Book Description
A renowned cultural critic untangles the twisted history and future of racism through its most volatile word.
The N Word reveals how the term "nigger" has both reflected and spread the scourge of bigotry in America over the four hundred years since it was first spoken on our shores. Asim pinpoints Thomas Jefferson as the source of our enduring image of th e In a seminal but now obscure essay, Jefferson marshaled a welter of pseudoscience to define the stereotype of a shiftless child-man with huge appetites and stunted self control. Asim reveals how nineteenth-centur y then colluded with popular culture to amplify this slander. What began as false generalizations became institutionalized in every corner of our society: the arts and sciences, sports, the law, and on the streets.
Asim's conclusion is as original as his premise. He argues that even when uttered with the opposite intent by hipsters and hip-hop icons, the slur helps keep blacks at the bottom of America's socioeconomic ladder. But Asim also proves there is a place for the word in the mouths and on the pens of those who truly understand its twisted history - from Mark Twain to Dave Chappelle to Mos Def. Only when we know its legacy can we loosen this slur'sgrip on our national psyche.
Customer Reviews:
would love to........2007-05-30
I would love to review this product if I ever receive it. It's been more than a month since it's been ordered and I'm sure I would have finished reading it in time for this review.
Masterful exposition of an explosive topic.......2007-05-15
The only bad thing to say about "The N Word" is what author Jabari Asim said himself. The subtitle, "Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why" is a marketing invention that missed the point of the book and does injustice to its purpose.
Asim follows the N word through America history, like a trail of bread crumbs through a dark and dangerous forest. There are times when the trail is rather sparse, and other times when the pile of crumbs is wide and deep. The first crumbs are laid by 1619, with the unloading of 30 Africans into the new world. From the beginning, the word has a brutally negative meaning. Some have attempted to soften the word's harshness by claiming that it originally meant little more than an observation about the darkness of a slave's skin. But Asim makes clear by quoting from period documents that pigmentation was considered a radical (and unsavory) deviation from the European standard of lightness. Some even considered it to be literally an infection of the skin. Very quickly, the word took on connotations of inferiority, debased humanity, servility and lack of intelligence. To use the word meant to distance oneself from and to deny another's personhood. Thus it was, thus it has always been. In fact, one thing I admire about Asim's approach is that he does not give in to the now-current opinion that one should not judge past generations by this generation's morality. Asim will have none of this - to capture, sell and own human beings, to separate them from wives and family, and then to ratify that action by creating an enduring culture that belittles and demeans them on account of skin color -- has always been and will always be an act of heartless depravity.
Asim takes us on a historical tour with stops at Monticello to hear Thomas Jefferson opine (without basis) compare the alleged lust of black men for white women with the lust of orangutans for black women. From there, we travel to the battlefields of the Revolutionary War, in an army where full 20% of the soldiers were black. We tour the racist and intolerant pre-Civil War North where even ardent abolitionists were convinced of Negro inferiority. Coming from Newburyport, MA, proud to be home to abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, this was a hard fact to acknowledge. Asim shows why "Uncle Tom's Cabin," intended as an abolitionist text, played on caricatures about blacks that were as offensive as they were inaccurate. Asim touches on the disgust of Union troops over fighting for black emancipation. We tour the Reconstruction Era South, which quickly and viciously shut the door to emancipation via lynchings, Jim Crow laws and propaganda. The propaganda took many forms, including popular music (with its depiction of "authentic" Negro dialect) and romances, which offered a sanitized and sanctified version of the glorious and pacific antebellum South in which beneficent whites and their willing slaves lived in symbiotic harmony. From here, we are treated to Northern race riots, the rise of minstrel shows and the caricatures of blacks in early films. Asim does the expected withering hatchet job on Klan-happy "The Birth of a Nation," but also eviscerates the revisionist tone of "Gone With The Wind," especially Margaret Mitchell's book, on which the film was based.
Asim shows also the quack-scientific and cultural beliefs that maintained whites' base (in both senses of the word) assumptions. Was a black man happy? Then he was born to servility. Was he angry and violent? Well, that's just his natural brutish temperament. Did he write thoughtful accounts of his life? He must have had the secret help of sympathetic whites. Asim also traces the original and development of the mythical "bad" black -- prone to criminality and sexually insatiable - from the 19th century to the present day, where it is firmly ensconced in the violence and misogyny of rap lyrics.
Asim gives us a glimpse into the science of race that used bad science to show that black brains were smaller than white brains. As Stephen Jay Gould demonstrated in "The Mis-measure of man," this was accomplished by comparing skulls from large-bodied European males to those of smaller Africans, even women, without accounting for the effect of body size on brain volume, a factor that would have erased nearly all correlations between brain size and racial "worth."
Asim brings us into the 20th century - from the Black Migration and the Harlem Renaissance through Emmett Till -- ending his history with a discussion of Lyndon Johnson, the champion of civil rights, who nonetheless held blacks in extremely low regard.
At this point, Asim falters somewhat as he tries to disentangle the complexities of modern cultural use of the N word. As the Civil Rights movement gained power and acceptability in 1950s and 1960s, whites began to self-regulate, socially punishing use of the word. But starting in the 1960s and 1970s, comics like Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor began using the word in their race-aware routines. This led the way to a more nuanced view of the term, but also opened the door to its misuse. It's one thing to listen to Pryor use the word to skewer lingering racial bias. But its use in the mouth of less talented and aware performers only served to reinforce the familiar "bad" black stereotype that both fascinated and repelled white audiences. Asim has the toughest time in this section, as he tries to detach "good" use of the N word (to attack racism) from bad uses (to reinforce stereotypes, to make cash). His heroes may be Pryor, Murphy, Chappelle, Rock and Tupac, but even he can't completely exonerate every use of the word by those he admires.
In the end, "The N Word" did its work. Asim expertly makes the case that the N word has always been associated with expressing the supposed inferiority of blacks, that its use continues to be a curse. For blacks to use it, Asim gingerly notes, is dangerous. Whether it is Chris Rock using it to brand criminally-minded blacks, or Quentin Tarantino (or Spike Lee) using it to sell movies, the word still has power to hurt and to reinforce race myths. Whether used by white racists to denigrate blacks, or by blacks to denigrate each other (and especially their women), the word has the ability to submerge entire populations into the quicksand of inferiority and self doubt. Its use always ends up confirming some of the worst and oldest facets of our culture.
In spite of the volatility of the topic, Asim's writes in cool, measure tones. Though his work is a survey that skims over the surface of his topic, Asim still conveys an enormous amount of information about history and race relations in the US. Though dispassionate in his exposition, he is passionate about the pain endured on account of the word he studies. "The N Word" is a must-read for those who think that racial bias is a thing of the past or that self-limits on language are nothing more than political correctness. Asim may be tentative about condemning those who continue to use the word, but his argument shows that there is no use of the word that will not eventually redound to the detriment of black aspirations. In a world in which talk show hosts regularly use racially-loaded language, we are well served by attending to the deeply-rooted and vicious social program that those words continue to promote.
Words matter.......2007-04-27
I saw Mr. Asim in Washington, DC during a discussion in April 2007 regarding this book, its origins and the history of the "N word". The discussion was lively, surprising and informational. Lively due to the subject matter, and surprising due to the number of black people, particularly black men, that supported the continued use of the word (in a particular context - read more below). Finally, it was informational because it shed some light - unfortunate though it is in my opinion - on why some blacks advocate for the continued use of this term in any way.
-- Now to the book. The book is thorough, well-written, and covers an astonishing period of time in just over 200 pages. Mr. Asim does not advocate the use of the word, but nor does he seek to ban it. Instead he makes a compelling argument that this word - unlike any other in the English language - has had such a significant contribution to the ongoing racism against and degradation and stereotyping of blacks in the US and elsewhere that it is appalling that the casual use of the N word has grown, rather than diminished, over the years. Asim argues that the N word's inability to disappear from the lexicon is hampered not strictly due to hip-hop artists of today, whom he doesn't let off the hook for their incessant use of the word, but by the larger society that began referring to blacks as "niggas, niggers and nagurs" etc. several centuries ago when they were sold as sub-human property. The word moved beyond slavery and continued on in popular culture (books, films and music), pseudo-science (including what is referred to as niggerology), politics (with politicians waxing about how they could "outnigger" each other) and even in war. Asim traces these uses - and the related prevailing and parallel views of blacks as sub-human - to well over 400 years ago, the more recent past and the present day. However, reading this book is not merely a history lesson. It is a chilling reminder of why words are the most fantastic weapons we have against one another.
In addition to the valuable historical context he uses to frame his argument, I think Mr. Asim offers a fresh perspective by dealing with the popular use of the term among black people. He makes a compelling point when he argues that of all of the words in the English language why use this word to supposedly show love or familiarity? As a black person are you okay with another black person saying to you "What's up my brother?" or "What's up nigger?" If you respond with both or the latter, your response to that question may change after reading Asim's book.
An important book with flaws.......2007-04-17
Nowadays, any time a hot-button issue garners a lot of chatter in the media a hot-button book can't be far behind. Enter The N-Word by Jabari Asim. Of course, the "Nigger issue" isn't exactly a new one. When I was 12 I had a badly designed button that was supposed to say "Stop using the word Nigger" but read as "Stop using Nigger the word" with a big circle-strike through the offending term. I'm a bit older than 12 now. We didn't abolish Nigger back then (in fact, its use has increased) and I'm pretty sure we're not going to abolish it now. Not without a history lesson, anyway.
Though it's tempting to write this book off as an insta-title put out to cash in on the discussion, I find that I cannot do so. Even if the author didn't think to write it until recently, it's a book that someone should have already written. What Asim tries to do is put the discussion and the word in context. What is this word? Where did it come from? Who first used it and what did they intend?
Does this stuff matter? Hell yes, it matters.
Asim does a good job of pointing out that the word Nigger never had anything but a negative connotation. That it's one of the tools white supremacists use to exert control over black people. Language is power. The highest placed black person in business, government, or education can be taken down in the eyes of others with just one label: Nigger.
That's why it's important to keep these things in context.
I do have problems with this book, but none of them have to do with the subject matter. As I said, Asim has an excellent grasp on the issue and provides a compelling argument against both the casual use of the N-Word and against banning the word all together. (More on that later.) As I read, I kept thinking that Asim could have benefited from a stronger editorial hand. It may be true that this book was put together quickly. It's not as focused as it could be. It's obvious he did a lot of research - there's a lot of history in here. But it isn't always clear how this history connects with the central point of the book. A stronger, less linear structure might have served the subject better.
Still, everyone could use a history lesson every now and then. Count me amongst the kind of people who couldn't stand history class but love a book that provides historical context surrounding something we're already interested in. And the stuff Asim offers up about the Founding Fathers, past presidents, and Charles Darwin won't make it into your typical high school history book.
In the last chapter or so -- by far the most moving and compelling part of the book -- Asim makes a forceful case for erasing the word from public discourse, but he is explicit in affirming people's rights to speak in whatever way they want in private.
The N-Word is definitely a worthy book, even with its flaws. I defy anyone to read it with an open mind and not come away feeling that the word Nigger ought to be retired. Hopefully its publication will keep the issue in front of the media in a meaningful way.
It's not really about the N word...........2007-04-16
The genius of Jabari Asim's book is not it's exposition of the word "Nigger", a subject that has been explored in contemporary detail by Randall Kennedy, Cornel West and others. Mr. Asim's book is really about the poisonous notion of Black inferiority, its pervasiveness in the American societal framework, and, finally, its expression through use of the word "Nigger". The N Word is destructive because of the vitriolic beliefs and attitudes that are associated with it. Asim teaches us this as straightforwardly as he knows how, and leaves us to make conclusions. I'm sending this book to my closest friends; it is a must for any comprehensive library on American race studies.
Book Description
A century after Appomattox, the civil rights movement won full citizenship for black Americans in the South. It should not have been necessary: by 1870 those rights were set in the Constitution. This is the story of the terrorist campaign that took them away.
Nicholas Lemann opens his extraordinary new book with a riveting account of the horrific events of Easter 1873 in Colfax, Louisiana, where a white militia of Confederate veterans-turned-vigilantes attacked the black community there and massacred hundreds of people in a gruesome killing spree. This was the start of an insurgency that changed the course of American history: for the next few years white Southern Democrats waged a campaign of political terrorism aiming to overturn the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and challenge President Grant’ssupport for the emergent structures of black political power. The remorseless strategy of well-financed “White Line” organizations was to create chaos and keep blacks from voting out of fear for their lives and livelihoods. Redemption is the first book to describe in uncompromising detail this organized racial violence, which reached its apogee in Mississippi in 1875.
Lemann bases his devastating account on a wealth of military records, congressional investigations, memoirs, press reports, and the invaluable papers of Adelbert Ames, the war hero from Maine who was Mississippi’s governor at the time. When Ames pleaded with Grant for federal troops who could thwart the white terrorists violently disrupting Republican political activities, Grant wavered, and the result was a bloody, corrupt election in which Mississippi was
“redeemed”—that is, returned to white control.
Redemption makes clear that this is what led to the death of Reconstruction—and of the rights encoded in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. We are still living with the consequences.
Customer Reviews:
A Needed Corrective.......2007-04-11
Nicholas Lemann's book "Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War," focuses on mostly forgotten and often sanitized versions of specific incidents that marked the end of Reconstruction and the regaining by White Southerns of state and local government institutions leading to Jim Crow and Segregation that continued for another 90 years or so. The book, relatively brief, examines in detail several incidents, one in Lousiana, the others in Mississippi where local vigalante groups seized control from local black officials through intimidation and massacres. It is perhaps not coincidential that the worst offenses took place in Mississippi, and perhaps some sort of rough justice that in exchange Mississippi remained for decades afterwards on the lowest rung of the ladder among the states in nearly every social and economic ranking.
Much of the book is through the eyes of one Adelbert Ames, a Union general, senator and governor of Mississippi, as revealed in the copius correspondence with his wife, Blanche Butler, who most of the time remained at home in the North. Because of weariness of the part of the North, insufficient troops, deliberate foot-dragging by US officials sympathetic to the South, and indecisiveness on the part of President Grant, these events from 1874-76 were allowed to precede with little intervention and protection of Black citizens. In effect, the withdrawal of Northern troops in 1877, the result of a compromise that ended the electoral stalemate in the Hayes/Tilden presidential election of 1876, overturned a major achievement of the Civil War, namely full citizenship and voting privileges for former African slaves. The result was another dark stain on American history and our pretenses of a just and equitable society where everyone has the chance to be president.
Because of its brevity, the book suffers from a lack of context of how overall Reconstruction had proceeded in the South, it's weaknesses and its victories. The book also would have been improved through a map, particularly Mississippi and the various places where the rampages of the vigantes took place. Another improvement would have been photographs of the several colorful characters portrayed. But all in all, for a brief look at an important moment in American history, the book is highly recommended.
Last Battle?.......2007-03-14
The subtitle is a little bit of a cheat, for the Civil War was long over by the time the massacres of 1875 began, but after reading Nicholas Lemann's book on the failure of Reconstruction and the life of Civil War General Adelbert Ames, I can see why he decided to bend the truth and capture the huge Civil War market.
he shows how JFK was a patsy to the Southern Conservative myth of Reconstruction and how, in PROFILES IN COURAGE (1956) Kennedy included Lucius Lamar of Mississippi as an avatar of courage, when in actuality he was a liar and a bigot and was personally responsible for the deaths of thousands of Mississippi freedmen. What was JFK thinking? Well, as Lemann points out, this was not an anomaly in Kennedy's otherwise antiracist public profile. Indeed it was part and parcel of his curiously suspect voting record and public stand towards the race question. It was as though, in the polarized 1950s, he had to keep the Southern Democrats happy in order to win their support for the campaign he saw coming his way. PROFILES IN COURAGE dismisses Adelbert Ames, Lemann's (admittedly flawed) hero, as a mere carpetbagger, not worthy of living in Mississippi, a `foreigner' and an Abolitionist. The strange thing is that, he lived so long (at age 98, he was the oldest surviving Civil War officer) his daughter Blanche was on hand to shame Kennedy into agreeing to change future editions of PROFILES. Then her years of disappointment began, for even though Senator, and then President Kennedy, had agreed to re-research Reconstruction, he never did, and when she kept bugging him he enlisted the help of her grandson, "Paper Lion" George Plimpton, to call his honorable kinswoman off his back. Of course all of these people had incredible privilege and wealth.
A needed corrective to the Reconstruction story.......2007-02-24
Having lived in the South for the first 21 years of my life, I can attest to the staying power of the myths of Reconstruction and the succeeding era which I was taught to call Redemption.
The central motif of these myths is that of courageous, heroic whites finally standing up to a brutal Northern occupation, but turning to violence only when physically threatened.
Some prominent historians -- Eric Foner in particular -- have been forthright and comprehensive in setting out the true facts. In my readings, there have been two aspects still missing from such large-scale works. First of all, a visceral, detailed accounting of the intensity of white-on-black violence has been needed. Second, we have lacked a nuanced, detailed biography of Adelbert Ames, perhaps the best exemplar of the promise interracial cooperation held for the South.
In "Redemption", journalist Nicholas Lemann makes an attempt to remedy both these insufficiencies in a narrative aimed at the non-specialist reader. Instead of giving us a comprehensive study of how integrated southern state governments were driven from power, Lemann chooses instead to focus primarily on the single example of Mississippi, with some inclusion of parallel events in neighboring Louisiana. And the story of Reconstruction Mississippi cannot successfully be understood without considering the career of New Englander Adelbert Ames, a Union veteran who became first the state's senator and then governor during this period.
Lemann recounts instance upon instance of politically-inspired and deadly violence that steadily drove Republican voters, especially blacks, from the polls. While many leading white Democrats maintained deniability and claimed that such attacks were rare and always provoked by the other side, and while President Grant's commitment to federal protection decisively waned, Governor Ames cast off his naivete and tried to counter with what forces he could muster. But without timely federal intervention, this proved an impossible task. Ames was finally forced to face facts, and he resigned the governorship and left the state for good. The Solid South was born with violence as midwife.
Lemann's choices mean that he needs to do three things well. First, with respect to bringing home the intensity, pervasiveness, and comprehensive effects of the violence, Lemann is especially convincing, at least within Mississippi (and to a less significant extent Louisiana). Second, his incorporation of an Ames biography is in itself valuable and multi-faceted. But it doesn't serve as a full-fledged biography due to the author's chronological boundaries. We do learn of Ames' background and his significant relationships with others, most notably his wife and father-in-law; these are important in understanding Ames' behavior in Mississippi. But for Ames' life after Mississippi, Lemann takes only a cursory wrap-up approach.
Finally, we should expect Lemann to do a convincing job of integrating these two intersecting narratives. In this he is largely successful. But there are moments when his attention to the details of Ames' life, while welcome to this reader, may yet seem only remotely relevant to the larger story of the Redemption era.
In 1933 Adelbert Ames became the last Civil War officer to die. The myths of Redemption have lived on long after, and Lemann's book is a significant contribution to puncturing those myths and establishing the truth.
Mississippi Burning.......2007-02-09
This is a story on how government failed, how the civil rights of freed slaves and blacks became a political playground of hate and deceit and how victory on the battlefield was lost to thugs & cowards. It clearly shows how history can be manipulated by the criminals who ushered in a sordid era of Jim Crow laws while others looked away.
Author Nicholas Lemann does a magnificent job in detailing the death of Reconstruction through white terrorism in Mississippi in the 1870s, which emboldened the white racists throughout the south to institute what became known as the "Mississippi Plan" of intimidation and murder to seize power in every government institution and to kick blacks back into servitude.
The heroes are the victims - the blacks and some white Republicans - who boldly stood alone while the mobs seized control in a revolution of aversion, and then afterwards wrote the articles and books, whose key lies are still being taught as factual history today.
You will be angered as Lemann explains as a reporter how Reconstruction was lost. But then look around, and realize that the subtitle, The Last Battle of the Civil War, may be incorrect. Unless this country confronts the harsh realities of the past, the last battle of the Civil War has yet to be fought, or won.
America's Own Terrorists.......2007-02-04
In this short historical account, Nicholas Lemann tells the disturbing story of how ex-confederates in Mississippi brought about the end of Reconstruction in 1875 through an orchestrated campaign of savagery and deception.
The "Mississippi Plan" employed an ugly and brutal pattern: when freed slaves attempted to exercise their political rights--by convening political rallies, becoming candidates for office or simply trying to vote--southern whites responded with hellish violence, not merely fighting the freed slaves, but coldly murdering them in front of friends or family or, worse, hunting them down if they fled.
To justify their heinous conduct, the whites invented an emotionally laden cover story that, to this very day, resonates among the American public. In their view, the violence was necessary to forestall imminent "Negro uprisings," prevent rape and pillage by brutish and bestial blacks, and redeem the honor of the south from the depredation of northern carpetbaggers who seized control of the political system by duping or bribing the newly freed slaves.
The key to the Mississippi Plan was the public relations tactic of presenting the organized slaughter of blacks as random local incidents, a tactic that discouraged President Grant from sending federal troops to secure the rights of the newly enfranchised citizens. Absent this safeguard, the intimidation worked, and the Democrats won control of key offices, despite significant Republican majorities among registered or potential voters. With the outcome of the presidential election of 1876 in dispute, the nation embraced the "Compromise of 1877" in which the Democrats agreed to let Rutherford Hayes become president and the Republicans agreed to the removal of the remaining federal troops from the South. Reconstruction was over.
Much of this tale is told through the eyes of Adelbert Ames, a Northerner and celebrated Union Army general who was elected Governor of Mississippi by the multitude of new black voters. Sometimes the book reads like a biography of Ames. Only at the end does Lemann step back from the detailed account and provide the larger picture of how the "Mississippi Plan" became the blueprint for the entire Southern strategy to end Reconstruction and how the nation shamefully abandoned its commitment to true citizenship for blacks.
As I read "Redemption," a profound sense of disgust and outrage rose within me. So horrific, repulsive, and needless was the conduct of the Southern Democrats that, at times, I felt Lemann must have been omitting facts that would have balanced the story. But this is precisely Lemann's point: when Southerners today celebrate the honor and courage of Dixie, they are endorsing a fiction that was invented in 1875. There was no honor, only terror of helpless black victims.
Amazon.com
When he was but 10 years old, Tim Tyson heard one of his boyhood friends in Oxford, N.C. excitedly blurt the words that were to forever change his life: "Daddy and Roger and 'em shot 'em a nigger!" The cold-blooded street murder of young Henry Marrow by an ambitious, hot-tempered local businessman and his kin in the Spring of 1970 would quickly fan the long-flickering flames of racial discord in the proud, insular tobacco town into explosions of rage and street violence. It would also turn the white Tyson down a long, troubled reconciliation with his Southern roots that eventually led to a professorship in African-American studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison--and this profoundly moving, if deeply troubling personal meditation on the true costs of America's historical racial divide. Taking its title from a traditional African-American spiritual, Tyson skillfully interweaves insightful autobiography (his father was the town's anti-segregationist Methodist minister, and a man whose conscience and human decency greatly informs the son) with a painstakingly nuanced historical analysis that underscores how little really changed in the years and decades after the Civil Rights Act of 1965 supposedly ended racial segregation. The details are often chilling: Oxford simply closed its public recreation facilities rather than integrate them; Marrow's accused murderers were publicly condemned, yet acquitted; the very town's newspaper records of the events--and indeed the author's later account for his graduate thesis--mysteriously removed from local public records. But Tyson's own impassioned personal history lessons here won't be denied; they're painful, yet necessary reminders of a poisonous American racial legacy that's so often been casually rewritten--and too easily carried forward into yet another century by politicians eagerly employing the cynical, so-called "Southern Strategy." --Jerry McCulley
Book Description
“Daddy and Roger and ’em shot ’em a nigger.” Those words, whispered to ten-year-old Tim Tyson by a playmate, heralded a ?restorm that would forever transform the tobacco market town of Oxford, North Carolina.
On May 11, 1970, Henry Marrow, a twenty-three-year-old black veteran, walked into a crossroads store owned by Robert Teel and came out running. Teel and two of his sons chased and beat Marrow, then killed him in public as he pleaded for his life.
Like many small Southern towns, Oxford had barely been touched by the civil rights movement. But in the wake of the killing, young African Americans took to the streets. While lawyers battled in the courthouse, the Klan raged in the shadows and black Vietnam veterans torched the town’s tobacco warehouses. Tyson’s father, the pastor of Oxford’s all-white Methodist church, urged the town to come to terms with its bloody racial history. In the end, however, the Tyson family was forced to move away.
Tim Tyson’s riveting narrative of that fiery summer brings gritty blues truth, soaring gospel vision, and down-home humor to a shocking episode of our history. Like To Kill a Mockingbird, Blood Done Sign My Name is a classic portrait of an unforgettable time and place.
Customer Reviews:
Grippingly Written, Moving, and Historically Powerful.......2007-08-16
I finally got around to reading this memoir this summer and was in awe of the author's narrative gifts. This story reads like a novel and is full of plain human wisdom, an emotional openness combining humility and pride, wry humor, sharp political analysis, and a can't-put-it-down story line that comes to terms with America's number one cultural problem: racism. This is a book of local history that gets at the human condition, and a work of history that reads like great literature. I'm telling everyone I can to read it, and that includes whoever reads this. Don't pay attention to any of the so-called "corrections" made by some other reviewers here. This is a must-read historical work that shows an astute and perceptive ability to understand its widely varying participants' points of view and experiences, while not shrinking from the moral and historical obligation to draw judgments. There is only one word to use: *brilliant.* (I'm not one to use that lightly when talking about either autobiography or
history.)
Disclaimer: The writer of this review is a professional historian with a Ph.D., but one who has never met Timothy Tyson.
Evangelical Pastor - 63 years old.......2007-07-29
Few books are as challenging for me as this one. I lived through the years of this story and consistently refused to believe that our racism was as extensive or deeply rooted as it was. Take away: the challenge to see it in our present day and to do something about it.
A mixture of polemic, interesting recollections, and accounts of questionable credibility.......2007-07-18
I was born and grew up in Oxford, North Carolina as a white boy, and graduated from the
University of North Carolina in 1949. I have lived in a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland for many
years.
Tyson deserves credit for deploring the murder and acquittal of the murderer in the book.
However, he tends to be polemic: all black people in it are noble; all but a few white people are
some combination of racist, ignorant, or narrow-minded. (It is similar in that respect to Leon
Uris's novel "Exodus", in which all Jews are noble and bigger than life, while all others are hateful
or, at best, not very bright.)
He often uses a down-home style of writing, calling his parents "Daddy" and "Mama" and being
addressed as "Little Buck" by his father, which he apparently feels makes him and his family seem
to be folksy, good plain people.
However, the book is not without its shortcomings.
Accounts of questionable credibility:
¶¶He states that tear gas was used by Oxford police in 1944 to dispel a crowd of black people
who were protesting the arrest of two men. I witnessed the event and remember no tear gas--had
there been, I think I would never have forgotten it.
¶¶An account of the torching of buildings in Oxford on May 25, 1970 by angry black people
following the killing of Marrow describes two tobacco warehouses which were among
them:"Inside these warehouses were eight hundred thousand pounds of golden cured tobacco, a
known flammable substance, with a total value of more than a million dollars." I find it hard to
believe that any tobacco would have been in those warehouses in May.
Tobacco was brought by the farmers to Oxford warehouses from mid-September through
mid-November, where it was sold at auction and immediately taken by the buyers to their Oxford
processing plants, and then shipped off to the cigarette manufacturers. By some time in late
November, all of the warehouses became empty.
Although the whole procedure I describe above could have changed somewhat by 1970, I still
find it hard to believe that there would have been tobacco in the warehouses in May, by which
time it would have probably become dry and crumbly.
¶¶The following exchange supposedly took place during the 1930's between Major T.G. stem (a
prominent white man in Oxford) and a man described in the book as "a local white bootlegger."
Having occurred long before Tyson was born, it was recounted to him by Thad Stem, the Major's
son and a close friend of the Tyson family.
"Major Stem was leaving Hall's drugstore with his son (Thad) and they passed Mrs. G. C. Shaw,
the wife of the principal at Mary Potter High, the local Negro high school.
'Good afternoon, Mrs. Shaw,' the Major said, tipping his hat.
A local white bootlegger, idling under the store awning, accosted Major Stem. 'Why'd you call
that [...] woman Mrs. Shaw'?" he demanded.
'Well, Mrs. Shaw's older than I am,' he began softly. 'She's better educated than I am,and she has
more money.' Then, thrusting the bootlegger away from him, the major exploded: 'But more to
the point, what I call Mrs. Shaw is none of your goddamned business, you low-life taxidermist,
you two-for-a-nickel jackal, you knee-crawling [...], net.' These were the days when
people really knew how to cuss. Back then, the appendage 'net' meant a real [...]...on the
way home (Thad) asked his father why on earth he had called the bootlegger a 'taxidermist.' The
major said quietly that a taxidermist is a man who mounts animals."
If not a total fabrication, the story seems to me to have been mostly made up.
In those earlier times, I never heard any white person in Oxford address or refer to a black person
as Mr./Mrs./Ms. (However, by some strange logic, a black doctor was referred to as Dr. X by
white people. Dr. Ellis Toney was a black practitioner there for many years and was so referred
to. The same was the case for some black ministers, who were referred to as Pastor or Reverend
such-and-such.)
¶¶In writing about the slave trade, Tyson speaks of "the dark Atlantic, where the bones of
somewhere around ten million Africans settled into the sand, thrown overboard by the slave ships
that plied those waters in the early days of the republic (the USA)."
Where did this 10 million figure come from? Tyson provides no source. One reference, "Slavery:
A World History", by Milton Meltzer, says that about 2.2 million died that way.
Degrading most of Oxford's black people by stereotyping them as uncultured:
The most puzzling aspect of the book is: On the one hand, Tyson makes the legitimate point that
black residents of Oxford and Granville County, after long having been subjected to a segregated,
inferior status in society, deserved to be recognized as having equal rights with white citizens.
Yet, at the same time, he consistently shows these same black people as being crude and unable to
say anything without massacring English grammar.
"I knowed him right good, and I liked him all right. He didn't hurt nobody." "Yeah, we was
listening to TV, that's how we got involved in the first sit-ins in Oxford, because we saw on TV
they was doing it up in Greensboro." "Me and a guy named Ronald Jordan, me and him climbed
up on the Confederate soldier..." And there are many more.
I know from personal experience that many black people in Oxford, then and now, are much more
cultured than Tyson portrays them. I also know from my volunteer work at the Helping Up
Mission in Baltimore, where I tutor men who are recovering from drug and alcohol addiction in
the 3R's (all of whom to date have been black), that most black people, like anyone anywhere, will
grasp an opportunity to become more cultured.
Heartbreaking and Revelatory.......2007-05-18
An essential history and memoir of a time whose facts are often forgotten and even actively repressed. The present doesn't make sense without honestly examining the past, and this book does that with humility and emotional power. Even if you think you know this history (as I did) you very well may not.
essential.......2007-03-15
For those of us who think we understand by reading about racial prejudice and thinking about what it must be like, should read this book. We still won't really understand, but we will be a much closer than we were before.
Product Description
After three centuries of oppression, black Americans had reached their limit. Tired of inferior schools, "Jim Crow" laws, and the threat of being lynched for trying to vote, African-Americans risked their lives for justice - most notably in the 1950s and '60s.
Customer Reviews:
This deserves more than six stars!.......2005-02-24
Wow! I've always been interested in the Civil Rights movement, so naturally I was drawn to this book when I spied it in the bookstore. I especially liked that I got a discount on it, which is always a nice thing. I paged through it in the bookstore, was impressed, bought it, took it home, and was just blown away. It's a very informative and outstanding book on the subject and if you are interested in this topic, then you should definitely check this book out. It also contains scores of photographs, so it is somewhat like an encyclopedia. It definitely helped me gain a better understanding of this dark part of our history.
Once again - WOW!
Great Book!!.......2004-03-13
I highly recommend this book to teenagers because it tells you about a lot of things that you don't learn in the classroom.
exceptional view of history.......2004-02-29
The Civil Rights Chronicle belongs in every library, every school, and every home. This honest look at the enslavement of people is not to be missed. The struggle for independence and freedom is chronicled here for all, black, white, or 'other', to read and understand. There are so many things in this world that should never be allowed to happen again!
Yet they continue to happen.
Customer Reviews:
Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America.......2007-03-23
Wonderful book! Read origin over 30 years ago. Greatly appreciate being able to replace a lost volume.
A must read for those interested in the influence of african americans abroad and in the u.s........2007-03-14
This book is a good reference for those who want to gain more knowledge about the african american experience before slavery and after. There is so much more to African American history than being enslaved in the United States. In this book you learn a little about African civilization, slavery, post slavery and today.
one more time!.......2007-03-08
I read this about a decade ago. Incredible insights! Well written. I am reading it again, and have given it as a gift. I will buy as many as I can afford. It is one book that must be read, for a historical and spiritual perspective of African Americans.
Well researched, with quite a bit of bias.......2006-10-12
Regardless of Mr. Bennett's apparent biases, and sometimes lofty criticisms of white America, this book is a remarkable read. When writing about such an emotional and intense subject, I believe it is impossible to be completely objective, especially when the topic involves the oppression and suppression of your own people. That being said, the author does a good job of remaining as objective as possible throughout the bulk of the book. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about the history of black America.
Big Sistah Patty.......2006-09-18
I loved this book. It was very informative. I am going to buy them and give as gifts to my family and friends.
Book Description
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist exposes the secret history of racial cleansing in America
"Leave now, or die!"
From the heart of the Midwest to the Deep South, from the mountains of North Carolina to the Texas frontier, words like these have echoed through more than a century of American history. The call heralded not a tornado or a hurricane, but a very unnatural disaster--a manmade wave of racial cleansing that purged black populations from counties across the nation.
We have long known about horrific episodes of lynching in the South, but the story of widespread racial cleansingabove and below the Mason-Dixon line--has remained almost entirely unknown. Time after time, in the period between Reconstruction and the 1920s, whites banded together to drive out the blacks in their midst. They burned and killed indiscriminately and drove thousands from their homes, sweeping entire counties clear of blacks to make them racially "pure." The expulsions were swift-in many cases, it took no more than twenty-four hours to eliminate an entire African-American population. Shockingly, these areas remain virtually all-white to this day.
Based on nearly a decade of painstaking research in archives and census records, Buried in the Bitter Waters provides irrefutable evidence that racial cleansing occurred again and again on American soil, and fundamentally reshaped the geography of race. In this groundbreaking book, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Elliot Jaspin has rewritten American history as we know it.
Customer Reviews:
Leave now, or die.......2007-10-13
Elliot Jaspin does a superb job of uncovering the hidden history of about a dozen American counties where the white citizens used violence and the threat of violence to force their black neighbors to move out of the county. It's ugly history that many white people might be reluctant to hear about, which is why it's been hidden for so long. But Jaspin tells the stories with a compelling and passionate voice that makes for very accessible and important reading for anyone who cares about the American history of race.
However, this book is not only about history. In his final chapter, Jaspin, who researched this history for both this book and a series of newspaper articles, recounts the struggles over the publication of the newspaper articles. This chapter shows that the impulse to keep the hidden history hidden is still strong -- for example, by resisting the term "racial cleansing" and holding to the legend (that Jaspin refutes) that the black people were generally compensated for their loss of land and property. This final chapter ends on a hopeful note with a story of truth and reconciliation that shows that the truth can lead to healing.
I encourage anyone interested in the American history of race to read this important book.
Goosebumps, Passing Darkness, Wish to See Light.......2007-06-27
I wish I could say that I cried over this book, but the truth is that I am so accustomed to America's legacy of genocide, social injustice, and external fraud, regime change, and invasion that I simply sighed and thought, "wow, about time this came to light."
This is a stunning book that should be read by every American of every race, creed, and class.
I previously reviewed a book today that discussed how white supremacy views were one of the causes of the downfall of democracy after the Civil War. I believe this. As a Marine, I learned there are only Marines, some dark green, some light green. That lesson has NOT been learned by all Americans, and that is one reason I favor a restoration of universal national service (including two years for any immigrant granted citizenship, at any age), with the option of armed, peace, or homeland service.
I am Latino by culture, white by race, intelligent by design (pun intended). I believe that America genocided the native Americans, genocided the people of color, and is now in the process of disenfranchising the Latinos while making commons cause with the Asians. None of this bodes well for a Republic that is supposed to offer Liberty & Justice for all as the foundation for collective intelligence and the sovereign We the People.
The Constitution has been trashed by Dick Cheney and his neo-conservative and Christo-fascist supporters, and it is high time someone stood up and said ENOUGH--we must make common cause with the people of color, embrace their leaders, both self-selected and elected, and MOVE ON beyond the corporate socialism and the corrupt political party environments that have broken the middle class and impoverished the working ppor--which the author of the book by that title points out, should be but is not an oxymoron.
This is an important book. I hope it shames some, causes dispair in others, and that overall, it rises to be a liberation manifesto, a starting point for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission within America, to reveal, curse, and forgive all that has been done to the people of color on the assumption, the grotesque assumption, of white supremacy.
I share Martin Luther King's dream, and I am committed to seeing it fulfilled.
Semper Fidelis,
Robert Steele
Bonhoeffer
Improper behavior
The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Galaxy Books)
Al On America
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States
Uncovering Hidden Treasures.......2007-04-10
Jaspin should be commended for telling the stories of these towns, even when the information concerning these incidents is scant. Buried in the Bitter Waters serves as a reminder to its readers that racial cleansing in America took place throughout the country, not just the Deep South. It also reminds us that much of the history of our country has yet to be told. Selma, Birmingham, Memphis, and Montgomery are familiar names in the history of race in America. Jaspin shines the light on towns like Corbin and Commanche, not to disparage them but to remind us that the racial clensing in America was widespread.
DEEPLY MOVING AND FACTUAL.......2007-03-06
Regrettably, there is a great deal in our country's history of which we are now ashamed. Surely the years between 1874 and the 1920s in America saw some of the most deplorable events. During that period of time racial cleansing took place over a wide geographical area. This was cruel, senseless and more to our disgrace these actions were condoned at the time and glossed over today.
Author Jaspin is twice a Pulitzer Prize winner, and is a reporter for Cox Newspapers. Years of prodigious research were poured into his book which presents clear evidence of what took place. Yet we hear of what was an apparent whitewash by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Editors ignored clear conflicts of interest while editing the racial cleansing series. Procedures designed to protect the integrity of the reporting process were dispensed with. And finally the head of the company's newspaper division overrode the judgment of editors in Austin and Washington and ordered that a different term be substituted for 'racial cleansings.' It is a cautionary tale about the lingering shame that trumps honest discussion of the full history of America's racial cleansings."
How sad that racial cleansing did occur - sadder yet that some will not acknowledge our misdeeds.
The apt title for Jaspin's book comes from the pen of Zora Neale Hurston: "Ah done died in grief and been buried in de bitter waters, and Ah done rose agin from de dead lak Lazarus. " For those who heard "Leave now, or die!" their lives were overturned in mere hours as they fled carrying what possessions they could. Those were the lucky ones - countless others were killed, their homes burned as blacks were driven from entire counties. Thus, even today some of these areas are still "lily-white."
According to the courts blacks were not considered citizens. Thus, it was quite literally leave or die. Jaspin bases his information on countless interviews, census records, and archives. It is a tragic story but a true one.
Actor Don Leslie offers an accomplished reading of Buried in the Bitter Waters, clearly stating facts and movingly relating the words of those interviewed.
Highly recommended.
- Gail Cooke
Book Description
Taking into account the major recent studies, this volume presents an updated analysis of the life of the black slave--his African heritage, culture, family, acculturation, behavior, religion, and personality.
Customer Reviews:
A Classic Contribution.......2005-09-08
In this revised and expanded edition, scholar John Blassingame describes not only what facts his researched uncovered, but also how he uncovered those facts. In particular, Blassingame's research emphasizes slave narratives and slave letters.
He explains that both of these types of documentation allow the researcher to enter the inner world of the enslaved person through his or her eyes, rather than simply accepting the plantation owners' views about slave life. His discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of historical resources along with his explanation of how to use internal and external evidence to assess the credibility of such sources offers a fine lesson in historiography.
In his choice of subject areas, Blassingame cuts a wide swath that overviews every core aspect of enslaved life. He begins with an intriguing examination of acculturation by comparing how enslaved Europeans in African, enslaved Africans in South America, and enslaved Africans in North America acculturated. He also explores the important but often neglected issue of the Africanization of the South--how southern Whites acculturated to African American culture.
Having laid this foundation, two moving chapters ensue. Blassingame documents slave family life with all its harrowing, horrible obstacles. Yet he also demonstrates the resilience and love of enslaved African American families. Next Blassingame addresses the many obstacles to rebellion and escape, putting to rest the notion that the lack of runaways in any way suggested acceptance of enslavement.
His final three chapters explore roles, realities, and personality types. At times his use of now-outdated sociological and psychological theory clouds the issues for modern readers. However, once sifted through and sorted out, these chapters continue to offer fresh information, if not always fresh insights.
Overall no researcher can afford to ignore Blassingame's contribution. Though many have critiqued some of his conclusions, all seem to quote him repeatedly.
Reviewer: Robert W. Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of "Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction." He has also authored "Soul Physicians" and "Spiritual Friends."
Great Book for Reseach on Slavery.......2005-07-03
This book has helped me in my independent study of slavery and family research. It gives a very good insight from the slaves perspective. Other books I have read, the insight comes from the owners prospective. A companion book to this one is "Tewlve Years a Slave" by Solomon Northup.
A realistic portrayal of plantation life.......2005-04-02
Blassingame succeeds in sheding light on the real-life culture of the black slave in the Antebellum South: his African heritage, culture, family, acculturation, behavior, religion, and personality. Rather than concentrating solely on the planter - the traditional way of approaching the subject - Blassingame attempts to clarify and distill the essence of slave life through the filter of three eyewitness accounts. Two of them, the planter and the slave, give an insider's view of the plantation while the third witness, the traveler, views the relation between slave and master from the perspective of an outsider. Blassingame then utilizes the raw material of these personal observations to construct a detailed account of the day-to-day life of a slave - providing the reader with an insightful glimpse into the Negro's African heritage, the development of an Americanized culture, the formation of families, acculturation and behavior patterns when not under white supervision, religious preferences and beliefs, and personality traits.
The author makes the assertion that there were several types of slave personalities. Sambo - the submissive half-man, half-child - is the most well-known but was mostly a stereotypical manifestation of planter class racism and insecurity. Yet this caricature is the clearest portrait the southern planter has drawn of the slave, according to Blassingame. Sambo was actually but one of many variations, and was not even the most dominant slave personality. "Such stereotypes," asserts Blassingame, "are so intimately related to the planters' projections, desires, and biases that they tell us little about slave behavior and even less about the slaves' inner life, his thoughts, actions, self-concepts, or personality."
Blassingame also asserts that, because masters were unable or unwilling to impose round-the-clock supervision, their system of control was open at certain points. These systemic "blind spots" presented opportunities for the development autonomous Negro behavior as the slave's quarters, religion, and family helped to foster self-sufficiency. Rather than identifying with and totally submitting to the master, the slaves tenaciously held on to many remnants of African culture while simultaneously gaining a sense of worth among fellow residents of the quarters. This resulting underworld society flourished in defiance of the burdens imposed by enslavement.
In writing this treatise, the author attempted to tap into the feelings and attitudes of the entire plantation community. Since the thoughts and observations of slaves were seldom recorded (the teaching of reading and writing to slaves was illegal), Blassingale tends to lean heavily on observations by whites.
Additionally, the book devotes a lengthy section attempting to determine the basis of the stereotypically feeble-minded, anxiously subservient "Sambo" image. To this end, Blassingame relies on data from Nazi concentration camps to test the hypothesis that, in a system as tightly closed as either the plantation or the concentration camp, the slave's (or prisoner's) position of absolute dependency virtually compels him to view the facility's authority-figure as somehow "good" despite the evil emanating from the master/commandant (because, so goes the theory, the master also supplies everything of value).
There are also some enlightening discussions regarding the nature of slave marriage, family, religion, rebellion, and miscegenation. For example, the slave father was virtually without authority. Unable to protect his wife and children from discipline and abuse at the hands of the master, Negro fathers' resourcefulness in compensating for their institutionally-imposed weakness evokes simultaneous waves of sympathy at their plight and admiration for pluck.
Blassingame has done an excellent job presenting and applying his research. His "holistic" approach to the subject effectively endows the reader with a keen sense of how masters and slaves interacted and provides a comprehensive picture of plantation life that effectively reveals the complexity of the institution - as contrasted with the distorted picture often emerging from those who rely solely on planter records.
He successfully incorporates the primary accounts of plantation owners, slaves, and visitors in the Antebellum South to powerfully illustrate in straightforward manner what plantation life really felt like. He also makes effective use of social science disciplines like anthropology and psychology (especially when examining techniques the plantation owners utilized to maintain control and how the slaves resisted theses efforts). Furthermore, Blassingame resists the temptation to moralize about the living conditions and oftentimes barbarous exploitation of the slaves. Instead, he allows the reader to make up his own mind about the alien word of the antebellum Southern plantation and its "peculiar institution."
A Good Treatment of an Unwieldy Topic.......2003-01-31
Blassingame wrote this book in the face of the insurmountable problem that a community can only be fully understood through tapping the thoughts and feelings of its members. Since slaves thoughts and feelings were so seldom recorded, the book tends to be based mostly on observations by whites. Nevertheless, even in observations of how slaves behaved, there is much that is not well understood. As a result, Blassingame devotes a lengthy section of the book trying to determine the degree of basis in fact of the stereotypical image of slave as demure and subservient. Ultimately Blassingame uses the example of Nazi-operated concentrated camps in World War II to reason through analogy to try to arrive at some kind of definitive conclusion.
This portion is not the bulk of the text, but there are several other points of discussion in the book that seem equally inconclusive in this same way. Nevertheless, there are also some very enlightening discussions such as the structure of marriage and the family, religion, slave rebellions, and miscegenation.
I found Blassingame's writing style very easy to read, and the material compelling. Despite my belly-aching on the inconclusiveness of many of the points in the Slave Community, I felt that this was a shortcoming imposed by the subject of the book, and not Blassingame's fault per se, and I still think it deserves four stars.
Excellent for Leisure Reading and as a Reference Guide.......2003-01-10
I read this book for my history of American slavery class and I really enjoyed it. It is one of the books I did not sell back to the college when the semester ended. Blassingame focuses on the slave culture and uses such sources as folk songs, fugitive wanted posters, slave interviews and correspondence, diaries, and memoirs (from slaves and slave holders) to bring insight on life on the plantation. The author offers an extensive, well-organized bibliography which, alone, makes this book valuable.
The chapters cover the topics of enslavement and acculturation, the Americanization of the slave and the Africanization of the South, slave culture, family, rebels and runaways, stereotypes and institutional roles (i.e. the "Sambo" role), plantation realities, and slave personality types. This work also includes appendixes on such subjects as African words, numerals, and sentences used by former slaves, and a comparative examination of total institutions. The book is well-written and also offers numerous illustrations.
Book Description
Incorporating the basic features and narrative from The African-American Odyssey, this concise history presents its major episodes, issues, and people. It tells a compelling story of survival, struggle, and triumph over adversity–leaving readers with an appreciation of the central place of black people and culture in this country, and a better understanding of both African-American and American history.
The 2
nd edition presents a broadened international perspective, offers expanded coverage of interaction among African-Americans and other ethnic groups, and includes additional material on African-Americans in the western portion of the United States, as well as a new chapter on the evolution of black politics since the 1980s. It describes African-American history from the struggle of black people to maintain their humanity during the slave trade and as slaves in North America continuing through the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction, and through the Civil Rights movement to discussions of black life at the dawn of the 21
st century.
This is a compelling story of survival, struggle, and triumph over adversity. Readers will learn an appreciation of the central place of black people and black culture in this country, and a better understanding of both African-American and American history.
Book Description
He called it one of the hardest things he ever did - as difficult as leading the D-Day invasion. When Dwight Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock to integrate Central High School in September 1957, he couldn't know that he was fighting the last great battle of his career...one that would change forever both him and his country. This is the story of how one of America's greatest leaders confronted America's greatest sin. This is the unlikely tale of how Ike became a civil rights president.
Ike's Final Battle represents a revolution in scholarship on Eisenhower and civil rights. Though not uncritical, the book credits his steady personal advance on the issue as well as his accomplishments in the military and as president.
Drawing on thousands of primary documents (including newly released material), Ike's Final Battle builds to its climax at Little Rock - one of the most pivotal events of the civil rights movement. Little Rock is at the epicenter, but the book will also look at the cause, and the aftermath.
* With the 50th Anniversary of Little Rock approaching in 2007, the timing is perfect. This is the last priceless nugget of civil rights history.
* The book draws on thousands of newly released documents, many never before made public.
* This is the first book on the subject in 25 years. It disproves the claim that that Ike didn't care about civil rights.
From The Wall Street Journal
D-Day in Little Rock, A Civil-Rights Showdown
By FRED BARNES, March 8, 2007
In spring 1954, as the Supreme Court was deliberating on Brown v. Board of Education, President Dwight D. Eisenhower invited Chief Justice Earl Warren to a stag dinner at the White House. He seated Warren at the same table as John W. Davis, the lawyer who had argued against school desegregation before the court. Eisenhower proceeded to tell the chief justice what a "great man" Davis was.
As it happened, Eisenhower had authorized his Justice Department to file an amicus brief in the case opposing Davis and public-school segregation. And he specifically allowed his solicitor general, Lee Rankin, to tell the justices during oral argument that "separate but equal" schools were unconstitutional. Yet he sympathized with the segregated South. "These are not bad people," he told Warren at the dinner. "All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big, overgrown Negroes." Warren was appalled.
To put it kindly, Eisenhower was ambivalent on civil rights. "Conservative by nature, he hoped that the advance of the civil rights movement would be gradual, allowing time for the South to change," writes Kasey S. Pipes in "Ike's Final Battle." Most of all, Eisenhower didn't want to lead a civil-rights crusade from the White House. "The only crusade he had ever wanted to lead was liberating Europe in World War II," Mr. Pipes says.
But when necessary -- or when steps toward desegregation were relatively painless -- Eisenhower acted. He broke the color barrier in the military by deploying black soldiers alongside whites to win the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944 and January 1945. As president, he integrated the schools and movie theaters in Washington, D.C., and federal installations around the country. Most important, he sent U.S. Army troops to Little Rock, Ark., in September 1957 to escort nine black students into Central High School after days of violent protest. It was a defeat from which segregationist forces never recovered.
"Little Rock represented something else as well: the culmination of Eisenhower's own attitude toward racial justice," Mr. Pipes writes. "Ike had enjoyed the luxury of endorsing civil rights in broad terms, knowing full well that much of segregation law was a state and local matter. Little Rock ended that."
Two days after the Army troops arrived in Little Rock, Eisenhower decided to address the nation on prime-time television. This surprised his attorney general, Herbert Brownell, who had been prodding Eisenhower for years to act more boldly on civil rights. The president wrote most of the speech himself, including a passage, suggested by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, arguing that violent opposition to racial integration was weakening America's influence and prestige in the world.
In the speech, Eisenhower lauded the desegregation efforts of other Southern communities and their willingness to comply with federal law. This was a new tack for the president, who had refused to endorse Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court's decision declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional. Nor had he denounced the murder of Emmett Till by racist thugs in Mississippi in 1955, despite pleas by the teenage boy's mother.
"He feared that moralizing from the bully pulpit would raise not only awareness, but also the collective blood pressure of the South," Mr. Pipes writes. "He saw no point in riling an already angry population. . . . To put it bluntly, Eisenhower had little interest in trying to change the minds of millions of Southerners."
But he had learned a lesson from Little Rock. His view had been, as Mr. Pipes puts it, that "segregationists and civil rights advocates were cut from the same cloth." In his dealings with Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus, he learned otherwise.
Faubus betrayed Eisenhower. In the midst of the Little Rock crisis -- as Arkansas's National Guard was blocking the nine black students from Central High -- Faubus had agreed to meet the president in Newport, R.I. At the end of their 20-minute talk, Faubus gave the president the clear impression that he would change the National Guard's orders, requiring it to protect the black students as they entered Central High. But Faubus didn't follow through. Eisenhower felt double-crossed and told Brownell: "You were right. Faubus broke his word." The president then took the next step, dispatching the 101st Airborne.
Mr. Pipes is not a professional historian. He is a public-relations consultant and speechwriter who worked in the Bush White House from 2002 to 2005. But he has written a highly readable and credible account of Eisenhower's struggle with race and civil rights. While sympathetic, he doesn't sugarcoat Eisenhower's qualms about desegregation or excuse his unwillingness to move decisively before Little Rock.
Eisenhower famously regretted his appointment of Earl Warren as chief justice. (Warren served in that role from 1953 to 1969.) Warren confronted Eisenhower about the president's feelings toward him when they flew together to Winston Churchill's funeral in 1965. Eisenhower explained that it was Warren's liberal rulings on national security that had upset him. He didn't mention Brown v. Board of Education, and understandably so: Years earlier Eisenhower had told an aide, privately, that he thought the Brown decision was wrong; by 1965, he had concluded that it was right.
Customer Reviews:
Pipes extracts the true Eisenower regarding civil rights.......2007-07-05
This book is a fast 300 pg. narrative on Eisenhower's nuanced positions regarding civil rights. The nuance is not whether equal rights for African Americans were right vs. wrong, but instead Eisenhower's struggle on how best to protect the rights of these Americans against the prejudice of southern conservatives who controlled the southern states and the relevant committees of the Senate.
Pipes begins with Eisenhower's experiences and contributions to the cause of equal rights in the military and ends in his retirement, with the climax happening 2/3 of the way through the book when Ike sends federal troops to Little Rock, AK to defend the right of African American students to attend a whites-only public school in spite of a bigoted governor who sends the national guard to keep them out. The book finishes with reflections on his contributions looking back from the time of Kennedy and LBJ moving the ball forward even further.
Pipes provides an incredibly fair report on President Eisenhower's policy positions and actions given the frequent opaqueness of his position depending on the situation and the company he was keeping. Many have attempted to paint Ike as a racist political opportunist or a courageous leader of the civil rights movement, with both positions given to hyperbole. Instead, Pipes portrays a man who respects majoritarian positions while realizing in his heart the wrongness of institutionalized bigotry even though Eisenhower, a man of his time, shares some prejudicial beliefs. The struggle for Eisenhower is often how to move the majority to his position without his having to depend on fiery rhetoric to change hearts and minds.
While Eisenhower was never a die-hard politico, he left the GOP with a wonderful legacy inherent in republicanism as a form of government instituted in 1787. Reading this book in 2007 shows how far the current majority of Republicans have mutated away from the principles of republicanism and Eisenhower, mostly due to the Southern Conservative Democrats who emigrated to the party after LBJ signed the Democratic party up to support civil rights as a party platform plank and due to his passing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts being the current majority within the party and their shunting aside traditional Republicans from the North.
Pipes only flaw in the book, so minor it's not worth knocking down a star, is a weak-hearted to attempt to define Eisenhower as a conservative even though all empirical evidence in the book and other studies on Eisenhower provide ample evidence that he was a moderate who "got it" regarding our founding ideal of republicanism that limits government power and that our liberty comes through each of us individually reserving our rights along with Eisenhower's actions following the examples of previous Republican presidents using federal power to protect individual and minority rights (e.g., Madison, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt).
An extensive bibliography, notes, and an index round out this welcome addition to American history shelves........2007-06-10
Written by former Bush White House worker Kasey S. Pipes, Ike's Final Battle: the Road to Little Rock and the Challenge of Equality is the amazing and unlikely true story of how Dwight D. Eisenhower became a civil rights president. Chronicling the landmark desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, which forced a historical confrontation between state and federal authorities and set an engraved precedent that the federal government would intervene for the sake of racial justice if necessary, Ike's Final Battle meticulously recounts events in unfolding detail, with an inset section of black-and-white photographic plates. An extensive bibliography, notes, and an index round out this welcome addition to American history shelves.
Ike's Struggle.......2007-05-29
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book! It tells President Eisenhower's story very well, and it kept my interest throughout the narrative.
Pipes' thesis, that Eisenhower went through a significant "struggle within himself" about his belief in civil rights (requiring significant social change) and majority rule (which did not support significant social change at that time), is also well argued. I especially appreciate the honesty in which the author tells Ike's story, including his strengths and weaknesses.
Also, Pipes does an excellent job of noting the number of significant Republican policy makers who were strong advocates of civil rights legislation during the 1950s and 1960s.
While I think everyone will benefit from reading this book, it especially should be read by all Republican office holders and candidates, today.
Outstanding.......2007-04-24
This is a very readable book from an outstanding young author. He gives an insight to Ike that most people don't remember. I can't wait for his next book!
A Good Man's Inner Stuggle .......2007-04-23
This is a very well written, highly engaging book about Eisenhower's inner struggle with racial equality. Generally, historians give President Eisenhower low grades for his handling of civil rights: too slow, too reticent, no vision or leadership. But this was not Ike's way, Kasey Pipes argues. He was a conservative, 19th century man who believed in low-key, incremental progress, in changing people's minds before changing laws. As a military man, he was taught to manage problems, not lead a revolution. The only crusade he was prepared to lead, Pipes says, was the one that liberated Europe.
Ike did boldly effect change where he could: giving African-Americans a combat role during the Battle of the Bulge, desegrating Washington DC as well as military bases in the South. These progressive moves were often made with little fanfare, as Ike believed (probably correctly) publicity would simply stir up a backlash of opposition. However, when the Big Test came at Little Rock, in 1957, he passed with flying colors, sending in the 101st Airborne. Indeed, Pipes observes, Ike's performance at Little Rock compares favorably with President Kennedy's five years later at Ole Miss. (There were no major casualties at Little Rock versus hundreds at Ole Miss).
Pipes, a Republican speechwriter, is a gifted wordsmith, and his first book has a brisk narrative pace. A terrific read.
Average customer rating:
- An Incredibly Revealing Narrative
- Awesome book!
- A three hundred year nightmare.
- Hope Born Out of Despair
- What a story!
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Twelve Years a Slave
Solomon Northup
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0486411435 |
Book Description
Kidnapped into slavery in 1841, Northup spent 12 years in captivity. This autobiographical memoir represents an exceptionally detailed and accurate description of slave life and plantation society. "A moving, vital testament to one of slavery's 'many thousand gone' who retained his humanity in the bowels of degradation..." — Saturday Review. 7 illustrations. Index.
Customer Reviews:
An Incredibly Revealing Narrative.......2007-03-26
This book presents its readers with a first-hand account of not only the cruelties of United States slavery itself, but more importantly it touches upon the ways in which other areas of social life were negatively influenced by the institution. Solomon Northup was a black man who was born a free black man in New York in 1808. In 1841, Northup was kidnapped in Boston and take to the south to be sold as a slave. He spent the next 12 years as a slave, and this book was written after he was rescued in 1853.
Many people have associated this book with "Uncle Tom's Cabin" ever since the former was published. While the story line is not exactly the same, there are a lot of similarities. Most notably, both books have evil Northerners and benevolent Southerners, a feature that I think is too often overlooked. This adds credibility to Northup's account, insofar as he does not simply condemn all Southerners. Other themes, such as the break-up of slave families, the harsh treatment of slaves (especially female slaves who had the misfortune of handsomeness), and camaraderie between slaves also reflect those written about in "Uncle Tom's Cabin".
In the past the credibility of Northup's work had been in question, especially since a newspaper worker helped him write his account. However, in light of the vast number of particular details the Northup provides and the extent to which those details match up with other records, historians generally view this work as an authentic and truthful account of a free man sold into slavery. This is an incredible read, and the fact that it is a real account makes it even more fascinating. This book should be required reading for high school or college American history classes that cover the Civil War era.
Awesome book!.......2007-01-25
A compelling and wrenchingly honest first-hand account of slavery, many
times breaking my heart and making me think of the children of Africa
today. A new book, "The Last Witness From a Dirt Road" which takes
place in 1946, was given to me after commenting about Solomon Northup's
narrative, and it could almost be a sequel to Twelve Years a Slave,
written a 100 years later by the son of an overseer on a plantation
along the banks of Bayou Bouef in the same location in Louisiana. Old
social and economic orders seemed little changed from 1841 to 1946,
tragic, heart rendering but both books are riveting and honest, are
timely and universal.
A three hundred year nightmare........2007-01-24
Until I read Solomon Northup's riveting first hand account of his life as a slave, I had only imagined the degredation and cruelty with absolute and total submission by those who had no choices, no chances for liberty. Early in my own life in the 1930s, as a young boy and son of a sugar plantation overseer along the banks of Bayou Bouef in Louisiana, the exact same location as Solomon's narrative, I recognized the lingering stains of an enslaved society, in my friends...the field hands who lived in the Quarters. As a white kid, I had chances and choices, however choices based on the social and economic order that existed in my life and where I lived, which in reality, cast their net over my life, too. I've written my own narrative...my book "The Last Witness From a Dirt Road" which after reading Twelve Years a Slave, I see that my narrative could almost stand as a sequel to Solomon's book, but written a hundred and fifty years later. My heart is still broken for all the souls whose lives were so badly tormented and taken by a vile system devised and placed on humankind. The lesson: We must be diligent and precise in our approach to anyone whose ideology in religion and politics, teaches or wishes, to take away or diminish the freedom of man. I'm grateful for the courage and power of Solomon Northup.
Hope Born Out of Despair.......2007-01-21
Solomon Northup's slave narrative follows in the line of scores of other enlightening first-hand accounts of African American enslavement. What makes Northrup's account so unique is the fact that he was free when kidnapped and enslaved.
His harrowing description of his kidnapping in Washington, D. C., and of his fellow kidnappees, will melt the hardest heart. Yet, his interactions with other abducted African Americans also portrays the beauty and power of shared sorrow.
Another fascinating distinction found in "Twelve Years a Slave" is Northrup's almost uncanny ability to fairly depict his slave owners. In some cases, he ruthlessly exposes the one-dimensional ruthlessness of cruel masters. Yet, in one case, with his owner Pastor Ford (yes, Pastor), he calls Ford one of the most godly, caring, Christians he has ever known. He describes the biblical preaching and personal ministry that Ford provided to him. It is difficult for us today to see how the hypocrisy of a slave-owning Pastor could occur. But for Northrup, an intelligent, educated, articulate man, who could be blistering in his verbal attack on slavers, Ford was not a one-dimensional man. He was flawed, yet could still display admirable attributes.
"Twelve Years a Slave" is perhaps the most important first-hand account of enslavement ever written. The end of the story, which I will not ruin, must be read. Of course, with riveting writing like this, only the rare reader would dare stop before the end of the journey.
Reviwer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction, Soul Physicians, and Spiritual Friends.
What a story!.......2003-09-03
This story of a free black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery is amazing. I know nothing of how it was written and sometimes questioned whether it was genuine or not because sometimes the writing was so eloquent, but after reading it I realized the author had some help from the editor, David Wilson. I hope Solomon Northrup is looking down from somewhere and knows what a treasure his book has become.
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