Episode 9 - The unfinished revolution? - Full episode

Hello and welcome to African Elements. In this episode, The Unfinished Revolution? We examine different perspectives on the success and failure of Reconstruction and hear the voices of African Americans themselves articulating the Reconstruction agenda in their own words. We look at the African American responses to the Reconstruction as we explore the meaning of Southern redemption as well as African Americans who are taking matters in their own hands by seeking out opportunities on the United States frontier. Finally, we examine the ideological responses that frame the continued struggle to finish an unfinished revolution. All that coming up next. African Americans who fought during the Civil War had high hopes of gaining some form of meaningful citizenship. Clearly the outcomes fell well short of their expectations, and by that measure, the Reconstruction was an abysmal a failure. On the other hand, historian Howard Zinn makes a very poignant observation with regard to the Reconstruction. His best known work, A People's History of the United States, offers a very critical view on the Reconstruction. In it, he notes that the Reconstruction failed to make citizens of African Americans, failed to politically empower African-Americans, and in a sense even failed to end a system of involuntary servitude. He makes clear that by the compromise of 1877, white supremacy was is firmly entrenched in the north and the south as it was prior to the Civil War. But, if you read to send Zinn carefully you'll notice that while he acknowledges all of this, he also considers the Reconstruction to be a brilliant success. He does so by arguing that the Reconstruction was never intended to bring about any meaningful change for African Americans. Zinn notes that, as we saw in Episode 8, what emerges in the South after the Civil War is ongoing control of African American labor in slave like conditions that carries none of the risks of slave rebellion and runaways. In short, we have a system with all of the economic exploitation of slavery still intact -- generating more than half of the country's wealth -- but none of the liabilities that go along with it. Other historians, like Eric Foner, refer to the Reconstruction as an "Unfinished Revolution." A revolution in which America started down the road toward making America be America for all of its citizens, but fell short before it reached its goal. He argues that the revolution would be made real by future generations of Americans, of a variety of hues. So, was the Reconstruction a success? To quote "The Oracle" from The Matrix, you'll just have to make up your own damned mind. Let's hear some the voices of African Americans themselves articulating their own agenda for the reconstruction. First, I have an excerpt from Booker T. Washington's book, Up From Slavery. Born a slave, he learned of his emancipation when he was a child 7 or 8 years of age. This excerpt is his reflection written some years later of that moment when he was told that he was no longer a slave. He writes: “For some minutes there was great rejoicing, and thanksgiving, and wild scenes of ecstasy. … I noticed that by the time they returned to their cabins there was a change in their feelings. The great responsibility of being free, of having charge of themselves, of having to think and plan for themselves and their children, seemed to take possession of them. … To some it seemed that, now that they were in actual possession of it, freedom was a more serious thing than they had expected to find it. Some of the slaves were seventy or eighty years old; their best days were gone. They had no strength with which to earn a living in a strange place and among strange people… To this class the problem seemed especially hard.” Another letter is a freedman’s responds to his former master who has asked the former slave to return to work in Tennessee. The response, which I will try to read with a straight face reads in part as follows: To my old Master, Colonel P. H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee. Sir. I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again… Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. … I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing … Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again. As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. … I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back … If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. … You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits. Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me. From your old servant, Jourdon Anderson As we can see from both of the previous of these firsthand accounts, education was a key concern for reconstruction era blacks. Additionally, institutions for community building were often cited as some of the immediate goals. By the compromise of 1877 and the end of Reconstruction, white supremacy was firmly institutionalized in the north and the south. The compromise of 1877 came about as a result of a dispute in the electoral college over the presidential election of 1876. The conflict was largely centered around the southern state of Florida, which had awarded its electoral votes to the Democrat Samuel Tilden. Recall that by the 14th amendment interfering with one's citizenship and voting rights would result in forfeiture of electoral votes. When it became known that African American voters had been largely disenfranchised through intimidation and various other tactics those electoral votes were disputed by the Republican Party. A compromise was reached in 1877 that awarded the electoral votes to Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for withdrawing union troops from the occupied south and effectively ending the Reconstruction. With that, Southern redemption was underway. There was an effort to return or "redeem" the South to what was, in the southern imagination, a state of social harmony that existed prior to the Civil War and northern interference. It was the South in which all whites owned all blacks. A south in which whites were socially superior and blacks knew their place. It was, in fact, a South in which blacks were perfectly content and happy being slaves. It was a south that never existed, and that's the gag. It was a joke that flew in the face of the obvious reality that the South throughout the period of slavery lived in constant fear of slave rebellion which was exactly the reason why such harsh slave codes had to be imposed. It was a joke on poor whites because they became part of an effort to redeem a south in which only about a quarter of southern families owned slaves. The joke here is that without realizing it racism has duped poor whites into supporting and defending their own exploitation. It's absolutely astounding to see the extent to which poor whites allow racism to kick them in the teeth. You'll see very early on in the labor movement, for example, that the AFL initially would not allow black membership. It's almost inconceivable how foolish that is. Black folks are people of the same or similar class and they were strategically called in as strikebreakers when the union goes on strike. Yet these poor white Unionists are going to vent their rage on the very black folks who they've refused to let into the union instead of the employer who is exploiting them. With racism so firmly entrenched in the north and the south, many blacks tried their luck in the West. It's not that racism was absent in the West, but the West did offer some opportunities for cheap land and to build communities in the region where racism was not so institutionalized for the simple fact that the West was so unsettled that many institutions there had been built yet. For many Blacks, the opportunity to settle and improve their own land was a far more attractive alternative than becoming a sharecropper, or worse a part of a prison chain gang. One attractive alternative to sharecropping was work on the cattle ranches of the Southwest. It was difficult work, but it was done in relatively free terrain. It was a largely lawless terrain, but since the law did not typically work in favor of black folks, lawlessness could be an advantage. As a result, there were at least 5000 blacks known to have worked as cowboys in the West. The 1862 Homestead Act provided 160 acres of federal land free to those who would settle on it and farm it for at least five years. After the Civil War, Black migrants who came to be known as "Exodusters” seized upon this opportunity. Kansas -- the Western territory nearest to the south -- absorbed 25,000 black emigrants during the 1870s and early 1880s. Life is difficult because of the unsettled nature of the frontier. Without supply lines connecting much of the West to the rest of the country, communities had to be self-sufficient and self-sustaining. Food had to be grown by local farmers and supplies had to be manufactured by local townspeople. Still, weighed against the reality of institutionalized white supremacy in the South many saw an advantage at least having the opportunity to become autonomous and self sufficient. In Nicodemus, Kansas, the best known black community in the West community building took on a familiar pattern with the establishment of churches being the first community institutions to spring up and schools soon followed. Its success was relatively short-lived, however, because ultimately the region's climate did not prove reliable for long-term community sustainability. Ultimately it needed to be linked in with the larger Western community and its decline was largely a result of its failure to attract the Missouri Pacific, the Santa Fe, and the Union Pacific railroads to their town. Despite the hardships, many opportunities for African Americans self-sufficiency and autonomy in the post-Reconstruction period lie in the West. That fact, however, is going to put African Americans on a collision course with the indigenous groups already living there. The intersection of African and Native American history is a long and complicated as the two groups have been intertwined in a relationship in which paradoxically success and opportunity for African Americans often comes at the expense of Native Americans and encroachment on native lands. At the same time, this complex history includes numerous examples of blacks -- including black runaways -- having become part of Native American communities and allies with Native Americans against white supremacy. The nature of the relationship between blacks and indigenous peoples largely depends on the specific group of Native Americans involved in it. The indigenous peoples of North America are an extraordinarily diverse peoples with hundreds of ethnolinguistic groups. So, for example, James Beckwourth's experience, as a respected and highly regarded member of the Crow nation is going to reflect the different relationship from the one that blacks would experience among the collection of native peoples known as "5 Civilized Tribes:" the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. These are the groups that were subject to President Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy whereby they were removed to Indian territory west of the Mississippi River which later became Oklahoma. The practice of slavery that is going to define the relationship between African-Americans and the 5 Civilized Tribes, which made a fateful decision to remake themselves in the image of the United States to prove their level of civilization. In doing so, they adopted a mode of being that transforms slavery that mirrored the American South – an intergenerational system that placed blacks in a permanent slave caste. That is the backdrop that's going to define the reality of the relationship between blacks and Native Americans that you will read in Quintard Taylor's, In Search of the Racial Frontier. It also frames a central paradox that's going to place African Americans and Native Americans on a collision course with history -- that is, liberty and self-determination for black people and Native Americans will often be framed in opposition to one another. In other words, when black folks venture and pursue opportunities out West it goes hand-in-hand with the subjugation of the native peoples whose land they are venturing onto. This is the stage at the Buffalo Soldiers step onto. Under the Army Reorganization Act of 1869, blacks who had served in the Civil War were reassigned to four all-black regiments -- the 9th and 10th cavalry, and the 24th and 25th infantry units. They received the most difficult assignments under the harshest conditions. They were sent right into the heart of the Indian wars that started around the time of the Civil War and continued through 1890. Along with the difficult conditions that came with living on the frontier, they had to fight with subpar equipment, inferior food, inadequate housing in harsh climates ranging from fierce winters where the Lakota staged their resistance to the scorching desert where groups like the Apache waged their war on the encroaching settlers. While most regiments rotated in and out of the heart of the conflict, black soldiers in their segregated units experienced long stints under these hostile conditions. Why would anyone volunteer under such conditions? Well remember the alternative. Sharecroppers saw money typically only once a year at the time of harvest while soldiers received a regular pay a $13 a month in addition to food rations and clothing albeit subpar. Couple that with the relative freedom and autonomy that comes with establishing new communities on the frontier and it's easy to see why many blacks would choose this option. Then there's always the hope that with service in the military African Americans will finally have proven their loyalty and worthiness for first-class citizenship in the United States. That hope would later manifest in African American’s later participation in the the Philippine War, World War I and II and later conflicts… all with similar outcomes…the continuing reality of “Jim Crow” 2nd class citizenship and disappointment. With the failure of Reconstruction, many African Americans took their out West, but still many more remained in the South. People like Booker T. Washington urged black Americans to "cast down your bucket where you are." He and others believed that African Americans ought not leave the South. He stressed and accommodationist approach that puts civil rights on the back burner and stressed self-sufficiency based in industrial training. To that end he founded the Tuskegee Institute in 1881. He reasoned that by learning a skill such as carpentry or agricultural industry, there was no need to press for first-class citizenship in white America. In other words, he reasoned that rather than pressing for integration into schools or public accommodations, blacks ought to focus on creating their own schools and their own accommodations. It's an approach similar to the one that would later be taken by people such as Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X who stressed separatism, black nationalism, and self-sufficiency over integration, although they did not take the same accommodationist tone that Booker T. Washington became known for. Still, in the famous "Atlanta Compromise" speech delivered at theAtlanta Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895, Booker T. Washington urged support among wealthy white Americans for African American industrial training saying, in effect if white Americans support African American self-sufficiency and they will not have to worry about black folks trying to integrate. He urged white Americans to help put an end to the reign of terror at the Ku Klux *** had been waging against the black communities and in return, he would deemphasize voting and political empowerment and the black community. He said famously, "We can be as separate as the five fingers, but joined at the hand." Booker T. Washington was an enormously influential and powerful politician. Known as the "Wizard of Tuskegee," Washington was able to forge relationships with the southern white elite and gained an enormous white support for his institutions of industrial training throughout the South. He also had an audience with Pres. Theodore Roosevelt and was the first African American regularly invited to dinner at the White House. No matter what one may think of his approach to the problems of the post-reconstruction era, there's no question that Booker T. Washington was a man who knew how exert influence and was a masterful manipulator of political power. Because he and Roosevelt regularly consulted on political appointments, he was able to marginalize his opponents through the system of patronage. In other words, as an African-American if you wanted a job in Washington DC or any type of political appointment you had best be on the good graces of Booker T. Washington. He had such control over the Washington establishment he was effectively able to shut his critics out of the power structure and was even able to manipulate the press to his advantage. He is also said to have manipulated white supremacist organizations ruthlessly against his enemies. According to one account, when his political adversary, WEB Du Bois planned to meet his allies in the South, Booker T. Washington reportedly tipped off the Ku Klux *** in hopes that they would disrupt the meeting. The organization that Booker T. Washington helped to found, the National League on Urban Conditions among the Negroes, later known as the Urban League also had a conservative bent to it. As the movement of blacks was not simply east-west but also from the south to the north and even more so from the rural to be urban areas within the South, the urban league sought to help African Americans to adapt to urban life. In effect it was an organization intended not to change the climate of urban areas to make it more tolerant and accepting of blacks in the rural areas, but rather helping blacks in rural areas shed rural customs and mannerisms so that they could better assimilate into urban life. After his death, Booker T. Washington's legacy becomes even more complex. It was revealed that Washington secretly contributed to efforts challenging grandfather clauses that kept black men from voting in the South, he held secret meetings with industrialists to improve conditions for black train travelers, donated money for court battles against segregation and disfranchisement, and even wrote an essay under a pseudonym on why segregation was "ill-advised," citing that it was "unjust" and "embitters the *** and harms the moral fiber of the white man." In a comment that may have hinted at his own internal conflict between racism and his accommodationist approach, Washington stated, "That the *** does not express this constant sense of wrong is no proof that he does not feel it." In contrast to Booker T. Washington, WEB Du Bois was born in the North in the post-slavery United States. He never experienced slavery firsthand and his approach to problems would largely reflect a version of reality widely divergent of his rival Booker T. Washington. In part their difference in perspective was regional -- Du Bois grew up in a setting that allowed him to see at least the possibility for racial integration. Born in the northern state of Massachusetts, Du Bois came of age in the region in which political activism did not carry nearly so dire a price. Unlike the South, where any hint of defiance to the racial order on the part of blacks or sympathetic whites was likely to bring about violent reprisal, one generally could protest and agitate in the north with no such fear. Some have also pointed to the generational difference between the two. While Washington was among the last generation of African Americans to experience slavery firsthand, Du Bois grew up in a generation that's had no such experience. So, while we can see in Washington a clear notion that slavery had no redeeming cultural value and a clear desire to dismiss it, pretend it never happened, and let bygones be bygones, Du Bois considered slavery to be the defining elements of African American existence. In his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk, which can be downloaded freely from any number of sites, Du Bois articulates the evils of slavery and the shortcomings of Reconstruction, but at the same time stresses that it should never be forgotten that it is out of slavery that the innate beauty of African American culture was forged. Slavery is what made black folks who they are -- it is, in effect, The Souls of Black Folk. His ideology expresses a belief that we don't have to forget the past in order to move forward. That African Americans should not have to deny or forget who they are to be American. We will discuss the ideological conflict in the next unit, but we can see clearly here how the seeds of ideological conflict have been sown. As we will see in a later episode, Du Bois was highly critical of Washington's gradualism accommodationism and acceptance of second-class citizenship. That’s all for this episode. You can see everything you’ve seen here as well as the entire archive of episodes at my website www.africanelements.org. You can also join the discussion on our Facebook Group African Elements. I'm Darius Spearman. Thank you for watching.