Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow
By Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
“In what skin will the old snake come forth?” asked Frederick Douglass rhetorically at the 1865 Anti-Slavery Society convention, the first one held since the end of the Civil War a few months prior. Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. recounts the comment in his new book, Stony the Road, the title of which was taken from the second stanza of the Black National Anthem.
“Stony the road we trod,
bitter the chast’ning rod,
felt in the day that hope unborn had died;
yet with a steady beat,
have not our weary feet,
come to the place on which our fathers sighed?”
Douglass knew that while freedom had been officially achieved for four million blacks in America, equality would remain elusive for some years to come. So he was raising the question since he knew the “old snake” of racism would change its skin, morph and return in other guises. Gates, later in the book, wondered what Douglass would think about the fact that 154 years after he spoke those words the “old snake” would still be spreading its venom.
Gates’ book was timed to be released as a companion to the PBS program Reconstruction: America After the Civil War, set to air Tuesday, April 9 at 9pm. This is but another in a series of programs over the years that the amazing professor has had a hand in producing. Everyone and I do mean everyone, should view the program, as well as read the book.
Knowing America’s past is critical to navigating America’s future. As the 1949 Nobel Prize-winning author, William Faulkner once wrote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Arguably, he knew more about Southern sensibilities than any other man who has ever lived.
As Gates chronicles, American blacks have been whipsawed back and forth by racism like no other peoples on the fact of the earth. Our ancestors thought that after Emancipation, racial hatred would gradually end: but no, it got worse during and after Reconstruction. And then after black soldiers again proved their loyalty and bravery in World War I we again thought it would be over, only to return home to lynching in the South. After World War II, where we again proved our valor, we returned home to a redlined America, where even with the G.I. Bill we still couldn’t receive fair treatment.
And then to the era I’m personally familiar with: Civil Rights of the ’60s. We honestly, sincerely thought that the “old snake” was set to be killed off — but boy, were we wrong! Then came Obama, and certainly we were headed to a post-racial society as some of my young friends admonished me. They too were wrong.
The “old snake” is alive and well, all we have to do is look to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and behold the racist seated in the Oval Office. Now I’m not saying that all Trump supporters are racists, but if it weren’t for that racist 10 to 20 percent of his base, he would not be befouling the White House.
How did we get here? Better yet, how do we get out of here? How do we get out of the ugly place the country finds itself in?
One sure way is to know more about how we got here in the first place.
Watch PBS, read Stony the Road, and find out.
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.