New Books in African American Studies

In the 1940s, the United States military performed an “experiment,” the substance of which was the formation of an all-black aviation unit known to history as the “Tuskegee Airmen.” In light of the honorable service record of countless African Americans, allowing blacks to become fighter and bomber pilots might not seem very “experimental” to you, but you have to put yourself in the mindset of the era in question to understand how “experimental” it was. Jim-Crow segregation was nearly universal, especially, though not exclusively, in the South. The armed forces were similarly segregated, with blacks serving in what might be mildly called “auxiliary roles” and whites doing all the commanding and fighting. There were few black officers (and they never supervised white troops) and no black military pilots. Most of the (nearly all white) “brass” could not conceive of integrated units and doubted the ability of African Americans to serve as line officers; most of those in the majority white voting public shared these views. When the argument to native ability failed (after all, black units had performed well in the Civil War and World War I), opponents of integration fell back on a familiar argument: if “we” allow “them” to serve with “us,” chaos will ensue and fighting effectiveness will suffer. But black leaders didn’t buy it; they wanted integration. The Roosevelt administration sat on the fence. It clearly couldn’t embark on full-scale integration (and, it must be said, FDR himself had doubts about it), but it couldn’t forgo black votes. So it compromised: blacks would get one high-profile flying unit, but integration would be deferred. And so the great experiment began. Todd Moye has mined the archives and talked to the airmen to tell the tale of how said experiment proceeded in his terrific Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II (OUP, 2010). It’s a tale I found both uplifting and shocking. I’m not usually one to heap praise on people, but the pilots themselves were remarkably brave. It is hard for me to imagine what they went through to get their wings and fight for the country they loved. I found myself again and again asking “How could they do that?” Todd does a terrific job of setting the scene and helping us understand their struggle. I confess I find it just as hard to enter the mindset of those whites who stood against them. They were racists and more frighteningly racists with absolutely clean consciences. When they said that blacks didn’t have the “right stuff” to become pilots, to command troops, to serve in integrated units, they believed it. Their testimony, again very ably related by Todd, is simply difficult to read. Here too I found myself asking again and again “How could they do that?” It was a different world. Parts of it, however, are obviously still with us. What is “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” but the executive branch’s attempt to find a “middle way” between integrationists and their opponents? Harry Truman, where are you now? Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

I asked my wife if she knew who W. E. B. Du Bois was. She did, as would most Americans. I then asked her if she knew where Du Bois was born and raised. She did not, and most Americans wouldn’t either. The odd thing is that Du Bois, who was one of the founders of the American civil rights movement and perhaps the most famous black public intellectual of the 20th century, was born and raised a stone’s throw from where my wife grew up in Western Massachusetts. If you are from Illinois, you know it is the “Land of Lincoln.” If you are from Virginia, you know that Jefferson was a Virginian. If you are from Kansas (as I am), you know that Eisenhower is a native son (even though he’s not, really). But the people of Western Massachusetts forgot Du Bois was one of their own. Or did they just choose not to remember? Amy Bass explores this question in her challenging new book Those About Him Remained Silent: The Battle Over W. E. B. Du Bois (Minnesota UP, 2009). Those who wanted to commemorate Du Bois saw a deep thinker who had overcome racism and helped found the civil rights movement; those who did not want to remember him saw Du Bois the communist who had abandoned the United States for Africa. Du Bois was both and much, much more. But historical monuments cannot reflect such complexity; they are all about simplification through selective recollection. Du Bois, however, just couldn’t be made simple. So the battle was joined and, to some degree, is still going on today. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

This is the first in a series of podcasts that New Books in History is offering in conjunction with the National History Center. The NHC and Oxford University Press have initiated a book series called “Reinterpreting History.”The volumes in the series aim to convey to readers how and why historians revise and reinterpret their understanding of the past, and they do so by focusing on a particular historical topic, event, or idea that has long gained the attention of historians. The first contribution to the “Reinterpreting History” series is Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (Oxford University Press, 2008). Today we’ll be talking to the editors of the volume, Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan. You may think that historians normally study states or nations, like France and China. But they also study areas of international or imperial interaction. The most famous example of this sort of “international” history is Fernand Braudel’s The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1949), but there are many others. Among them one finds contributions to “Atlantic History,” itself a relatively new field. Its object is the “Atlantic World,” roughly, the history of the interaction of four continents (Africa, Europe, North America, and South America) from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. In this podcast, Greene and Morgan talk about the origin of the field, its work to date, and its prospects. For an introduction to Atlantic history, see Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History. Concepts and Contours (Harvard University Press, 2005) andJ. H. Elliot, Empires of the Atlantic World. Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (Yale University Press, 2006).There is also a lively Atlantic history discussion list. See H-Atlantic. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

You’ve heard of “Reconstruction,” that is, the reform of the South after the Civil War. But have you heard of “Northern Reconstruction?” Probably not. I hadn’t either until I read Leslie Schwalm’s superb new book Emancipation’s Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest (University of North Carolina Press, 2009). We tend to think of the Civil War as a Northern fight against Southern slavery. It was that to some extent. But, in our rush to congratulate ourselves on liberating those in Southern bondage, we tend to overlook the fact that blacks living in the North were treated none too well by the majority white residents. Being anti-slavery didn’t mean being pro-African American. In this meticulously researched book, Leslie traces the history of the African American migration to the Upper Midwest (Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota) during and after the war. It’s not a very pretty picture. The whites in the area were not at all receptive to the idea that emancipated slaves would live among them. White Midwesterners had deprived African Americans of their civil rights before the war and they had every intention of doing the same after the war. They were hostile to the emancipated migrants and did everything they could to see that they were kept “in their place.” That’s why even the North had to be “reconstructed.” Read this book. It will change what you think, and that can’t be said for every history. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

In just a few days, the United States will inaugurate its first black president, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. And though it’s a momentous day for the cause of equality, Mr. Obama is hardly the first African American to come to DC to serve the people of the United States. His way was paved by well over one hundred black legislators who served over the past 140 years in the House and Senate. Happily, you can read all about them in wonderful Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007 (U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Clerk, Office of History and Preservation, 2008). This is book has three cardinal virtues. First, it’s timely, as we’ve said. The editors and authors deserve praise for seeing it into print at exactly the right moment. Second, it’s well researched and written. The entries–one for each black legislator–are at once informative, rich in detail, and full of humor and pathos. Finally, it’s a beautifully designed and produced work. This book is, like its companion Women in Congress 1917-2006, a work of great craftsmanship, and should be acknowledged as such. Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007 is the sort of book you buy to keep and hand down to your children. So buy it, hand it down, and preserve the memory of those who came before President Obama. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Today we are happy to have Colin Grant on the show. Colin is that rare breed of writer who is also an excellent historian. Or is that “rare breed of historian who is also an excellent writer?” I’m not sure, but I can tell you that Negro With A Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey (Oxford UP, 2008) is a great book. The subject matter couldn’t be more interesting and the prose is as delightful as it is instructive. There are many laugh-out-loud, I-wish-I were-that-clever sentences in this book: “Scott was not to know that the UNIA leader was of the school of thought that translated ‘no’ as ‘maybe’ and maybe’ as ‘yes.'” And many others that will make you sad. Grant is that kind of writer and Garvey that kind of figure. Go buy this book. Then read it. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

This week we have Professor Colin Gordon of the University of Iowa on the show talking about his new book Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). Professor Gordon is the author of two previous monographs, Dead on Arrival: The Politics of Health Care in Twentieth Century America (Princeton University Press, 2004) and New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics in America, 1920-1935 (Cambridge University Press, 1994). Mapping Decline breaks new ground not only in our understanding of the decay of the American inner-city, but also in its use of quantitative data in combination with GIS mapping technologies. The book is full of beautiful maps that paint a vivid, if somewhat depressing, picture of American urban history. Philip J. Ethington of the University of Southern California calls Mapping Decline “a searing indictment of policymakers, realtors, and mortgage lenders for deliberate decisions that sacrificed their own city of St. Louis on the altar of race.” That it is. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Today we talked with Eric Gardner, who is chair and professor of English at Saginaw Valley State University. The interview focuses on Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West (University Press of Mississippi, 2008), a new book which Dr. Gardner both authored an introduction to and edited. This is the first collection from an African American journalist writing for the San Francisco based newspaper, the Elevator. Gardner’s introduction does an excellent job of placing Carter into both the context of the history and literature of the American West. Dr. Gardner is also the editor of Major Voices: The Drama of Slavery and has authored works which appear in the African American Review, the African American National Biography, and Legacy. Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Today we feature an interview with Kevin Mumford about his new book Newark: A History of Race, Rights and Riots in America (New York University Press, 2007). Dr. Mumford is an Associate Professor of History and African-American Studies at the University of Iowa, where he also serves as the current Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of History and the Academic Coordinator of the Sexual Studies Program. He is the author of many articles and the book, Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century (Columbia University Press, 1997). In this week’s interview, we discussed Dr. Mumford’s latest book, Newark: A History of Race, Rights and Riots in America. David Roediger of the University of Illinois raves that “Meticulously researched and engagingly written, Newark tells an important story.” Please become a fan of “New Books in History” on Facebook if you haven’t already. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies