Equality: An American Dilemma, 1866–1896 by Charles Postel (review)

In 1944, Swedish social scientist Gunner Myrdal described an “American dilemma.” He identified an “ever-raging conflict” between the high-minded values of the “American Creed” (essential human dignity, fundamental equality, and inalienable rights of freedom, justice, and fair opportunity) and continued prejudice and acts of oppression and alienation that ran counter to these principles.¹

In Equality: An American Dilemma, 1866–1896, Charles Postel confronts a similar paradox with his in-depth analysis and dismantling of aspects of the American Creed in the late nineteenth century. Postel notes that equality during this period became “a catchall” for a whole manner of ideas where notions of equal opportunity “confronted the reality of unequal political, economic, and social power” (10). In the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, Americans refashioned their creed into principles of individual liberties, resting on commitments to solidarity and association. Grounded in a renewed spirit of association and collective action, hundreds of thousands of white Americans, in particular, united and organized in national organizations to confront economic and sexual inequalities on a scale never seen before in American history.

Yet, as these farmers, industrial laborers, and social reformers reshaped the political, economic, and social landscape of the nation in their pursuits of equality, they did little to alleviate and sometimes encouraged the simultaneous oppression and exclusion of African Americans and other minority groups. These men and women faced an “inescapable dilemma,” where often “fraternity and solidarity rested on division and exclusion” (4). For Postel, these competing definitions of equality left unresolved conflicts still present in the “gaping social and political wound” (13) of inequality facing Americans in 2019.

Equality is divided into four parts, with the first three making up the bulk of and most compelling aspects of the analysis. Rather than a strict chronological retelling of the era, Postel chooses to focus on three national movements and organizations: the Grange, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and the Knights of Labor. These groups, he argues, had an outsized impact on politics and society in their moment and on later generations.

In his telling of the history of the Grange, Postel rejects a declension narrative of independent farmers co-opted by centralizing forces and instead argues that the movement was bureaucratic from its founding and used its centralized structure to pursue equality among farmers. It was both a benevolent association dedicated to its members’ well-being and a resistance movement of farmers’ interests against corporations. Yet, even as it was committed to equality among its members, the Grange was profoundly silent on issues of racial inequality. In an attempt to unite white farmers across sectional lines, the Grange focused on restoring rights of former slaveholding planters and became a vehicle for ending Reconstruction, including through its efforts to roll back African Americans’ hard-won freedoms. In many ways, the Grange and its members sacrificed black rights on the altar of white national reconciliation and fought for a vision of agrarian equality rooted in white supremacy.

Postel’s analysis of the WCTU, the second and shortest section in the book, explores how social reformers created the most powerful women’s rights organization in American history, merging calls for the prohibition of alcohol with demands for women’s suffrage. Unlike the Grange, the WCTU sought out African Americans and engaged with issues of racial equality. But, like those of their agrarian reform counterparts, the WCTU’s attempts to strengthen the organization’s position in the South meant that any calls for equality would be confined to “a white nationalist framework of sectional reconciliation” (115). Its white organizers blindly declared victory over racial inequality and deflected persistent questions toward a “new antislavery war” (143) against alcohol. Theirs was a “balancing act” (153) between maintaining alliances with white southerners while continuing to influence and work among African Americans. Appeals to white southerners required ignoring black demands for equal rights, and as lynching campaigns increased in the 1890s...