The Half Has Never Been Told

by Edward E. Baptist

  Meanwhile, the unbending anger of former Confederates against Reconstruction morphed into their grandchildren’s suspicion of the New Deal, and the insistence on the part of white southern Democrats that measures against the Depression could do nothing to alleviate black poverty or lessen white supremacy. Compared to their dominance of US politics through much of the antebellum period, and their ability to consume disproportionate quantities of the fruits of antebellum national economic growth, the postwar southern white upper class achieved only a truncated triumph. Yet white folks still kept the black folks who toiled for them in poverty, forcing African Americans to take the implicit and explicit insults of life in the Jim Crow South in silence, lest they die brutally at the hands of mobs with or without badges. No wonder so many African Americans saw no chance for freedom but to leave.14

  Still, there were things that for all their power, even the pre–Civil War enslavers themselves had not been able to control. They could create a system that seemed to reduce African Americans to body parts: feet walking like a chained machine, hands on the block and hands picking, minds and nervous systems yielding revenue, providing entertainment and pleasure. Yet there were two ways to look at the body of African America, sutured together in the trauma of slavery’s expansion. The body had two forms, two instances. One profited enslavers, and in fact, white America, North and South, had again and again agreed to co-exploit this body, which was the new slavery of the cotton fields. This African America, created by expansion, was marked by vast suffering. In it, hundreds of thousands of people died early and alone, separated from their loved ones. Millions of people were lost by millions of people. By the water’s edge, they parted.

  But tongues also spoke words that enslavers did not hear. Lungs breathed a spirit that would not yield. Enslaved men and women watched and guarded and stilled their blood, and trained their seed to wait. Even when enslavers realized, in particular moments, that enslaved people had created something else, an identity, a political unity, a common culture, a story, and a sense of how it shaped them and made them one, enslavers had forgotten, or willed themselves to forget. So people survived, and helped each other to survive, and not only to survive but to build. Thus, another body grew as the invisible twin of the one stretched out and used by white people. Eventually, the waiting had its reward. The body rose. African Americans took up arms and defeated the enslavers.

  Survival, and this kind of survival, made victory possible. Unlike its predecessors on the North American mainland, and unlike counterparts in most of the New World, the African-American culture that emerged from the crucible of nineteenth-century forced migration within the United States had no alternative but to think of itself as a political unity. Assimilation, sought by enslaved Africans and their descendants in both Brazil and in many Spanish-speaking societies, was impossible. Escape through individual manumission, an option pursued by enslaved strivers throughout the rest of the New World, was usually impossible. Escape through revolt, relying on old African identities and concepts—the Haitian option—was likewise impossible. All of these options closed, enslaved African Americans had to develop a sense of unity or crumble. And they did develop that unity, bending a narrative of history that bound them together around a clear-eyed assessment of their situation as victims of a vast crime. They had to recognize that without solidarity they would live only at the whim of a set of structures and practices designed to exploit them in every possible way.

  The political agenda that enslaved people developed, and that they exported in the words of survivors and runaways, was not assimilation, not manumission, but destruction for the whipping-machine and everything that made it work, and the transformation of America into a place that would redeem its thefts. This agenda, smuggled north in the minds and on the tongues of an intrepid and lucky few escapees, resurrected a dead antislavery movement in the United States. This agenda set a group of progressive whites on a political collision course with the slavelords and their many northern allies. Even as that political trajectory unfolded, in spaces sacred and secular, during the day and during the night, in pain and in joy, enslaved people were still finding new ways to protect and defend the human soul in the midst of the still-unfolding chaos of creative destruction. They made survival and form out of terror, theft, and death. They learned to be fast but not hurried, to lose themselves without losing their souls. All this was also the legacy of slavery’s expansion. This was the collective body that survived forced migration even as many bodies did not survive it, or died in the war that ended it, or suffered through impoverishment and disfranchisement in the wake of Reconstruction.

  In the war, survivors ended slavery. When the survivors began to die off, they could pass on to their descendants very little in the way of material wealth. So much had been stolen from them. But African Americans had a story that made them a people. They had a unity that was ultimately political. This had led them to choose solidarity over individual deals. They had lodged their claim to citizenship in the Constitution, a precedent that would grow in leverage as the century went on and the United States found itself up against enemies eager to point to the hypocrisy of first-class language and second-class practice of civil and political equality. They had, with white allies, created in the form of abolitionism the ideological template of American dissent, of progressivism, of the faith that social change, pursued with a religious zeal, could make America truer to its ideal self.

  At the same time, from lands devastated by forced migration, creativity continued to boil forth in the years after Reconstruction’s collapse. African-American cultural forms permeated and reworked American popular culture, which then exported these cultural forms to the entire globe. Over the century that followed Cade McCallum’s burial, using all these tools, working in all sorts of métiers, African-American people transformed the world. They remade the social, cultural, and political geography of the United States through their own volition in the course of the Great Migration. They changed the South and the United States and the world forever through the civil rights movement. And they built a tradition of community organization that eventually led the American electorate, in an astonishing development, to elect a black president who was the son of an African immigrant. As a political force, the solidarity that African Americans first built while still enslaved remains impressively coherent, generations later, despite two centuries of temptations to give up, turn aside, or dissolve into nihilism.

  Image A.4. Alfred Parrott, formerly enslaved man, photographed in 1941, when he was ninety-one. Jack Delano, Farm Security Administration. Library of Congress.

  Image A.5. Formerly enslaved woman, living on a farm near Greensboro, Alabama. Jack Delano, Farm Security Administration, 1941, Library of Congress.

  The descendants of enslaved African Americans could do these mighty deeds for many reasons, but one root of every reason was this: those who survived slavery had passed down what they had learned. The gifts, the creations, the breath of spirit, songs that saved lives, lessons learned for dimes, the ordinary virtues, and the determination to survive the wolf. The lessons came down in the strong arms that held babies in sharecroppers’ cabins, in the notes of songs, in the rocking of churches, in jokes told around the water bucket on hot days of cotton-picking, and in lessons taught in both one-room schoolhouses and at places like Hampton. Day after day, year after year, the half untold was told. And in the tomb, the body stirred.

  The wind washed the sun clear of clouds. Claude Anderson scribbled the last few words with his pencil, and then noticed that the old man had come to a stop. The sunlight had marched far across the pine board floor. It must be well past noon. Glancing up, Anderson saw Lorenzo Ivy looking at him with a calm smile, one that belied the catalog of horrors he had detailed. Outside, children were calling to each other in wild play. Anderson heard two pairs of bare feet shooting down the street in chase. He could feel the dirt kicking out behind his own heels, only a few years since.

  Somewher
e, across the sea, people peered up through the barbed wire at guard towers. The story being told to justify the machine guns was one of the prisoners’ subhuman race. It was a story told with phrases that the defenders of slavery had coined to claim their righteous hold on Ivy when he had been a child. Somewhere, across the sea, a man in a gulag huddled under a blanket woven from cotton picked by Anderson’s and Ivy’s lost cousins. Somewhere, across the ocean, a child in a tavern entrance heard a record playing, heard a shocking combination of correctness and violation, a trumpet singing a new song. Somewhere, in fact at the far end of the same old slave trail that led through Danville and over the mountain, a mother huddled by Mississippi’s Highway 61 with her children. Put out with the coming of the tractor, she clutched a Chicago address in her hand. And somewhere—not far from Danville—law students three generations from slavery huddled, planning the next move against Jim Crow and lynching.

  Another shift of wind shook the curtains, another minute had marched the sun further, to an angle that suddenly cast the deep wrinkles on Ivy’s face into relief. He rose, creaking audibly. Sometimes these old men wanted chewing tobacco; Anderson often gave the women snuff. Ivy’s hand only asked for a grip. “I know a lot more I can tell you some other time; I’ll write it out. Just send me an envelope like you said and I’ll write it all down and send it to you.”15 Anderson thanked him, and he stepped through the door the old man held open. He walked down the steps, opened the door of his black Ford, dropped his notepads on the passenger side, and slid into the driver’s seat. He started the engine and leaned his head out through the rolled-down window. The old man was still on the porch. “Be good now,” Lorenzo Ivy said, and turned back through the open door.

  Image A.6. Great-grandchildren of enslaved men and women, preparing to leave the cotton South, 1930s. Marion Wolcott, Works Progress Administration, 1939. Library of Congress.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Any book that takes this long to write inevitably leads one to incur multiple debts. The power of compound interest eventually renders those debts completely unpayable. I’ll just consider this a statement of bankruptcy. In this list of debts, I must begin with the fact that this book would never have seen the light of day without the unflagging support of Lara Heimert, editor and director of Basic Books. I can’t thank her enough for her support, patience, careful readings, and pointed questions. Other sources of support and expertise at the press and in the production process include Sandra Beris and Leah Stecher of Basic, line editor Roger Labrie, and copyeditor Kathy Streckfus. Linda Beltz Glaser and Syl Kacapyr of Cornell helped with promotion ideas, David Ethridge did the maps, and Lillian Baptist helped create the cover concept.

  Research funding came above all from Cornell University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the University of Miami, but also from the University of São Paulo, Tulane University, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the University of North Carolina, and Duke University.

  No work of history is possible without the support of the librarians, archivists, and institutions that make original research possible. Support and assistance came from: Cornell University Library and its entire staff; Duke University Library and its staff, especially Elizabeth Dunn, Nelda Webb, and Janie Morris; the University of North Carolina’s Southern Historical Collection, especially Laura Clark Brown, Tim West, Tim Pyatt, Shayera Tangri, and John White; Tulane University’s Howard-Tilton Library and its Special Collections Department; the New Orleans Notarial Archives; the New Orleans Public Library, especially Greg Osborne; the New York Public Library; the New York Historical Society; Louisiana State University’s Hill Memorial Library; the National Archives (Washington, DC, and Fort Worth); the Chicago Historical Society; the Newberry Library; the Virginia Historical Society; and the University of Miami Library. The Natchez Historical Collection deserves special mention for the intellectual and moral support given to scholars by Mimi Miller, as does the University of West Alabama’s Center for Study of the Black Belt. I thank Zachary Kaplan, Gregg Lightfoot, and Sam Robinson for research assistance. Thanks go as well to Jonathan Pritchett, James Wilson, Richard H. Kilbourne, Dale Tomich, and Mimi Miller for sharing data, to CISER (Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research) for help in storing and analyzing data, especially Bill Block, Lynn Martin, and Jeremy Williams; and also to Jordan Suter, Nancy Brooks, Peter Hirtle, Bob Kibbee, and Michelle Paolillo for help in analyzing data.

  I was able to get useful feedback from audiences and co-panelists at numerous presentations of portions of the materials contained here, so I thank those who participated in and organized such events, including the Southern Historical Association, Social Science History Association, Humboldt Foundation, American Philosophical Society, Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton University, Federal University of São Paulo, University of Rio de Janeiro, University of São Paulo, British-American Nineteenth-Century History Conference, Cambridge University, Cornell University Society for the Humanities, Harvard University, Brown University, University of North Carolina, Tulane University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern Mississippi (Gulfport), University of the West Indies (St. Augustine), Georgetown University, the Huntington Library, and Columbia University.

  Then there is the group of people who read and commented on all or on significant parts of the book as it was being written and revised. These include Sarah Franklin, and Rafael Marquese and his students and colleagues at the University of São Paulo, including Waldimiro Lourenço, Leo Marques, and Tamis Parron. The group also includes Richard Dunn, Chuck Mathewes, Joshua Rothman, Tom Balcerski, Eric Tagliacozzo, Adam Rothman, Julia Ott, Dale Tomich, and Tony Kaye. I thank others who not only engaged with the arguments in the book, but from whom I have learned on a journey that has been going on so long that some of you have probably forgotten. But I remember: Lauren Acker, Rosanne Adderley, Ligia Aldana, Tony Badger, Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Sven Beckert, Catherine Biba, Ser Seshs Ab Heter-Clifford M. Boxley, Jeff Brosco, Vince Brown, the late Clark Cahow, Corey Capers, Mickey Casad, Catherine Clinton, Mari Crabtree, Fred D’Aguiar, Edwidge Danticat, Christine Desan, Doug Egerton, the late Robert F. Engs, Freddi Evans, Susan Ferber, Laura Free, Johan Grimm, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Will Harris, Maurice Jackson, Walter Johnson, James Lake, Triwa Lee-Chin, Jonathan Levy, David Libby, Gregg Lightfoot, Mary Maples Dunn, Stephanie McCurry, John H. McNeill, Delores McQuinn, Alice Michtom, Stephen Mihm, Daegan Miller, Duncan Morgan, Brent Morris, Chris Morris, Viranjini Munansinghe, Michael O’Brien, Sarah Pearsall, Dylan Penningroth, David Perry, Larry Powell, Marcus Rediker, Elizabeth Pryor Stordeur, Olivia Robba de Rocha, Pharissa Robinson, Seth Rockman, Dan Rood, Ricardo Salles, Manisha Sinha, Adriane Lentz-Smith, Jason Scott Smith, Nicole Spruill, Daisybelle Thomas-Quinney, Darla Thompson, Phil Troutman, Rob Vanderlan, Harry Watson, Jonathan Wells, Mark Wilson, Betty Wood, Kirsten Wood, and Michael Zakim.

  Here at Cornell University, I’ve benefited from a wonderful and supportive group of colleagues. I especially appreciate the friendship and intellectual exchange I have enjoyed with Holly Case, Derek Chang, Duane Corpis, Jeff Cowie, Ray Craib, Maria Cristina Garcia, Robert Harris, Louis Hyman, the late Michael Kammen, Walter LaFeber, Fred Logevall, Tamam Loos, Vladimir Micic, Larry Moore, Mary Beth Norton, Jon Parmenter, Gabriele Piccoli, Mary Roldan, Aaron Sachs, Nick Salvatore, Suman Seth, Joel Silbey, and Eric Tagliacozzo.

  I appreciate the confidence of Cornell’s History Department, especially a series of supportive chairs: Sandra Greene, Victor Koschmann, Barry Strauss, and Isabel Hull. The History staff, above all Katie Kristof and Maggie Edwards, not only did a great job, but also taught me a lot about friendship. In my other life on campus, on West Campus and especially at Carl Becker House, I have to thank Cindy Hazan and Laura Schaefer Brown in particular, but also Renee Alexander, Garrick Blalock, Rick Canfield, Isaac Kramnick, and Elmira Mangum. Above all, when it comes to Becker House I am deeply grateful to our incredible assistant dean, Amanda Carreiro. Along with her, I thank ou
r assistants Jesse Hilliker and Victoria Gonzalez, as well as Tony Kveragas and Eileen Hughes, and the wonderful graduate and undergraduate student staff members with whom I have worked. Among the latter, I want to name in particular Neal Allar, Tinenenji Banda, Fritz Bartel, Joyce Chery, Ryan Edwards, Kelsey Fugere, Jeremy Fuller, Aziza Glass, Darvin Griffin, Louis Hopkins, Janice Chi-lok Lau, Javier Perez Burgos, Jon Senchyne, and Kavita Singh.

  I have benefited for many years from the teaching, guidance, and mentoring of Drew Gilpin Faust, Richard Dunn, the late John Hope Franklin, David Johnson, Robert F. Moore, and my parents Ed and Lynda Baptist. I would forget my own self without my friends Luther Adams, Stephen Bumgardner, and Justin Warf to remind me of who I am.