By Michelle Hines, University Relations
Contact: (336) 334-5371
Posted 2-18-08
GREENSBORO, NC – Charles McIver, founder of the State Normal College for Women that became UNCG, invited Walter Hines Page to give the Normal’s commencement address in 1897.
Page’s speech, “The Forgotten Man,” was a “rallying cry for educational reform in the South,” says Dr. Scott Romine, an English professor who has written an extensive introduction to a reprint of Page’s 1909 novel, “The Southerner.”
“The book is especially interesting because it captures a particular mentality of a specific historical moment—the Progressive Era. It captures the spirit of Progressivism,” Romine says.
“The Southerner,” 464 pages, was just reissued by the University of South Carolina Press as part of the Southern Classics series. It features a key character, Professor Billy, based on the energetic and effusive McIver, a champion of women’s education.
“He paints a very true-to-life portrait of McIver,” Romine says. “Page very much admired McIver for doing the legwork of educational reform.”
The novel centers on Nicolas Worth, a Harvard-educated southerner who fights for political reform in his native state.
Page, namesake of Greensboro’s Page High School, was born in Cary. Although he intended to become a Methodist minister, he instead attended Johns Hopkins University and came to frown upon organized religion.
“He saw religion as trapping the South in an older, outdated form of civilization,” Romine says. “Johns Hopkins was a cutting-edge research university, and he very much bought into that worldview of Darwin and Huxley. He viewed religion as a more or less malignant influence on the South.”
In his “Forgotten Man” speech, Romine says, Page lobbied for North Carolina’s forgotten men and women. “He was very much concerned about those who were living in rural places without any public education available. And he saw education as a way to pay attention to these people.”
