Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 78

April 24, 2023: Recent Scholarly Books: Amy Paeth on Poets Laureate

[Writingabout KidadaWilliams’ new book a couple weeks back reminded me that it’s been too longsince I’ve focused a series on new scholarship. So this week I’ll highlight ahandful of great recent books—add your nominations for a crowd-sourced Fridaypost (ahead of the monthly recap on the weekend), please!]

One of thebest parts of my many yearson the NeMLA Board—a competitivecategory to be sure—was my chance to be part of the process for selectingand awarding the prestigious NeMLA Book Award.Through that process I’ve not only read a ton of phenomenal manuscripts, butI’ve also gotten to know some amazing young scholars, including Katie Daily and Regina Galasso.Exemplifying both those layers is Amy Paeth, whosemanuscript on American Poets Laureate was one of the very best I ever got toread. So I’m super excited that that manuscript is now TheAmerican Poet Laureate: A History of U.S. Poetry and the State, outearlier this year from Columbia University Press and getting tons of acclaim asyou can see at that hyperlink. I’m equally super excited to read it in bookform, but I know from that exemplary manuscript that this is indeed one of thebest scholarly books of the year.

Next scholarlyhighlight tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other scholarly books or work you’d highlight?

PPS. For alot more—I mean a lot more—great recent books, check out that section of all my#ScholarSundaythreads!

April 22-23, 2023: Crowd-sourced Soap Opera Studying

[April 22nd marks the100th anniversary of the birth of the king of primetime soap operas,. So thisweek I’ve AmericanStudied Spelling and other soap opera contexts, leading up tothis crowd-sourced cliffhanger of a weekend post featuring the responses andthoughts of fellow SoapStudiers. Add yours in comments!]

Vaughn Joy seconds what Itweeted in introducing the series, writing, “I 100% agree that AaronSpelling is one of the most influential Americans of the 20thcentury.”

Rob Gosselin takes a quote from Tuesday’spost, about “testing the mind of the viewer,” in a differentdirection: “Wait until AI starts producingtelevision shows. It will not only test us, but it will find increasinglyeffective ways to influence us. Right now we are just cattle for mass media. Weare about to become sheep.”

OtherSoapOperaStudying takes:

Georgina tweets, “I’ve loved soap operas since the time my mom plopped mein the ‘playpen’ so she could watch GeneralHospital. They covered all the hot button issues from rape and domesticviolence to AIDS with lots of amnesia and evil twins in between.” And sheshares thisarticle as well, as a “good opportunity to talk rapepre-#metoo & soap operas during #SexualAssaultAwarenessMonth.”

&StanYeahMan shares the workof fellow SoapOperaStudier WillMcKinley.

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other soap opera contexts or stories you’d share?

April 21, 2023: Soap Opera Studying: Aaron Spelling

[April 22nd will markthe 100th anniversary of the birth of the king of primetime soapoperas, . So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Spelling and other soap operacontexts, leading up to a crowd-sourced cliffhanger of a weekend post! So shareyour soapy responses and thoughts, you evil twins you!]

On a fineline that primetime soaps have to walk, and how the genre’s king perfected it.

As I hopethis week’s series has illustrated, there are various elements which helpdefine the cultural genre known as the daytime soap opera. But high on the listis a particularly unique and complex characteristic, a trait that is shared by justone other genre that I can think of, the syndicated daily comic strip: works inboth these genres have to be created in such a way that each individualepisode/strip tells some sort of story, has its own beginning and endpoint; andyet their creators recognize that audiences will often dip in and out, returnto the work after some time away and expect the familiar things they’ve come to(hopefully) love, and so not a lot can ultimately change across those multipleepisodes/strips. With the one exception of actors leaving soap operas and thustheir characters needing more of a definitive end (unless they’re just going to berecast, as frequently happens and as proves this point with particularclarity), daytime soaps feature seemingly huge events that quite often don’tend up changing a thing about the characters, relationships, overall dynamics,and so on.

There’sgood reason for that: daytime soaps are designed to air every day and to stayon the air for as long as possible, with the fourlongest-running all having long since surpassed fifty seasons! That’sobviously quite different from primetime TV dramas, most of which not only havea much shorter lifespan, but the creators of which also don’t necessarily knowwhether they’ll be renewed, and so need to tell distinct and definite storiesin their individual seasons. So what happens when these two distinct and evencontrasting TV genres come together, as they do in the form of theprimetime soap? The result is often a pretty delicate balancing act, showsthat feature season-long storylines a la the best dramas, yet that are designedwith some of the same layers of repetition and stasis that we find in daytimesoaps. When that balance goes awry, it can be quite frustrating for audiences,as illustrated by one of the most famously controversial TV plotlines/gimmicksof all time: the long-running primetime soap Dallas (1978-91) ending its third seasonon the “Who Shot J.R.?” cliffhanger and spending the entire offseason hyping upthat question, only to revealthe culprit relatively early in the fourth season and with no significant consequence(J.R. lived, no charges were pressed, basically everything went on as if therehad been no shooting).

Thatfourth-season Dallas episode drew oneof the largestTV audiences to that point (and remains in the conversation overall), somaybe the gimmick was a success. But I would argue that it’s the creator andexecutive producer of many of the other most famous primetime soaps, today’s birthday boy Aaron Spelling,who really figured out how to walk that particular genre’s fine line. Acrosscountless mega-popular shows, from TheLove Boat (1977-86) and Dynasty(1981-89) to Beverly Hills, 90210(1990-2000) and teenage Ben’s personal favorite Melrose Place (1992-1999; what can I say, like America itself I amlarge and contain multitudes), among many many others, Spelling brought therepetitive and thus pleasantly familiar rhythms of soap operas to the explosiveplotlines and seasons of nighttime dramas. A show like Melrose Place aired 226 totalepisodes in its seven seasons, which is not that far off from the number ofepisodes a daytimesoap might air in a single year. A great deal happened and changed acrossthose 226 episodes—and yet viewers could nonetheless tune in to pretty much anysingle one of those episodes and see Heather Locklear’s Amandaacting in precisely the high-powered, back-stabbing, irresistible ways shealways did. Few American artists have achieved greater success in their chosengenre and medium than did the king of such tightrope-walking primetime soaps,Aaron Spelling.

Crowd-sourcedpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Soonce more: what do you think? Other soap opera contexts or stories you’d share?

April 20, 2023: Soap Opera Studying: Parodies

[April 22nd will markthe 100th anniversary of the birth of the king of primetime soapoperas, . So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Spelling and other soap operacontexts, leading up to a crowd-sourced cliffhanger of a weekend post! So shareyour soapy responses and thoughts, you evil twins you!]

On what afew pitch-perfect parodies can add to the conversation.

1)     Soap(1977-81): One way to be sure that a genre has really entered the culturalzeitgeist is when parodies start to emerge, and for soap operas that seems tohave particularly happened with TV parodies in the late 1970s, including boththe short-lived Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman(1976-77) and the far more successful Soap.Soap undoubtedly satirized the mostextreme elements of the genre, including such plot elements as alien abduction,amnesia, demonic possession, mafia murders, and plenty more. But what made theshow genuinely controversial (at least withthe Catholic Church and various parent groups), and what has likewisehelped it end up on various Best-of TV lists over the years, were itsgroundbreaking portrayals of identity and social issues likehomosexuality. Soap operas have long balanced familiar formulas with envelope-pushingchoices, and this satirical soap was very much a case in point.

2)     Soapdish (1991)and Delirious (1991): Oneof the first films to send up the genre was Tootsie(1982), about which I wrote in that hyperlinked post. But in that film soapoperas were part of the setting and context for the main story, while in thispair of 1991 films soaps were the primary subject. They did so through two verydistinct kinds of stories: Soapdishis a realistic depiction of life, career, relationships for a group of actorsworking on a hit soap opera (led by Sally Field butsupported by an all-star cast); while Deliriousis a fantasy film in which a soap opera writer (played by John Candy) awakens froma car accident to find himself inside the world of his show. But both films areaiming for laughs, and so both, like Tootsie,play up and exaggerate the most outrageous kinds of soap opera stories. There’snothing wrong with that goal (it’s a primaryone for parodies, after all), but it can miss out on the kinds of culturaland social innovations that Soap knewcould be part of the genre as well.

3)     Tender Touches(2017-20): It seems to me that the 1980s and 90s were in many ways the heydayof the soap opera genre, including not only daytime soaps but also the popular primetimeones about which I’ll write in tomorrow’s Spelling Birthday Special post. Overthe first decades of the 21st century I believe the genre has lost agreat deal of its prominence (just too many ways to entertain ourselves, maybe,even in the middle of a weekday afternoon), but that shift has also opened upnew territory for parodies and satires to take the genre itself in different directions.One of the most innovative is the AdultSwim animated series Tender Touches,a boundary-pushing satire that featured (among other striking choices) both aregular and a musical version of every episode across its first two seasons. Anotherfeature of the 21st century is that the line between satires and thethings being satirized have become increasingly blurry, and so perhaps it’ssimplest to say that Tender Touchesis one of the only new soap operas to emerge over the last decade.

Lastsoap-post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other soap opera contexts or stories you’d share?

April 19, 2023: Soap Opera Studying: Telenovelas

[April 22nd will markthe 100th anniversary of the birth of the king of primetime soapoperas, . So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Spelling and other soap operacontexts, leading up to a crowd-sourced cliffhanger of a weekend post! So shareyour soapy responses and thoughts, you evil twins you!]

On twoways a classic short story helps us understand a soap opera sub-genre.

The MexicanAmerican author and educator SandraCisneros is most frequently and consistently associated with her wonderful debutbook, the short story cycle TheHouse on Mango Street (1984); that certainly includes this blog, whereI’ve written about House anumber of times. But while Houseis indeed one of the greatest debut books in American literary history(published when it’s author was only 30, no less), Cisneros has gone on towrite plenty of other compelling and important works over the nearly threedecades since. Among the best is the short story “Woman Hollering Creek” (1991),which tells the story of Cleófilas DeLeón Hernández, a Mexican American womanwho finds herself in an arranged marriage in Texas with an angry and abusive husband.Exacerbating that already fraught and painful situation is how distant it isfrom Cleófilas’ dreams of her ideal marriage and future, dreams that Cisneros consistentlyconnects to the character’s childhood in Mexico watching the national (and morebroadly Latin American) genre of soap opera known as telenovelas.

Telenovelasare a cultural genre linked more to other nations than to the U.S. (althoughcertainly part of AmericanTV and communities alike for many decades now, one of so many layers to thebroader ideaof creolization for which I’ve argued inthis space many times), and I’m not going to pretend to be able toAmericanStudy them in depth here. But I would argue that Cisneros’ story helpsus engage with a couple layers not only to that particular genre, but to soapoperas overall as well. The more obvious level to their role in “WomanHollering Creek,” and an important topic to analyze to be sure, is the way thatthe genre creates fantasy versions of men, romance, and marriage for youngwomen like Cleófilas. As Cisneros puts it in the story’s opening pages, in thefirst reference to telenovelas and the kinds of perspectives they have helpedcreate in our protagonist: “passion in its purest crystalline essence. The kindthe … telenovelas describe when one finds, finally, the great love of one’slife, and does whatever one can must do, at whatever the cost.” The problem isn’tsimply that Cleófilas’ husband Juan Pedro is far from a fantasy man; it’s alsoand especially that no person, and no love, is worth “whatever the cost,” notif the cost is abuse and violence like that Cleófilas faces.

Thoselimits and downsides to fantastic representations of romance and relationshipsare of course a relatively ubiquitousfeature of soap operas (and many other cultural genres as well, to besure). But I would say that Cisneros’ story also features a more subtle butequally significant second layer to what telenovelas can represent for acharacter like Cleófilas: a feminist, or at least female-centered, alternativeto the patriarchal violence she endures on both sides of the border. As thestory unfolds through both flashbacks and ongoing events in the present, we seethat Cleófilas has been under attack by many more men than just Juan Pedro,from her Mexican father’s patriarchal expectations to the harassment she enduresfrom men (Latino and non-Latino) in Texas. Her one source of escape andenjoyment is her occasional opportunity to watch telenovelas, “the few episodesglimpsed at the neighbor lady Soledad’s house.” “Soledad” translates tosolitude or loneliness, but of course those shared moments oftelenovela-watching are quite the opposite, one of the experiences ofsolidarity in Cleófilas’ present life. And those moments foreshadow the femalesolidarity that ultimately offers her a way out in the story’s hopefulconclusion, one that, perhaps, embodies not the fantasies of telenovelas buttheir shared, communal realities for an audience for whom they are far morethan just cultural escapism.  

Nextsoap-post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other soap opera contexts or stories you’d share?

April 18, 2023: Soap Opera Studying: The First TV Soaps

[April 22nd will markthe 100th anniversary of the birth of the king of primetime soap operas,. So thisweek I’ll AmericanStudy Spelling and other soap opera contexts, leading up to acrowd-sourced cliffhanger of a weekend post! So share your soapy responses andthoughts, you evil twins you!]

OnAmericanStudies takeaways from the first three televised soap operas.

1)     FarawayHill: The first televised soap was broadcast live once a week on the groundbreakingDuMontTelevision Network, aiming on Wednesdays between 9 and 9:30pm from Octoberto December, 1946. An adaptation of an unfinished novel from creator and longtimeTV writer and director DavidP. Lewis, Faraway Hill told the storyof wealthy young widow Karen St. John () who moves toNew York to stay with relatives in the titular Kansas town and falls in lovewith her niece’s fiancé. While that plotline sounds like plenty of other soapopera stories, its show was quite strikingly experimental—as it aired live andfeatured no commercials, the show made no money for the network; Lewis’ goal,instead, was to “testthe mind of the viewer.” An interesting way to frame the entirety of thenew medium of television in that mid-1940s evolutionary moment.

2)     Highway to the Stars: Theexperiment seemed to be a success, as less than a year later DuMont’s flagshipTV station, NewYork City’s WABD, aired another live, weekly nighttime soap opera, thistime featuring commercials. That show was Highwayto the Stars, which ran from August to October 1947 and starred Patricia Jones as a talentedyoung singer trying to make it in the big city. As with Faraway Hill, Highway’slive broadcasts means that unfortunately no extant copies of episodes remain,so we can’t for example compare the two to see how the genre was evolving inthese early years. But I do think it’s interesting to note how early this newTV genre tapped into one of the most iconic American stories, that perennial, SisterCarrie-like tale of a young womantraveling from her rural hometown to navigate the allure and challenges of thecity. If Faraway dealt with thefamily melodrama that has so often defined soaps, Highway made clear that this new genre would likewise connect tomore universal stories.

3)     TheseAre My Children: There’s no doubt that both Faraway and Highway have a strong claim to the title of “first TV soap opera”;but since they aired once a week and at night, it’s understandable that thedaily daytime soap These Are My Children isoften granted that title. The show aired live and for only 15 minutes, from5-5:15 every weekday on Chicago’s WNBQ from January to March, 1949, so it certainlywasn’t yet the prerecorded, hour-long daily formula that came to define thedaily soap opera genre. But These wascreated by IrnaPhillips, as I wrote yesterday already well-established by this time as apioneering figure in the soap opera genre, and was indeed closely based onprior radio soaps of hers like PaintedDreams. So it’s fair to say that Thesewas the first full attempt to translate the genre from radio to television, anddespite its short run (and runtime) thus represents an important watershedmoment.

Nextsoap-post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other soap opera contexts or stories you’d share?

April 17, 2023: Soap Opera Studying: 1930s Origins

[April 22nd will markthe 100th anniversary of the birth of the king of primetime soapoperas, . So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Spelling and other soap operacontexts, leading up to a crowd-sourced cliffhanger of a weekend post! So shareyour soapy responses and thoughts, you evil twins you!]

On five pioneeringwomen who together helped create the genre on 1930s radio.

1)     Irna Phillips: Theprogram generally accepted as the first daytime serial, WGN’sPainted Dreams, which debuted inOctober 1930, was the brainchild of Jewish American actress and screenwriterIrna Phillips. Phillips also frequently voiced the show’s main character, IrishAmerican widow Mother Moynihan, but writing and showrunning in this nascentgenre were really her passions—she would go on to create five more radio soapsover the next decade, including the first to transition to television (The Guiding Light). Phillipslikewise transitioned to TV, writing for many TV soaps, including some of the mostpopular and enduring (As the World Turns andDays of Our Lives, for example), andconsulting for one of the first primetime soaps, 1964’s Peyton Place. But it was her radio origins that truly embodiedwhere this genre likewise got its start.

2)     Bess Flynn: Noradio or TV program is the product of only one artist of course, and anotherkey player (in every sense) in PaintedDreams was contributing writer BessFlynn, who also sometimes voiced Mother Moynihan. Like Phillips, Flynnwould go on to create a number of other radio soap operas as well, includingone of the longest-running and most successful daytime serials, Bachelor’s Children(1935-1946). That show became closely associated with its two male stars, HughStudebaker and Olan Soule;but while their performances as the pair of titular bachelors (who, in aplotline that wouldn’t really fly in 2023, fell in love with two young womenfor whom they served as guardians after their father’s death) were what audiencesheard, it was the words and work of Flynn that undoubtedly lay behind this show’sstriking success.

3)     Clara, Lu, ‘n Em: There’s never just one “first”in a genre, and at the same time that PaintedDreams was on the air, so too was another very early and successful WGN soapopera. Clara,Lu, ‘n Em first premiered at night in June 1930, and when it was pickedup by NBC’s radio network in January 1931 it became the first nationallybroadcast soap era (a year later it moved to a daytime slot and so likewise becamethe first networked daytime soap). This show was the brainchild of a trio of talentedyoung artists: LouiseStarkey, Isobel Carothers, and Helen King created the concept whilestudents at Northwestern University, wrote all the scripts, and performed asthe title characters. While these various shows and artists gradually wenttheir separate ways, they were all writing and performing at WGN in 1930-31,and I like to think that these five groundbreaking women got the chance to chatoccasionally about the compelling new genre they were together creating.

Nextsoap-post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other soap opera contexts or stories you’d share?

April 15-16, 2023: Remembering Reconstruction: Kidada Williams’ I Saw Death Coming

[This week marksthe 150th anniversary of thehorrific Colfax Massacre, one of many such Reconstructionsesquicentennials over the next decade. So this week I’ll AmericanStudyfive Reconstruction histories we need to better remember, leading up to aspecial weekend post on a vital new scholarly book.]

On three reasonswhy Kidada Williams’ ISaw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War againstReconstruction (2023) is a must-read.

1)     The Author: I’ve written about Dr. KidadaWilliams a couple prior times on the blog: reflecting on our SouthernHistorical Association panel together here; and highlighting her work onthe psychological and emotional effects of racial violence and terrorism (thetopic on which she presented on that SHA panel) in thispost on Beloved. Her work on thatparticular, crucial historical (and of course all too contemporary) topic isquite simply the best I’ve ever encountered on those fraught and defininglyAmerican themes, and would be more than enough to make me beyond excited forany new project of hers. But that’s just one portion of her work, which alsoincludes the excellent Seizing Freedom podcast; a podcast that begins quite specifically withReconstruction and which made me particularly stoked for Williams’ new book onthat period.

2)     The Premise: As its subtitle suggests, that newbook certainly extends and deepens Williams’ analyses of racial terrorism andits effects, bringing that lens to bear on Reconstruction in important new ways.But I think her central premise is more straightforward yet even more groundbreakingthan that: a history of Reconstruction that focuses not on political figures anddebates, nor activists for civil rights, nor white supremacist forces, butinstead on the everyday African American experience. Williams has found andanalyzes a ton of vital first-person voices and accounts, but also reads morefamiliar documents and materials anew through this emphasis on the collectiveAfrican American experience of the era, opening Reconstruction and itshistories and stories up in ways that even Du Bois didn’t manage(understandably, given the limitations of research and travel in his era; but I’mjust saying, this book takes things a significant step further).

3)     This Book Talk: Stillnot convinced? Well there’s no one better to convince you of this book’simportance than Williams herself, and that early February book talk is a greatway to hear more of the book as well as her purposes and perspective. Check itout, then get your hands on I Saw DeathComing pronto!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other books on Reconstruction (new or not) you’d highlight?

April 14, 2023: Remembering Reconstruction: DuBois’ Vital Revisionism

[This week marksthe 150th anniversary of thehorrific Colfax Massacre, one of many such Reconstructionsesquicentennials over the next decade. So this week I’ll AmericanStudyfive Reconstruction histories we need to better remember, leading up to aspecial weekend post on a vital new scholarly book.]

On the book thatrevised Reconstruction historiography, redefined an entire profession, and thenwent even further.

The developmentof American historiography is a complex and multi-part story, and wouldcertainly have to include mid-19th century pioneers such as Francis Parkman,the 1884 founding ofthe American Historical Association, and the turn-of-the-centurypopularization of scholarly history by figures such as Frederick JacksonTurner and Charles andMary Beard, among many other moments and figures. So it’d be crazy of me tosuggest that one historiographical book stands out as both the single mostsignificant turning point in the profession and the best reflection upon its priorinadequacies, right? Well, then you’re going to have to call me crazy, becauseI would describe W.E.B. Du Bois’s BlackReconstruction in America (1935) as both of those things. Du Bois hadpublished books in virtually every genre by the time of Black Reconstruction’s release, but interestingly none since hisHarvard PhD dissertation (The Suppressionof the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870)could quite be categorized as American historical scholarship. But when hereturned fully to that genre, he not only produced one of his very best works,but a book that changed everything about both Reconstruction historiography andthe discipline as a whole.

Even if we knewnothing of the half-century of American historical writing that preceded DuBois’s book, its strengths and achievements would be clear and impressive. Inan era when extended archival research was almost impossible for most scholars,especially those not supported by wealthy institutions (which Du Bois had notbeen for decades by the time he published BlackReconstruction, having workedprimarily at Atlanta University), Du Bois produced a work of history thatrelied entirely on archival and primary documents, materials he used to developoriginal, thorough, and hugely sophisticated and convincing analyses ofReconstruction’s efforts, effects, successes, and shortcomings in everyrelevant state and community. Moreover, since that prior half-century ofhistorical writing, at least on Reconstruction and related themes, had beenalmost entirely driven by establishednarratives and myths (ones that, frustratingly, have apparently enduredinto our own moment), Du Bois could not do what virtually every otherhistorian since has done—build on the work done by his or her peers, add his orher voice to existing conversations. He had to invent that work and thoseconversations anew, and did so with nuance, care, and unequivocal brilliance.

That’d be morethan enough to make Black Reconstructiona must-read, but in its finalchapter, “The Propaganda of History,” Du Bois added two striking additionallayers to the book. First and foremost, he called out that half-century ofhistoriographical mythmaking, creating a devastatingly thorough and convincingcritique of the historians and works that had combined to produce such a falseand destructive narrative of Reconstruction (one echoed and extended by popcultural works such as Thomas Dixon’s novels,The Birthof a Nation, Claude Bowers’ bestselling The Tragic Era, and, a year after DuBois’s book, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind).Yet at the same time, decades before Hayden White, Du Boisused the particular case of Reconstruction historiography to analyze thesubjective and political contexts that inform even the best history writing,recognizing the limitations of theconcept of “scientific” scholarship well before the profession as a whole wasable or willing to do so. On every level, a book ahead of its time—and stillvital to ours.

Special post ona new, equally great book this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do youthink? Other Reconstruction histories you’d highlight?

April 13, 2023: Remembering Reconstruction: Massacres

[This week marksthe 150th anniversary of thehorrific Colfax Massacre, one of many such Reconstructionsesquicentennials over the next decade. So this week I’ll AmericanStudyfive Reconstruction histories we need to better remember, leading up to aspecial weekend post on a vital new scholarly book.]

I’ve written agood deal, in this space and elsewhere, about the 1898Wilmington massacre and the 1921Tulsa massacre (both too often described as “race riots”), amongother such acts of racial violence. But just as under-remembered, and perhapseven more historically telling, are the massacres that marred and helpedundermine Reconstruction. Here are three:

1)     New Orleans(1866): In late July, 1866, a group of African Americans (many of them CivilWar veterans) marching to the Louisiana Constitutional Convention were stoppedand attacked by Mayor John Monroe (a longtime Confederate sympathizer and whitesupremacist), New Orleans police forces, and an angry white mob. As happened inWilmington, Tulsa, and so many other massacres, this individual starting pointmorphed into acity-wide rampage against African Americans citizens and communities, onethat ended with hundreds of African Americans (both convention delegates andothers) dead and wounded. This massacre took place early enough inReconstruction that a federal response was both possible and swift—Monroe andmany other officials were moved from office, and Reconstruction efforts in thecity intensified. Yet at the same time, the New Orleans massacre (along withanother 1866 massacre,in Memphis) reveals just how fully white supremacists were prepared to use official and political as well asmob and vigilante violence to oppose both Reconstruction and AfricanAmerican rights.

2)     Colfax(1873): By the early 1870s, such white supremacist racial violence had beencodified into organized groups—most famously the Ku Klux Klan, butalso parallel groups such as Louisiana’s WhiteLeague (which, as that platform reflects, was not only a paramilitaryterrorist group but also a political appendage of the state’s DemocraticParty). Not coincidentally, the League’s first organized action was the ColfaxMassacre, in which members attacked an African American militia; although atfirst shots were exchanged by both sides, the militiamen were outnumbered andquickly surrendered, only to continue being massacred by the League members.All told more than 100 African Americans were killed, and only three WhiteLeague members convicted of murder—and those convictions were overturnedby the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. The Charles Lane book reviewed atthat last hyperlink argues in its subtitle that both Colfax and the Courtdecision represented “the betrayal of Reconstruction,” and it’s hard not to agreethat by this time, every level of America’s social and political powerstructure seemed allied with the white supremacists.

3)     Hamburg (1876):The ultimate betrayal and abandonment of Reconstruction are usually associatedwith the 1876Presidential election, but racial violence played a significant part inthat culminating year as well. In many ways, the massacre inHamburg (South Carolina) echoes the others I’ve written about here: aseemingly small incident of racial tension (two white farmers had a difficulttime driving their wagon through a July 4th march by AfricanAmerican militiamen) exploded into an orgy of racial violence, as a July 8thattempt to disband the militia was followed by the arrival of a white mob whofirst attacked the militia’s armory and then expandedtheir massacre to much of the city’s African American population. Yet notonly were there no federal or legal responses to the massacre, but instead itbecame part of the Democratic Party’s triumph in the state’s elections, as white supremacist candidate WadeHampton uses a mythologized narrative of the massacre as a “race riot” tohelp gain the governor’s seat and put an end to Reconstruction in SouthCarolina—one more reflection of the central role that these acts of racialviolence played in opposing and undermining Reconstruction throughout theperiod.

LastReconstruction remembrance tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do youthink? Other Reconstruction histories you’d highlight?