Stony the road : Reconstruction, white supremacy, and the rise of Jim Crow / Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., author.

Book

New York : Penguin Press, 2019.

xxii, 296 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm

A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that resubjugated them, as seen through the prism of the war of images and ideas that have left an enduring racist stain on the American mind. The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked 'a new birth of freedom' in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the 'nadir' of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance. Through his close reading of the visual culture of this tragic era, Gates reveals the many faces of Jim Crow and how, together, they reinforced a stark color line between white and black Americans.

African Americans -- Segregation -- History.

Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)

African Americans -- History -- 1863-1877.

African Americans -- History -- 1877-1964.

White supremacy movements -- United States -- History.

Racism in popular culture -- United States -- History.

Visual communication -- Social aspects -- United States -- History.

United States -- Race relations -- History -- 19th century.

United States -- Race relations -- History -- 20th century.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [266]-279) and index.

Antislavery/antislave. Backlash : the white resistance to black Reconstruction -- The old Negro. Race, science, literature, and the birth of Jim Crow ; Chains of being : the black body and the white mind -- Framing blackness. Sambo art and the visual rhetoric of white supremacy ; The United States of race : mass-producing stereotypes and fear -- The new Negro. Redeeming the race from the redeemers ; Reframing race : enter the new Negro -- Epilogue.

9780525559535

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