Clarence Cason’s Shade: A Look At Alabama Then And Now

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Clarence Cason was described in the Montgomery Advertiser as one of the “most brilliant and engaging thinkers in Alabama.”

Returning to The University of Alabama as a journalism professor in 1928, only 11 years after his graduation, Cason had already distinguished himself as a highly respected reporter and essayist, widely publishing his works in leading national journals. As a writer, Cason often concerned himself with his Alabama home, questioning the South’s stubborn traditionalism while trying to defend its distinctiveness. Cason culminated these thoughts in 1935, in a book of essays titled “90 Degrees in the Shade.”

In this book that should have been his crowning achievement, Cason found his deepest fears, notes Bailey Thomson in the spring issue of Alabama Heritage magazine. Thomson follows Cason from the early childhood influences in Alabama through his college and newspaper careers that led him to be one of the most respected intellectuals in the South. However, immediately prior to the publication of “90 Degrees in the Shade,” Cason’s fear that his gentle criticisms of the region would antagonize his fellow Southerners became overwhelming, and he took his own life.

Detailing the shock of Cason’s death on campus and around the state, Thomson also reveals that, despite Cason’s fears, the book received a most positive reaction. Cason’s editor, W. T. Couch, stated, “I have never read any book about the South that I thought was written with better humor and was less likely to arouse antagonism.”

Bailey Thomson is an associate professor of journalism at The University of Alabama and a former associate editor of the Mobile Register. Thomson has previously written for Alabama Heritage, most recently on his distant ancestor, Confederate Brig. Gen. John C.C. Sanders. This article on Clarence Cason is adapted from Thomson’s introduction to a new edition of Cason’s “90 Degrees in the Shade,” forthcoming from The University of Alabama Press.

Alabama Heritage is a nonprofit quarterly magazine published by The University of Alabama and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. To order the magazine, write Alabama Heritage, Box 870342, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0342, or call 205/348-7467.