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Chapter 19: Reconstructing Slavery
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Stamped from the Beginning, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Discrimination, Racist Ideas, and Ignorance
Segregationists and Assimilationists vs. Antiracists
Media, Institutions, and the Transmission of Knowledge
The Invention of Blackness and Whiteness
The Illogic of Racism
Summary
Analysis
William Lloyd Garrison is delighted by the Fifteenth Amendment, which he considers a “miracle.” Some celebrate the amendment as a chance for Black people to develop political autonomy, but others warn that voting will do little to save them from the terror of the Klan and other white supremacist vigilantes. The Klan demonizes ordinary Black people, white antiracists and other “radicals,” and—most of all—Black men accused of raping white women. Meanwhile, Kendi writes, the Klan justifies the extreme violence they exert on the basis that they are defending white women’s purity.
From this point in American history onward, there’s a substantial gap between the laws that are technically in place and the reality for most Black people. Black enfranchisement in the Reconstruction era is a classic example of this problem. Black men are technically allowed to vote, but they might be killed for it—or at least strategically prevented from actually accessing the voting booth and exercising their right.
Themes
Black suffrage does have an impact on the South; there are a substantial number of Northern and Southern Black delegates, some of whom were formerly enslaved. They help found a number of public institutions and stimulate the economy, although Black people are rarely able to reap the benefits of this. The region still remains highly reliant on cheap labor. President Grant resurrects the idea of colonization, suggesting that Black people relocate to the Dominic Republic. Douglass joins this plan, enthusiastic about the racist idea of Black Americans helping “uplift the impoverished and backward Dominican people.” In the 1872 presidential election, a former champion of “emancipation and equality,” Horace Greeley, runs as the Democratic candidate, telling white Southerners: “Segregate yourself; employ each other.”
As this passage shows, the issues that plague the South in the immediate aftermath of slavery tend to be based in economics. For centuries, the region has depended on a supply of forced labor in order to generate profits. It is deeply inequitable, with enormous income gaps between the rich and poor. The question of how the economy will be reorganized is arguably the fundamental issue that will determine if there is to be any racial justice in the region following slavery. But as the end of the passage shows, segregation and white greed becomes the economic order of the day.
Themes
The year of the election, Congress reproduces a report on Southern violence that blames the violence on expanded Black political power, not the white people that are actually perpetuating that violence. Politicians and the media alike being pronouncing Reconstruction a failure. For many white Republicans, and all Black men in the South, voting to reelect Grant means “risk[ing] death.” In a landmark Supreme Court ruling, the civil rights protections in the Fourteenth Amendment are gutted, effectively allowing discrimination to take place as long as explicitly racist language is not used to justify it. Kendi notes that this legal precedent is still used to shield and enshrine racist discrimination today.
Throughout, Kendi highlights how the idea that something is only racist if it is framed using explicitly racist language is a ludicrous idea in itself. Unfortunately, this falsehood has had a major impact on American society. Over time, people have come to believe that racism is a matter of intention, not outcome. Stamped from the Beginning is part of a wave of efforts to undo this misguided idea.
Themes
The Panic of 1873—a financial crisis that triggers a recession—affects poor Black Southerners most intensely. Many lose their land and are forced into sharecropping, which allows them to be exploited by landowners. Witnessing this erosion of civil rights, Garrison writes a series of articles denouncing the “abandonment” of Reconstruction. Yet many other commentators, even those who claim to support the racial equality and freedom promised by Reconstruction, blame Black people for its failure. Meanwhile, Grant’s every act of support for Black people deepens his unpopularity. His time as a key player in the political arena, like Garrison’s, is up.
The end of Reconstruction is one of the starkest examples of regression when it comes to the issue of racism that has ever happened in American history. Not only are the (already limited) efforts to support Black people instituted in Reconstruction denounced as failures and abandoned, but those who supported those efforts are similarly denounced and ostracized from the political sphere.
Themes
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In 1875, Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, the final piece of legislation from the “Radical Reconstruction” era. This bill makes racial discrimination in a number of public institutions illegal. However, this legal protection is not enough to stop Black Southerners from being terrorized by ordinary white people, nor does it stop the resurrection of slavery by another name. Grant realizes that white people in the South are resentful of being prevented from killing Black people and Republicans with impunity. At the same time, the early field of criminology is developing extensive ideas of Black people as naturally lawless, violent, and depraved.
This passage highlights the dangers of capitulating to racist resentment and false perceptions of injustice. Many white Southerners oppose every form of rights given to Black people and take it open themselves to terrorize Black communities simply because they resent no longer being legally permitted to treat Black people with however much violence they please. But Kendi points out that it is impossible and morally wrong to capitulate to—or attempt a compromise with—such a position.
Themes
Furious white people promise to bring about the “redemption of the South,” a promise that ends up being fulfilled. The 1876 presidential election is extremely close; the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes is declared the winner by a narrow margin. A second Civil War seems imminent; Grant privately regrets extending suffrage to Black men. In order to quell the growing conflict, Hayes arranges the Bargain of 1877, promising to end Reconstruction in order to save his presidency and avoid war. The Bargain is immediately recognized as a move to eliminate Black people’s role in the political world, and Garrison denounces it as a return to the “covenant with death” (slavery).
Here, Kendi reminds readers about the foolishness of believing that leaders like Hayes and Grant are actually commendable when it comes to their support for Black people. While these two Republican presidents may have been less viciously racist than their Democratic peers, their investment in delivering any real justice to the Black community is essentially nonexistent.
Themes
While Democrats proclaim that the new rights granted to Black people will remain in place, this is far from the case. In order to reestablish control over “rebellious Blacks and White women” white men enact a new reign of terror: lynching. While lynching is an obvious manifestation of hate, lurking behind this hate is not ignorance, but a complex system of racist ideas produced by discriminatory policies implemented by the white elite.
Kendi rejects the white elite’s efforts to distance themselves from the problem of lynching, which is sometimes characterized as being the fault of poor, uneducated, immoral white people. Kendi underscores that by implementing racist policies, the white elite share responsibility for the problem of lynching.
Themes
The journey from Emancipation through Reconstruction and its demise was an emotional one for Black Southerners. Many felt unable to continue living among their former enslavers and sought freedom in the North. In April 1879, Garrison cancels what would have been his final speech due to illness, speaking via a proxy instead. He remains resolutely optimistic about the possibility of imminent racial equality freedom. Within a month, he is dead.
Emancipation did not wipe the South’s slate clean, allowing Southerners to start fresh. Instead, during Reconstruction, Black people live in close proximity to those who exploited, terrorized, raped, brutalized, and murdered their families, communities, and themselves.
Themes
