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Led by a coalition of blacks and whites with funding from congressional radicals, the Union League was a secret society whose express purpose was to bring freedmen into the political arena after the Civil War. Angry and resentful of the lingering vestiges of the plantation system, freedmen responded to the League’s appeals with alacrity, and hundreds of thousands joined local chapters, speaking and acting collectively to undermine the residual trappings of slavery in plantation society. League actions nurtured instability in the work force, which eventually compelled white planters to relinquish direct control over blacks, encouraging the evolution from gang labor to decentralized tenancy in the southern agricultural system as well as the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan. In this impressive work—the first full-scale study of the effect the Union League had on the politicization of black freedmen—Michael W. Fitzgerald explores the League’s influence in Alabama and Mississippi and offers a fresh and original treatment of an important and heretofore largely misunderstood aspect of Reconstruction history.
"A superb oral history." —The Washington Post Book World "So touching, so exhilarating...no book for a long time has left me so moved or so happy." —The New York Times Book Review The almost unfathomable courage and the undying faith that propelled the Civil Rights Movement are brilliantly captured in these moving personal recollections. Here are the voices of leaders and followers, of ordinary people who became extraordinary in the face of turmoil and violence. From the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1956 to the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968, these are the people who fought the epic battle: Rosa Parks, Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy, Hosea Williams, Fannie Lou Hamer, and others, both black and white, who participated in sit-ins, Freedom Rides, voter drives, and campaigns for school and university integration. Here, too, are voices from the “Down-Home Resistance” that supported George Wallace, Bull Connor, and the “traditions” of the Old South—voices that conjure up the frightening terrain on which the battle was fought. My Soul Is Rested is a powerful document of social and political history, as well as a magnificent tribute to those who made history happen.
Forceful and detailed account of the struggle for “freedom” after the American Civil War How did America recover after its years of civil war? How did freed men and women, former slaves, respond to their newly won freedom? David Roediger’s radical new history redefines the idea of freedom after the jubilee, using fresh sources and texts to build on the leading historical accounts of Emancipation and Reconstruction. Reinstating ex-slaves’ own “freedom dreams” in constructing these histories, Roediger creates a masterful account of the emancipation and its ramifications on a whole host of day-to-day concerns for Whites and Blacks alike, such as property relations, gender roles, and labor.
After the American Civil War, several movements for ethnic separatism and political self-determination significantly shaped the course of Reconstruction. The Union Leagues mobilized African Americans to fight for their political rights and economic security while the Ku Klux Klan used intimidation and violence to maintain the political and economic hegemony of southern whites. Founded in 1858 as the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, the Irish American Fenians sought to liberate Ireland from English rule. In Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern Whites, Mitchell Snay provides a compelling comparison of these seemingly disparate groups and illuminates the contours of nationalism during Reconstruction. By joining the Fenians with freedpeople and southern whites, Snay seeks to assert their central relevance to the dynamics of nationalism during Reconstruction and offers a highly original analysis of Reconstruction as an Age of Capital and an Age of Emancipation where categories of race, class, and gender -- as well as nationalism -- were fluid and contested. After the American Civil War, several movements for ethnic separatism and political self-determination significantly shaped the course of Reconstruction. The Union Leagues, which began during the war to support the northern effort, spread to the South after the war and mobilized African Americans to fight for their political rights and economic security. Opposing the Leagues was the Ku Klux Klan, which used intimidation and violence to maintain the political and economic hegemony of southern whites. Founded in 1858 as the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, the Irish American Fenians sought to liberate Ireland from English rule. Mitchell Snay provides a compelling comparison of these seemingly disparate groups in Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern Whites, illuminating the contours of nationalism during Reconstruction. Despite their separate and often opposing goals, the Fenians, Union Leagues, and the Klan, Snay reveals, shared many characteristics. To various extents, they were secret societies that sought to advance their mission through both political and extra-political means. Both the League and the Klan employed elaborate rites of initiation and secret passwords common to nineteenth-century fraternal organizations. They also shared a similar political culture of secrecy, conspiracy, and countersubversion. All three groups were quasi-military in structure and activities and shared a desire for the control of land. Among the three organizations, Snay shows, the Fenians provide the clearest case of nationalist aspirations along the lines of ethnicity, though the rise of racial consciousness among both southern whites and blacks also might be seen as expressions of ethnic nationalism. According to Snay, the political culture of Reconstruction encouraged the nationalist ambitions of these groups, but channeled their separatist impulses along civil rather than ethnic lines by focusing on questions of freedom, citizenship, and suffrage. In addition, the Republican emphasis on color-blind equality limited overt expressions of national identities based solely on ethnicity or race.Unlike southern whites and blacks, Irish Americans are seldom mentioned in Reconstruction histories. By joining the Fenians with freedpeople and southern whites, Snay seeks to assert their central relevance to the dynamics of nationalism during Reconstruction and offers a highly original analysis of Reconstruction as an Age of Capital and an Age of Emancipation where categories of race, class, and gender -- as well as nationalism -- were fluid and contested.
A groundbreaking new history, telling the stories of hundreds of African-American activists and officeholders who risked their lives for equality—in the face of murderous violence—in the years after the Civil War.
The Republican Union League of America played a major role in the Southern Reconstruction that followed the American Civil War. A secret organization introduced into Texas in 1867 to mobilize newly enfranchised black voters, it was the first political body that attempted to secure power by forming a biracial coalition. Originally intended by white Unionists simply to marshal black voters to their support, it evolved into an organization that allowed blacks to pursue their own political goals. It was abandoned by the state’s Republican Party following the 1871 state elections. From the beginning the use of the league by the Republican party proved controversial. While its opponents charged that its white leadership simply manipulated ignorant blacks to achieve power for themselves, ultimately encouraging racial conflict, the League not only educated blacks in their new political rights but also protected them in the exercise of those rights. It gave blacks a voice in supporting the legislative program of Gov. Edmund J. Davis, helping him to push through laws aimed at the maintenance of law and order, securing basic civil rights for blacks, and the creation of public schools. Ultimately, its success and its secrecy provoked hostile attacks from political opponents, leading the party to stop using it. Nonetheless, the Union League created a legacy of black activism that lasted throughout the nineteenth century and pushed Texas toward a remarkably different world from the segregated and racist one that developed after the league disappeared.
A Companion to the American South surveys and evaluates the most important and innovative writing on the entire sweep of the history of the southern United States. Contains 29 original essays by leading experts in American Southern history. Covers the entire sweep of Southern history, including slavery, politics, the Civil War, race relations, religion, and women's history. Surveys and evaluates the best scholarship on every important era and topic. Summarizes current debates and anticipates future concerns.