Interview with author Scott E. Giltner
I feel incredibly privileged to have been able to pose some questions to author and academic Scott E. Giltner about his book, “Hunting and Fishing in the New South: Black Labor and White Leisure After the Civil War.” Giltner provided thoughtful and thorough answers to my queries and displayed a willingness to expound on points beyond my expectations. The interview demonstrated some of the best aspects of professorial discourse.
My hope is that the interview sheds some light on this important subject and that it might serve as an impetus for a more nuanced understanding of some of the disparities we see in the hunting community today. I’d love to hear any feedback you might have as I move forward and hopefully bring more substantive and informative content. Please feel free to leave a comment or email me directly at blackduckrevival@gmail.com
What is your current position at Culver-Stockton? What are your primary fields of focus?
I have been at Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri, for 14 years. I am Professor of History and Chair of the Applied Liberal Arts and Sciences division. My primary area of expertise (that I was trained for in graduate school) is in 19th century America, specifically Southern and African American history.
Did you grow up hunting and fishing. Do you currently hunt or fish?
I did a little of both when I was a kid. I did some squirrel and rabbit hunting when I was younger. I never did any deer hunting because I realized about the age of 12 that sitting outside in the cold was not my idea of a good time. I fished occasionally with friends through college but it never really became a big passion for me. I stumbled into the topic when I was in graduate school by reading interviews with former slaves and was struck by how often those activities were mentioned and how important they clearly were, even beyond simply serving as sources of food. It also interested me because it reminded me of so many people who I grew up with for whom hunting and fishing were really important family traditions.
I understand that this text evolved from your masters dissertation to a full fledged book. Could you explain your motivations for taking your work beyond the purely academic sphere and why you thought the subject matter warranted this level of examination?
Originally the project started out as a failed investigation into sports and the slave community. I was curious what role athletic contests played in the slave community. After poring over lots of interviews with former slaves I realized there was not much but I was taken by how many discussions of hunting and fishing there were. So I proposed that as the topic for my Masters thesis. The initial reaction from my advisor and members of committee was skepticism and a sort of “Well, that’s different” response. I found that response motivated me to dig deeper and see if this seemingly odd topic had some merit to it. And the more I dug the more I found. One quote in particular really struck me. Former South Carolina slave Charles Ball noted that when he finally managed to acquire an old musket for hunting that “I now began to live well, and to feel myself, in some measure, an independent man.” This made me think that the topic was about more than just sport and even more than just subsistence. It was about independence.
As far as how it went from Masters thesis to dissertation to book, it actually happened because someone else published a book on a similar topic and that pushed me in a new direction. I had planned to write both my MA thesis and dissertation on slave hunting and fishing but then a terrific historian named Nick Proctor published his book Bathed in Blood: Hunting and Mastery in the Old South and I felt like there maybe wasn’t enough room in the topic for my work. So I set about trying to determine if there was room for a study of African Americans hunting and fishing after the Civil War. And what I found was that the same sense of those activities helping creating a sense of freedom amongst slaves also appeared in post-emancipation accounts of how freed people worked to protect their independence and maintain the benefits of freedom. The more I ran across references like that, the more I thought this story could and maybe should be told to a wider audience.
I actually had a great “A Ha!” moment that made me think this subject was a good one for the book when I was researching at the South Caroliniana Library in Columbia SC. I found a 1913 report from South Carolina Game Commissioner A.A. Richardson where he discussed how conservation laws provided the best way to both protect supplies of fish and game but also to disarm the black population. He noted that “there are certain classes that should be stopped from carrying guns, and as far as I can see the hunter’s license is the only constitutional way that you can do it” and also declared that “the greatest destroyer of game out of season, and also of the insectivorous birds, is the negro, who is continually hunting at the very season of the year when he should be between the plow handles.” This document really brought home for me the fact that this topic was about much more than sports or even subsistence and that the conservation movement itself, at least in the South, may have had an element of racial control to it.
How much did your work change when you took it from dissertation presentation to publisher? Did you have to expand on your research or was it fairly complete by the time you decided to transition to writing a book?
I was extremely lucky to have met and discussed the project with an acquisitions editor from Johns Hopkins University when I was at a conference a few years before I finished grad school who was interested in the project and urged me to write the dissertation with an eye toward publication. I took some general pieces of advice he had given me when writing the book and tried to make the manuscript as publication ready as I was able. When I submitted the manuscript to Johns Hopkins, they didn’t ask for many alterations. I had to condense the manuscript down by combining two chapters into one and re-working the introduction and conclusion but those were the only major changes. I also worked with a copy editor to smooth out the writing a bit. They didn’t ask me to expand the research since I had thought about the subjects of the chapters while keeping in contact with the copy editor. I did kick around the idea of adding a chapter on gender and hunting and fishing but ultimately decided it would take too long and maybe divert from the main themes of the book too much. I do sometimes wish I had done that though.
Taken from Scott E. Giltner’s book, “Hunting and Fishing in the New South: Black Labour and White Leisure after the Civil War.”
Much attention is given to the notion of the “elite white sportsman” vs the “black pot hunter” in your book. Could you explain how white southern society viewed blacks hunting after the civil war. In particular, could you explain how whites viewed blacks hunting, fishing and providing for themselves after the Civil War. How was this seen as a threat to white society and the established social order?
Well the opinion of white Southerners changed dramatically after Emancipation. Hunting and fishing by slaves was often viewed quite positively. It could provide food for farms and plantations (i.e. the plantation huntsman, save money on rations by letting slaves earn part of their own subsistence, or be seen as a way to build good will through granting the privilege of doing those activities. There were some who thought them dangerous activities for slaves due to lack of supervision and especially the highly restricted use of firearms but it seems like many if not most slaveowners allowed some form of the practice.
After emancipation however, the opinion changed dramatically. What was once a way to save money or build good will now became a threat to control of needed labor. African Americans hunting and fishing independently and for their own benefit came to be seen as a way for blacks to avoid working for whites, to find subsistence apart from laboring for others, and a way to flaunt their independence. Seen that way, many former slave owners who once allowed the practice because it was to their benefit now opposed it because it seemed to benefit freed people more. And as the rural South came to become more and more dependent on sharecropping over time, whites wanted African Americans working in the field, not hunting in them.
The emerging idea of “proper sport” also plays into this. In the 19th century, as field sports emerged as more and more popular forms of entertainment, especially for tourists, the idea of “proper” hunting v. “pot hunting” began to really take hold. Elites sneered at those who had to hunt and fish for a living and came to use the idea of a sporting code—i.e. what methods to use, adherence to bag limits, never giving the impression that the product of the hunt was an economic necessity, not selling what you catch, etc—to delegitimize sporting practices of groups they did not like and to reserve sporting privileges for themselves. In the Northeast, sporting enthusiasts attacked immigrants for their supposed bad sportsmanship. In the West, Native Americans were the targets. In the South, former slaves became the archtype of the bad sportsman who was ruining it for everyone else and thus needed to be controlled. So fear of lost control of labor and of independent African Americans making their own living through hunting and fishing dovetailed nicely with emerging sportsmen’s ideas of why we need to regulate hunting and fishing through comprehensive legal restrictions.
You discuss how the institution of socio-political control tactics like Jim Crow and gun ownership laws were largely simultaneous with the creation of many of the laws governing game and fish management. Could you explain how game laws have historically been used as a means to control “non-white” populations?
One of the main goals of the project once it became focused on the postwar period was to determine if there was an obvious connection between fish and game conservation laws and race. It did not take long for me to realize that it was there. Southern legislatures tried to avoid mentioning race explicitly in Jim Crow laws. If you look at the actual statutes, they used coded language. The Poll Tax for example, which was designed to keep blacks from voting by making it cost restrictive, did not apply only to people of color. But white registrars and sheriffs could demand that money from would-be black voters and opt not to collect it from white voters. A similar approach was used with fish and game law. Creating a licensing system that allowed local officials great latitude to decide who did and did not have to purchase, passing exorbitant fines for people found hunting or fishing without a license, imposing firearm taxes, enacting more stringent vagrancy laws, proposing more rigid laws against trespassing, and like measures were not passed with specific racial language but if you read newspaper and magazine articles calling for them, it is clear that it was about controlling black populations. In fact, that was the approach state officials used to get those measures to pass with uneasy poor white voters. “Relax, we aren’t trying to restrict you. It’s former slaves we are after.” This was the approach used to mollify anxious whites in the West, where Native Americans were used as leverage to get the laws passed, and in the Northeast, where immigrants were the preferred target. And though they rarely were explicit about it, it is clear that one of the great benefit of these laws is that they would not only restrict sporting practices for non-native born, non-whites but also would limit their ability to make a living independent of white elites.
In your research did you come across any accounts of how poor whites were negatively affected by the implementation of wildlife management practices that favored the standards of the wealthy.
My research was less focused on poor whites in the South so I didn’t come across a lot of that but it did come up quite a bit. National sporting magazines complained about poor whites as often as they did any other group. In the South, elites who were aggressively seeking to define and restrict sporting practices were probably almost as concerned about poor whites “ruining” Southern hunting and fishing as they were with African Americans. And I strongly suspect once they used the specter of unrestrained black sporting to help pass conservation measures I’m sure they went after poor white sportsmen as well. It was, pardon the pun, killing two birds with one stone as conservation both limited black subsistence activities and devolved control of the sporting field increasingly to sportsmen of means. And poor whites did not accept game regulation measures easily, despite the use of race as a wedge in the debates. The level of violence fish and game wardens encountered, probably most often by angry whites, in the field in the early 20th century makes that very plain.
During your research what was the most surprising aspect of the intersection of race and hunting?
The thing that surprised me the most was how often white sportsmen, both before and after emancipation, would praise the skill level of black sportsmen. I had assumed that all I would find were accounts of how African Americans were poor sportsmen. I certainly did find that but there were also accounts from admiring whites about the skill and daring of black sportsmen. This confused me until I realized that whether blacks were criticized or praised depended on their relationship to whites in the field. As a slave, a black sportsmen hunting or fishing on their own was a lazy shirker who had dangerous mobility and too little oversight. But a slave sportsmen who exercised great skill in bringing food to the master’s storehouses could be heaped with great praise as an extension of the master’s aristocratic standing. And as a free person, a former slave hunting or fishing on their own was an avoider of field work who threatened the racial status quo and reminded whites of the control they had lost when slavery ended. But a free person who worked as a guide or huntsman for white sportsmen and displayed great acumen in the field could be praised as an extension of his employer’s abilities and a reminder that the hierarchical black-white relationship was not dead. The story of former slave, Confederate veteran, and legendary sporting guide Holt Collier is a great example of that. He was regarded as a legend in the sporting community and revered even by white sportsmen, who paid top dollar for his services in the field. He even served as a guide for Teddy Roosevelt on several Southern hunts and was present for the origin of the “Teddy Bear.” He was so revered not only because of his skill but because his long life of service in the field was seen as an extension of the kind of service he once provided as a slave and positive reflection of the kind of master-servant relationship that whites liked to think still lived even after emancipation.
At the end of your book you discuss, in depth, some of the more useful origins of source material that you found. From your descriptions, it seems that it took considerable leg work to gather enough source material on this subject. With the wealth of academic material on the intersection of race with politics, gender constructs, economics, socio-political power etc., why do you think that the subject of race and hunting in the United States has such a low level of academic interests.
I think for a long time studying topics like hunting and fishing were seen as frivolous. Perhaps it was related to a somewhat long-standing bias against studying sporting practices. Academics, especially prior to the 1960s and 1970s, can sometimes be an elitist lot. It probably just wasn’t seen as a serious topic by many in the academy. I got that kind of reaction from many when I was explaining my dissertation topic. You’d be surprised at the number of times someone replied, “Really? They are letting you do THAT?” when I shared my research focus. It was also maybe seen as something of obvious importance but that did not require any deep investigation. Academics granted the importance of hunting and fishing as subsistence activities and mention of hunting and fishing by slaves and freed persons appeared frequently (albeit briefly) in accounts of 19th century black life. But there were few efforts to study those practices in detail for the longest time. That slowly began to change as greater appreciation emerged for aspects of slave culture and slave resistance as critical topics of investigation. There were a few other works that came out around the same general time as mine (Herman’s Hunting and the American Imagination and Proctor’s Bathed in Blood come to mind for example) that did focus on the topic and I’m happy to say that the subject seems to pop up from time to time in articles and occasional books since then but I do think that the topic is richer and more revealing than most people think.
Taken from Scott E. Giltner’s book, “Hunting and Fishing in the New South: Black Labour and White Leisure after the Civil War.”
I’m especially interested in your thoughts on the texts that you cite from southern game wardens and their thoughts on black hunters. Could you elaborate on how men in these positions helped to institute game laws and conservation strategies that marginalized non-white hunters?
For me, finding the sources from game wardens was a big part of really convincing me that I was on to something and that the connection between hunting and fishing and race was really quite strong. Game wardens were in a very unique position in the early 20th century South. Both landowners hoping to better control former slaves and elite sportsmen hoping to better control fish and game pinned their hopes on these men. And as they were appointed in increasing numbers across the South, one of their main jobs was to travel around and convince uneasy white voters that fish and game preservation was necessary. The South resisted comprehensive conservation efforts longer than almost anywhere else in the U.S—you can imagine how reluctant whites in the former Confederate states were to surrender unfettered use of the fields, forests, and streams of the South to a centralized government entity. So when game wardens met with local sporting clubs, farmers organizations, and church congregations to convince them the need to accept fish and game laws they were in a great position both to use race as leverage in those conversations and to craft ways to use fish and game law to directly (though not explicitly) go after non- whites. Once game laws had become common across the South, they were celebrated by state officials as both gains for conservation and for white supremacy. As Alabama Fish and Game Commissioner John H. Wallace declared in 1912, African Americans “ have become completely disarmed under the game law, and must now pursue the avocation of an honest and industrious life.”
Where I live (in central Arkansas) I very rarely see black hunters when afield. The exception to this is houndsmen, usually chasing rabbit. Also, there is still a strong culture of African-American hunters running dogs for deer in the south. Could you explain the historical and cultural significance of blacks keeping hunting dogs and how it might shed some light on why this style of hunting still proliferates among black hunters.
Black sportsmen keeping hounds for hunting goes back a long way in the United States. Slaves often kept hunting dogs when they were allowed to do so and the practice expanded after emancipation. White observers frequently commented on the large numbers of dogs found in black communities. Dogs provided companionship, made hunts more effective, and perhaps symbolized independence. They were both practical and also symbolic of the kind of sporting pride in ownership that, at least according to whites, was supposedly reserved for elite whites and their fine hunting hounds. I can imagine that combination proved powerful for former slaves and might even help explain how that tradition carried over from slavery could persist even today. I’d recommend looking at John Campbell’s “’My Constant Companion’: Slaves and Their Dogs in the Antebellum South” if you want to read more on that topic. It’s a good read.
It is my contention that the combination of discriminatory wildlife management laws coupled with the intense violence that blacks in the south were subject to in the decades following the Civil War had a multi-tiered effect. Firstly, the disenfranchisement of blacks because of game laws, limited African American access to hunting and fishing in the South (where most blacks lived at the time.) Secondly, the attempt to flee physical brutality and experience greater economic opportunity drained many rural locals of a black populace and instead congregated black residency in the great cities of the North. It seems that several generations later we are left with a colloquial narrative that African-Americans have an almost innate rejection of the natural world. What are your thoughts? Do you think that the historical record affirms or disaffirms this popular notion?
I think you are correct. The historical record does support the idea that African Americans, who were once synonymous with the Southern sporting field, were in some measure driven out by Jim Crow laws and other attempts to restrict their use of the natural world. Coupled with the population shifts that, as you noted, accompanied the Great Migration, the nation’s once most Southern and rural population became its most Northern and urban by 1990. That has spread an artificial idea that African Americans do not have ties to the natural world and somehow reject it. But that is a relatively recent shift that took a long time to occur and does not reflect the historical realities of African Americans long ties to hunting and fishing. They were deep and important traditions that concerted efforts at legal restriction, racism, and migration patterns changed over time. But in my view that does not make them any less worthy of study.
Taken from Scott E. Giltner’s book, “Hunting and Fishing in the New South: Black Labour and White Leisure after the Civil War.”