Brother to a Dragonfly

Brother to a Dragonfly is a 1977 memoir by the Civil Rights activist and Baptist preacher Will Davis Campbell. It concerns Davis' upbringing in an impoverished corner of Amite County, Mississippi in the 1930s. It focuses heavily on Davis' relationship with his brother who, despite a similar upbringing, died of a substance abuse problem. The book was nominated for a National Book Award and has been reprinted with a Foreword by President Jimmy Carter.

As a Civil Rights activist, much of Campbell's reflections of Mississippi in the 1930s are rooted in race relations. He describes in vivid detail the sight of fully-robed Ku Klux Klan members walking down the aisle in church to deliver a Bible to the pulpit. He sees black neighbors falsely accused of crimes by local enforcement, while crimes against his black neighbors--including murder--go uninvestigated and ignored. Meanwhile, Campbell describes the things he learned about race from his grandfather. While his grandfather's views on race were hardly progressive by today's standards--and certainly imperfect by any standards--he taught his grandchildren not to use the N-word because society had moved past that word. More importantly, he suggested, society had moved past the concept, burying the idea of white supremacy for his young charges. Clearly, racism was still a huge problem in Campbell's community, but his grandfather's aspirations for relative equality were hugely influential on the author's future work during the Civil Rights Movement.

Campbell's descriptions of the shape racism took in the South during the segregation era are extremely telling. He says that despite the generational and institutional racism in the South, whites in the South are more likely to have familiar relations with their black counterparts than Northerners, where the segregation isn't codified but is nonetheless real. This is owing in part to the notions of "Southern hospitality" in which a gentleman is supposed to be polite in the company of others, regardless of their race. He describes in detail a racist shop owner who he believes is emblematic of many Southerners. The man regularly spouted vile rhetoric about African-Americans, but was more than happy to hire a black neighbor he trusted because that man is, as ever, the "exception."



Because of the prevalence of racism among his friends and family, Campbell regularly recounts some pretty bewildering experiences for a man as progressive as he is. For example, while at an all-night funeral vigil for a nephew who passed away, Campbell's unrepentant racist of an uncle approaches Campbell and pours him a cup of coffee from a thermos. Is this act of generosity negated by the man's racism? Campbell's religious beliefs also play into the conversation. Is a racist capable of behavior inspired by Jesus? Clearly, generosity and camaraderie are Jesus-like qualities. Are they still "Jesus-like" if the person doing them is a racist? And how does racism differ from other sins like greed or envy? Campbell provides no clear answers to these questions, but clearly he finds value in the asking of them.

Campbell is all about the hard questions. For example, he wonders about the difference between a white man feeling superior to a black man, and a man of any race feeling superior to a racist. If we're all God's creatures, he argues, there is no reasonable occasion for superiority on either side of the debate. Campbell discusses how some of these questions got him in hot water with the more radical students he regularly organized. Students labeled him "pro-Klansmen," a charge he does not deny exactly, though he is adamantly not "pro-Klan."

Campbell also takes a paradoxical viewpoint of "equality," as indicated in this rather controversial passage:



“If we are to suppose that all people are equally good then we must suppose that they are equally bad. “If I live to be as old as my father I expect to see whites marched into gas chambers, the little children clutching their toys to their breasts in Auschwitz fashion, at the hands of a black Eichmann.”

Finally, Campbell talks a lot about his brother who became a pharmacist before spiraling into alcoholism, drug addiction, and domestic violence. His brother's story is a perfect encapsulation of humanity's imperfections, which the author sees mirrored in the attitudes of the Klansmen and segregationists he battled his whole life. His experiences with the brother he lost also lead him to the conclusion that serves as the closest thing to a mission statement in the book:

"I came to understand the nature of tragedy. And one who understands the nature of tragedy can never take sides."