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

Steven Hahn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 10, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0674011694 | ISBN-13: 978-0674011694

This is the epic story of how African-Americans, in the six decades following slavery, transformed themselves into a political people--an embryonic black nation. As Steven Hahn demonstrates, rural African-Americans were central political actors in the great events of disunion, emancipation, and nation-building. At the same time, Hahn asks us to think in more expansive ways about the nature and boundaries of politics and political practice.

Emphasizing the importance of kinship, labor, and networks of communication, A Nation under Our Feet explores the political relations and sensibilities that developed under slavery and shows how they set the stage for grassroots mobilization. Hahn introduces us to local leaders, and shows how political communities were built, defended, and rebuilt. He also identifies the quest for self-governance as an essential goal of black politics across the rural South, from contests for local power during Reconstruction, to emigrationism, biracial electoral alliances, social separatism, and, eventually, migration.

Hahn suggests that Garveyism and other popular forms of black nationalism absorbed and elaborated these earlier struggles, thus linking the first generation of migrants to the urban North with those who remained in the South. He offers a new framework--looking out from slavery--to understand twentieth-century forms of black political consciousness as well as emerging battles for civil rights. It is a powerful story, told here for the first time, and one that presents both an inspiring and a troubling perspective on American democracy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his bold and extensively researched study of the black political traditions emerging out of slavery, Hahn continues the field's ongoing demolition of the myth of the submissive slave cowering before his master and the ignorant freedman passively waiting for his "40 acres and a mule" to fall from the sky. In their place, he offers an occasionally overstated but compelling portrait of rural Southern blacks fighting for political and economic power despite entrenched and often violent obstacles. From clan-based organization on the plantation through Reconstruction-era political party mobilization to the rise in emigrationist sentiment culminating in Garveyism in the 1920s, Hahn describes the serious groundwork that became most visible with the franchise but had formed long before the Civil War. He is at his strongest chronicling the hidden history of slave resistance, emphasizing slaves as agents of change, and spends less time on the extent and dimensions of psychological slavery, the vestiges of which continued well after emancipation. Hahn also minimizes the colonialist impulses behind the formation of Liberia, treating emigrationism as an expression of black resistance. While the book's prose is often congested, the research is formidable, bringing to the fore intricate histories of unknown but significant struggles. Original and deeply informed, the book does an excellent job of rendering those devoted "to the making of a new political nation while they made themselves into a new people."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker

Looking back on his antebellum childhood, Booker T. Washington wondered at how slaves "on the remotest plantations" had so knowledgeablydebated "the great National questions." Hahn argues, in this ambitious and fascinating book, that associations of slaves—centered on kinship, work, and religion—were far more intricate, enduring, and politicized than has been realized. For Hahn, plantation life was the crucible in which modern black political communities were formed. Slaves who hid under porches to overhear news later astonished their former masters by marching in groups to the polls (with women acting as "enforcers" of party loyalty). One of the most striking theses here is that black rural laborers, rather than urban, educated freeborn leaders, radicalized Reconstruction. Freed slaves were also, Hahn writes, some of the most important advocates America ever had for a broad concept of citizenship based not on property or education but on "manhood"—for which he calls them "the jacobins of the country."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 624 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press (November 10, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674011694
• ISBN-13: 978-0674011694
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #931,182 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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52 of 52 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A historical work of major importance December 3, 2003

By [e-mail]

Format:Hardcover

Every now and then one reads that political history has fallen on hard times. And there is some truth to this. Much political history seems awash in a sea of detail, accounts of endless intrigues and bureaucratic machinations whose overall significance is unclear, while regression coefficients run amuck. Surely, a reader may be tempted to think, Michael Holt's 1296 page history of the Whig Party tell us more than anyone would possibly want to know about the subject. Steven Hahn's new book is very different. Twenty years ago he published "Roots of Southern Populism," a brilliant monograph on postbellum white Southern farmers. Now after two decades this new book fully confirms the promise of his first book. It helps, of course, that Hahn cares about his subject and makes sure that we care as well. Hahn tells the story of black Southern politics from the last decade of slavery to the civil war through Reconstruction. Then he goes on about the next two decades before disfranchisement when African-Americans sought to maintain their positions with alliances with the Virginia Readjusters in the 1880s and the Populists in the 1890s.

But surely we already know the basic contours of the story. Do we really need to be told that African-Americans were not just passive subjects but actively sought their own political ends? But Hahn provides much more than this. For a start he provides a much larger definition of politics than other writers might. He looks at the kinship networks, the importance of church and school, the significance of labor, and the value of community. Notwithstanding the wide unity of African-Americans he takes special care to discuss differences over region, strategy and especially class. He notes the rise of more successful blacks, those who benefited from military service, literacy, earlier freedom and access to land. He starts off by discussing slavery and he gives an excellent discussion of the system of petty production which allowed slaves limited access to markets and money. We then read up to date accounts of slave families and slave religion as well as a pioneering discussion of the networks of information that slaves had. The next chapter deals with the now familiar tale of how hundreds of thousands of slaves fled plantations, 150,000 joined the union army to defeat the Confederacy, while many of the rest engaged in "sulkiness, demoralization, insolence and outright insubordination." There is then a chapter based on much original and new material about the wave of rumours that ran through the south in the fall of 1865 that much Southern land would be divided up and given to the freedpeople. We learn about the freedmen conventions that made noticeable efforts to attract the rural black majority, as well as the routes and circuits of rumours.

The next three chapters deal with Reconstruction. Hahn points out the scope of political mobilization and the rise of Black militias. He points out the tremendous feat of registering a largely illiterate population once they achieved the vote, a feat rarely matched in American history. He discusses the difficulties of interracial cooperation in the Union League and how officials had to yield to popular wishes and sensibilities. We are reminded of the scope of black office-holding, and especially of the importance of holding local posts during Reconstruction. Not simply governors, senators or state legislators, but also sheriffs, magistrates, registrars and tax collectors, were vital to hold. We are also reminded how unprecedented it was for such a deprived class to achieve such power after emancipation. We are reminded of the constant pressures of vigilantism and economic pressure directed against African-Americans and we also learn about the use of intimidation to counter this. Associational life boomed with black burial clubs, saving banks, firefighting clubs and mutual aid societies being formed. We learn of more subtle checks on democracy, such as the widespread use of bonds. A lowly court clerk might have to post $3,000, while a sheriff might have to post as much as $90,000. Naturally this only encouraged people to place their dependence on the wealthy who stood as surety for them. And of course we learn about the Ku Klux Klan, and how they especially targeted schools for their murder and assassination raids.

Part three looks at the "Redemption period." On the one hand blacks were still able to make alliances with Readjusters and Populists. But the intense hostility whites had to voting for black officials or living in communities run by black officials undermined every alliance. Hahn points out that this hostility was not simply racism; there were intense ideological prejudices within American ideology that looked down at any underclass, there were few areas such as churches and school where poor blacks and whites could meet, and kinship ties and economic dependence blunted class differences with the Democratic ruling class. But this hostility existed nevertheless and it was not overcome. Hahn also discusses such movements as Exodusters to Kansas and colonization of Liberia. Although they attracted only 25,000 or so in the late 1870s, they had a larger constituency of people who would have liked to move but lacked either the money to do so or were cowed by white opposition. Hahn points out that emigration was particularly weak in those areas of South Carolina and Louisiana had blunted the worst of redemption, and he also notes that the threat of emigration helped blunt the first round of anti-black Redemption measures in the 1870s. Hahn also points out these nationalist tendencies lasted well into the twenties, where most of Marcus Garvey's supporters were in the countryside. Especially noteworthy is Hahn's interest in gender and the importance of women as mothers, political advocates, community organizers and anti-lynching advocates. With 101 pages of notes, papers from at least fifteen different archives and a thorough grasp of the secondary literature, "A Nation Under Our Feet," confirms Hahn's status as one of the leading American historians.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars How Southern Blacks Empowered Themselves July 14, 2005

By Robin Friedman HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Steven Hahn's history "A Nation Under Our Feet" (2004) tells an inspiring and broad story: how rural Southern African Americans took steps towards political empowerment as a group beginning with the period of slavery and continuing through the Great Migration to the Northern states beginning early in the Twentieth Century. Hahn is a Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania, and his book received, and justly so, the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize and the Merle Curti Prize in Social History.

The purpose of Professor Hahn's study is to show how African Americans from their earliest days in the South attempted to organize to take control of their own destiny. The book challenges the view of many historians that African American political activism was predominantly only a reaction to white oppression and to the unwillingness of Southern whites to have African Americans assume a full role in political life.

Professor Hahn's book is arranged chronologically in three broad Parts. Part I covers African American political activity during the pre-Civil War and Civil War period. He describes how blacks, even in the condition of slavery, used their position to wrest concessions from the slaveholders, including the right to farm their own plots, to make limited sales of produce, and to visit neighboring plantations. He describes the growth of an informational network during these years, an early commitment to education to literacy, and the beginnings of a political organization. These early efforts intensified during the Civil War with the advance of Union Armies in the South, the defection of many slaves, and the service of Southern African Americans in the Union Army.

The second part of the book covers the complexities of the Reconstruction period from the close of the War through about 1877. This is the heart of Hahn's account, and it has been influenced heavily by Eric Foner, W.E.B. DuBois, and John Hope Franklin. Professor Hahn shows the strong efforts of many African Americans throughout the South to take control of their destinies and to make active and responsible contributions to the body politic. During this period, African Americans had many leaders who had been slaves or free blacks prior to the War and who had acquired literacy and political ability. They achieved a degree of success for a time in different parts of the South but their efforts were doomed by Southern Paramilitary movements, such as the Ku Klux Klan, and by the unwillingness of the United

States government to stand wholeheatedly behind black civil rights. Professor Hahn tells a chilling story of murder and political intimidation which, as did the efforts of the black leadership, had its roots in the years before the Civil War.

Part three of the book covers the years following the end of Reconstruction, a period which sometimes is greatly oversimplified. Even with the end of Reconstruction, African Americans made efforts to empower themselves by forging alliances with white groups. During the first decade or so following Reconstruction, Southern whites were sufficiently divided among themselves to allow African Americans a degree of political leverage and power. Also during these years, there was an active black emigrationist movement which encouraged blacks to move to Liberia or to a location outside the South -- such as Kansas. And this movement had some limited success in forcing concessions from economic powers in the South. Again, the political structure African Americans created during this time survived the Jim Crow era in the South and contributed directly to the Great Migration to the North of the twentieth Century and, ultimately to the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-twentieth century. Professor Hahn has interesting and largely sympathetic things to say about Marcus Garvey and his movement in the 1920s for the repartriation of American blacks to Liberia.

This study is dense, highly detailed, and thoroughly documented. Professor Hahn displays a wealth of learning in the primary literature and in secondary studies. The footnote documentaion is extensive. This book is probably not suitable for the reader coming to this subject matter for the first time. The book makes for heavy reading and it presupposes some basic knowledge in the reader about slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the many post-reconstruction movements in Southern politics in the different Southern states. It seems to me as well that the book owes a considerable debt to C Vann Woodward's study, now over 50 years old, "The Origins of the New South 1877 -- 1913" which covers some of the same material on African American political activism. Professor Hahn has written an outstanding work of American History, African American History, and Southern History. This book will be invaluable to serious students of our Nation's history.

Robin Friedman

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging history of black politics before and after the Civil War November 3, 2008

By cs211

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I suspect that Steven Hahn's "A Nation Under Our Feet" (ANOUF) was originally and primarily intended for a collegiate-level academic audience, perhaps in a history course studying slavery in the United States and its aftermath. However, it almost certainly received a much wider than intended audience when it won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in History. Indeed, that is the reason I read the book, as I try to read the Pulitzer Prize winning history book every year, to expand upon the very minimal grounding in history that one receives in today's U.S. educational system. So, the "non history major" perspective is the one from which I am reviewing this book.

Although ANOUF is pretty dense and does resemble a typical academic tome, with long paragraphs and voluminous footnotes, the compelling subject matter and Steven Hahn's prose elevate it far above the typical sleep-inducing history book that only finds a home on dusty college library shelves. I can surmise several reasons why the Pulitzer panel chose to honor it: the importance of the subject matter (black politics from before emancipation to the great migration north); the painstaking research that Hahn put into the project (by reading this book, you get the condensed wisdom from what appears to be hundreds of other books and documents that Hahn studied); and the quality of Hahn's writing, which manages to present detailed descriptions of events in a fairly engaging manner. It's not the page turner that "The DaVinci Code" is, but the subject matter is far more important.

ANOUF aims to describe how blacks in the South, especially the rural South, practiced politics both during and after slavery. During slavery, of course, they had no legal representation in the formal political system, but Hahn shows how they used various informal means to disseminate information, form community views, and then attempt to change what they could. The most fascinating part of the book, I feel, is the account of politics during and after the Civil War, including Reconstruction and the backlash of Redemption. The Civil War was a far more complex event than the popular four word summary of "Lincoln freed the slaves", and the many parties involved had different views of what the war meant, what they were fighting for, and what it meant when the war was over. To a large extent, when the formal war ended, the fighting continued in other ways, and eventually the Southern whites were able to re-exert their influence. The portrait the book paints of the Democratic Party and its close alliance to the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist paramilitary organizations is brutal, and one that would shock many modern-day Democrats who don't know the history of their party. But that's just a minor point - this book is far deeper and more nuanced than modern-day party-line politics. In fact, it does an admirable job of showing the true roots of politics, and all the different ways that black people worked together to make their views heard, through a wide variety of means.

If you are interested in learning a lot more than what you are taught in U.S. public schools about slavery; if you want to gain a greater understanding of the background behind contemporary race politics in the U.S.; if you are a Civil War buff; or if you just appreciate a good history book, then I can definitely recommend "A Nation Under Our Feet".