Paul Gaston is a consummate Southerner. He was born and raised in Alabama, then came to U.Va. in 1957 to teach American history to “the fortunate sons of the South,” as Gaston describes them. He’s written several books about his much-loved landscape and speaks with affection in his honeyed accent about the legacy of Jefferson or the beauty of the Gulf of Mexico. Yet his devotion is informed by an intimate familiarity with a painful and tumultuous period in American history. In his memoir, Coming of Age in Utopia: The Odyssey of an Idea, Gaston reveals his struggle against racial injustice and documents the great changes that came during the civil rights movement.
A young Paul Gaston with his soon-to-be wife, Mary.
The book begins with the Fairhope Colony—founded by Gaston’s grandfather in 1894 and later led by his father—which was an experiment of radical economic ideals meant to overcome the poverty that Gaston’s grandfather saw as the natural outcome of industrialized capitalism. Gaston was raised at Fairhope and might have taken up the legacy of his forefathers, but instead answered a call to fight the social problems of his own era. He left the colony and became a historian and activist. Gaston’s years as a professor in Charlottesville were transformative ones; student activism caused the University to enroll African Americans and hire African-American faculty, while protests forced businesses on the Corner to desegregate. Gaston himself was beat up at a sit-in. Later, Gaston taught what he’d learned from the American civil rights movement in South Africa during apartheid.
Coming of Age in Utopia offers an important and often unknown side of Charlottesville’s and the University’s history from one of its beloved professors. It also traces a personal history through the monumental events and famous personalities of the second half of the 20th century. It is a coming-of-age story not only of an individual but of the South itself.
A young Paul Gaston with his wife, Mary, and cousins at the Fairhope Colony in Alabama.
Comments
Finally, someone is writing about the civil rights movement in C’ville & UVa. Thank you! As a UVa undergrad in the 1980’s it was a taboo topic. Very taboo. Racial prejudice & informal segregation was everywhere but one still could not talk about it. When I did ask, it was common to be told not to question the past because I would upset or insult people’s traditions and heritage. Yes, that was the response. Slavery, Jim Crow, and continuing prejudice was almost NEVER discussed. It was as if the civil rights movement never happened in C’ville. But it did. And clearly there some very good progress was made. Thank you for talking about it!
Excellent interview and window into the maturation and transformation of the University in the 1960s. Kudos to U.VA Magazine and thanks to Professor Emeritus Gaston for his insights.
What an excellent article! Thank you for sharing.
I am so glad to hear from the “ivy tower” that there is not enough emphasis on the part of the students and faculty on protesting and demonstrating in regard to “civil rights” and “social change”. Perhaps the professor hasn’t noticed that we have a president and a congress that carries the banner of “social change” and “social justice” every day. Sir, the “revolution” has made it! The socialism you always wanted is entrenched at the White House. Did I hear you say that the utopia of race relations hasn’t arrived yet? Well, we have the next best thing, we have an omnipresent government that is determined to make us all equal, that is equally impoverished financially and spiritually. It is a wonder the eminent professor can abide admitting his employment at an institution inspired by a slave driver.
Paul Gaston also extended his civil rights work through his leadership role on the board of the Southern Regional Council (SRC), which among other initiatives sponsored the Voter Education Project in the 1960s and 1970s. I was fortunate to have Gaston as my graduate advisor in UVA’s history department in the 1970s and his encouragement to work for one of SRC’s other projects in the South in later years. So this is a belated “thank you” to him for his role in making the South a much better place for all persons.
Paul Gaston was a force in the C’ville community much as Dr. Guy Johnson was in the Chapel Hill community of the 60s and 70s. These men of conscience should not be confused as socialists, as they simply lauded the idea that everyone should be treated equally and enjoy the same freedoms in our society. They also supported capitalism wholeheartedly, but called upon the consciences of the wealthier among us to be considerate of the mass of workers who have made their particular fortunes possible—and to do so with a living wage and more humane working conditions and benefits. It’s not wealth-redistribution, but the simple notion of fairness, much like the contemporary idea that our nation’s tax structure may indeed heavily favor the wealthiest among us - to the point that the fortunate and wealthiest do not pay a more “fair share” of taxes to support our governments that comprise the pillars of our civilized society. Dr. Guy Johnson was a renowned social scientist and historian who studied early settlements of freed or escaped African Americans, with much of his own life’s research and writing of early African American history comprising UNC’s first Black Studies curriculum.
Like Dr. Gaston, Johnson was a strikingly humble, learned man of conscience who did not particularly seek the limelight, but contributed significantly to the early evolution of racial equality in America. Thank you for a very interesting and significant article about Dr. Paul Gaston.
Thank you Paul for your courageous work dating back to 1957. You are an inspiration to me besides you were so cute back then!!! How could anyone deny you.
You and Mary were such a gorgeous couple and still are.
If it is okay with you, I will download this and make it available at the Marietta Johynson Museum.
Lots of Love and Good Health are wished for you and Mary. We’ll look forward to seeing you in Fairhope. Maggie
What a treasure Paul Gaston has been to the University. It was like we had our own Atticus Finch in Charlottesville. I took Professor Gaston’s History of the South in the early seventies and will never forget that melliflouous voice and those seersucker suits as well as the content of his lectures.
Mr. Reavis deludes himself as he pats himself and others of his ilk on the back for being so “fair minded” and promoting government’s imposition of “fairness” through the income tax. Free men making decisions freely, without the imposition of government deciding who gets what and what is fair. Is that not the formula that has been applied by the “more government crowd” starting with Lincoln and going through the current manifestation of “we know better than you, we can spend your money wiser than you can, can’t we all just get along and by the way if you don’t like our idea of political correctness, we will marginalize you, ostracize you and call you a racist, bigot or homophobe. what is the next stage or manifestation of these utopians who “really know” what fair is?
redistribution racket
Mr. Patterson, I must respectfully call you out on your response to Paul Reavis’ comments. Perhaps his choice of the word “fair” was a poor one, but his argument is valid. In a democratic republic, it is the responsibility of government to provide a level playing field for all citizens to compete. That is what, at its core, the civil rights movement was all about.
And I don’t quite understand your aspersions cast upon Abraham Lincoln. Even as a Southern ... a Virginian who traces his family roots back to the 1640s ... I know the leaders of the Confederacy were on the wrong side of history. Lincoln knew what the concept of “America” was and would be to future generations, and that is what he was fighting for.
I’m going to make an assumption about your political philosophy—please correct me if I’m wrong, but you sound as if you’re of the Ayn Rand school of though ... politically, socially and economically.
Mr. Paterson, I would argue—strenuously—that Rand and her disciples in business and government over the past 40 years are who have brought this nation to its knees economically today with their extreme devotion to an almost uber-Darwinian belief in the “survival of the fittest.”
That is simply a morally bankrupt way for society to operate, and I’m glad to see the pendulum swinging in the opposite direction.
Alumnus, College of Arts & Sciences 1983, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences 1985
What did Gaston and local civil rights leaders in the ‘60s/70s say about urban renewal? Today we call it eminent domain abuse/due process violations. Seems like we traded one civil rights movement for another and forgot all about the second movement.
From my perspective, many people do have a point, and many or them i strongly oppose my descision between the civil rights movement.
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