Remembering Reconstruction Struggles over the Meaning of America's Most Turbulent Era eds. by Carole Emberton and Bruce E. Baker (review)

For several decades, historians have devoted significant attention to the memory of the U.S. Civil War. Books such as David Blight's Race and Reunion and Caroline Janney's Remembering the Civil War, among others, have analyzed the contours of postwar memory and the key groups and actors. However, despite consistent interest in Civil War memory, scholars have spent significantly less time considering Reconstruction memory. The ten essays in Remembering Reconstruction: Struggles over the Meaning of America's Most Turbulent Era seek to address this gap in the scholarly literature by exploring how people remembered a turbulent era.

Carole Emberton and Bruce E. Baker group the essays into four sections. The first addresses white supremacist memories of Reconstruction. According to K. Stephen Prince, the work of establishing Jim Crow took place "in the auditoriums and print culture of the North" as well as "the streets and convention halls of the South" (17). Jim Crow propagandists cast Reconstruction as an unnatural and wicked experiment. The white supremacist memory of Reconstruction, Prince concludes, was more an attempt to shape the future than a reflection of the past. While Prince studies the formation of a white supremacist memory, Jason Morgan Ward explores, through analysis of the anti–poll tax campaign, the limits of this memory. Although southern white supremacists "viewed the racial skirmishes of the Roosevelt era as a continuation of struggle rather than as echoes of a bygone past," cracks appeared (38). Carpetbagger analogies, for instance, "failed to unite white southerners around a neo-Redeemer agenda" (50).

The second section considers African American memories of Reconstruction. Shawn Leigh Alexander and Justin Behrend consider how T. Thomas Fortune and John R. Lynch challenged the white supremacist memory Prince and Ward outlined. Fortune created a counter-memory designed to help African Americans understand and resist Jim Crow. This memory, Alexander concludes, was one of "survival, resiliency, and perseverance amidst a life of terror" (78). In The Facts of Reconstruction, John R. Lynch employed his own experiences to attack the white supremacist memory. Lynch's book did not alter the white supremacist memory, but, according to Behrend, it "did quench the thirst of many African Americans looking for a firm rebuke to the prevailing white supremacist versions of southern history" (101). In the final essay in the section, Carole Emberton analyzes Hannah Irwin's account of a Ku Klux Klan raid. Although the account contained inaccuracies, Emberton cautions readers against dismissing Irwin's memories. Black vernacular memories, Emberton argues, reflected a less celebratory understanding of Reconstruction than the "'official' counter-memories" of black intellectuals (111). This may be true, but it should be noted that T. Thomas Fortune's understanding was hardly celebratory. However, Emberton is correct in pushing historians to be more attentive to vernacular memories.

The third section, featuring essays by Mark Elliott, Natalie J. Ring, and Samuel L. Schaffer, discusses Reconstruction and U.S. empire. Elliott analyzes two conferences held in New York on the "Negro Question," in 1890 and 1891. Northern conference organizers forged common ground with southern conference attendees. Consequently, the conferences "downplayed the importance of black political rights, lamented the mistakes of Reconstruction, and accommodated proslavery ideology" (160). Elliott suggests links between Reconstruction and overseas empire. His essay demonstrates how the white supremacists Prince discusses had significant northern help fashioning their memories of Reconstruction. Natalie Ring's essay, however, offers a very different discussion of empire. Northern philanthropists, southern liberals, and the federal government linked the South and U.S. territorial possessions. Efforts to uplift the southern population, especially poor white people, became a "domestic civilizing mission" sometimes called the "New Reconstruction" or "readjustment" (174). The South and overseas territories presented similar questions about the incorporation of regions perceived as backward. Ring's fascinating essay might have been a bit stronger had she included a discussion of...