Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery PDF
Preview Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery
First Vintage Books Edition, August 1980 Copyright © 1979 by Leon F. Litwack All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in May 1979. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Litwack, Leon F. Been in the storm so long. 1. Afro-Americans—History—1863-1877. 2. Reconstruction. 3. Southern States—History—1865- 1877. 4. Southern States—Social conditions. 5. Afro-Americans—Southern States—History. I. Title. [E185.2.L57 1979b] 973′.0496073 80-11073 eISBN: 978-0-30777361-6 v3.1 For Rhoda with love Been in the Storm So Long I’ve been in the storm so long, You know I’ve been in the storm so long, Oh Lord, give me more time to pray, I’ve been in the storm so long. I am a motherless child, Singin’ I am a motherless child, Singin’ Oh Lord, give me more time to pray, I’ve been in the storm so long. This is a needy time, This is a needy time, Singin’ Oh Lord, give me more time to pray, I’ve been in the storm so long. Lord, I need you now, Lord, I need you now, Singin’ Oh Lord, give me more time to pray, I’ve been in the storm so long. My neighbors need you now, My neighbors need you now, Singin’ Oh Lord, give me more time to pray, I’ve been in the storm so long. My children need you now, My children need you now, Singin’ Oh Lord, give me more time to pray, I’ve been in the storm so long. Just look what a shape I’m in, Just look what a shape I’m in, Cryin’ Oh Lord, give me more time to pray, I’ve been in the storm so long. —NINETEENTH-CENTURY BLACK SPIRITUAL Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Preface Acknowledgments One “The Faithful Slave” Two Black Liberators Three Kingdom Comin’ Four Slaves No More Five How Free Is Free? Six The Feel of Freedom: Moving About Seven Back to Work: The Old Compulsions Eight Back to Work: The New Dependency Nine The Gospel and the Primer Ten Becoming a People Notes Selected Bibliography and Manuscript Sources Preface T the end of slavery in the South is to re-create a profound O DESCRIBE human drama. The story begins with the outbreak of the Civil War, when the South’s quest for independence immediately underscored its dependence on black labor and black loyalty and set in motion a social upheaval that proved impossible to contain. Throughout this devastating war, and in the immediate aftermath, the two races in the South interacted in ways that dramatized not only a mutual dependency but the frightening tensions and ambiguities that had always characterized the “peculiar institution.” The extent to which blacks and whites shaped each other’s lives and destinies and were forced to respond to each other’s presence had never been more starkly apparent. The truth of W. J. Cash’s observation—“Negro entered into white man as profoundly as white man entered into Negro, subtly influencing every gesture, every word, every emotion and idea, every attitude”—has never been more poignantly acted out. Under the stress of war, invading armies, and emerging black freedom, pretensions and disguises fell away and illusions were dissolved, revealing more about the character of slavery and racial relationships than many white men and women wished to know or to believe. The various dimensions of slavery’s collapse—the political machinations, the government edicts, the military occupation—should not be permitted to obscure the principal actors in this drama: the four million black men and women for whom enslavement composed their entire memory. For many of them, the only world they knew ended at the boundaries of the plantations and farms on which they toiled; most of them were several generations removed from the African immigrants who had been torn from their homeland and shipped in chains to the New World. The distant voices of Africa still echoed in their music, in their folk tales, in the ways they worshipped God, and in their kinship relationships. But in 1860 they were as American as the whites who lorded over them. The bondage from which black men and women emerged during and after the Civil War had varied in conditions of living, in degrees of mental and physical violence, and in the character of ownership. But the education acquired by each slave was remarkably uniform, consisting largely of lessons in survival and accommodation—the uses of humility, the virtues of ignorance, the arts of evasion, the subtleties of verbal intonation, the techniques by which feelings and emotions were masked, and the occasions that demanded the flattering of white egos and the placating of white fears. They learned to live with the uncertainties of family life, the drab diet of “nigger” food, the whippings and humiliations, the excessive demands on their labor, the wiles and changing moods of masters and mistresses, the perverted Christianity of white preachers, and the inhumanities few blacks would ever forget—a spirited slave reduced to insensibility, a father helpless to protect his wife or children, a mother in the forced embrace of the master or his sons. Not only did most of the slaves learn to endure but they managed to create a reservoir of spiritual and moral power and kinship ties that enabled them under the most oppressive of conditions to maintain their essential humanity and dignity. The slaves came to learn that the choices available to them were sharply constricted, that certain expectations would remain unrealized, that a lifetime could be spent in anticipation and disappointment, that to place any faith in the promises of white men and women or to misinterpret their occasional displays of patronizing affection might result in betrayals and frustrations that were psychologically debilitating. Each generation complied in its own ways with the demands and expectations of those who claimed to own them, sucked whatever joy they could out of their lives and families, and gave birth to still another generation of slaves. But for the black men and women who lived to experience the Civil War, there would be the moment when they learned a complex of new truths: they were no longer slaves, they were free to leave the families they had served, they could negotiate the terms of their future labor, and they could aspire to the same rights and privileges enjoyed by their former owners. It is that moment—and the days, months, and years that immediately followed—which this book seeks to capture: the countless ways in which freedom was perceived
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