
What Reconstruction Meant
Historical Memory in the American South
Bruce E. Baker(Author)
University of Virginia Press
Will be published approx. on 29. December 2009
Book
Paperback/Softback
978-0-8139-2877-7 (ISBN)
Description
A great deal has been written about southern memory centering on the Civil War, particularly the view of the war as a valiant lost cause. In this challenging book Bruce E. Baker looks at a related, and equally important, aspect of southern memory that has been treated by historians only in passing: Reconstruction. He examines what both white and black South Carolinians thought about the history of Reconstruction and how it shaped the way they lived their lives in the first half of the twentieth century. Baker addresses the dominant white construct of 'the dark days of Reconstruction', which was instrumental both in ending Reconstruction and in justifying Jim Crow and the disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South, setting the tone for early historians' accounts of Reconstruction. Looking back on the same era. African Americans and their supporters recalled a time of potential and of rights to be regained, inspiring their continuing struggles to change the South. The author draws on a tremendous range of newspapers, memoirs, correspondence, and published materials to show the intricate process by which the white-supremacist memory of Reconstruction became important in the 1890s as segregation and disenfranchisement took hold in the South, and how it began to crumble as the civil rights movement gained momentum. Examining the southern memory of Reconstruction, in all its forms, is an essential element in understanding the society and politics of the twentieth-century South.
Reviews / Votes
"Bruce E. Baker's latest offering, What Reconstruction Meant: Historical Memory in the American South, inspects the construction of a southern culture through the new lens of Reconstruction memory. This approach is innovative, and it adds exciting new context to the already established study of wartime memory.... When all is said and done, What Reconstruction Meant: Historical Memory in the American South is a commendable combination of history, memory, and exhaustive research. Bruce E. Baker has written a book suitable for both amateur and professional historians, particularly those interested in the study of memory and how it has been harnessed to influence the development of southern culture." - North Carolina Historical Review "This could be the first major study we have ever had of the deep significance of the memory of Reconstruction." - David W. Blight, Yale University, author of A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation"More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Charlottesville
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
6 b&w illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
390 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8139-2877-7 (9780813928777)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Bruce E. Baker is Lecturer in U.S. History at Royal Holloway, University of London. His essays have appeared in numerous publications, including most recently American Nineteenth Century History and Radicalism in the South since Reconstruction.