The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post–Civil War South by Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego (review)

The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post–Civil War South by Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego examines the political lives of six prominent black U.S. congressmen from the South in the four decades after the Civil War: Virginia's John Mercer Langston, Alabama's James Thomas Rapier, North Carolina's George Henry White, South Carolina's Robert Smalls, Florida's Josiah Thomas Walls, and Mississippi's John Roy Lynch. The book seeks to describe their individual struggles as well as the collective struggles of all African Americans. Specifically, The Risen Phoenix explores the "strategies employed by black congressmen and how they meshed" with popular aspirations (p. 11). Dinnella-Borrego aims to fill the gap between two views of black politics. One is of African Americans as U.S. citizens, as represented by Eric Foner's work. The other views African Americans as protonationalists, as represented in the work of Steven Hahn. Dinnella-Borrego focuses on these six politicians' strategies as a series of compromises and prudent choices to achieve the "best result possible for their constituents" (p. 8).

The book is organized into three parts and seven chapters. Part 1 follows the rise of black politics out of the American Civil War. The first chapter examines the relationship between Unionism and the service of black leaders in what the author calls the "democracy of the dead" (p. 22). Chapter 2 focuses on the Southern States Convention of Colored Men of October 1871; its "interracial approach" figured prominently in the subsequent political work of black congressmen (p. 54). Part 2 examines the role of these legislators in pursuing an interracial democracy. Drawing on the Congressional Globe and the Congressional Record, chapter 3 examines four legislative issues—private legislation, internal improvements, civil rights, and larger national issues—pursued by these black congressmen during the Forty-First through the Forty-Third Congresses. The fourth chapter looks at black representatives' rhetorical strategies within the context of violence, amnesty, and civil rights that culminated in the 1875 Civil Rights Act. Chapter 5 explores violence, legislative failure, and so-called Redemption as impulses toward alternatives to Republican politics, including supporting the Democrats and fusion voting. Chapter 6 examines new strategies of emigration and fusion. Chapter 7 narrates the demise of black politics and the rise of the one-party South. The work draws on numerous manuscript collections in major southern state archives and Washington, D.C., together with government publications, prominent federal court cases, newspapers and periodicals, and published primary sources. The eleven-page bibliography of secondary sources underrepresents six decades of rich historical scholarship.

The Risen Phoenix succeeds in demonstrating the range of strategies employed by these politicians and how these changed over time and place. One is also struck by the tremendous courage of these representatives as they confronted serious physical dangers. These congressmen also led very interesting political lives. But there are questions. What more do we learn about these black leaders that we cannot extract from either more detailed monographs by others or from prosopography? Why invoke gender and comparative emancipation studies when these are not pursued in depth and actually refute the definition of politics as purely institutional representation displayed here? What gets lost when politics equals strategies, successful or otherwise? Since human nature—and by extension political behavior—means little outside of culture, then what about values, mores, and principles? Why was congressional representation necessarily more significant than grassroots politics? Surely fusion voting, emigration, and third-party movements from the 1870s through 1890s assumed more vital roles in the political lives of black men and women. Were not they, rather than congressmen, the risen phoenix in the book's title, and perhaps it is they, rather than President Barack Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus, who return with renewed vigor and youth?