Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South, 1865-1914

CHAPTER 6. The Rise and Decline of Political Self-Help, 1883–1900

6 THE RISE AND DECLINE OF POLITICAL SELF-HELP, 1883–1900 On May 29, 1890, Richmond residents unveiled the statue of Robert E. Lee that still sits on Monument Avenue. With first light the city bustled with activity, accompanied by martial music. The crowd was estimated at 100,000, with the procession of veterans, according to one observer, taking two hours to pass. Important generals from the former Confederacy had come, including James Longstreet, Joseph Johnston, and Jubal Early, as well as less prominent figures such as M. C. Butler of South Carolina—the man who had been instrumental in the Hamburg massacre of 1876. Confederate flags were everywhere. Some of the veterans marched in the gray uniforms worn during the war. Not many black people participated, but some could not help but watch. An old man, possibly a former slave, intently took in the events until he finally blurted out what the display meant to him: ‘‘The Southern white folks is on top.’’ He was not the only person making such a connection. The black press in Richmond condemned the event as an indication that the white public clung ‘‘to theories Political Self-Help 145 which were presumed to be buried for all eternity.’’ Among these were the notions that a state could secede from the Union, ‘‘and that dealing in human beings, selling children from their parents, wives from husbands, sisters from brothers were right and the South in contending for these things by force of arms was right.’’ Some northerners, especially staunch Republicans, joined in the criticism. A New York regiment declined to participate because its older members refused to walk under a Confederate flag.∞ Not quite four months later, a very di√erent commemorative event took place in the same city, this time to promote a national celebration of emancipation. The movement had been sparked by the unveiling of the Lee monument. Thousands of African Americans jammed the Exposition Grounds on October 16 to cheer the arrival of the procession, which took thirty-five minutes to pass a particular point. Although delegates had come from around the country to see if they could agree on a national holiday for freedom, most of the marchers were from within the Petersburg-Richmond region, with the usual forty or fifty civic societies in line. The contrast in the symbolism with the Lee monument unveiling could not have been more striking. Instead of Confederate banners, the marchers displayed U.S. flags and pictures of Abraham Lincoln. Members of civic societies carried framed pieces of cloth bearing inscriptions such as ‘‘In 1860 slaves, in 1890 bankers’’ and ‘‘The Solution to the Negro Problem is Finance.’’ John Mercer Langston, the black congressman from the 4th District of Virginia, addressed the audience, o√ering himself as a living example of how a person born in the slave quarters had walked into the halls of Congress.≤ Black orators used such occasions during the 1880s and 1890s to advocate self-reliance so the race could become, among other things, a greater political force. Self-help, or the ideology of uplift equated with the accommodationist approach of Booker T. Washington, was considered by scholars to include a rejection of the partisan approach in favor of uplift of the race primarily through building economic strength. Economic uplift, so the interpretation has gone, presented a safer path than party politics to advance the race. Historians recently have discovered a more complex use of self-help as a form of resistance underneath a public stance of accommodation . Few, however, have recognized that this thought still advocated a political solution—one that fell short of black separatism while striving for an independent, black electorate.≥ In the speeches delivered at freedom celebrations of the last decades of the nineteenth century, political self- 146 Political Self-Help reliance and economic improvement often appeared as twin, interrelated goals. The creation of economic interdependence within the black community to enhance its electoral strength was frequently sounded in the public ceremonies of the black South. Without economic freedom, so the reasoning went, black people remained vulnerable. A united community with financial independence was necessary for independent action that might include breaking ranks with the Republican Party. At the 1890 emancipation celebration in Richmond, one person put it this way: ‘‘Our position is independent. We must vote for the party that will recognize our manhood and protect our lives. We have discharged our obligations...