The Negro in American Society; 3; Lerone Bennett: The Civil War and Black Reconstruction

The negro in American society. In the beginning in the middle and then the ending of the Civil War, the black man was central. Both as a civilian and as a soldier. (music) It was the Fort Wagner charge that Harriet Tubman had in mind, when she penned that eloquent and imperatively beautiful description of war. "And then we saw the lightning," she said. And that was the guns. "And then we heard the thunder," and that was the big guns. "And then we heard the rain falling," and that was the drops of blood falling. "And when we came to get in the crops," it was dead men that we reaped." In blood that fell like rain, a black man helped to cement the union of this country and made all Americans black and white (music). Men say today that Black men did little to help themselves.

But it is a fact of history that in proportion to the population more black men than white men served in the Civil War. (music) Without the military help of black freedmen, I'm quotin' now, Abraham Lincoln said this, Abraham Lincoln said, "Without the military help of black freedmen, the war against the south could not have been won." (music) In this historic city, in this the 104th year a quasi-freedom we ought to remember that the emancipation of the black man was not a gift, but an achievement. An achievement paid for by the blood, sweat, and tears of hundreds of thousands of gallant men and women. We ought to remember also that most of our problems today stem from the fact that emancipation was half-hearted, half-baked and

incomplete and that it has never been complete. (music) There were tears, that were rivers of tears, but no land and few mules. Without land, without tools, without capital or access to credit, the freedmen drifted into a form of peonage the sharecropping system. Land reform is mirrored all in all the modern scholars have pointed out was an indispensable prerequisite. for lasting reconstruction in America. The failure of the Radical Republicans to achieve that basic objective, doom reconstruction from the start and pave the way to our present crisis. (music) And the south began the long process of whipping black people into submission. During this white time, the conscience of America went to sleep. And the Supreme Court of all institutions drove the last nail in the social coffin of the

black man. (music) Reconstruction in all its various facets was a supreme lesson for America the right reading of which might still mark a turning point in our history. But 10 years in these United States, for one hundred and twenty months, America tried democracy. Black and white people married each other in the south and the world did not end. Little black boys and little white girls went to school together in the south, and the confederate dead did not rise, did not in fact make a sign at all. Well the Klan said they were turning over in the grave. (music) (Narrator) The Negro in American Society, six studies by eminent negro scholars and personalities tracing the history of the American negro from the time of the African experience to the present day. Tonight, part three. Author, lecturer, Leron Bennett examines the negro in the Civil War and Black Reconstruction. Recorded at the

Patrick T. Campbell Junior High School in Dorchester, the third meeting of the community lecture series is opened by Chairman Hubert E. Jones. [Hubert E. Jones] Welcome to the third lecture of the Community Lecture Series on the Negro in American society. The Community Lecture Series is a co-operative educational program sponsored by twelve organizations in Roxbury and twelve organizations in Newton. My name is Huey Jones and I have the honor of serving as chairman of the lecture series. We believe that we are providing a framework for education and learning. The purpose of the Community Lecture Series is to present the true history of the Negro in America as a framework for understanding contemporary events and to expose persons from the Roxbury and Newton communities to Negro intellectuals who have made a substantial contribution to American society. Our lecturer today, Mr. Lerone Bennett Jr., will certainly make our purpose come

alive. He has made fantastic contributions to this country. Mr. Bennett was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1928 and educated in the public schools of Jackson, Mississippi where he worked on a local Negro weekly newspaper, The Mississippi Enterprise. He attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia and was editor of the student newspaper. Upon graduation with honors he joined the Atlanta Daily World first as a reporter and then as city editor. After joining the Johnson Publishing Company in 1953, Mr. Bennett in 1960 became the first senior editor of Ebony Magazine. Wyatt Tee Walker, who was to be our Fitz Lecturer, talks a great deal about the cultural blackout, meaning the blackout of knowledge about the Negro and his contributions to this society. Mr. Bennett has probably done more than any other person to eliminate the

so-called cultural blackout by his writings. Most of us know his excellent articles on Negro history published in Ebony. In addition he has written four major books which includes "Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America from 1619 to 1964," "Confrontation Black and White," "The Negro Mood, and "What Manner of Man: A Biography of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." In addition to his writings he lectures a good deal around the country. He resides in Chicago with his wife and four children. In November 1966 Mr. Bennett came to Boston to lecture at the Arlington Street Church on the future of freedom. Today we welcome him on his return to the heart of Boston's black community. It is truly an honor to present to you Lerone Bennett, Jr. who will lecture on the Negro in the Civil War and Black reconstruction. Mr. Bennett

thank you. [applause] [applause] [applause] [Bennett] Thank you very much, Mr. Jones and ladies and gentlemen, it is indeed a pleasure to be back in Boston. This is a good time I think, and a good place to talk about the Civil War and the Reconstruction period. It's a good place because of the key role that Boston and Bostonians played in these events. A good time I think because our country is threatened by a carnival of racism which is playing to large and enthusiastic audiences in the U.S. Congress and other bastions of power. A carnival of racism that reflects a malignant spirit, I think. It's very similar to the first white backlash which doomed the first reconstruction and democracy in America almost 100 years ago. It seems to me today that if we are to avert a disaster here,

we must search in the ruins of that first reconstruction to discern the signs and omens of the reconstruction in which we are engaged today. Santayana said once that people who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. The insight here is that you have to use the past in order to make the future. The insight here is that you have to use past disasters in order to prevent future disasters. Now, before it is too late. Now while the storm clouds are gathering. Now is the time for us to look candidly backwards so we can see more clearly ahead. There is a regrettable tendency in some circles to underestimate the importance of the past and of history in the formulation of the social ideologies and the social character of a people. This view I believe is based on a profound

misunderstanding of the nature of human reality. History is not something added to life. History, as Heidegger reminds us, is life itself. Man is not historical because he historicizes, he historicizes because he is historical in the depths of his being. Because he is a being who harbored the Jungian subconscious half-consciously, Always understands himself and must understand himself historically. Contrary to the popular view, nothing is more important to a man or to a group than a remembrance of things past. What a man knows about all those yesterdays enters into and colors his sense of now and his sense of tomorrow. And this history and the history of his people oftentimes determine how much bread he will eat and where he will eat it. "We cannot say the past is past," Winston Churchill said once, "without surrendering the future." In other words, he who

controls the past controls the image, and he who controls the image controls the mind, and he who controls the mind has little to nothing at all to fear from the body. Men who know the mind best, know that history has many uses. It has been used and is now being used to mold the minds and hearts of the young. It has been used and it is now being used to tell people who they are and what they can be. To give them pride in their origin and confidence in their destiny. History has been used and it ought to be used in the struggle for human decency. But in America history is too often used to undergird the whole superstructure of prejudice and fear and anxiety. Our current crisis I think is in part a reflection of our failure to use our past in the creation of a human environment in America. American historians have been asked too often to serve the national passion for evasion

and rationalization. The net result is a history which masks the essential complexity of American life and the depth and urgency of our current problems. Nothing indicates this more clearly, I think, than our continued attempts to evade the implications of the Civil War and the Reconstruction period. About Northern episodes in our collective past is there so much distortion, so much evasion, so much outright lying. The general picture of the Civil War in our traditional texts is of a melodramatic big screen war between brothers. The last war, we are told, between gentlemen. Why were these gentlemen fighting? There was, we are told, a big misunderstanding. Something to do with mint juleps and Scarlett O'Hara. What of the black man? The black man, we're told, had nothing to do with it. Nor did slavery. This was a spiritual war.

The men of the blue and the men of the grey were defending ways of life. And according to the traditional texts, they both sides were right. As for Reconstruction, it was a sordid little episode of Black corruption and fraud in which poor deluded Negroes, led by vindictive and unscrupulous carpetbaggers from Boston displayed [i.e. displaced?] the natural ruling element of the South and disturbed that natural harmony which has always existed between Black and white people in America. But the fact that Southerners fought four years to perpetuate human slavery, nothing is said. In fact traditional accounts take the point of view of a North Carolina monument to Confederate soldiers which managed to turn the truth upside down by saying they died fighting for liberty. As for Negroes, the traditional account takes the stance of a famous white writer who said, and I quote, "The American Negroes are the only people in the history of the world, so far as I

know, that ever became free without any effort of their own." Unquote. Practically all of this is sheer fantasy For in the beginning and in the middle and in the ending of the Civil War the Black man was central, both as a civilian and as a soldier. It is unfortunate. It is a national national tragedy to men continue to view the Civil War and the Reconstruction in this way instead of seeing these road-forking events as a tremendous effort to reverse history and to make democracy real in America by improvisations in the economic sphere and in the sphere of social and political relations. As a matter of fact, the Civil War and the Reconstruction were two complementary facets of the same reality, the social revolution that changed the material and social climate of America. In essence that revolution was an economic thrust which destroyed the power of the planter aristocracy and paved the way for the

ascendancy of industrial capitalism. But since Black people formed the power, the capital, of the planter aristocracy, it was not possible to resolve the underlying issues without coming to grips with that Black capital. More concretely, it was impossible to resolve the issues without confronting the racism that [?] transform men into capital. A racism that openly and dramatically contradicted the meaning of America. In the beginning of the Civil War men tried hard to get around that fact. In the first blast of emotion that followed the fall of Fort Sumter Abraham Lincoln himself tried to evade it. When Lincoln issued a call for men who loved the Union, both white and black patriots rallied to the flag. In this city in Boston, in Philadelphia, in Chicago, and cities across the North, Black men lined up to volunteer for the Union Army.

The Lincoln administration sent them home with the understanding that the war was a white man's quarrel and black people had no place in it. For almost two years Abraham Lincoln held this posture. For almost two years he maintained the official fiction that the war was a polite misunderstanding between white gentlemen. A war in no way related to the black man and to slavery. "The soul of old John Brown may have been marching," Dudley Cornish wrote, but in the first two years of the war it marched in exclusively white company. That this policy was changed at all was due not to Union humanitarianism but to Rebel battlefield brilliance and the daring and hope of fugitive slaves. By digging in and fighting, the South brought the North to a realization that it was in a real brawl and that it needed all the weapons that it could lay hands on. Came to some

soon and to others late that at the very least all men are buried equal. By flocking to Union lines, by leaving bed and cabin and rallying to the flag, fugitive slaves made the North define its terms. It came to some in 1861 and to others in 1863 that the black man was inextricably involved in the root cause of the war, And that the war could not be fought without taking him into consideration. Nor, and this was most frightening, could the war be ended without coming to grips with the meaning of the Black man, and the meaning of America. Let me say at this point that it is one of the ironies of history that Abraham Lincoln became the Great Emancipator. "Never before in history," as Kenneth Stampp has said, "did a man embrace immortality with such reluctance." A friend of the Union is not quite a friend of the Negro. Lincoln was made the

emancipator by the force of circumstances. Never really an abolitionist, never really a liberal on the racial issue, he had opposed granting Negroes social and political equality in Illinois. And in Washington he championed gradual emancipation and the abrupt emigration of all free Negroes. His plan, documented official plan was based on the gradual emancipation of the slaves over a 37-year period ending in 1900, and compensation to slaveholders. Until his death, Abraham Lincoln believed that black and white Americans would be better off separated, preferably with a very very large body of water between them. In the Civil War then, as in World War One, World War Two, and the monstrous vendetta of Vietnam, black leaders and their white allies had to force the issue of freedom, an issue Abraham Lincoln and Northern

moderates tried desperately to avoid. In this campaign Wendell Phillips, that noble Bostonian, and Frederick Douglass, the great Black leader, played key roles, crisscrossing the country and denouncing what they call the quote "tardy hesitating vacillating policy of the President of the United States." Frederick Douglass above all saw the war as a struggle to complete the American Revolution, and he was highly and openly contemptuous of men like Lincoln who placed the Union above freedom. "The old Union," he said, "was death. We are fighting for something incomparably better than the old Union. We're fighting for unity, unity of idea, unity of sentiment, unity of logic, unity of institutions in which there should be no North, no South, no East, no West, no black, no white, but a solidarity of the nation," making every slave free and every free man a voter.

As the war progressed and as defeat piled on defeat, Douglas, Phillips, and other abolitionists picked up strong support in Congress where radical Republicans began to denounce the moderate Lincoln program and to insist that the North hit the South where it would hurt most by freeing the slaves and giving them guns. Some radical Republicans, speaking for the rising industrial capitalism of the North, championed Negro freedom as the best way to win their ultimate objectives. But others like Charles Sumner, the great Massachusetts Senator, and Thaddeus Stevens, the iron-willed Pennsylvania Congressman, saw the war as an excellent opportunity to smash the power of Southern planters and establish a social order based on the political and economic emancipation of Negroes and poor whites. To Sumner and Stevens, as much as to Lincoln, black people owe their freedom.

The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments are permanent testimonials to the courage and devotion of these two men, and the most daring proposals of contemporary legislators are only pale reflections of the civil rights bills they offered in the 1860s and 1870s. It was Stevens who captured the imagination of the Freedmen with a proposal for allocating 40 acres of land and a mule to each Freedman. It was Sumner who proposed the civil rights bill that would have banned segregation in schools, churches, cemeteries, public conveyances, and places of public accommodation. So insistent was Sumner that one of his colleagues begged him once to give the Senate, as he put it, one day without the nigger. Sumner and Stevens were the greatest friends Black people have ever had in public power in America and the fact that they are virtually unknown today in the Black community

is a testament to the effectiveness of the brainwashing process to which we all have been subjected. With these two men taking the lead, Congress began in 1862 to breathe new life into the Civil War. In quick order military officers were forbidden to return fugitive slaves to rebel masters, slavery was abolished in Washington D.C., and the Confiscation Act was passed which in effect freed the slaves of all rebels. At the same time there was increasing pressure on the home front. The war had never been popular with immigrant groups who saw it as a struggle for quote "lazy niggers and rich whites" unquote. Since Negroes were, as they said, the cause of the war, these groups in the North amused themselves by killing and maiming as many Negroes as they could find. When in 1863 the draft law was passed,

individual acts of resistance gave way to open sedition. I'd like to stress this point here because certain ethnic groups who express horror today at resistance to the draft and riots have forgotten apparently the widespread resistance to the draft law of 1863, a resistance which culminated in perhaps the largest riot in American history. The New York draft riots of July 1863. For four days in that month white rioters in New York City fought policemen, soldiers, and firemen, and brutally murdered Black people who were hanged from lampposts and trees. Some 1,000 black people were murdered in those four days. And more than 5,000 black people were forced to take refuge on Blackwell's Island, at police stations, and in the swamps of Bergen, New Jersey and other outlying towns.

The draft riots in New York and other Northern cities in 1863 reflected a very significant change in the mood of the North. The sons of thousands of white mothers were dying at that time and people were beginning to say that Black people could stop bullets as well as white people. Humorist Miles O'Reilly mocked this basic shift in a poem which he entitled "Sambo's Right to be Killed. And it went like this: "Some say it is a burning shame to make the niggers fight. And that the trade of being killed belongs but to the white. But as for me upon my soul so liberal are we here, I'll let Sambo be murdered in place of meself on every day in the year." The wind in America was changing and Abraham Lincoln, an excellent weathervane, began to change with the wind. Prodded by Congress and by

repeated reverses on the battlefield, not to mention the threatened intervention of European powers, Lincoln changed his policy, saying with great honesty that he had not controlled events but had been controlled by them. Finally on Thursday, January the first, 1863, he issued the celebrated Emancipation Proclamation. Now this proclamation was a masterstroke of international diplomacy and it had enormous military and propaganda value at home, but it freed very few slaves. If you'll pardon the digression, my daughter and I, she's 9 now, my daughter and I have a very interesting dialogue that we both enjoyed immensely. I try very hard not to contradict teachers but once she came home one day in February and she said, "Daddy, we were celebrating the birthday of Mr. Lincoln."

I said, "Wonderful. What did he do? Why are you celebrating his birthday?" And she said "he freed the slaves." And I said "no he didn't." And we had a dialogue, discussion about it, explained to her the limitations of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Union Army etc. etc. and so she went back apparently and told the teacher what I said. And then on the day of the celebration she came home and she said "Daddy, we celebrated Abraham Lincoln's birthday today," and I said "What did he do?" And she says with a smile "he helped to free the slaves." [laughter] I might say that February is approaching and every year for the last three years we've had this dialogue. She enjoys it very much. The point I'm trying to make here is that the Emancipation Proclamation was a very interesting document and we ought to know it. Lincoln freed slaves where he had no power in the Confederacy and

left them slaves where he had power in the border states and in sections under federal control in the South. "The general theory of the proclamation," an English paper said sardonically, "seemed to be that it was a crime to enslave a man if you were not a loyal American citizen." One can say all of that about the proclamation and I say it repeatedly but we must not forget that there was something grand about the little piece of paper. As a symbol it changed the entire course of the war and outlined a future policy of Black liberation. But I still insist that it is an error to suggest even by implication that Black people were freed by a stroke of the pen. Emancipation of the Black man in America was a long and painful process that extended over many years and it was never really complete. The Emancipation Proclamation was only one

link in a whole chain of events that stretched from Nat Turner's dark arm of vengeance to the Palm Sunday scene at Appomattox. A chain of events that included the sacrificial death of John Brown and the unrelenting fight of Black and white abolition. What the Emancipation Proclamation did was to release the energy of Black people and convert a vague war for Union into something men could get their teeth into, a war for freedom. With that change, Black people began to desert Southern plantations in droves. In desperation, planters tried to move them further into the interior. But the mass movement continued, reaching the propulsion of a South-wide general strike. There had never been anything quite like it, John Eaton said. A slave population rising up and leaving its ancient bondage, forsaking its old traditions and all the associations and attractions of the old plantation life. Coming garbed in

rags or in silks, with feet shod or bleeding, individually or in families and larger groups. Eaton, who was a high Union official, said it was like the oncoming of cities. The slave said it in a memorable song. No more driver's lash for me, no more, no more. No more driver's lash for me. Many thousands, gone. The freeing of the energy of Black people and the subsequent policy reversal which enabled Black men to enroll in the Union Army marked the decisive moment in the Civil War. With Black men fleeing Southern fields and with hundreds of thousands staging what amounted to a general strike, the Southern war effort was dealt a crippling blow. A Southern white man, John C. Underwood, said as much and I quote him here, "I had a conversation," he said, "with one of the leading white men in Richmond,

and he said to me that the enlistment of Negro troops by the United States was the turning point of the rebellion, that it was the heaviest blow they had ever received. He remarked," and I'm still quoting here, "he remarked that when the Negroes deserted their masters and showed a general disposition to join the Union forces, intelligent men everywhere saw that the matter was ended." Among the first Black soldiers accepted by the Union Army at that time were the famous 54th and 55th Massachusetts Volunteers. These soldiers and others from all over the country struck man-sized blows for their own freedom and for the freedom of all Americans. But Fort Hudson, Fort Wagner, Olustee, Nashville, Petersburg, Richmond and 440 other major battlefield campaigns. Any accurate account of the gallantry of that war would have to include the brilliant charges of the Louisiana Native

Guards at Fort Hudson and the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers at Fort Wagner. It was the Fort Wagner charge that Harriet Tubman had in mind when she penned that eloquent and imperishably beautiful description of war. "And then we saw the lightning," she said, "and that was the guns. And then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns. And then we heard the rain falling and that was the drops of blood falling. And when we came to gather in the crops it was dead men that we reaped." In blood that fell like rain, Black men helped to cement the union of this country and made all Americans, black and white, their debtors. President Johnson said recently that Milton Olive was the third of eight black men to win

a Congressional Medal of Honor. It is something of a national tragedy really, that the president and the vast bureaucracy of the Pentagon are so ill-informed about their own history. Had the president and his advisors consulted the records in the Pentagon, they would have learned that 16 Black soldiers and four black sailors won the Congressional Medal of Honor in the Civil War alone. They would have learned that on Thursday morning September 29, 1864 at the Battle of New Market Heights, Virginia, twelve black men won Congressional Medal of Honors in one day and 30 minutes of gallant fighting. Black men fought gallantly in that war but that is not the most that can be said for them. In that war as in every other war, Black men were given less and required to do more.

Black men were promised the same pay and in general the same treatment as white soldiers. No one really expected the same treatment in the sense of courtesy, but everyone believed that a great nation would keep faith with the soldiers in the beggardly matter of pay. Black soldiers were promised $13 a month, the same pay white privates received, but they were insulted with an offer of $7. Many black regiments refused to accept the $7. When the Massachusetts legislature passed a bill providing the $6 difference, the state's Black regiments refused to accept the money, saying they were fighting for principle not money. Many Negroes fought for 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 18 months until the inequity was directed without accepting a penny from the American government. Despite discrimination in pay, assignment, equipment, despite the fact that captured Black

soldiers were sold into slavery, murdered, and subjected to barbaric indignities by Confederate soldiers, Black soldiers fought on and made a tremendous contribution to this country. In all, more than 186,000 Black men participated in the Civil War and they fought in more than 449 major battles. The Black soldiers were organized into 166 regiments, 145 infantry, seven cavalry, twelve heavy artillery, one light artillery, and one engineer. Black men also also saw service in the Union Navy, where one out of every four sailors was Black. Men say today that Black men did little to help themselves, But it is a fact of history that in proportion to the population, more Black men than white men served in the Civil War.

In addition to the soldiers and sailors more than 300,000 Black people served the Union Army as cooks, servants, teamsters, laborers, and spies. By all contemporary accounts, as distinguished from the accounts we get today, the service of Black people was crucial. Without the military help of Black Freedmen, and I'm quoting now, Abraham Lincoln said this, Abraham Lincoln said "without the military help of Black Freedmen, the war against the South could not have been won." In this historic city and this, the 104th year of quasi-freedom, We ought to remember that the emancipation of the Black man was not a gift but an achievement, an achievement paid by the blood, sweat, and tears of hundreds of thousands of gallant men and women. We ought to remember also

that most of our problems today stem from the fact that that emancipation was half-hearted, half-baked, and incomplete and that it has never been completed. No one knew this better than the Freedmen. (Creditors?") suddenly, without food, money, A land that 4 million Freedmen perceived almost from the beginning that the House of Freedom was built on sand. Never before had an emancipated people been dealt with so harshly. Unlike the emancipated serfs of Russia, the Black peasants of America received no interest in the land they had tilled for hundreds of years. They were free. Free to the wind, free to the rain, free to the wrath and hostility of the ex-master. They had no tools, they had no shelter, they had no cooking utensils, and they were surrounded by hostile men who were determined

to prove that emancipation was a mistake. In this hostile atmosphere with nothing working for them but hope and faith and a certain tenacity of spirit, Black people began their odyssey as free men. In the first years of freedom tens of thousands of Black people died of privation, disease, and want. In some communities one out of every four Negroes died and mourners gathered on the sidelines and began to weep for the poor Negroes who they said was destined to disappear like the Indians. "The child is already born," crowed the Natchez, Mississippi Democrat, "who will behold the last Negro in the state of Mississippi." Dr. C. K. Marshall, a learned and wealthy preacher, was more precise. He predicted that Black people

would disappear from America by the first day in January 1920. The good preacher was wrong, as you can see. The Freedmen tightened their belts and to the consternation of the mourners, their tribe increased. Painfully, in fear and trembling, Black people picked up the threads of a social life that had been destroyed hundreds of years before in Africa, as Mr. Johnson, I believe has pointed out. Who were these people? What do they want? What did freedom mean to them? The evidence is incontrovertible, there was a mania for land and education. The Freedmen's Bureau, a temporary government agency that paved the way from slavery to freedom, and heroic New England schoolmarms, many of them from Boston, satisfied their hunger for letters,

but no one, and this was the great tragedy of rRconstruction, no one satisfied their hunger for land. Some men said the freedmen were entitled to retributive justice. But "retributive" was an unnecessarily large word to the freedmen. All they wanted was a little back pay. They saw what only the wisest saw, that freedom was not free without a firm economic foundation. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts saw it. So did Thaddeus Stevens. To Stevens more than to any other man the freedmen owe their undying faith, faith in the magical phrase "40 acres and a mule." In and out of Congress Stevens demanded that large Southern plantations be confiscated and distributed to Freedmen in 40-acre lots. Congress of course refused to sanction this revolutionary departure and Stevens, always

a realist, admitted that the dream was stillborn. Charles Sumner made a similar fightin the US Senate. And when that body refused to countenance homes and land for Freedmen, Sumner, the elegant Harvard man, the orator, the scholar, the passionate advocate of human freedom, went home and wept. There were tears too on Southern plantations when Federal officials tried to reclaim land that had been distributed with temporary titles. Black people picked up stones and drove them away. General O. Howard, the head of the Freedmen's Bureau, went to South Carolina to try to explain the situation. He called a large assembly of Black people and stood on a platform looking out into the sea of Black faces and words failed him. He could not find words to say it. How does one tell a people

that they have been betrayed again? How does one tell them that they have been taken again? To cover his confusion and his shame, General Howard asked the assembly to sing him one of the good old Negro spirituals and a Black woman in that crowd was up to the occasion. She opened her mouth and out came words tinged with insufferable sadness. "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen." Howard, a gentle one-armed humanitarian broke down on the platform and cried like a baby. There were tears. There were rivers of tears. But no land and few mules. Without land, without tools, without capital or access to credit,

the Freedmen drifted into a form of peonage: the sharecropping system. Land reform, as Myrdal, and other modern scholars have pointed out, was an indispensable prerequisite for lasting reconstruction in America. The failure of the Radical Republicans to achieve that basic objective doomed reconstruction from the start and paved the way to our present crisis. But nobody could see that then. At war's end, few politicians knew what to do with the freedmen. As late as April 1865, Lincoln was toying with the idea of voluntary deportation. A few weeks before his death he asked Ben Butler of Massachusetts to figure out the logistics of deporting the Freedmen to another land. Butler came back two days later with a very very sad story. "Mr. President," he said, "I have gone carefully over my

calculations as to the power of the country to export the Negroes of the South. And I assure you that using all your naval vessels and all the merchant marine fit to cross the seas in safety, it will be impossible for you to transport to the nearest place half as fast as Negro children will be born here." The Black man, in short, was in America to stay. What was to be done with him? As far as possible Lincoln and his successor Andrew Johnson tried to ignore that question. Both men proposed to reconstruct the Southern states on the basis of the pre-war, lily white, electorate. Neither man came to grips with the question of the Negro, although Abraham Lincoln suggested privately that very intelligent Negroes and Union veterans be given the right to vote. An extraordinary convergence of forces doomed the Lincoln and Johnson plan and

gave Black people their first national victory. As it turned out, the North needed the Negro at that time almost as much as the Negro needed the North. The freeing of the slaves was paradoxically a political boon to the South. Under the old system every slave counted as three-fifth of a person in apportioning representation, but now each slave counted as a whole person and if the South took advantage of that situation it would return to the national fold with increased political power and additional seats in Congress. Now more than anything else the industrial North feared the resurgence of hostile agrarian-minded Southerners. There were, to be sure, some idealists like Sumner and Stevens who said the slaves should be given land and ballots because it was just, but most Americans then and now were not willing to go that far. While men debated, while public opinion was congealing, the South for the second time in this decade played into the hands of Northern

agitators and politicians. Having been whipped by the Yankees, the South avenged its rout by whipping Negroes. A brutal reign of terror swept the South and hundreds of Freedmans were massacred in riots staged by policemen and other public officials. Nor was this all. The new Johnson legislators refused to make even a token gesture toward Black liberation, and passed harsh Black codes which virtually re-enslaved Negroes. The North, still reeling under the impact of Lincoln's assassination' was enraged, and Thad Stephens, seizing the moment, moved swiftly, organizing a joint committee of Congress which seized control of Reconstruction, put the South under military control, and ordered new elections in which all males could vote. Under this election, under this registration more than one million black people were put on the books of the South, and

in five states it was discovered that black people constituted a majority of the registered voters, and these states were South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, and Alabama. The passage of the 14th and 15th Amendment and later the Civil Rights Bill of 1875, Reconstruction reached a climax and some people were heard to say, as people would say almost 100 years later after the passage of another civil rights bill, that the struggle was over and that freedom was last a reality. They were wrong and it would take time and much blood to undeceive them. The awakening began with the promising political revolution. Black men were elected to the legislatures of every Southern state. In South Carolina Black men had an overwhelming majority in every rep-- legislation [i.e. legislative?] session except one. In that state and other Southern states. Negroes served as lieutenant governors, secretaries of state, treasurers, superintendents of education, and held

other offices. There was also a bumper crop of Black judges, assessors, and sheriffs. Twenty Negroes were sent to the House of Representatives, two Negroes were elected to the U.S. Senate, and a prominent Black politician, P.B.S. Pinchback, served briefly as Governor of Louisiana. Many would say later that Black people were disenfranchised because they did not understand the duties of citizenship. But the trouble was that they understood their duties too well. If politics is the science of who gets what, where, when, and how much, then the Black masses of the Reconstruction period demonstrated a sheer genius for the game. The Black leaders of this revolution were typical American political types. Some like Robert Brown Elliott, a graduate of Eton, and Francis Cardozo, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, were handsomely educated. Others were ex-slaves who pulled themselves up

by their bootstraps. Both of the two senators were college educated men and Blanche Kelso Bruce, who was elected to the Senate for a full term beginning in 1875, was very militant. Unlike some modern Black politicians, he always said, "I'm a Negro and I'm proud of it." We need not concern ourselves here with the myths of corruption and ignorance that men used to overthrow the Reconstruction governments. The wild charges are ex parte accounts from men who murdered and stole in order to regain power. And most of the evidence would not be admissible in the meanest police court. The fact is that practically all of the major Black leaders of Reconstruction had more formal education than Abraham Lincoln. Although there was some corruption, it has been magnified out of all proportion, for in fact none of the reconstruction

governments reached the scale of theft of the Tammany Ring of New York or some of our more picturesque [?] rings and rogues today. The basic problem of Reconstruction was not graft or education; the basic problem was Black power. A Southern historian said as much, "the worst crime of which Reconstruction leaders have been adjudged," he said, "was the violation of the American caste system. The crime of crimes was to encourage Negroes in voting, office-holding, and other functions of social equality." The governments created by Black leaders and their white allies were excellent instruments which dragged the South screaming and crying into the modern world. Slavery and servitude were abolished. So was the ancient custom of imprisonment for debt. The property rights of women were protected, and poor whites were freed from the shackles of feudalism. It is a

point of immense significance, I think, that white women and poor whites were freed along with the Black people of the South. Black politicians were largely responsible for the most important innovation in Reconstruction governments: the establishment of a public school system for poor and rich, white and black. In Louisiana, South Carolina, and other states incidentally. the public schools were integrated. And it seems likely that at that time more students attended integrated schools in New Orleans than attend integrated schools in Boston or New York or Chicago today. This period ended with a counterrevolution and a betrayal. The Republican governments in the South were undermined by a revolutionary campaign of terror and intimidation directed by the Klan and other colorful organizations with names like Mother's Little Helpers and the Baseball Club of the First Baptist Church.

It has been estimated, it has been estimated that more than 100,000 black people were killed finally before the freedmen of the south were pacified. This revolution was legitimatized [sic] by the compromise of 1877. A political deal that gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency in exchange for a suspension of constitutional safeguards which protected the Negro voters of the South. This bargain, which shaped the future of the Negro as much as the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments was signed, sealed, and delivered. Hayes was elected. The troops were withdrawn. And the South began the long process of whipping Black people into submission. During this white time the conscience of America went to sleep and the Supreme Court, of all institutions, drove the last nail in the social coffin of the Black man. In a series of decisions culminating in Plessy vs. Ferguson,

the courts sucked the meaning out of the 14th Amendment and invalidated the Reconstruction law. When the Supreme Court got through with the 14th and the 15th Amendments, a Black man had no rights white men were bound to respect in America, unless the Black man in question had an enormous amount of money, a staff of expert lawyers, and an infinite amount of time. By guile then, by artifice, by fraud and intimidation, Reconstruction and democracy were done to death in America in the last quarter of the 19th century. As the years wore on the area of Black expressiveness narrowed, and by World War One it was considered subversive for Black men to hold public office in the South. By that time the whole Black population had been reduced to a form of

group servitude. In the South, with this approval of the Supreme Court and every structure of power in the North was grinding out Jim Crow laws of increasing severity. The long term effects of this turnabout were disastrous not only to the Negro but to the South and to America. Having lost their power, Black men soon lost the power of their being. Using the state apparatus, white men push Black men out of skilled trades and shamelessly appropriated the surplus funds in fraudulent sharecropper transaction. Even worse, the state deliberately fostered ignorance and multiplied Black criminals who were fed into the maw of the enormously profitable convict system. A totalitarian system came into being in the heart of America, and America, in sanctioning that system, became less than a

democracy. A solid block of reaction in the South stood athwart every impulse of reform and renovation in America and in the world and this solid block of reaction spread in ever widening circles, changing the tone and the temper of American life. Can we say then that Reconstruction was a failure? No, I don't think we can because although it was as Dubois said "nazius (?) contra mundum, Reconstruction was also at the nazius (?) pro mundum." Back there almost 100 years ago before the rise of Afro-Asia, before the emergence of the United Nations, the Black people of America struck a blow for the disadvantaged of all peoples of all the countries of the world. That attempt did not fail in the realm of the spirit, nor for that matter did they fail in the realm of the practical, for the 14th and 15th

Amendments were permanent steps forward. If these amendments had not been ratified in that era, they would never have been ratified. There's never been a period in America before or since when the climate of public opinion was favorable to the passage of national legislation of the breadth and scope of the war amendments. Beyond all that we must know that Black Reconstruction established beyond question the right of Black men to participate in power and it created political instruments that would revolutionize America and the South if concretized today. Reconstruction in all its various facets was a supreme lesson for America, the right reading of which might still mark a turning point in our history. For 10 years in these United States, for 120

months, America tried democracy. Black and white people married each other in the South and the world did not end. Little black boys and little white girls went to school together in the South, and the confederate dead did not rise, did not in fact make a sign at all, though the Klan said they were turning over in the grave. All over the South in these years Blacks and whites shared streetcars, restaurants, hotels, honors, dreams. The sun rose then and the sun set, and the Constitution of the United States of America had meaning from Maine to Mississippi for 10 short years. And if we are to avert the social catastrophe which followed that period, if we are to build that America which was dreamed, which was promised, and

which has never existed. The building, whether it starts today or ten years from today, must go back to the lessons learned in that first Reconstruction, the indivisibility of political and economic power, participation by all the people, and light for slaves in America, poor and rich, black and white. [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] [Host] Does anyone doubt that Mr. Bennett has made a fantastic contribution to American society?

At this time I'd like to bring Mr. Bennett back to the podium and I'm sure there are a flock of questions. Who has the first? Yes. [Questioner1] (inaudible) [Host, to Bennett] Would you repeat the question for me? [Questioner1] (inaudible) (inaudible) [Bennett] The question, in case you did not hear, was that I mentioned in the book "Before the Mayflower," P.B.S. Pinchback was elected to the U.S. Senate. The question was "does the Congressional record state the reason why he was denied admittance?" Yes. A reason is given.

Pinchback was denied his seat because of, allegedly, because of the turbulence in Louisiana at the time. Now let's make a short background thing. The political situation in Louisiana at the time was very very confused. Two legislatures and two governors were competing for power. Finally the United States government recognized P.B.S. Pinchback, who was a lieutenant governor at that time, and he in fact became the de facto governor of Louisiana and remained so for 34 days. He's recognized by the President, he's recognized by the whole United States government. After serving his 34 days, Pinchback was elected by the Senate of that state, by the legislature of that state to the US Congress. And he went to the Congress and presented his credentials, and Congress refused to seat him, asked him to step aside. Some striking parallels between

some recent happenings in America and things happened a hundred years ago. They asked him to step aside while they investigated his credentials. Well, after three years, about three years of debating Pinchback's qualifications, the Senate voted, refused to seat him. And interestingly enough several Republican senators, roughly 12, perhaps more, several Republican senators broke ranks and voted against Pinchback. And the reason stated officially for the record was because of the confusion of the political situation in Louisiana at the time. And it was said it is very difficult to find out which was the legitimate government. At the time it was said repeatedly, and it's been said repeatedly in the modern age that Pinchback was in fact denied admittance to the Congress, to the Senate of the US, United States because he was a Negro.

That is not an official record but it was said in newspapers at the time and various other places, a very interesting thing I just mentioned it as a cute story. It was said at the time that Pinchback was not admitted to the Senate because the wives of the senators had some qualms about associating with Pinchback's wife. Pinchback was in many ways, in some ways similar to Adam Clayton Powell. He's a very bold man, he's a very arrogant man. He knew what power was. And he knew how to use it. And it was said at the time that of course that he was denied admittance for this reason and it was said also that when Blanche Kelso Bruce presented himself to the Senate for admittance in 1875, he was advised very strongly by people in the know to delay his marriage until after he was admitted. He

delayed his marriage and he was admitted and I'm not saying that that was the reason but he did in fact delay his marriage and he was in fact advised not to marry until he got into the Senate. Yes, in the back. [Questioner2] (inaudible) [Bennett] Well I can say as an individual, as a Black man, as a father of four Black children I can and will comment. I cannot have-- I want it understood completely that I'm not speaking for Ebony magazine, I'm speaking for myself. I think in my opinion Adam Clayton Powell was asked to stand aside primarily because of racism. I think this is a very dangerous thing in America. I think it's a reflection of a very dangerous spirit that is abroad in the land. And it seems to me that if all Black people and all white people would mobilize themselves

to meet this spirit, I am aware of the fact that other charges have been alleged against Adam Clayton Powell as other charges were raised against P.B.S. Pinchback, but I think it's highly significant that Powell was singled out in this manner. I for one would be perfectly agreeable to a renovation of the antiquated committee system of the Congress, of the Senate, and of the House of Representatives. I for one would be perfectly in favor of reform throughout the legislative branch. But so long as Adam Clayton Powell is singled out for what a great many people are doing and have been doing for almost 100 years, I am led to believe the basic reason is race, and beyond race, not only race, I think we've known in America and unfortunately we've shown in America repeatedly that we can accept certain individuals,

certain Black people if they know their place. I think more than race, the problem with Adam Clayton Powell was that Adam Clayton Powell did not know his place, and would not stay in it. That is my personal opinion. [applause] Next question. Yes. [Questioner 3] What do you see, what is different now (inaudible)-- I'm wondering now if the whole rise of Africa and Asia is part of-- what future do you see for African unity and Asian togetherness in relation to the Black man in America, the work that Malcolm X was engaged in, and what other signs, if there are others even, of hope, are there present now that were not present during the first reconstruction? [Bennett] One important factor I think is at least

the level of education, the level of literacy. When I mention education I'm not speaking of Plato and all that jazz. [laughter] I'm talking about education, real education. I think the level of education among Black people at this time is higher. I think the level of consciousness, and I think this is more important than education, I think the level of consciousness is higher. I think we have at this moment, at this time within the Black middle class, within the talented 10, talented 20, enough Black people to lead, to avoid certain pitfalls that were made in the Reconstruction period, if they will do it. And that's a big if. I think also at this time you have an interesting difference, difference almost diametrically opposed to the situation. During the first white backlash,

what I call the first white backlash, the whole world you see was going in a different direction. Amazing that you would have an attempt to put Black people in power in America in the last quarter of the 19th century when at the same time you had the beginning of this movement to colonize all the colored peoples in the world. And the overthrow of Black Reconstruction in America was closely linked to the creeping colonization movement which Europe in the last quarter of the 19th century, I believe I'm right, threw itself across all of Africa. Heretofore it had been content to exploit by individuals. In the last part of the 19th century Europe wanted the land, took over the land in Africa, the same thing happened in Asia. And yet

you had this interesting little pocket of Black people in America grasping for political power and to a certain extent getting it. So the whole trend of the world, the whole trend of industrialism, the whole trend of colonialism was opposed to what the Black people were trying to do in the Reconstruction period. Here again a hundred years later I think the whole trend of the modern world I think is opposed to the reactionary spirit of white supremacy. I think white supremacists, racists of whatever kind find themselves at this moment fighting with their back against the wall in terms of the whole world. I think this is a tremendously important plus. But I would say finally again a personal opinion I can't help add. Say finally that it all depends really on the degree of organization, the degree of determination, and degree of consciousness that Black people exhibit in America here as to

what will happen. And I think Black people are in a very very desperate situation. We are a minority here. And we must find, within the confines of that minority, some way to force the minority [i.e. majority?] to live up to the ideals it preaches in its Bible and in its Constitution. It's a very difficult situation but I think it depends on what we do here. Yes. [Questioner4] In your opinion does Senator Edward Brooke from this Commonwealth know his place? [laughter] [Bennett] I'm not speaking for Ebony Magazine, I'm going to be absolutely honest, yes I think he knows his place it's my personal opinion. Yes. [Questioner5] Is there any chance that your talk will be printed or used in schools? [Bennett] I don't know.

I must confess, and I'm very sorry, the scribble-scrabble of notes, [inaudible talk from audience] I'll have to get it together, but if I can get it together I'd be very glad to make it available to Mr. Jones. It's not in proper shape at the time. [applause] Yes. [Questioner6] Would you like to comment on the Back to Africa Movement before and during the Civil War? [Bennett] His question was would I comment on the Back to Africa movement of Black intellectuals before and during the Civil War. As you know, has anyone discussed this, you know there was a very strong Back to Africa movement in the early part of the 19th century that originated not with black people, but with white people. Watching the problem become more complex, some

humanitarian whites saw no way to solve the problem in America and decided that the best thing to do would be to ship Black people, as they put it, back to Africa. And they started the colonization movement And eventually obtained Liberia. And eventually a great many people went there. At the same time most Black intellectuals at that time opposed the movement greatly. It's a very interesting thing, I digress, but you know Black people called themselves Africans until the about the middle of the 19th century, Negro, colored, they were Africans. African Baptist Church, all of the first institutions, African Baptist Church, African Methodist Church, African Reading Society, African Chorale,

they were Africans up until about the middle of the 19th century but when this movement began to really expel free Negro, the movement to expel free Negroes and to leave slaves here, the free Negro colonies decided that they would change their name and they would stop using "African" essentially for this reason. And a few Black people supported that move including John Russwurm, who was the first editor of a Black newspaper in America. And because of this he was looked upon, it was very interesting, the way we Black people feel about some Uncle Toms today. In the beginning the Back to Africa Black intellectuals held approximately that spot. But things got worse in America. and by the 1850s a great many Black people were reaching out for ties to Africa and were championing approaches to Africa; among these Martin Delany who was perhaps the first Black nationalist on a

national level and several other Black abolitionists and people in Boston, people in New York. During the Civil War and Reconstruction actually a small number of Black people left South Carolina and other states and went to Liberia. But throughout this period, after the 1850s when things became very very bad for Black people in America, from this period on you find an increasingly large number of Black intellectuals articulating some idea of a return to Africa and trying to find instruments to actualize that idea. Beyond all that, from the middle of the 19th century on, I think you will find that Black intellectuals showed increasingly more an idea of spiritual, spiritual closeness to Africa and championing the ties in that way. Dubois was an early figure in that movement. Alexander Crummell was

even earlier and of course the movement continued on to Marcus Garvey, to Malcolm, and you have Elijah Muhammad today. Yes. [Questioner 7] Do you feel there was any connection between white supremacy and Malcolm X's assassination? [Bennett] Do I feel that there was any connection between white supremacy and the assassination of Malcolm X. I have no evidence that-- other than what came out in court. I have my own views and suspicions. The most I could say from a public platform at this time is that I have no evidence to substantiate any view that white racists were directly implicated in the act. Of course, as has been said repeatedly, white racists created the whole climate and environment in which he worked and in which necessarily

he came to his death. But as for having specific evidence of the involvement of white racists, I have no specific evidence, but I have suspicions. [Questioner 8] (inaudible) [Bennett] It would be substantially the same, I would perhaps detail it more. [Host] One more question. [Bennett] One more question. Yes, young lady. [Questioner 9] (inaudible) [Bennett] Very good question and-- we have a question here. Yes I will repeat it. The question was "are white people trying to run away from Black people by going to the moon?" [laughter] Very difficult question to answer. [laughter]

In the first place I think the whole moon venture is essentially, has become, at any rate, a power thing involving Russia and America. At this particular point I think power is more involved than race. Though if the climate is admirable and if we succeed, I think we should remain vigilant to keep whites from making it lily-white too. [laughter, applause] [Host] The Negro in the Civil War and Black Reconstruction, part three in the Community Lecture Series on the Negro in American Society. You heard this evening Lerone Bennett, author. This third meeting in the Roxbury-Newton Community Lecture Series was recorded on January 15th

1967 at the Patrick T. Campbell Junior High School in Dorchester. Next Sunday evening at this same time, part four, Dr. Adelaide Hill, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University, views the early urbanization of the Negro. [singing, lyrics] No more love for me, many vows ago No more deck of corn for me, no more, no more. No more bed of corn for me, many vows ago. [different song] Come by here, my lord, come by here, come right here, oh my lord, come by here. While I need you, lord, come by here, oh lord, come by here. Come by here, my lord, come by here. Come by here, my lord, come by here. Oh, lord, come by here. We need you lordy, come by here. We need you lordy, come by here. Oh, lord, come by here. [different song] Wading in the water, wading in the water, wade in the water, wade in the water, children, God's gonna trouble these waters. Wade in the water, wade in the water children, wade in the children,

God's gonna trouble these waters. See that band of resting whites, God's gonna trouble these waters. It look like a band of Israelites. God's gonna trouble these waters.

Wade in the water, wade in the water, children, wade in the water, god's gonna trouble these waters. See that band all dressed in red, god's gonna trouble these waters. Look like a band that Moses led. God's gonna trouble these waters. [different song] We will not moved, we shall not be moved, oh we shall not be moved. We shall not be moved, my lord, we shall not be moved. Just like a tree is guarded by the water, we shall not be moved. We shall not be moved, just like an island, we shall not be moved. Just like a tree that's guided by the water, we shall not be moved. Just like a tree that's standing in the water, we shall not be moved. [different song] This is the hammer killed young Henry. This is the hammer killed young Henry. This is the hammer killed young Henry. Won't kill me, baby baby it won't kill me. Take this hammer to the captain, take this hammer, carry it to the captain, take this hammer carry it to the captain, tell him I'm gone, tell him I'm gone. If the captain ask you, was I running, if the captain ask you, was I running, captain should ask you was I running, tell him I'm

flying, tell him I'm flying. If the captain ask you was I laughing, if the captain ask you was I laughing, captain should ask

you was I laughing, tell him "all the time," tell him "all the time,", tell him "all the time." If he should ask you [music] [music] tell him you don't know, tell him you don't know, tell him you don't know. [different song] Which side are you on, which side are you on? Which side are you on, which side are you on? My daddy was a (inaudible) Which side are you on, which side are you on? Which side are you on, which side are you on? [different song] No more auction block for me, no more, no more. No more auction block for me,

many thousands gone, many thousands gone. No more bed of corn for me, no more, no more. No more

[music] Many thousands gone. No more pain of salt for me, no more, no more. No more pain of salt for me. Many thousands gone, many thousands-- [song cuts off]