Leon F. LitwackRecensioni

Is America misled or misguided? The final pages of “Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery” led me to this crossroads after author Leon Litwack closed his outstanding survey of the experiences and expectations of black and white Americans with regard to race relations in the lead up to, during, and immediately after the Civil War with the birth of the 14th Amendment.

If America is misled, it means the founding fathers promised a union they either could not build or had no intention of building. It also means that even had Lincoln lived his plans to bring southerners back into the Union would have given blacks no real say in government or economic opportunity.

If America is misguided then we must assume that the kind of capitalist state based on equal rights and equality of opportunity Americans envision is based on the supremacy of whites and was as much in the 19th century as it is now a pipe dream.

Slavery was baked into the union from the very beginning not only in the design of the Electoral College which gave slave states enough power to elect many US presidents, but also in the promise to return fugitive slaves as if they were Fedex packages gone amiss in the delivery system.

(Today Americans shackled under the Electoral College system see sparsely populated rural states stymie the population centres on the coasts in the election of their president, pace Donald Trump.)

Southern planters had good reason to believe they were betrayed when resistance grew to returning runaways (read “The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War” by Andrew Delbanco), when radical Republicans supported abolitionist sentiments in Congress, and when the north fought mightily to prevent new territories from becoming slave states.

From their perspective it looked as though they were tricked into supporting New England break away from Great Britain. Northerners didn’t believe blacks were any more equal to whites than they did, and as history has shown us (in Isabel Wilkerson’s majestic “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration”) northerners weren’t all that accommodating when the descendants of slaves and sharecroppers finally moved north in huge numbers to seek a safer life for their families and better economic opportunity.

Slavery lasted more than 260 years in America. It was so profitable (“The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism” by Edward E. Baptist) that slaves were used as collateral for speculative loans in property west of the Mississippi and Texas. It was so unusual that English linen manufacturers couldn’t replicate it anywhere else in the world (Sven Beckert’s “Empire of Cotton: A Global History.”)

Four million blacks lived in the South at the time of the Civil War. More than 186,000 blacks fought in the war, mostly on the side of the North. Almost all of these people were illiterate.

With emancipation came the opportunity for black families to reunite, for women to devote time to building their families, for adults to move about the countryside without asking permission, and for black families to openly educate their children. It also gave blacks a chance to reflect on their very names and decide who they wanted to be.

But emancipation did not bring 40 acres and a mule, the rallying cry for blacks who believed the Union Army would give them the resources to start their own farms from plantations taken from the rebels. Many blacks became embroiled in contracts working for their former masters, or others like them, often incurring debt and most usually not improving their independence a bit.

Freedom. Independence. Two concepts not necessarily alligned at the close of the war.

In addition to enduring complete powerlessness for the better part of two and a half centuries, they were repeatedly insulted, beaten, and whipped. Their young and adult women were repeatedly raped. Many thousands of them had their families torn apart by the sale of their family members to other plantations. Children taken from mothers. Husbands taken from wives.

It was in this backdrop that Southerners told themselves that blacks were childlike, incapable of governing either themselves or others, or deserved to take control of their own lives. Southerners sought compensation for lands torn from them in war, but never considered for a moment compensation owing to the slaves themselves.

Southern men considered the blacks lazy, even though it was the blacks from the sweat of their own brows who built the wealth of the South, and southern women despaired when their house slaves abandoned them after emancipation and left them to cook, clean, mend clothes, and entertain on their own. (And cooking and cleaning and particularly ironing in those days ain’t what it is today.)

America is still living with the aftermath of slavery. Politicians cheat to keep blacks from voting. Rich parents cheat to get their largely white children into elite schools. And Silicon Valley apes the Old Boys Clubs of yore.

I was struck by a quote from the black poet W.E.B. Dubois who looked back at the newly “freed” men and women. Their first images of themselves were taken from their white masters. How heroic was their quest to build their self-respect and their dignity from a whole new cloth.

You could also say that the planters — and Northerners who benefitted sometimes directly, and sometimes indirectly from slavery in America— took their identities from their position of power over the blacks. The same could be said of white Americans over the aboriginal peoples. Had Americans not traded in blacks or murdered Indians, would they see their manifest destiny in quite the same light?

Whites were so dependent not just economically but emotionally on free black labour that the destruction of slavery fractured their self-esteem.

In fairness to America, it did not invent slavery or bigotry or white nationalism. These are among the carbuncles of our civilization. It remains an open question whether we will ever rid ourselves of their influence. Emancipation in America was only a beginning.

It took me more than two weeks to read this horrifying, depressing, infuriating and absolutely essential history. Trouble in Mind covers the period from the end of Reconstruction, when the brief period of black enfranchisement ended as southern states moved to brutally and emphatically reassert White Supremacy throughout the American south, through what is known as the Great Migration, when blacks in great numbers moved north to fill factory jobs that came available during and just after World War I.

I had thought I had an idea of what the term "Jim Crow" represented to the people who lived under the weight of that oppressive system, but it turns out I had only a relatively shallow understanding. It wasn't just a question of separate railroad cars and exclusion from restaurants and stores. It wasn't just being prevented from voting, although many of the problems stemmed from that. It was about vicious, all-pervasive, horrendous oppression. If you were black and you were perceived as getting "above your place," you could have your house burned down and your crops destroyed. You could be run off your land. Or you could be murdered. What did "above your place" mean? If you had raised enough cotton on your land so that you could pay your rent and your bills at the store and still have enough left over to sell a couple of bales at market and keep the money for yourself, that was an offense for which you and your entire family could be, and might well be, murdered. Or if you were able to fix your house up so that it was more presentable that a rundown shack. Or if it was learned you had money in the bank. Or if you questioned the white man who was cheating you out of wages or payment for crops. Or if you were a teacher in a black school. And so on. Black lives, in this time and place, were meant to be, and most often were, unending hours, days and years of drudgery with no chance to improve one's lot in life. There are a lot more details here about this era, the horrors of lynching (often preceded by long hours of torture and frequently accomplished via burning at the stake). These conditions, again, prevailed across the south through World War One, and, of course, beyond.

I am appalled that it took me until age 65 to understand these details. This book, or at least knowledge of this history, is essential, I think, to any attempt at a comprehension of racial issues in America today, including the Black Lives Matter movement as well as a myriad of deeply rooted economic and cultural problems. Of course I am talking to my fellow white people. I would assume that most black Americans are already well versed in this history. But the next time somebody says anything along the lines of "Slavery ended 150 years ago. Time to get over it," I'm going to want to shove this book, all 500 pages of it, down that person's throat.

I have only touched on some of the major subjects that Litwack addresses in Trouble in Mind. His writing is clear and as concise as it can be with such a sprawling topic. He lays on the examples. Sometimes I felt like I'd already gotten the point while he was still illustrating it over and over, but I never begrudged Litwack these details even then. I felt that they were necessary to impress upon the reader the degree to which the violence and suppression he was describing were all pervasive and relentless, and also to illustrate the horrible toll it all took on the daily lives of millions of Americans.

It's unclear to me whether I can possibly have encouraged anybody to read this book with this review, but, at any rate, I do urge people to read it.½

About two months ago, my friend Kim Nalley, who is both an internationally know jazz and blues singer and a Ph.D. candidate in history at UC Berkeley, sent around a list of suggested reading about the African American experience and the history of racism in America. I will be going back to that list perhaps every third or fourth book I read until I've worked my way through it.

Checking in at 556 pages, Been in the Storm So Long constitutes a commitment of time and energy, but an extremely worthwhile commitment. I was under the impression that the book would provide an overview of the Reconstruction Era, but in fact Litwack stops right as Radical Reconstruction get going. Instead, the book starts with a description of the conditions endured by the prisoners of slavery as the Civil War neared, continues on to describe conditions and events during the war years, and then covers the first few years after Emancipation. Litwack makes detailed use of letters, diaries, newspaper articles and interviews. He lays on example after example after example of each condition and development he describes. At times it seems like perhaps he's still doing that even after the points been effectively made. However, at all times I felt like the effect created with this tactic was an important one. Because it made each element not just something to be told and then to be moved on from, but instead something to consider over and over again until something like knowledge perhaps had seeped in.

Some of the key historical points, some of which I can say that I knew, perhaps, but often only in a vague manner and are extremely important for every American (at least) to be strongly aware in more detailed ways:

1) Slavery was a horror.

2) The crossing of thousands of escaping slaves across the advancing Union lines and, eventually, into the Union army, was an extremely important factor in the North's military victory.

3) The Southern planter class was determined during and after the war that Emancipation would not in any way mean the end of White supremacy. Acknowledging that slavery was over did not in any way signify to them that Blacks should have any rights whatsoever. That included voting, testifying in court, serving on juries or, in many places, owning land.

4) The occupying Union forces sympathized much more with the White aspirations listed above than with helping protect ex-slaves from getting cheated out of the wages their former "masters" were now supposed to be paying them or even physical attack and murder at the hands of whites displeased by their behavior in one way or another.

That's a very, very short list of the major issues covered in this fascination and essential history.

This is an admirable work of evidence-based history, presenting the aftermath of the Civil War in the words of the people, black and white, who lived it. This technique delivers not just a tremendous amount of important information but also a nuanced account of the baffling and horrific human experience of slavery. The grotesque and obstinate projections by slaveholders of the supposed satisfactions, but also the lurking threat, of their slaves aptly shows the fierceness of their internal denial of the atrocity they were responsible for. The former slaves' accounts poignantly express misplaced faith in American ideals and values that would redress their wrongs. The lasting impression is of an opportunity missed, as the chance to knit former slaves into the society was discarded and squelched, with Jim Crow racism selected and favored instead.

The author of [b:Been in the Storm So Long|57432|Been in the Storm So Long The Aftermath of Slavery|Leon F. Litwack|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170462650s/57432.jpg|55952] continues his study of Reconstruction and black/white relations in the South following the Civil War.

These two books, by Leon Litwack, professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley, are important and should be read by everyone interested in the history of race relations in this country. The period following the Civil War represents the nadir of black American history; a time when the white power structure in the South took back what they had lost on the battlefields. During this period a group of people were denied the basic rights of citizenship in the land of their birth. They were stamped as inferior based on the artificial concept of race — it was not the Nazis who invented the one-drop rule. Litwack describes how the first blacks born free after Emancipation had to cope with a new racial order, a vicious form of apartheid, in which they were nominally free, but enslaved in a system of tenant labor that forced them to remain in misery and poverty. They became “invisible” even as great waves of immigrants quickly assimilated into their role of superiority to the “nigger.” The celebration of "hard work" and "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps" applied only to whites. Education coupled with hard work could create prosperity and middle class for the white immigrant; for the indigenous black it resulted in lynching.

The boundaries of the New World for blacks were enforced by incredible violence. White savagery beggars the imagination. Blacks were mutilated and tortured in front of huge crowds often for the mere "crime" of trying to be successful. Black children witnessed horrible acts of random violence against black males. These actions were clearly intended to send a message to the black community: “Stay in your place or reap the consequences.” White children were taught the policeman
was your friend; black youngsters soon learned he was the enemy.

Litwack follows four generations of black southerners following the Civil War. This is the story of extraordinary courage and resourcefulness; of how blacks often managed to create a world of their own. The book explains the gradual destruction of barriers leading eventually to the 1954 Brown decision and the Civil Rights Movement.

Litwack begins with the generation of former slaves. Next he examines the lives of freeborn children of former slaves who desperately wanted success. Then he discusses the generation that supplied men for the "Jim Crow" army in the Spanish-American war while their brothers were being killed at home. Finally, he focuses on the generation of the early twentieth century that rejected accommodation and moved north in vast numbers. Across these generations, blacks were frequently denied access to the political process and education but found ways to create a rich oral tradition and a new musical form, jazz, that was to conquer the white musical world. They remained ambiguous about how to define themselves, becoming Africans, Negroes, colored, Afro-Americans, etc. "Negro" was the term preferred by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B.
DuBois until it was discarded during the Civil Rights Movement as too representative of white paternalism and subjugation This book is a celebration of the spirit of a people who survived enormous difficulty and managed to preserve the genius of their human spirit.

2097 Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery, by Leon F. Litwack (read 6 Sep 1987) (Pulitzer History prize in 1980) (National Book Award history prize in 1981) This book is a prime example of what used to be called revisionist history, but it is much more mature than early examples of that genre. I found the early chapters, with their seemingly unending examples of incidents illustrating slave life during the Civil War, rather tedious but the concluding chapters are excellently done and absorbing reading. They illustrate that the freedmen were well justified in their behavior in their actions after the Civil War and before the start of Radical Reconstruction. This book just goes up to the beginning of Radical Reconstruction, covering about 1860 to 1868. It is very well-done and an excellent, excellent book to read. An absorbing book, and how it makes one ashamed that emancipation had to wait till the 1960's to be completed!

Litwack, Leon F. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1998

In Trouble in Mind, Leon Litwack rivets his readers with a thoroughly harrowing, but nonetheless engrossing, illumination of life in the Jim Crow era southern United States. Ostensibly, as the sub-title indicates, this monograph deals with Black Southerners existence within the white supremacist construct of Jim Crow. However, the main title leaves open the double entendre begging the question: trouble in whose mind? In a society where perception often outweighed reality, Litwack elucidates the nexus of Jim Crow: the supremacist construct most assuredly brought troubles to the minds of blacks but rather than eliminate white supremacist fears it instead brought continuing troubles to their minds as well. Litwack demonstrates that although black southerners were "slaves in the system," white supremacists (and white non-supremacists) were "slaves to the system (page 421)." Playing on the multiple meanings of “trouble,” Litwack also argues that this was a race war and that both whites and blacks were not only in states of distress but also agitated against or for the system.
Litwack pulls his readers into the Jim Crow era through the voices of the people who lived the reality. From famous figures of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, to political pundits of white supremacy Litwack uses these voices to weave a narrative full of details. His first three chapters focus on black experiences in Jim Crow from their initial exposure through the adaptations and compromises they made to survive within the system. The next two chapters bring in the white experience of manipulating and enforcing the system on the south. The final three chapters detail the explosive societal terms of lynching, black endurance and the choices made by blacks to either fight or leave the system.
Litwack takes the reader beyond the veil of the color line and forces the reader to confront the brutishness of Jim Crow. The familiar dialectic between the two polar positions of black reaction to Jim Crow is marked out. Black leaders could chose accommodation and industrial education, like Booker T. Washington, or entitlements to full citizenship, like W. E. B. Du Bois. Yet Litwack stunningly reveals how neither path satisfied white supremacists; who routinely interpreted any black advancement as a threat to themselves (page 51).
Litwack’s analysis of lynching, in his chapter Hellhounds, reveals just how deeply the trouble in white supremacist minds went. Litwack argues that lynching victim’s true offense was challenging Jim Crow white supremacy; either boldly or in the fickle perception of whites (page 307). Horror after horror was inflected upon black southerners by whites. Lynching may have served to underscore “black vulnerability” but it also exposed the “moral character of whites (page 312).” The construct that trapped blacks beneath the weight of white supremacy also trapped white supremacists to the violence necessary, in their view, to maintain the system. From living through lynching after lynching, blacks “placed their own interpretations” on the events and realized that “neither a deferential accommodation nor economic success guaranteed them civil or human rights (page 317).”
While most critics suggest Litwack is not breaking any new ground here but is simple telling the story again in a masterful way, Litwack does challenge at least one historical analysis. Although not overtly, Litwack challenges C. Vann Woodward’s tenet that Jim Crow segregation was not merely an extension of local custom but a built social construct. Litwack argues that the custom of segregation “was not” new to the South but its “legalization and intensity” of enforcement were new (page 238).

3212. Trouble in Mind / Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow, by Leon F. Litwack (read July 2, 1999) This takes up where Been in the Storm So Long, which I finished on Sept 6, 1987, left off, and deals with black Southerners' lives from the 1870's till World War One. It is very devoted to episodes, and shies away from giving objective data. I suppose sociological data would have made the book dryer, but some such data would have been helpful, I thought. But much of the book is very powerful, especially the horrid accounts of lynchings, burnings, and the like--happening in this country in this century! I thought to myself: Where was the outrage? There apparently wasn't any! This overall was a worthwhile book to read.

Leon F. Litwack, in the preface to his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, describes the setting of four million black slaves receiving freedom. Four million people who had lost connection to their African heritage and at the time of the Civil War had been American slaves for generations.
As slaves, they had learned skills of survival, especially how to adjust to the needs and desires of white people. Such engrained skills intended for subservience, now needed to propel them forward into shaping their own lives.
The massive social upheaval confronted white slave owners with the realities of their dependent and exploitative relationships with black slaves. Slaves were confronted with the vulnerability of their white owners. Many were not able or ready to process such life-changing alterations to their perspectives and social constructions.
While reactions to the upheaval are available from the white perspective, very little written history is available from the black perspective. The Federal Writers’ Project compiled interviews with the few remaining former slaves about seventy years after the Civil War. While this is some of the most original source available, Litwack encourages caution in researching the material. The interviews were done decades after the experience, and while such a traumatic occurrence was still fresh in the minds of the interviewees, some particulars of memory may not have been accurate. The interviews were conducted by whites unfamiliar with the life experiences and language idioms of those they interviewed. Of even more concern is the blacks’ lifetime of learned subservience, evasion, and giving the white person what they imagined they wanted to hear. With these cautions in mind, these interviews provide the most authentic and timely revelation of the black experience of emigrating from slavery to freedom.

I did not finish because it had to go back to the library but I will check it out again later. it is really interesting but long. this is an important one to read (note to self)