write a book-length version. Thus was born the book of the same title for which Cash is primarily known. The book 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, receiving help along the way from the noted University of North Carolina
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
, The New York Times
, The Saturday Review of Literature 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."
to spend a year in Mexico writing a novel, to be on the progress of a Southern cotton mill family from the Old South into the modern era. Cash had always considered himself to be superior at writing fiction to non-fiction, so stated in his October, 1940 application to the Guggenheim Foundation, and 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
, to have been titled "Anatomy of a Romantic," using Hearn as an exemplar by which to study Southern romantics generally; 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 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, Thomas Wolfe
, 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 president Homer Rainey
to provide the main commencement address to the 1941 graduating class on June 2 in Austin, Cash accepted and addressed some 1,500 graduates from the steps of the Main Building, focusing on the main developmental socio-psychological themes of the South through history into the modern era, titled "The South in a Changing World"; (a recording of this half hour speech still survives and is available for listening at the University of North Carolina Southern Historical Collection in Chapel Hill, as well as online).
At the time, Mexico City had a large contingent of Nazi spies, the largest in North America outside of the New York City area. The largest single spy arrest in United States history, netting 32 spies in and around New York City, occurred during the weekend of June 28-29, 1941, becoming national headline news on June 30, the same day Cash began complaining to his wife of being followed by Nazi spies.
Since 1933, the Ambassador to Mexico had been Josephus Daniels
, a genial and popular elder statesman, former newspaper editor for The Raleigh News & Observer, former Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson
, and good friend to President Roosevelt, who had his first government job as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Daniels. Although the Ambassador's son Jonathan Daniels, had co-sponsored Cash for the grant which took him to Mexico, the elder Daniels did not know Cash and had only met with him briefly during the month prior to his death.
For reasons which were not stated, on July 12, 1941, Daniels asked Mexico's foreign minister to arrest three particular German nationals, suspected of being principals of the Nazi spy ring in Mexico. [Daniels had never made such a request in the whole of his previous eight-year tenure as Ambassador.] Those arrests did not occur, though 240 Nazi spies were arrested and deported from Mexico after Pearl Harbor, in February, 1942.
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 in Oxford. 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 imprint of Random House. 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 1950's and 1960's, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. It has been described 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.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author and journalist known primarily for his works about the American South.
Early life
Cash was born and grew up in the mill village of Gaffney, South CarolinaGaffney, South Carolina
Gaffney is a city in and the county seat of Cherokee County, South Carolina, United States, in the upstate region of South Carolina. Gaffney is also sometimes referred to as the Peach capital of South Carolina. The population was 12,414 at the 2010 census...
He graduated from Wake Forest College (now Wake Forest University
Wake Forest University
Wake Forest University is a private, coeducational university in the U.S. state of North Carolina, founded in 1834. The university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina, the state capital. The Reynolda Campus, the university's main campus, is...
) in 1922, and attended 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
Old Gold & Black
The Old Gold & Black is the student-run newspaper of Wake Forest University, named after the school's colors. Founded in 1916, the newspaper is currently on its 94th volume...
. 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
During the period 1926-28, Cash undertook several newspaper jobs: a year in Chicago writing for the now-defunct Chicago Post; several months with The Charlotte NewsThe Charlotte News
The Charlotte News was the afternoon newspaper in Charlotte, North Carolina. The newspaper was eventually purchased by its larger rival, The Charlotte Observer but continued to be published until 1985.- See also :* The Charlotte Observer...
, 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, North Carolina
Shelby is a city in Cleveland County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 19,477 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Cleveland County.-Geography:Shelby is located at ....
, during which Cash excoriated the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
and the anti-Catholicism at work, especially in the South, against the candidacy of Al Smith
Al Smith
Alfred Emanuel Smith. , known in private and public life as Al Smith, was an American statesman who was elected the 42nd Governor of New York three times, and was the Democratic U.S. presidential candidate in 1928...
for the U.S. Presidency against Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
.
During the period of primary writing on The Mind of the South (1929 through 1937), Cash lived with his parents, first in Boiling Springs and then in nearby Shelby, N.C. When his contributions to the The American Mercury
The American Mercury
The American Mercury was an American magazine published from 1924 to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured writing by some of the most important writers in the United States through the 1920s and 1930s...
ended after the passage of the Mercury's editorship from H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...
to Lawrence Spivak, Cash supported himself with freelance weekly book reviews to The Charlotte News from 1935 through 1939, for each of which he received a meagre $3. These "book reviews" often became fierce analytical diatribes penetrating the mindset of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
under Hitler and Fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
under Mussolini, while at other times exploring the South through Southern writers such as James Branch Cabell
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 and Sinclair Lewis. His works were considered escapist and fit well in the culture of the 1920s, when his...
, Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Preston Caldwell was an American author. His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native South like the novels Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre won him critical acclaim, but they also made him controversial among fellow Southerners of the time who felt he was...
, Lillian Smith
Lillian Smith
Lillian Smith may refer to:*Lillian Smith *Lillian Smith...
, Ellen Glasgow
Ellen Glasgow
Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist who portrayed the changing world of the contemporary south.-Biography:...
, Claude McKay
Claude McKay
Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote three novels: Home to Harlem , a best-seller which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo , and Banana Bottom...
, Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Clayton Wolfe was a major American novelist of the early 20th century.Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing...
, and William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
. During this period 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 beginning in 1935, a topic which by the latter thirties 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 through May, 1941; in this role, Cash wrote editorials on every conceivable topic, stressing 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."
Cash was nominated for a Pulitzer prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for editorial writing 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. Blanche and Alfred KnopfAlfred Knopf
Alfred Knopf is the name of:*Alfred A. Knopf, Sr. , founder of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., the publishing company*Alfred A. Knopf, Jr. , son of Alfred A. Knopf, Sr.*Alfred A. Knopf or Knopf Publishing Group, subsidiary of Random House...
, publishers of the Mercury, saw the piece, liked it, and asked Cash to write a book-length version. Thus was born the book of the same title for which Cash is primarily known. The book 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, receiving help along the way from the noted University of North Carolina
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
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
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, The Saturday Review of Literature 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."
Cash in Mexico
In March, 1941, largely on the strength of the critical success of the book, Cash was awarded a Guggenheim FellowshipGuggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
to spend a year in Mexico writing a novel, to be on the progress of a Southern cotton mill family from the Old South into the modern era. Cash had always considered himself to be superior at writing fiction to non-fiction, so stated in his October, 1940 application to the Guggenheim Foundation, and 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
Lafcadio Hearn
Patrick Lafcadio Hearn , known also by the Japanese name , was an international writer, known best for his books about Japan, especially his collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things...
, to have been titled "Anatomy of a Romantic," using Hearn as an exemplar by which to study Southern romantics generally; 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 Editor and Guggenheim recipient, Jonathan W. Daniels
Jonathan W. Daniels
Jonathan Worth Daniels was an American author, editor, and White House Press Secretary. Daniels' term serving as White House Press Secretary was the shortest since the inception of the position in 1937. He held the position in 1945 under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman...
, 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, Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Clayton Wolfe was a major American novelist of the early 20th century.Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing...
, and playwright Paul Green
Paul Green
Paul Eliot Green was an American playwright best known for his depictions of life in North Carolina during the first decades of the twentieth century...
, 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 president Homer Rainey
Homer Rainey
Homer Price Rainey was a U.S. college president and professor. He was born in Eliasville in Young County, Texas, and served as the president of the University of Texas at Austin from 1939 to 1944, when he was fired after a lengthy battle over academic freedom with the university regents...
to provide the main commencement address to the 1941 graduating class on June 2 in Austin, Cash accepted and addressed some 1,500 graduates from the steps of the Main Building, focusing on the main developmental socio-psychological themes of the South through history into the modern era, titled "The South in a Changing World"; (a recording of this half hour speech still survives and is available for listening at the University of North Carolina Southern Historical Collection in Chapel Hill, as well as online).
His death and the "Nazi spies" controversy
On July 1, 1941, after complaining to Mary during the previous 24 hours of being followed by Nazi spies, Cash was found hanging by his necktie from a bathroom door hook in the Reforma Hotel in Mexico City. Though there was no note of suicide and no physical evidence other than the fact of his being hanged, the Mexico City authorities concluded his death to be suicide. Cash's remains were cremated under rushed circumstances, and against his parents' telegraphed wishes. Thus, no examination of his remains was ever conducted in the United States.At the time, Mexico City had a large contingent of Nazi spies, the largest in North America outside of the New York City area. The largest single spy arrest in United States history, netting 32 spies in and around New York City, occurred during the weekend of June 28-29, 1941, becoming national headline news on June 30, the same day Cash began complaining to his wife of being followed by Nazi spies.
Since 1933, the Ambassador to Mexico had been Josephus Daniels
Josephus Daniels
Josephus Daniels was a newspaper editor and publisher from North Carolina who was appointed by United States President Woodrow Wilson to serve as Secretary of the Navy during World War I...
, a genial and popular elder statesman, former newspaper editor for The Raleigh News & Observer, former Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
, and good friend to President Roosevelt, who had his first government job as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Daniels. Although the Ambassador's son Jonathan Daniels, had co-sponsored Cash for the grant which took him to Mexico, the elder Daniels did not know Cash and had only met with him briefly during the month prior to his death.
For reasons which were not stated, on July 12, 1941, Daniels asked Mexico's foreign minister to arrest three particular German nationals, suspected of being principals of the Nazi spy ring in Mexico. [Daniels had never made such a request in the whole of his previous eight-year tenure as Ambassador.] Those arrests did not occur, though 240 Nazi spies were arrested and deported from Mexico after Pearl Harbor, in February, 1942.
Legacy
Since Cash's death, there has been active dispute whether he was in fact a suicide or whether, as he claimed, he was actually being followed by Nazi spies during the last day before his death. The latter theory is extensively explored at the website, "W. J. Cash: Quandaries of the Mind."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 in Oxford. 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 imprint of Random House. 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 1950's and 1960's, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. It has been described 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.
External links
- Biography on Charlotte Mecklenburg Public Library Website
- W. J. Cash: Quandaries of the Mind
- Old Gold and Black, Wake Forest UniversityWake Forest UniversityWake Forest University is a private, coeducational university in the U.S. state of North Carolina, founded in 1834. The university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina, the state capital. The Reynolda Campus, the university's main campus, is...
's student newspaper where W. J. Cash served as editor while an undergraduate. - Wilbur J. Cash Collection, at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Wake Forest UniversityWake Forest UniversityWake Forest University is a private, coeducational university in the U.S. state of North Carolina, founded in 1834. The university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina, the state capital. The Reynolda Campus, the university's main campus, is...