January 22

Blog #134 – Reconstruction as relevant as ever

I don’t like to give you just a two-pronged choice, because logically, there are more than two choices to choose from.  So, what I’d like you to do is weigh the evidence that we looked at during our debate, in the Reconstruction stations activity, Dr. Foner’s article on why Reconstruction matters still, your chapter 15 reading, and make your own decisions about Reconstruction’s successes and failures.

In the old school or William Dunning interpretation (or Group A’s position in the debate), Reconstruction was a miserable failure that blundered in giving freedmen their rights (which they weren’t ready for for a variety of reasons, but usually racist theories about intelligence and human nature), but Andrew Johnson and the Klan were portrayed as the heroes of the era because they tried to ease the country back together painlessly (Johnson) and pushed for restoration of home rule (Klan).   Reconstruction governments were filled with scalawags and carpetbaggers who corrupted the states and raised taxes.  The true victims here during this period were Southern whites.  In this old school, we see a major critique of the federal government’s expansion and exercise of federal power over the states.  Behind much of this interpretation is the opinion that was popular at the turn of the 20th Century that white people of Anglo-Saxon (English) or Northern European descent were superior to the rest of the world.  We see a lot of this nonsense in the silent blockbuster from 1915, Birth of a Nation (link here if you wanna check it out), and the epic Gone With the Wind in 1939.  Part of the reason that this Dunning School of Reconstruction had such a lasting impact was that there was a huge push towards reconciliation in the late 19th Century, all the way into the 1950s when younger historians began reexamining the records of the times and came to different conclusions.

The Black Experience During the Reconstruction Era | by Vanessa Holloway | Arc Digital

 

Black historians like W.E.B. DuBois in the early 20th Century depicted Reconstruction as a tragedy (much like Group B in the debate) because of its failure to secure civil rights for African Americans throughout the country in his 1935 book, Black Reconstruction (link to the audio book on YouTube here).  While he stated that there were minor successes like education for Black Americans, he lamented the violence that racist whites inflicted upon Black Americans – lynching had reached peak numbers in the 1890s, and white society attributed this to inherent Black criminality (but we all know the real story). Reconstruction | Definition, Summary, Timeline & Facts | Britannica

 

Under some of the new interpretations, especially the Progressive and Neo-Progressive / New Left historians in the 20th Century, the Dunning interpretation is flipped on its head.  Andrew Johnson was a racist who stood in the way of the idealist Radical Republicans who wanted to give freedmen their full and equal rights.  The Klan was not the protector of the South but a haphazard terrorist organization that kept blacks from voting and intimated both whites and blacks in the South.  And the Southern state governments, Republican by nature, may or may not have helped out the freedmen.  One thing is certain: the governments, from the local (Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall) and state all the way up to the federal level (see the Grant administration) were corrupt.  Moral standards were low during this time period and many people (as we’ll see in one of our next units) are in it to make a quick million or two.  Here is an extended interview with historian Eric Foner on Reconstruction.

Klan newspaper cartoon

Your task: Discuss your interpretation of Reconstruction on its successes and failures.  Use specific evidence from the notes, articles, and readings that we have used to back up your ideas. 

Due Monday, January 25th by class.  Minimum of 300 words for your total answer.  

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March 8

Blog #84 – Convict Leasing and the New Jim Crow

Prison Labor in America: How Is It Legal? - The Atlantic

“Work, warden Cain posits, is an important part of the rehabilitative process. Prison labor provides a way to pay society back for the costs of incarceration.”

  If embed doesn’t work, use link to watch Angola for Life: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/prison-labor-in-america/406177/

Between the film, Slavery by Another Name, and the article in the Atlantic, “American Slavery, Reinvented,” we have seen how African Americans have been systematically affected by prisons.  After Reconstruction, as we saw in the film, prison acted as another form of social control that arbitrarily put black people behind bars and forced them to work in dangerous conditions.  This was known as convict leasing.  Many black prisoners helped rebuild the South after the Civil War by working in mines, factories, and other industries.  It was industrialist John Milner from Birmingham, Alabama who envisioned the convict leasing system as a way to help industrialize the South after the Civil War.  Prisoners had little economic value, unlike the previous slavery system, because these prisoners could be replaced if they are overworked, died, or injured on the job.  Prisoners were allowed to be whipped, and the bottom line, as always, was about productivity and profits.  These prisoners were 50-80% cheaper than paid labor, so it made economic sense for the industrialists to lease convicts.  Morally, however, that’s a different story.  Harvest time saw an increase in arrests for trumped-up charges, the most notorious being vagrancy or loitering.  And because Black Americans represented over 30% of the prison population, higher than the demographic average of 12% of the American population, Black Americans came to be associated with crime and danger.  We still see this today with the shooting of Trayvon Martin and other African Americans who are killed in circumstances where whites doing pretty much the same thing somehow survive.

Debt peonage, or debt slavery, had been outlawed in America in 1867, but was used by landowners as a cheap source of labor after Reconstruction.

“The most corrupt and abusive peonage occurred in concert with southern state and county government. In the south, many black men were picked up for minor crimes or on trumped-up charges, and, when faced with staggering fines and court fees, forced to work for a local employer would who pay their fines for them.”

When President Teddy Roosevelt cracked down on debt peonage, hundreds and hundreds of Black Americans wrote to him asking for his help in freeing relatives.  The Alabama cases appeared to be examples for the rest of Southern landowners, especially when TR pardoned the men on trial.

Today, prison has been called the new Jim Crow because of its adverse effects on Black Americans.  See the chart below to get an idea of how many people of color are imprisoned vs. white people.

... of the 13th Amendment Outlawing <b>Slavery</b> For All Conditions Except One

Today, there are more Black people involved in the criminal justice system than were enslaved in 1850, according to Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow.  Felons who have served their time can be discriminated against in housing, voting, education, and employment, all because they’ve been in jail and have served their time. Some of the laws of the 1980s and 1990s that cracked down on the crack cocaine and crime epidemics during those decades adversely affected people of color more than it had whites, especially in the prosecution of crimes involving drugs.  For instance, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 had stiffer penalties for crack cocaine use than for powdered cocaine, which came down hard on black communities more than it did white communities.  Alexander believes that prison works as a new racial caste system that replaced Jim Crow laws outlawed in the 1960s by the Civil Rights Movement.

In the article, “American Slavery, Reinvented,” it describes how prisoners who are deemed healthy enough by the prison physician can be put to work.  If a convict refuses to work, he/she can be thrown into solitary confinement, losing the opportunity to visit with their family, and loss of good time served.  2.2 million people are incarcerated, the highest number in the world, according to the article, and some of them work in jails that had been prison “farms” or “plantations” after Reconstruction, like Angola in Louisiana or Parchman Farm in Mississippi.  Some of these convicts are employed in call centers, and also do work for military manufacturers or sewing clothes for Victoria’s Secret.  Nor is any of the prisoners’ work covered by any existing laws that prevent free workers from being exploited by employers.  Also, being mentally ill increases your chances of being in prison.  And, factors like illiteracy, poverty, mental illness, and drug addiction increase your chances of going to jail.  These are issues that transcend prison and cross over into the social and public health realms.

But should we feel sorry for these prisoners and ex-cons?  The Atlantic article talks about how “prison labor provides a way to pay society back for the costs of incarceration, as well as a pathway to correct deviant behavior and possibly find personal redemption.” Because that’s what prison is for, right?  Rehabilitation?  Or is it to lock up those members of our society deemed too dangerous to be out among society?  Are all the 2.2 million in prison irredeemable people?  Are some of them innocent?  Another argument for prison work can be seen in this quote:

“Why should prisoners sit with idle hands when the rest of us must work to put a roof over our heads and food in our bellies?  Perhaps the low-to-no-wages paid to incarcerated workers are a form of pay garnishment, a sort of compensation for the costs of [prison] room and board?”

Or. to take it one step further, why do criminals deserve our sympathy?  Should prisoners get humane treatment, especially if they’re “murderers, criminals, and all manner of sinners and deviants”?  The 8th Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, but that usually applies to the death penalty and other forms of abuse.  Shouldn’t prisoners have their freedoms restricted b/c they have broken the law?  We are not following the Hammurabi code of an eye-for-an-eye, but there is a feeling out there that prisons are for punishment and not rehabilitation.

Your informed opinion matters.  Please make sure that you read the Atlantic article and take some time to watch the 13 minute video on life at Angola prison in Louisiana.  My questions are:

  1. Should we reform our prison system to make it more responsive to those who have mental health issues or are petty criminals?  Why or why not?  Feel free to use the article’s arguments or your own.
  2. Has prison really changed from what we saw in Slavery by Another Name?  Why or why not?

Due Thursday, March 10 by class.  300 words minimum.

More info on the school-to-prison pipeline: https://www.aclu.org/fact-sheet/what-school-prison-pipeline

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November 30

Lincoln Extra Credit

As I watched Lincoln, I couldn’t help but be struck by the honest attempt to portray the 16th president and the tumultuous last months of the Civil War.  Lincoln seemed funny at times, deeply troubled and burdened by leading the country through some of its worst times ever, and also a grieving father and husband.

But what struck me most was what I thought was the parallel between the freedom and rights of freed slaves back in 1865 and today’s struggle for most LGBT equality.  Tony Kushner, the screenwriter, was the author of 1993’s Angels in America, a ground-breaking play that addressed gay and lesbian issues in a very different time (even just twenty years ago) that shocked America.  Back in 1993, people were still afraid of AIDS victims and spurned those who were HIV positive.  Today, gay and lesbian couples struggle for marriage equality, have been turned down for adoption, and are still the victims of harassment and bullying.  The Laramie Project, a play about the life of Matthew Shephard, a gay man who was tortured and killed for his sexual orientation by two straight men, was just at Seaholm a few weeks ago and has had such an impact on the lives of Americans that Matthew’s mother believes that the play has saved more people than all of the hate crime laws in the country. 

 Another thing that I was struck by was the blatant vote-courting done by the men hired by Seward who twisted Democrats’ arms and practically bribed these Congressmen with government jobs (like postmaster of _______, Ohio) in order to get the needed 2/3 number of votes to pass the 13th Amendment.   Part of me was not surprised by these strong-arm tactics, because I know that this was (and is) how things were done, but part of me was startled because I wanted to preserve this ideal that I’d had about Lincoln as being above this kind of political wrangling.   But the one thing I have learned over the years was that Lincoln was not above using politics as a means to his ends, whatever they may have been at the time.  He had promised to gradually emancipate slaves in the border states (even suggesting monetary compensation for slaves) so that they would stay in the Union.  This never happened. 

 A third thing that struck me was the word play and rhetorical sparring in Congress.  Many of those exchanges were funny and enlightening with regards to the way politics played out in the 1860s.  Today’s Congress doesn’t conduct itself like this today (but watching the face-to-face barb flinging in the movie, it’s no surprise that Charles Sumner was beaten by South Carolinian representative after Sumner “insulted” the South’s honor).  I loved Thaddeus Stevens, the radical Republican from Pennsylvania, who was willing to compromise his desire for full rights for freedmen to get the greater goal of slavery abolished.  Also, I don’t know if the final scene with him is true (no spoilers here!) though Wikipedia and other sources have confirmed it. 

 A fourth thing that really opened my eyes was the troubled relationship between Lincoln and his son, Robert, with Robert’s anger boiling over at not being allowed to fight in the Civil War (and instead enrolled at Harvard).  I wonder if Lincoln didn’t allow his son to fight because of his own fears of Robert’s death (knowing that he’s already lost two sons, Eddie in 1850 and Willie in 1862) or Mary’s own fragile psyche which could fracture with another death (and probably did with Abe’s death in 1865).  Though the oldest, Robert seemed neglected by his father when he comes to visit for the “shindee” after his father’s re-election.  There were scenes that showed Robert being ignored by Lincoln, but by contrast Tad gets all of his father’s love.   One of the more touching scenes was when Lincoln cuddled up with Tad on the floor who had fallen asleep playing war with toy soldiers.  I was also surprised to see Lincoln slap Robert when Robert wouldn’t let his duty to fight drop.  These scenes made Lincoln seem like a real person with flaws and fears. 

 The last thing that I took away from the movie was the battle over giving the slaves equal rights once the 13th Amendment would be passed. What would be the point of freeing slaves if they weren’t citizens of the nation that had freed them?  What’s the point?  No voting?  No civil rights?  This was a preview of what Reconstruction would become: a battle over guaranteeing the rights for freed blacks vs. preserving white supremacy. 

 

Please provide your insights about the movie.  You can respond to any of my five insights or share your own after you’ve seen the movie.  If you find an interesting movie review, please include the link / url in your blog response.  Minimum of 200 words.  Due by Monday, Dec. 10th at the beginning of your class. 

 

 

Sources:

http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/movies/lincoln-by-steven-spielberg-stars-daniel-day-lewis.html?_r=0 – an interesting look at how the actor, Daniel Day-Lewis, developed his speaking voice for his part as Lincoln, and the back and forth between writer Tony Kushner and Lewis as to what phrases and words would be used in the movie. 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie/lincoln/review/385705

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/16/tony-kushner-at-hero-summit-obama-likes-new-lincoln-movie.html – brief article about the screenwriter’s meeting with Obama after he watched Lincoln for the first time.

 http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/10/14/can-angels-in-america-soar-again.html – A 2010 article about Kushner’s Angels in America plays.

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