Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow

by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

"Stony the Road presents a bracing alternative to Trump-era white nationalism. . . . In our current politics we recognize African-American history--the spot under our country's rug where the terrorism and injustices of white supremacy are habitually swept. Stony the Road lifts the rug. --Nell Irvin Painter, New York Times Book Review

A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that resubjugated them, as seen through the prism of the war of images and ideas that have left an enduring racist stain on the American mind.

The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked a new birth of freedom in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the nadir of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance.

Through his close reading of the visual culture of this tragic era, Gates reveals the many faces of Jim Crow and how, together, they reinforced a stark color line between white and black Americans. Bringing a lifetime of wisdom to bear as a scholar, filmmaker, and public intellectual, Gates uncovers the roots of structural racism in our own time, while showing how African Americans after slavery combatted it by articulating a vision of a New Negro to force the nation to recognize their humanity and unique contributions to America as it hurtled toward the modern age.

The story Gates tells begins with great hope, with the Emancipation Proclamation, Union victory, and the liberation of nearly 4 million enslaved African-Americans. Until 1877, the federal government, goaded by the activism of Frederick Douglass and many others, tried at various turns to sustain their new rights. But the terror unleashed by white paramilitary groups in the former Confederacy, combined with deteriorating economic conditions and a loss of Northern will, restored home rule to the South. The retreat from Reconstruction was followed by one of the most violent periods in our history, with thousands of black people murdered or lynched and many more afflicted by the degrading impositions of Jim Crow segregation.

An essential tour through one of America's fundamental historical tragedies, Stony the Road is also a story of heroic resistance, as figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells fought to create a counter-narrative, and culture, inside the lion's mouth. As sobering as this tale is, it also has within it the inspiration that comes with encountering the hopes our ancestors advanced against the longest odds.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, Politics, Social Justice, American History, African American

296 pages, Hardcover

First published April 2, 2019

About the author

Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. is a Professor of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. He is well-known as a literary critic, an editor of literature, and a proponent of black literature and black cultural studies.

Reviews

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating snipets of life and events for Blacks during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow. From the very beginning voting rights were attacked. That was where they believed Blacks and their numbers would be most powerful. Many snapshot portraits of Black leaders of the time: Fredrick Douglass, WEB DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey. Many of the prominent Black thought was also victim to systemic racism. It limited their vision of how they could rise above racism. Those Black intellectual points of view were also enlightening. DuBois pushing for leadership by the talented 10th aka the wealthy, educated Blacks, Fredrick Douglass far more egalitarian and Booker T Washington who felt like we should just go back to Africa, Alain Locke who felt the Negro needed to reinvent themselves, etc. Also, some insight to how they marketed racism and white supremacy. It was so despicable. The search for using the science of phrenology. But even more despicable was the unfettered, brutality and violence. The lynchings. Gates also brings in a lot of illustrations of the political cartoons, photos and propaganda of the era to really bring home the madness during the Reconstruction and the Jim Crow eras denigrating Blacks and supporting white supremacy aka he brings "receipts". Sigh. But as Falkner says, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." The book is excellent! The more things change...

4.5 Stars

Listened to the audiobook. Dominic Hoffman was very good!

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author does a great job showing, explaining how and why Reconstruction failed. The various ways the Southern States used to portray the now freed blacks, as less than human, and lacking in intelligence. A concentrated effort in newspapers, ads, jokes, sambo art and comics. Lynching, the number of blacks that were lynched beyond awful, with no or little cause on the part of the black.

Portrayed as animals whose only goal as a black man was to rape a white woman. Ironic since the white plantation owners were the ones doing the raping. It is one thing to read the words, another to see the pictures of which this book has many. Images that will not soon leave my mind. This book shows the systemic racism of the Southerners and a President, Johnson that aided and abetted.

The narrator was Dominic Hoffman and his voice was clear and concise.

[H (trying to keep up with GR friends) Balikov · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the USA, this is a time for hope and concern. There are many issues in play regarding race, but the element of racism is at the top of the list. Many of my GR friends know of my interest in what happened to the USA in the 19th century period after the Civil War. This was a war that was fought because the USA could not continue to exist “half slave and half free.”

While the victors were generous in many ways, they incorporated the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution to protect the freedom of those former slaves and make sure that they had the full rights of citizenship. It is my belief that the “rise of Jim Crow” and other aspects of white supremacy needs to be fully accepted if we are to have a pluralistic and functional nation. Gates goes through this period combing out the details of incremental reversals that include: the Supreme Court’s mitigation of those Amendments; their overturning of the Civil Rights Act of 1875: the Compromise of 1877; and, its continues to the Wilson administration’s reinstitution of segregation in government offices, and the caustic uses of mass media as propaganda tools against people of color.

Of all who were to blame, it appears that the Supreme Court did much of the heavy lifting while many were content to see the freedoms eroded. In Gates’ words: "Judges and legislators, on the federal and state levels, dismantled black rights in a number of overlapping ways. The Supreme Court played a crucial role. In United States v. Reese (1876), the court struck down key sections of the Enforcement Act of May 1870, which had attempted to outlaw any interference with a citizen’s voting rights. The court said the Fifteenth Amendment did not guarantee any citizen the right to vote; it only prevented setting racial limitations on the vote."

“In United States v. Harris (1883), the court struck down a key section of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, ruling that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments did not allow Congress to punish acts of private persons, only the actions of states." Similarly, in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), “the court applied similar reasoning to strike down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which had banned racial discrimination in the access to all manner of services and public accommodations.

Even though the Republicans, the inheritors of Lincoln’s success, were in power for much of this period, they showed little interest in elevating to the Supreme Court, those who believed in the freedoms that were so costly to win. By 1896, the reversals of those victories had been effectively completed and the Supreme Court confirmed that in Plessy v. Ferguson. “Homer Plessy, a mixed-race man, was removed from a whites-only train car after he told the conductor he was one-eighth black when asked for his ticket—and jailed as a result. Plessy sued. The Louisiana Railway Accommodations Act of 1890 stated that railroad companies must “provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.” Plessy and his team argued that the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment and awarded railroad employees too much power in determining the race of an individual. In his brief in favor of Plessy, Albion Tourgée—the novelist, newspaper editor, civil rights activist, and attorney and courageous judge in Reconstruction North Carolina, who worked on the Plessy case for free—wrote, “Justice is pictured blind and her daughter the Law, ought at least to be color-blind.”67 In his majority decision, however, Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote: “Laws permitting, and even requiring, [the races’] separation in places where they are liable to be brought into contact do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police power. The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children.”"

Gates discusses at length the debate among people of color as to the path to true freedom. He spotlights Booker T. Washington advocating a focus on economic gains while others, including W.E. B. DuBois formed the Niagara Movement in 1905 and subsequently, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. It is Gates conclusion that: “…cultural constructions not built on or allied with political agency were destined to remain exactly what they’d started as: empty signifiers."

For many, Gates’ approach may appear too academic. For me, it was one of the most thorough treatments of this period of history that identified, not only the major elements of “Reconstruction, White Supremacy and the Rise of Jim Crow,” but provides in-depth looks at the persons of color who tried to shape the nation’s response to those retrograde initiatives. 4.5*

April 2021 ... a significant change just began in the consideration of past actions https://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review was first published here: https://medium.com/ballasts-for-the-m...

Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. tells the story of the rise of white supremacy after the Civil War and Black America’s response to it. His book covers the eras of Reconstruction, Redemption, and the New Negro Movement.

Gates chronicles the resurgence of antiblack racism immediately at the end of the Civil War when newly freed blacks were given citizenship rights and black men were given the right to vote. White supremacists during this time wanted power taken away from Black Americans and began to do so by first demeaning them through “racial science, journalism, political rhetoric, and finally fiction and folklore”.

White supremacists falsely asserted that blacks were not even humans or that they descended from apes. They even used the Bible to justify why, in their words, blacks were cursed by God. They practiced other forms of pseudoscience where they compared the skulls of white, black, and monkey skeletons to falsely make the point that black people were inferior.

This racism was also clear in the literature written by white authors (Joel Chandler Harris and others) who put white supremacists thoughts and words in the mouths of their black characters (i.e. Uncle Remus). Films like The Birth of a Nation, peddled the false narrative that blacks were the reason Reconstruction failed. Finally, Sambo art was also used to solidify the ludicrous idea that blacks were infantile and lacked humanity.

Gates tells this story in three chapters but also effectively uses three visual essays between each chapter which shows a host of racist pictures and images from the time period. The visual essays were very depressing to see as a black person, especially the third essay. At one point the pictures were actually affecting my mood. My hope is that these sections of the book will be a learning experience to white readers who are not aware of the racist images.

The book closes with a more uplifting chapter and visual essay on the New Negro Movement, which was a response by upper middle class black elites to the Redemption racist caricature of the Old Negro. I had heard of the movement prior to reading this book but was not intimately familiar with it. Gates does a good job of exposing the class dynamic in the movement. This dynamic consisted of the leaders of the movement looking down dismissively on working class blacks, which continues in a different form in the present day.

Gates’ book gives a good preview for the reader to further their study on these various topics. I started reading this book thinking it would be solely focused on Reconstruction but it has ultimately exposed me to the other lingering legacies of the era. Reconstruction did not completely end in 1877, we are still living with some of the negative effects today especially as it relates to racist imagery and sterotypes. Gates’ book ties those threads to our current moment.

[Kathleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gates is the well-known Harvard professor of African and African-American studies. His academic credentials are on full-display in this hugely depressing book about how Emancipation for slaves was short-lived during Reconstruction and was soon dashed during Redemption and the rise of the onerous Jim Crow laws.

The white population adamantly refused to see black people as equal citizens of the nation and justified their beliefs by twisting religious dogma and ‘scientific’ facts to form pretzel logic. Not surprisingly, these beliefs tended to contradict themselves. [The irony is that recent DNA research has been unable to discover any ‘racial’ markers in the human genome—Carl Zimmer’s She Has Her Mother’s Laugh. Apparently, race is a myth.]

Gates provides contemporaneous evidence to showcase the mindset of whites in the South as they passed law after law supporting segregation and attempting to deny voting rights to black citizens. The Ku Klux Klan provided additional intimidation and violence to plant fear in the black populace. As I said—hugely depressing! Plus, the academic tone of the book makes for dry reading. Pass.

[matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This isn’t really the kind if book that one “likes,” so I don’t know exactly what to say about it. One Goodreads review (2 stars) called this book “depressing, academic, and dry” in what seemed like an attempt to discourage others from tackling it.

You shouldn’t avoid it. 20th and 21st America are the product of explicit and implicit efforts to dehumanize and belittle black (and other non-white) people. It seems the height of privilege to complain that a thorough examination of the complicity of mainstream white America in the degradation of black America might make you sad or isn’t “exciting” writing.

I hope we’re nearing a time where we don’t consume history from the perspective that it has to make us feel good about the US or that it would go well with some fake Lee Greenwood-level patriotic naïveté. We need critical accounts and unblinking perspective. This book provides both.

[CoachJim · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the first chapter of this book the author draws a parallel between the election of Barack Obama as President and the subsequent election of trump with the Reconstruction and Redemption periods following the Civil War. After the Civil War the government, at least in theory, attempted to grant the freed former slaves their full rights as American citizens. This was followed by a period known as the Redemption when those gains were systematically erased and the country witnessed the rise of White Supremacy. This he compares to the election of Obama which was seen as the dawn of “post-racial America”. However, after the election of trump the idea of an end to racism because of Obama’s election and presidency proved naive. Also, just as in the Redemption, the trump administration has rolled back many of the programs that were passed during the Obama administration.

In the following chapters the author begins to list the many forms that White Supremacists took to enforce their take on the inferiority of Blacks. Some of these started even before the Civil War, and some of them had very respected sources behind them. Harvard University was the center for one of these schools of thought. These ideas were so disgusting that I refuse to mention them, however, I will give one example. In the last decade of the nineteenth century a trend in literature was of “Plantation Literature”. You will recognize this as the Uncle Remus type stories. This idea was to portray the life of slaves on the plantations as a happy, contented period. (There is an irony here in that the engineer responsible for the foundation of Liberty Island the home of the Statute of Liberty, the symbol of freedom, was an author of some of this literature.)

At the turn of the century there was an effort to combat the negative “Old Negro” image as impoverished and illiterate as portrayed by the White Supremacists by creating a “New Negro” image as educated, cultured and professional. Black intellectuals knew that Negroes must be seen as a “proud, productive, and cultured race.” This became the “The Politics of Respectability”. It was initially thought that through economic success and education an elite and middle class of Blacks could win acceptance into the White social class. When this proved unsuccessful, W. E. B. Du Bois tried political means to scale back the “Separate and vastly Unequal” segregation of the Jim Crow laws. But the color curtain forced the Black elite — the “New Negroes” — to recognize that any hope of political rights and social equality were in vain.

There then came a period known as the “Harlem Renaissance”, but the true renaissance was not in literary or visual artists.

“The renaissance was occurring among those great geniuses of black vernacular culture, the musicians who created the world’s greatest art form in the entire twentieth century — jazz.”

Here there is a hint that Blacks were beginning to identify as Blacks and recognizing their own beauty. In an essay by Langston Hughes, he says:

“Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and the bellowing voice of Bessie Smith singing the Blues penetrate the closed ears of the colored near-intellectuals until they listen and perhaps understand.
…
Let these sublime artists … “cause the smug Negro middle class to turn from their white, respectable, ordinary books and papers to catch a glimpse of their own beauty.”

That White Supremacy exists today is evident when the events of the last four years are remembered. Prior to Dylan Roof murdering 9 people at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, an avowed White Supremacist, at a pro-Confederate anti-black racism and neo-Nazi anti-Semitism rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, plowed his car into a crowd of counter protesters, killing one person. This was followed by another White Supremacist killing eleven Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Then a white individual opened fire at a Walmart in Allen, Texas, with the stated goal of killing as many Mexicans as possible.

So now after over 400 years since the first Africans were brought to America and sold into slavery by people trafficking in human beings, what are we to think. In the 156 years since the end of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation Black Americans are still insisting on their legal rights and social equality. During that time the many iterations of the “New Negro” have been attempts to counter the continuing negative portrayal by White Supremacists. The issue isn’t about what is or isn’t a Negro, but about fighting the racism that has denied Blacks their constitutional rights. Or as the author states at the end:

“One can say that to thrive, the Old and New Negroes needed a New White Man.”

[Colleen Browne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read several books on Reconstruction, including Eric Foner's much hailed, Reconstruction. This books is more about the Redemptionist period, what African Americans faced, how the Lost Cause came to be, to Jim Crow. It is also about the way that mainstream America used stereotypes to define blacks. It contains a myriad of the "cartoons" and advertising to reinforce the negative image portrayed. Finally, and most importantly, Gates discusses how African Americans saw themselves and the strategies they employed to be treated as equals. From Booker T. Washington to W.E.B. Du Bois, to Mitchell's The Birth of a Nation, the reader is informed on all levels about race in America. It is concise and well-written book, a welcome addition to the history.

[Eddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read! You really can't go wrong reading anything from Skip Gates. Don't forget this coincides with his new PBS documentary series, "Reconstruction: America after the Civil War."

[Bri Little · Rating 4 out of 5]

**CW: lynching, anti-Black violence

First of all, shout out to the Seattle Public Library for having really cool books like this...for free!! We love that.

The audiobook for Stony the Road was so engaging, I so enjoyed the narrator's voice. I also think this book is an appropriate length. Sometimes nonfic books are too long for me, and I end skipping around halfway through. But if anything, I wanted more content!

This book covers A LOT: the period after slavery ended (Reconstruction), the origins of white supremacy and the eugenics movement of the early 20th century, Harlem Renaissance and the emergence of a New Negro aka The Black Elite. It was all interesting and mostly well researched (we'll get back to that in a min). But I wanted more about the rise of Jim Crow, since it is in the title.

Gates discussed several of the political and cultural repercussions for Black people during the post-Civil War period, but shies away from really getting into the white supremacist terror Black people, especially in the American South, experienced during the turn of the 20th century. I think there was maybe one mention of lynching at all, unless I missed that whole part. Thousands of Black people were lynched in the span of less than a decade due to white people being angry they could no longer own them, and I definitely think that deserved more of a discussion here. I wanted to know some of these people's stories.

Something I really appreciated is that Gates directly points out the classism and general disdain Black people in the North during the post-war period had towards formerly enslaved Black people, especially during the Great Migration. Gates gave a lot of evidence of popular intellectual ideas about "advancing the Negro Race." Many of them were predicated on class divides and a perceived superiority over "the ignorant darkies." And ultimately, the ideals of people like Alain Locke, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. DuBois were centered on being desirable and comparable in intellect to white people.

The biggest reason this isn't a 5-star read for me is that I'm disappointed that Gates only quoted one Black woman in this entire book. Stony the Road could've been better researched in that regard. There were plenty of Black women, especially through the church, who were doing anti-lynching and activist work after slavery ended. Gates definitely relied on content from big name male public figures from the period (i.e. DuBois, Locke, Cullen, Hughes). I wished he had discussed the ideas of more women and people from the South.

Overall there is a lot to learn and think about here. What an interesting and extremely relevant point in time. I definitely recommend.



_________________________________
I very much enjoyed this audiobook, the narrator is amazing. So much to unpack! RTC.

[Moonkiszt · Rating 5 out of 5]

When did it happen, ancestors deciding it was ok to own another human being? Then comes a war challenging such a decision. Those who are imposed upon find ways around the imposition. Changes happen in the letter of the law of things, but in spirit they do not. . .turns out all that is decided is that it is wrong to own another person, but it is perfectly ok to isolate, strip rights away and vilify the supposed victors. By use of culture and tradition, careful circumvention of changes instituted by those in power. . .well, there's more than one way to skin a cat. And if the those in power just look the other way - so tired of wars and fighting over this. . .a problem already solved. . .

This book walks a reader through the role of reconstruction in setting up the system we sit in the middle of today. Complaints about problems destroying peaceful normal (!!) lives and surprise at the misbehavior of others, rising up out of nowhere. This brilliant author takes issue with this stubborn, disingenuous POV. He carefully, with facts, documents, personal accounts, commerce's indisputable marketing evidence (which rises up out of our own demands), and a tale told in his own storyteller's fashion, lays out the timeline. This is not a Southern problem. Not a Northern problem. Not a politician's problem. Not our ancestor's problem. This is our problem - and all citizens of these United States need to own it, educate themselves about it, and fix it in their particular part of the field - wherever they are, however they are, make a change, a choice to move forward. Standing still, declaring perfection - nothing wrong with me - will walk us backward. Seeking a national identity from some place in the past is backward thinking - we've never been perfect. We've been comfortable for a few, maybe. That's not ever been an American goal -comfort for a few.

This is a text book of a sort, but it is well-presented and calmly delivered, without rancor or giving rise to defensiveness. Here is a teacher's voice, with hope and expectations for better choices in the years to come.

5 stars. God bless all of those who continue to choose to teach us. Their sacrifice is immense.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is 2020 and ultimately I am exhausted. A cursory glance of former white friends' social media posts reveals the "slack-tivism" (not my word, but fitting, nonetheless) that is so prevalent. Run your 2.23 miles, name your "awareness of your privilege," and on and on...and on. It will never be enough and every white person in America knows it. But the real work that is required...THAT is avoided. I sit in meetings for work with white colleagues and have conversations that revolve around any and everything (their pets, impending travels, what they're reading, etc.) but the state of the nation for African-Americans. We don't live in the same world. One would think that Ahmaud Arbery's murder would change that. It is not so. And so, I read, yet another book on the history and, arguably, the present state of the United States and am left to sit in that aforementioned feeling of exhaustion. The social media posts, the status updates, the likes and all that they really represent--SILENCE AND INACTION-- will continue from them and my own internal rage and growing distrust will also boil up under the surface.

Ultimately, Gates' account is an interesting and informative book discussing the transition of African men into American slaves. Then the treatment after emancipation and during the reconstruction era. The book is brilliantly organized, well documented, including photos, illustrations, and well-cited comprehensive research into how the careful building of a negative narrative of brown and black people occurred.

This is a book to study, discuss, and ponder;not just read. After listening to the book, I better understand some of the fear that fuels the hatred in our American society. To maintain control, push fear and hold back freed slaves, they presented them as less than human, criminal, unintelligent, and with unbridled passion.

The level of literature, false media, contrived studies, and other avenues (Sambo art, jezebels, Negroid characteristics being made into deplorable cartoons, and auntie Jemima propaganda) were used to solicit unfounded fear about the free blacks and ex-slaves, thus leading to continued hatred and hostility after the civil war. The fact that so many people white and black, accepted the bigotry and lies is astonishing.

What has Gates helped me understand: as a Black man in America, I am tired. My patience has run its course (justifiably so). As Baldwin states about White people (particularly in America), you fear quite clearly the potential for Blacks to do what you have done to us. I am tired.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clear, reasoned, thoughtful analysis of the failures of Reconstruction. Gates Jr. explores not only how, but why these failures occurred and in doing so shines a light on systemic racism in America, and the way it is embedded in the country’s history.

[Crystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non-Fiction>USA Black History 1860s-1950s

I wanted to learn more about 'Reconstruction' (1865-1877) after the US Civil War (1861-1865). A lot of descriptions for race relations in the US seem to gloss over this period. This book focuses on the justification for disenfranchising Blacks and what the internal movements and reactions were for the periods immediately following freedom for Southern slaves. The New Negro is analyzed, followed by the New New Negro.

This is not a Critical Race Theory diatribe---this is not a political tool preaching to the choir about systemic and historical injustice---this is not a touchstone for being 'woke'---this is not a rant by an angry or resentful person against the mainstream culture. This is a well-researched and insightful description of the 100 years after the Civil War. 1865-1895 is a whole generation of time and it is often overlooked when discussing Black history. The people living in those times didn't jump from 1860 to 1960 and our collective consciousness didn't, either.
There are many quotes and direct sources from the timeperiods the author describes and explains. Perhaps too many quotes and not enough of his own words and conclusions, even. This offers ample 'further reading' opportunities but I would rather see more analysis and conclusion than the text being full of other people's speeches.

What stands out most for me is the idea Gates proposes that the enslavement of Africans wasn't as much of an enduring issue for America as the justification that was invented for it. Convincing an entire country and most of the world (because America wasn't alone in this) to go along with this practice required some significant mental gymnastics for most humans. In fact, the ideas were so ingrained that the inferiority of the African person became ingrained in African Americans during their enslavement in the South and persisted after their freedom was granted. Values and practices that were used to justify that Africans were beneath Europeans in areas of education, religion, cleanliness, temperament, speech styles, and community structure were also used to stratify African Americans amongst themselves. Different eras had different emphases and weren't all the same, but the theme persisted.


There sure seems to be something about how America has handled these issues that is unique to us. Having slaves wasn't uniquely American. Having a minority population that is darker-skinned isn't unique to America. Having different cultures clash over foundational and immovable issues isn't unique to America. I'm not even sure that White people and Black people have immovable and foundational differences, it just seems that way sometimes. The race problem we have seems to be unique to us, though. If not unique, it definitely isn't universal. I appreciate the honest, fact-based, and open discussion that the author has invited here to assist in our journey to understand how we got to where we are today. Rhetoric, reductionism, and hostility aren't going to help us fix the issues. Learning the patterns of history and every bit of our story will lead to enlightenment on the current problems we have.

[Donald Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author is a vital voice in American jurisprudence and culture. This book is a moving collection of shocking art and a compelling, well documented, essay on the horrendous travails of Americans of color from reconstruction to today. He adroitly discusses the several major players in the ongoing attempts to obtain justice and the period many have called the "Redemption" (the movement to destroy "Reconstruction") after the civil war. This is an important book for everyone to read, even if it is just a reminder and reinforcement of what we should all know. "Stony the Road" is a mild reference to what White Supremacy's evil has and continues to inflict.

[Sarah C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Other than the cursory overview provided in hs American history class, I had never given much thought to the Reconstruction era of the US. After reading Chernow’s biography of Grant, it made me really consider how very different race relations would be in the US if Lincoln had not been asassinated.

Now Gates’ Stony The Road goes really deep into the reconstruction era and everything since. He does an excellent job of writing it as a lively and moving story while covering a broad narrative of our history.

I now can’t wait for the PBS series that starts tomottow night!

[Mehrsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really interesting reconsideration of reconstruction and reconstruction literature. The running theme of the book is the recurrence of this idea of "The New Negro," which is each new generation's break with the past. Gates traces this idea back to Booker T. Washington's Atlanta compromise and the constant struggle against pseudo-science and white supremacy.

[April eclecticbookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this reinforced two things for me. The first is that if you don't know your foundation you can't really understand what's truly wrong with the structure and the second is that it's our responsibility to educate ourselves. The ignorance and hatred that went into building the foundation were disgusting and depressing but no matter how ugly it must be acknowledged if we have any hope of learning from it. Often when reading stories that focus on historical race relations we seem to go from slavery, civil war, boom slavery is over, and then a blank spot until the civil rights movement almost a hundred years later. Gates links events and attitudes to help the reader understand more about that blank spot. It was academic but not inaccessible but it did feel like it only scratched the surface.

[Linda Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 (2 Stat. 426, enacted March 2, 1807) is U.S. federal law that stated no new slaves were permitted to be imported into the United States. Yet the slave trade ship Clotilde landed in Mobile Bay in 1860. Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation 1 January 1863, but the Civil War went on until the Confederacy surrendered 9 April 1865. Lincoln was assassinated 14 April 1865. Andrew Johnson became the 17th president of the U.S., and most of the Confederate hierarchy became governors, representatives and immediately began laying the rocks in the road to emancipation, voting rights, land ownership for the already free peoples, and just freed peoples. Dr. Gates covers the years 1894 through the Harlem Renaissance ~1925, and the thought leaders, writers, activists who held strong against the sweeping tide of racism; and especially, the supposed scientific reasoning that justified the white elite xenophobia. Reconstruction was mangled into the Redemption. Lost Cause thinking, contrived justification by professors at elite universities, pop culture depictions (which Dr. Gates includes in the book) that brutalized an entire race.

There was a presentation at our local library by the Black Scroll Network in Detroit, and we learned how the North contributed its knowledge of Jim Crow to the southern states after slavery ended. Our guide reminded us that the slave states didn't have to know how to work it - their people were owned. Northern newspapers, carpetbaggers, vile opportunists helped to refine the language to stoke repression, suppress the vote, segregate, deny home ownership and education, embed racism in law, and permit - if not actually encourage - murder.

Today, as I looked up the years of the Civil War, I saw a top result that asks why the Civil War happened. The 1st result is Industry vs Farming. 2nd result is States' rights. 3rd Expansion. And 4th Slavery. I'm guessing this is what is being taught to school children today. I've never heard the industry vs farming reasoning before. This is why the history of Reconstruction, the Redemption needs to be taught and taught again. And the images of our history collected and preserved. History belongs to the people who tell the stories that lead us to truth.

This book introduced me to people I want to read more about, brings a clearer understanding of the leaders who stepped forward in the mid- to late-19th century, and reminded me that we are still fighting for a true democracy.

[Robert Sheard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gates is one of the pre-eminent scholars in African American studies so it's no surprise that the scholarship in this volume is thorough and compelling. What's most interesting to me is that the book covers a portion of American history that often gets short shrift in our history classes. We read about the Civil War, and maybe a little about Reconstruction, then we gloss over much of the next century until we discuss the Civil Rights era in the 1950s and 60s.

Gates fills those gaps and it's a vital period to understand. He talks about why Reconstruction failed and was essentially rolled back by Redemption–the white South "redeeming" itself from what it saw as the horrors of civil rights advances for black Americans during Reconstruction. With the rebirth of the KKK, Plessy vs. Ferguson codifying "separate but equal," and a culture of lynchings and white supremacy, the rise of Jim Crow segregation all but wiped out any gains from Reconstruction.

The latter half of the book describes the insidious use of Sambo art and white supremacist culture and pseudoscience to frame the narrative of black Americans, and details how the black community struggled for decades to redefine the New Negro, taking us ultimately to the New Negro Renaissance (later dubbed the Harlem Renaissance as blacks fled the South in the Great Migration to northern cities).

It's a fascinating history, but pick it up forewarned: this is not really written for a general audience, despite being published by Penguin Press. It has all the trappings of a difficult academic work: many and lengthy quotations, at times challenging abstract prose, and a hefty set of footnotes. It's not an easy read, although it is definitely an important one.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I have found Eric Foner's works on the Reconstruction period to have been most helpful, this recent work is also a vital record of how the evil concepts that underlay and supported slavery not only up-ended the goals of the Reconstruction Period following the Civil War and paved the way for a reimposition of laws designed to keep Black people down, but which also remain very alive today at a time when the votes of Black people (and others deemed undesirable or unworthy) are being actively suppressed.

Gates covers a period of our history that is central to our own time, yet is largely unknown and even less understood.

Recommended for his factual, lucid, and gripping presentation!

[Mrs. Danvers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short but very powerful, made more so by the illustrations, which have to be seen to be believed. I know that the fact that I can ponder this question is an example of my own privilege but how in god's name can you go forward when people are debating whether you are even human? I am writing this just a few days after Biden's first joint address to Congress, followed by Rep. Tim Scott's assertion that the US is not a racist nation. I defy anyone to read this and not draw a parallel between the backlash to Reconstruction and the insurrectionist riot on Jan 6, 2021 or Tucker Carlson's fear mongering "replacement" theories. My white cohort disgusts me.

[Marco Crolla · Rating 5 out of 5]

He does a great job of outlining the form redemption took in trying to dehumanize the perceptions of black people as a way to justify rolling back the rights of reconstruction, and the many forms African American resistance took to this process during a period recognized as the nadir of racial equality in America.

[Faith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, but parts of it felt like a compilation of lengthy quotes rather than analysis.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book goes way beyond the PBS documentary on Reconstruction and the South's subsequent reworking of their own history as a “lost cause” which rescued white supremacy just as it was slated to die.

[Steve Smits · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of the failure of Reconstruction and the rise of the "Reedemed" South with its virulent white supremacy in the late 19th and most of the 20th centuries is critical to fully understand the painful state of political and social injustice that persisted throughout most of the 20th century, and whose effects linger today. Only when one when comes to terms with the emergence of and magnitude of racially grounded stereotyping of African-Americans from the end of Reconstruction to the civil rights breakthroughs in the 1960's can one fully grasp how great is the blot this era on the purported values and principles of the republic. [The idea that the supremacy of the white race existed only in the South is incorrect; the North had no less of this view in the antebellum and post war years.] Professor Gates, in the companion book to the PBS documentray series on Reconstruction, provides scholarly but eye opening insights in the methods by which white supremacy and its manifestation --Jim Crow strictures -- took hold and persisted for the better part of a century.

The passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution and enabling legisation (augmented by stringent conditions placed on Southern states for reentry to the union) gave freed people a full panoply of civic rights, most especially the franchise. Newly freed slaves gained substantial political power, and elected offices, as the result of the vote. Dating from the presidential election of 1877, where an orchestrated compromise gave the presidency to Hayes in exchange for removing federal oversight of several formerly confederate states, the national concern for civil rights for the emancipated population waned considerably. The so-called "Lost Cause" mythology emerged that held that South failed in its rupture from the union only because of the overwhelming military and industral superiority of the North, but the merits of the Southern ethos on the hierarchy of the races still held. The never-settled question of the respective powers of the federal government v state's rights played a significant role in several Supreme Court decisions that eviscerated civil rights legislation combined with growing indifference in the North to the affairs of the South, led to the resurgance of white suzerainty over political and social matters in the South.

Gates tells us how this push toward reestablishing white supremacy was instilled in the public psyche. Much of this focused on dehumanizing African-Americans, usually through ascribing characteritics portraying them as sub human. Commentators on the Old Testament came forth with the preposterous exigesis that held blacks were shunned by God to be a separate species as descendents from Hamm in the Noah tale. Another idea to justify the low caste of blacks was that human kind was created as separate species, the whites from Adam and Eve and blacks and other races in some other process. Gates also describes how pseudo scientific ideas of the era posited a biological basis for the inferiority of the African race employing such quackery as phrenology and misconstrual of Darwin's theories evolutionary theories that had so recently taken hold in the intellectual world. This distorted view linked with the onset of the eugenics theory about the necessity for controlling the breeding of so-called inferiors. This, as we know, extended, with loathsome consequences, well into the 20th century.

The depiction of blacks in publications, black face minstrelsy and new forms of media was aimed at reinforcing the low class and inferiority of blacks. Gates gives a scathing review of white supremacistthe literature and early movies like "The Birth of a Nation" (screened to positive response in Wilson's White House). Throughout this glossy and well-produced book are sections depicting images that underscore the ideas Gates is conveying. The pictures of scientific renderings of racial types, advertisements, post cards, posters and more convey quite viscerally how casually and widespread were the demeaning stereotypes prevalent for many decades. One is reminded of the Disney production of the "Songs of the South" with its (Old Negro) Uncle Remus, that many of us saw as children, to appreciate how accepted were the racist portrayals of African-Americans even within our lifetimes. Who can forget the images of blacks in one of the most popular movies of all times -- "Gone with the Wind".

Another path to white domination over blacks was to promote the nostalgic sentiment that freedmen and women were like children, simple people whose best interests could be achieved through the paternalistic nurturing of their beneficent former masters, and that the freed slaves longed for the security of thise times. (The image of a contended, compliant "Uncle Tom" under the gentle treatment of his first masters comports with this meme.) Contrary to this theme was the image of black men as licentious brutes whose sexual appetites posed real danger to the sanctity of white womenhood. This, of course, led to the scourge of lynchings that afflicted black men for decades. This was terrorism in its fullest form.

Gates makes the point effectively that a principal motivation to reestablish white domination was economic; that the labor needed from former slaves to sustain cotton production was essential to the return of economic prosperity of the landed class.

The last quarter of the book describes responses of the African-American community to the overt subjection in the Jim Crow era, particularly through its intellectual leaders. This was an attempt to supplant the idea of the "Old Negro" (compliant, lazy, no ambition, etc.) with a vision of the "New Negro" (competent, accomplished, independent of reliance on whites). One strand of this movement, led by Booker T. Washington, advocated that growing competence of blacks in the trades would bring about self-sufficiency that would lead intentionally to separation of dependence on the white world. This was contrary to an alternative concept of the "New Negro" whose intellectual, literary and artistic accomplishments were to demonstrate that blacks were ever so much the equals of whites. Gates portrays leaders such as W.E.B. Dubois as exemplars of this effort, along with some figures that are lesser known now. The Harlem Renaissance with its outpouring of grat literature, art and music was the zenith of this movement among literary and artistic leaders of the era.

The Jim Crow era and its gross inequity and distortion of history was a part of my teenage years. I grew up in the deep South at the time when whites-only strictures were everywhere. Was I as appalled about that then as I am now? I hope so. I do recall the teaching of Reconstruction during high school history class with its assertion that it was black inferiority that caused its (justified) passing (the so-called Dunning school of history), along with the return to right relations of the races. i.e. white supremacy.

Someone once said history is the way in which we betray the past and never is this more apt than in the distorted history of Reconstruction and Redemption taught for decades. This version can be rightfully said to have retarded for years the justice due to our fellow citizens.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

As America continues to grapple with its checkered past in the wake of recent and ongoing Black Lives Matter protests, one period that is seeing a resurgence of interest is the Reconstruction period. Between the end of the Civl War and the Compromise of 1876, America made its first tentative forays into multiracial democracy and equality. Eric Foner’s book Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 is a critically praised history of that period worth a look. But what Dr. Gates contributes in this book is a cultural history of Reconstruction and the immediate period afterwards known as Redemption. While the racist imagery in this book can be hard to look at at times, Dr. Gates does a great job of showing the violent and propagandistic origins of many of today’s racial issues, but also how important Black artistic movements, particularly the Harlem Renaissance, were to resisting these racist narratives.

For the full review, check out my blog post here.

[C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting and informative book discussing the transition of African men into American slaves. Then the treatment after emancipation and during the reconstruction era. The book is brilliantly organized, well documented, including photos, illustrations, and well-cited comprehensive research into how the careful building of a negative narrative of brown and black people occurred.

This is a book to study, discuss, and ponder;not just read. After listening to the book, I better understand some of the fear that fuels the hatred in our American society. To maintain control, push fear and hold back freed slaves, they presented them as less than human, criminal, unintelligent, and with unbridled passion.

The level of literature, false media, contrived studies, and other avenues (Sambo art, jezebels, Negroid characteristics being made into deplorable cartoons, and auntie Jemima propaganda) were used to solicit unfounded fear about the free blacks and ex-slaves, thus leading to continued hatred and hostility after the civil war. The fact that so many people white and black, accepted the bigotry and lies is astonishing.

[Carly Friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and powerful examination of the “new negro” in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I was not the least bit familiar with the concept and found parts of the book too dense and academic for me to fully understand how or enjoy.

However, the last chapter was much more clear and therefore impactful to me. It really did a good job bringing the book together and demonstrating the importance of the idea of the new negro as well the positives and negatives of the concept. I enjoyed learning about how it was related to economic, political, and artistic trends of the time.

Now I really want to read more about Alain Locke, W.E.B. du Bois, and of course Ida B. Wells.

[Kate McMurray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Gates's companion to the recent PBS documentary on Reconstruction, and there is some content overlap, but a lot of other information and analysis as well. Worth the read, though it is difficult to read in places—I found the chapter on "scientific" justifications for racism and the photo essays of racist imagery particularly difficult to stomach—but that's also the point: to show how pernicious and horrific racism is, and how enduring also because so many of the racist tropes we still see today have their origins in white supremist reactions to Reconstruction.