Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America

This chapter covers the efforts of Black people to construct success for themselves after the Civil War. Although Reconstruction is often portrayed as a brief time of gains in liberty followed by victimization by racist white people, “Black America” used the Reconstruction era to redefine the South in ways that could not be erased.

After the Civil War started, many enslaved people emancipated themselves. In order to punish the traitor enslavers, President Lincoln gave their land to freed enslaved people through Brigadier General Rufus Saxton. He distributed confiscated land to formerly enslaved people in 40-acre allotments. However, after Lincoln’s assassination, Confederate sympathizer Andrew Johnson became president and gave the land back to the Confederate traitors in return for an oath of allegiance.

The now disenfranchised Black people turned to the Freedmen’s Bureau, a federal agency run by General Oliver Howard. Howard, unable to undo Johnson’s order, instead set a minimum wage for Black laborers and formalized contracts between those laborers and their employers. Now paid for their labor, the Black people could save to purchase their own land. The Freedmen’s Bureau also started more than 1,000 Black schools to educate and empower the next generation of free Black people. In 1868, two amendments to the Constitution were ratified, guaranteeing citizenship to formerly enslaved people and giving them the right to vote. Now Black people had political power, which they exercised enthusiastically. This led to violent backlash from what Harriot calls the “cowards” of white America. Violent mobs sought to terrorize the Black citizens of Southern states in order to reestablish the racist antebellum status quo. They also used legal technicalities to disenfranchise Black voters, creating vague laws that could jail a person for things like “rambling without a job” (204). Voter intimidation, fraud, and other forms of “cheating” pervaded state and federal elections, trying to disenfranchise Black voters. This culminated in a federal agreement to placate the white supremacists. Among other things, Southern states were given the “right to handle Black people as they wish” (205), a policy later called Jim Crow.

These racist policies did not erase the institutions of education, religion, and political power that Black people created in the Reconstruction era. These institutions would act as a framework for all civil rights victories moving forward.

Chapter 8 Unit Review

This quiz concerns the rewards for formerly enslaved people after the Civil War, the institutions that only existed after emancipation, and the desires of freedmen after emancipation. The activity asks the reader to write a letter from the perspective of an enslaver, trying to convince the people they formerly enslaved to keep working for them.

Chapter 9 delves deeper into the racial violence and white supremacy in the South in the 20th century. A racist backlash to the Reconstruction era saw many openly racist and violent lynching supporters elected to public office. They argued that since the North would not support their white supremacy, they had to resort to “something else” (212). That something else was an escalation in violence against Black people, in different yet equally horrific forms.

Sam Hose, an intelligent, self-educated freedman, who worked as a fieldhand to support his family, defended himself from his employer Alfred Cranford, who pointed a gun at him after Hose requested time off. Hose threw an ax at the man, killing him, then immediately fled, knowing that he had no chance at justice. After his capture, a mob of 500 people kidnapped Hose from deputies and gruesomely tortured him to death. They cut off his fingers, nose, and genitals, then skinned him and burned him alive.

Between 1889 and 1922, the NAACP recorded 3,436 lynchings, a rate of two per week. They defined lynching as an incident in which the victim dies, where three or more people took part in the killing, the execution was extrajudicial, though often facilitated by law enforcement, and there was some reason for the lynching, however trivial.

After a brutal lynching in Memphis, Ida B. Wells, the famous Black journalist, took up the cause to pursue justice. She encouraged Black citizens of Memphis to flee and those who couldn’t to save up until they could. She called out the oft-repeated myth that Black men raped white women whenever they could and remained unmoved by the threats she received for doing so. She quickly became the “undisputed leader of the anti-lynching movement” (220).

She also called out other, more moderate Black activists, like Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, for implying that Black people had to improve to be accepted by white people, as if the problem was Black people and not white violence. She also argued with white women like Frances Willard, a suffragist and friend of Wells, after Willard stated that Black people should not be allowed to drink alcohol or vote and should return to Africa. Wells published a scathing response to Willard’s arguments, and after Willard did not back down, Wells published a long pamphlet called The Red Record, a brutal and eloquent description of lynching culture that called out Willard by name for her harmful stereotypes.

Wells was denied the same kind of fame that Washington and Du Bois had, most likely because she refused to capitulate to white fragility, often criticizing her white benefactors. Her journalistic integrity, however, struck a crippling blow to the apologetics of lynching and race-based violence in general.

Chapter 9 Unit Review

This quiz asks about the causes of racial terrorism during Reconstruction, the biggest myths about lynching, and the parts of a lynch mob. The activity asks the reader to define a list of different incidents of actual racial violence as “lynching or nah” (227).

Supplement: “The Difference Between Soul Food and Southern Cuisine”

This supplement spells out the difference between soul food and Southern food, categories that are frequently confused. The identity of the cook, the type of seasoning, the method of cooking, the different ingredients, preparations, results, and appearance are all discussed in determining the difference.

Chapter 10 introduces the character of Uncle Rob, the author’s erudite uncle who is well-known and beloved for his wide-ranging knowledge and turn of phrase. Uncle Rob “interrupts” Harriot to explain why a Black person should fear, above all else, “an American.”

Uncle Rob states that, though the political definition of an American has changed constantly, the most accurate definition is “not Black people” (235). He points out that the US Constitution defines a Black person as worth 60% of a white man and it also denied naturalization to all but white immigrants. It even denied American citizenship to the original inhabitants of America until 1924. Racial violence against Black people is perpetrated almost exclusively by white people who think of themselves as the “real Americans.” Uncle Rob argues that vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan reinforced white supremacy in the South. When the federal government sent troops down to defend Black Americans, the white supremacist groups only grew more radicalized, becoming trained paramilitary units.

Uncle Rob, however, warns against thinking that racism is only a Southern concern, stating that there’s no one more racist than a “Northerner who thinks they’re racism-free” (238). Though they did not institute slavery, the North was still segregated, the Union Army was separated into racial companies, and Black voters were regularly disenfranchised in different states. Uncle Rob contends that, in the Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1892, which concerned the segregation of railway cars, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of white supremacy. They argued that segregation was not inequality, and this decision freed many Southern states to enshrine racism into their state laws, such as racist voting acts that required a pre-voting literacy test for everyone except people entitled to vote before 1867 (i.e., white people). Uncle Rob points out that Black people were not eager to hang out in white spaces with white people. Their opposition to the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling was instead rooted in the fact that they simply wanted to be able to defend themselves against the objective oppression of their people by white people.

Because of his conciliatory principles, Booker T. Washington became a favorite of white elites and was even invited to dine at the White House. Other Black leaders criticized him for his “respectability politics.” Despite being criticized by Ida B. Wells for the same thing, Du Bois disagreed with Washington’s optimism. He believed that Black people’s ability to politically, culturally, and physically defend themselves from white supremacy and white violence was the only way to encourage a “growth of democracy” for Black people and for the South in general (251).

Chapter 10 Unit Review

The quiz covers the flaws in the “separate but equal” argument, the biggest myth about Jim Crow, and the most toxic traits of historical figures. The activity instructs the reader to construct a racially equitable education system, not on paper but in real life.

Supplement: “Funny AF”

This supplement covers Charles Case, America’s first stand-up comedian. In an age of minstrel shows, in which white people wore blackface to perform cartoonish stereotypes of Black Americans, Case rose to prominence. Despite being mixed-race, he passed as white and was able to enter segregated beer halls and bars as he traveled. At first, he wore blackface and played the banjo. Later, however, he dispensed with all accompaniments and simply told stories on the stage to a riveted audience. He was a celebrated monologist of the vaudeville era. Harriot states that, though Mark Twain is often credited with being the first proto-comedian who performed stand-up, Charles Case is actually the first.