Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (review)

BOOK REVIEWS171 done with extensive maps and photographs of the battlefield. Less effective is his attempt to tie the border turmoil into the fierceness with which the battle was fought, especially since Kansas troops were not prominent in the day's action. Their main contribution was roundingup Confederate prisoners, a number of whom they summarily executed. It is also difficult to follow the connection between Mine Creek and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" or the lesser known, and just as well forgotten, charge of the Zagonyi bodyguard under Fremont into Springfield in October, 1861. That the fighting had a direct effect on the Kansas election of 1864 is well shown, but the contention that the Price raid "assured continuance of the wartime administration" in Missouri shows a complete misunderstanding of the political struggle there, for in reality it helped pave the way for the triumph of the Radicals. Still, Buresh has done a good job of bringing to our attention the one neglected battle of Price's raid. This is a book which buffs will enjoy. William E. Parrish Mississippi State University Bhck Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Shvery to Freedom. By Lawrence W. Levine. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. Pp. xviii, 522. $15.95.) For more than a decade, historians have called for research which would explore the lives of the powerless and the (literarily) inarticulate. This need has always been most apparent in the field of black history where the traditional sources can be used only with great ingenuity and greater care. Using the insights of such disciplines as psychology, anthropology and sociology, along with a healthy dose of historical imagination, Lawrence W. Levine has explored the rich contours of Afro-American folk culture and thought from slavery to freedom. The product ofyears of research, Black Culture and Bhck Consciousness is a rich and rewarding response to these earlier pleas for imaginative research in nontraditional areas of American history. Nowhere is the strength of Levine's book more apparent than in his discussion of black culture in the slave South. In our secular age, it is difficult to fully appreciate the profound religiosity ofante-bellum slave culture. Slaves were a prepolitical people in a prepolitical setting, observes Levine, but this does not mean they were passive objects who simply absorbed the values and outlook of their white masters. The "sacred universe" which they created with its emphasis upon personal worth and righteous judgment was a serious alternative to the social structure created by Southern slaveholders. This sacred universe was created from a marriage of African and Christian cultures. It focused upon the virile prophets of the Old Testament, but it also drew upon African elements, particularly the 172 CIVIL WAR HISTORY figure of the "trickster." At the same time it exploited a rich lode of European folk traditions. As Levinenotes, the religion and folk beliefs of the transplanted African often bore a remarkable similarity to the "magic divination, witchcraft, astrology and ghostlorethat informed the English world view in the sixteenth and seventeenth century" (p. 59). It is to his credit that Levine does not become embroiled in the stale disputes over which was more important, African survivals or western culture. As Levine summarizes the issue, the essence of the black Americans' cultural thought was not "either, or," it was instead a "syncretic blend of the old and the new, of the African and the EuroAmerican . . . " (p. 135). The result of this synthesis was a "style which in its totality was uniquely the slaves' own ..." (p. 135) . In his account of black consciousness after emancipation, Levine describes a changing folk culture. The religious dimension remained, but it was increasingly overshadowed by secular songs and stories. Thus, the "spiritual" became the gospel song or (more commonly) the secular, hard-driving blues. Earthy and explicit humor became more acceptable . The nature of black story telling evolved from an emphasis upon the trickster's guile to the courage and physical prowess ofpowerful folk (John Henry) and his historical (Jack Johnson) figures. Even as this culture underwent a subtle evolution, however, it continued to shield and protect the psyche of an oppressed people. And in the process...