Looking forward to my grad seminar this semester on Black History from Reconstruction to Jim Crow. A preview/tour of what we’ll be reading follows. We’ll start in week one with some DuBois, from Black Reconstruction, and supplementary essays from Eric Foner and Thomas Holt. 1/
Week 2: Hannah Rosen, Terror in the Heart of Freedom.
And finally, Week 14, N.D.B. Connolly, A World More Concrete.
It'll be a hard and busy semester, but many of these are works I've wanted to get to for a while. Hope the list turns a few folks out there to take a look too! /end
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Lots of comments observing that the cry of "socialism" goes back at least to the New Deal. But it, and what's now the standard litany of scaremongering from the right goes back way, way further than that. Let's take a snapshot from the 1850s. 1/
“The Great Republican Reform Party” was a lithograph from the 1856 presidential campaign, used to bash the first Republican candidate, John Fremont, and by extension, the entire Republican Party. 2/
The Republicans were then considered by their opponents to be “radicals” (which speaks to some of the deep roots of the “party switch” of the 20th century, but that’s a separate story). 3/
The framing of the role of race and slavery in American history in the order to create the "1776 Commission" isn't surprising, but it's still remarkable somehow to see slavery described as a "curse." It's right out of a proslavery apologia. 1/
If white Americans generally thought slavery was such an abomination, and something someone else just dumped on them, why did it take almost 90 years to abolish it? 2/
If the “great moral endeavor” led by Abraham Lincoln was really marked by “good will” and an “emphasis on our shared principles,” why was he assassinated after a civil war in which hundreds of thousands died? 3/
Domestic terrorism carried out against lawmakers by white “militias” was extensive during Reconstruction, largely as a backlash against black freedom and civil rights. 1/
In Georgia, freedman Abram Colby was elected to the Georgia legislature in 1866, and got reelected in 1868. White people in Greene County tried bribing him to switch parties or resign. 2/
Colby refused, so in 1869, the Klan dragged him out of his bed in the middle of the night and beat him within an inch of his life in front of his wife and children. 3/
On Friday, the 11th Circuit overturned a lower court ruling and upheld the Florida legislature’s mandate that former felons pay all fines and fees to have their voting rights restored. So let’s talk about the history of the poll tax. 1/
Because that’s what the Florida law is. One can say it’s constitutional, or not a tax, or that paying fines and fees is part of a person’s “sentence.” 2/
But the law is an obvious attempt to restrict the franchise and limit the impact of the 2018 referendum approved by Floridians to restore voting rights to those who have served felony sentences. 3/
Thread about the Lincoln “quote” deployed last night by Lara Trump. Which was, of course, not an actual quote. But the real quote comes from a speech where Lincoln condemned and warned of the consequences of anti-Black mob violence. 1/
The line she referred to, and got wrong, comes from the Address to the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Ill., in January 1838. 2/
There, Lincoln said “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” 3/
His name was John O’Sullivan. The editor of a popular magazine called the Democratic Review, in 1845 he published an essay called “Annexation” to justify American annexation of Texas. 2/
Texas had revolted against Mexico in the 1830s, and proslavery forces had been clamoring for it to be annexed to the United States and formally made a state that would be the leading edge of slavery’s western expansion. 3/