A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration Book

Monumental, Pulitzer-winning narrative history of African-American efforts before, during and after the Civil War to forge a cohesive community. Hahn (A Nation Without Borders) demonstrates that, long before emancipation, slaves in the South created intricate, informal networks of communication to keep abreast of politics and social developments; these laid the groundwork for the postwar emergence of an African-American political class. Thus, freedmen and women needed no encouragement from white Republicans, Freedman's Bureau educators and Northern philanthropists to take control of their own destiny; they eagerly sought out education, literature and religious connections that enabled them to overcome the ossified racism of Southern states. Nonetheless, even with the emergence of a generation of remarkable individuals (Mississippi activist John Roy Lynch, politicians Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce, writers Ida Wells and Booker T. Washington) their success was largely contingent on events outside their control. The withdrawal of Federal support (and the renascence of white supremacy) resulted in a violent overthrow of the New Order. Not that this ended anything: even after Reconstruction's end, black Americans found new to assert themselves, whether in immigrating abroad, forging self-sufficient communities (both urban and rural) or forging biracial coalitions with Republicans, populists and others to exert their strength. Not a happy story (and one that ends somewhat arbitrarily in the early 20th Century), but an insightful, well-written one; it shows that African-Americans, even as they were victimized and targeted by institutional racism, never lost agency, drive or willingness to forge ahead.