Morbid Romantic

Book Review & Personal Blog

Title: Black Bangor: African Americans in a Maine Community, 1880-1950¹
Author(s): Maureen Elgersman Lee
Genre: Nonfiction – History
Finished: April 7, 2010
Rating: 2 Stars

In Black Bangor: African Americans in a Maine Community, 1880-1950, author Maureen Elgersman Lee attempts to fill what she calls a void in the narrative of the African American experience in one of the whitest states America, Maine (xiv). Lee is primarily focused on answering a few specific questions about the Bangor black community: what did it mean to be black in Bangor, how did Bangor’s small black population create their own community, and how did they live within a white majority. To answer her questions, Lee sections her book into four topical chapters. Chapter one investigates the migration and settlement of African Americans and foreign blacks into Maine, and specifically Bangor. Chapter two describes the sort of labor the black Bangor population was involved in. Chapter three portrays the daily life of a black citizen of Bangor. Chapter four is about how the blacks of Bangor used already existing institutions and also created their own to meet their needs. Lee states in her introduction that she will start each chapter with snippets of the lives of select Bangor citizens as a way to illustrate the points she makes within (xvii). Lee offers full disclosure of the problems of her usable sources, announcing to the reader from the start that the federal census data she uses contains gaps that can be filled in only so much by narrowing state statistics to a local level, and that the manuscript census too contains errors due to illegibility and fire damage (xviii).

In chapter one, Lee spends a great deal of time discussing numbers and percentages. While these are intended to give the reader the statistics and scope of black settlement in Maine, and then specifically Bangor, the author could have presented her figures in a more succinct and less scattered way. Fortunately, Lee was able to clear up some of the confusion caused by too many numbers in one paragraph by providing a simple table of population and percentages (4). In this way, she more easily compared black populations to white, accounted for dates, and showed what her numbers were intended in a way much easier to grasp and understand (4). With the table present, it is unnecessary for her to repeat the information in text because it only serves to weaken the overall readability of her book. Chapter one also introduces the reader to a number of black Bangor residents whom Lee will refer back to throughout her book. After four chapters of names and families, especially without the direct benefit of chronological organization, the individuals easily become one mix of confusing references. Lee should have included an appendix in the back of her novel for reference, including each individual’s job(s), address, income, spouse, children, and any known organizational links. Further along in the book, Lee discusses the specific regions, or wards, in Bangor that blacks settled. Taking this a step further, she disseminates which streets they lived on and the rent costs they paid. A small and insufficient map is provided to allow the reader to follow along this geographical journey (54). A larger map with actual readable street names would help to place the story characters, and make it a great deal easier to follow Lee’s geographical discussion.

For what Lee tries to address, she addresses little of what it truly meant to be black in a white dominated Bangor. Lee comes to the conclusion that Linda Brooks Davis’s work at Union Station as a restroom attendant was relatively free of racism, and was in fact more split along class than racial boundaries. This analysis of experience is reached from personal testimony by Davis herself. Yet historians know that the memory is a tricky and often unreliable thing and that people will not disclose what they do not want others to know. It is also very relevant that Davis’s testimony was part of a newspaper article written when she retired from Union Station, hardly a forum for her to discuss the racial ills of her work environment. The ultimate conclusion about racism and segregation is that military training camps during WWII brought segregation to Bangor, and that there was little racial trouble before then (108). Again, this is taken from an interview that was published as part of a book on the African American experience across the United States, and does not include any study of events throughout the course of the 1880-1950 period to illustrate or contradict the assumption of general racial peace in Bangor. Yet Lee gives hints here and there that all was not racially well in Bangor, Maine. For example, the black citizens were faced every day with racist caricatures of themselves used in film and advertising (81). Schools, though integrated, self-segregated, and the two races did not do a lot of social mixing, though it appears they thought favorably of one another (88 & 99-104). Additionally, as Lee points out, the black citizens had their own small NAACP chapter and kept updated on national events (120). It almost seems as if Lee wants to, at times, truly set apart the black Bangor population by isolating them and making them distinctly different from the rest of the African American population, as they seem so little impacted by racism and impervious to the social problems related to black life in America pre-civil rights. It is a shame also that her source limitations do not allow readers to know how foreign blacks settling in Maine maintained some of their own cultural traditions or institutions within the larger community since, as we know, the black community is not one unified group with the same interests and concerns.

Lee recognizes the inadequacy of her sources best in her statement that “they cannot replicate the breadth or the depth of the socially intimate experiences of African Americans at the time” (87). Due to the limits of her sources, Lee is left to make a lot of conjecture about the people she studies and their daily lives. In some cases this is necessary and warranted when evidence points to it. In other cases, Lee stretches reality and assumption too far. It is not necessary to assume, for example, that Carrie Drymond was influenced by a certain advertisement for a stove in order to include in the book the interesting tidbit about the stove itself (75). To illustrate further, Lee assumes that relatively poorer African Americans used investments and tips from their jobs to supplement their income in order to purchase into middle class luxury (80). There is simply no way for Lee to know this, or to be able to verify where the income was spent, especially because she is only looking at house rents and mortgages, not the totality of financial burden on one individual or family. Again, this is due to the scarceness of her sources, which afford her a very snapshot and small look at the individuals within the Bangor community. Making so many unsubstantiated claims negates the intellectual value of her more correct analyses such as when she postulated that the structure of the Maine school system might have limited the opportunities available to African American students (97).

Lee is without a doubt fully engaged in the lives of the black Bangor population. The interviews she uses, the personal experiences she recounts, and the ways in which she brings life to a group of people for which there is little known about is fascinating. Despite the weaknesses inherent in the scant sources, the personalities of each individual come out to the forefront of her stories. This book would perhaps be a better depiction of the black Bangor experience if she had focused her book a bit on the people. It would have been a better read and just as informative if she had chosen to instead focus on just the people and let them speak for themselves. In that case, the book would have flowed along on a person-by-person basis and gain a cohesiveness that is not part of the book because it is written in such a way that it jumps around by date and person throughout the various topics. Lee was right when she said that there is little known about blacks in Bangor, and that there is indeed an historical void because there is little evidence left from which historians can create narratives.

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Disclaimer(s):

- More can be found in my Reviews section or on my Biblio page. If you would like to see my book list for 2009, go here.

- If you would like me to review your book, send an email to me at morbidromantic@gmail.com. Read my Book Review Policy for more information.

1. This review was done as part of a graded assignment. [↩]

Title: Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice¹
Author(s): Raymond Arsenault
Genre: Nonfiction – History
Finished: March 23, 2010
Rating: 4 Stars

In what author Raymond Arsenault calls the first historical study of the Freedom Rides, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice is a journalistic and chronological narrative that separates, but does not isolate, the Freedom Rides from the broader context of the Civil Rights movement. Arsenault’s revisionist styled history addresses the lack of historical focus on the Freedom Rides itself, which he claims has so far only been discussed by historians as a “prelude to the climactic events” of later civil rights efforts and never on its own for its own significance (7). To Arsenault, the Freedom Rider movement was a transformative event that ushered in an era of citizen politics vital to the entire civil rights struggle (8). To tell a story that speaks of personal sacrifice and bravery, and a willingness to place oneself in personal harm for the most basic recognition of rights, the human element cannot be ignored. When the Freedom Riders decided to challenge their right to desegregated interstate bus travel, a right upheld by the Supreme Court, they took a personal and dangerous stand against the vehemently racist Deep South. To portray the humanity of the Freedom Rides, Arsenault says he will let the players speak for themselves throughout his monograph (9). In this, Arsenault is very successful. Using a vast archive of manuscripts that includes personal papers and scrapbooks, as well as court decisions, newspapers, government publications, and interviews, Arsenault imbues Freedom Riders with a poignancy that cannot come from chronological narration and analysis alone. For example, to depict the chaos of the Montgomery, Alabama riot of May 20th, Arsenault chooses to use the words of John Lewis himself, whose emotional and personal account of the event lends to the story an element of dramatic immediacy that academic language could never do justice to (212).

To assume that Arsenault’s intent is to strictly isolate the Freedom Rides from the larger picture would be incorrect. The Civil Rights movement as a whole was dominated by different groups and people, all of whom engaged in an interplay of alliance, faction, and inspiration. In one of the most extensive studies of Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) by David Garrow, Bearing the Cross, little attention is paid to the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and their involvement with King and the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). In Garrow’s interpretation, the relationship between King and FOR was based on FOR’s curiosity about King and the Montgomery boycott. When members of FOR found out King was interested in Gandhi and passive resistance, they helped provide resources to teach him more about it.² Arsenault contributes a new element to the dynamic relationship by instead insisting that the link between the two was stronger than mere curiosity and sideline influence. According to Arsenault, King and the MIA was dependant on FOR’s leadership, and it was the FOR movement that instilled the ideas of Gandhian nonviolence into King, which he would utilize passionately (70). To Garrow, it was a matter of refinement of an already adopted idea. To Arsenault, it was because of FOR that the MIA adopted the practice.

Arsenault does similarly when he describes the legacy of the Freedom Rides. Due to what he sees as an historical lack of importance attributed to the Freedom Rides, it is essential for Arsenault’s to define what the importance of the Freedom Riders was and remains. This required him to look outside of the Freedom Rides themselves and account for how the Freedom Rides inspired future civil rights developments. Arsenault states that the Freedom Riders nationalized their movement and would later move on to direct, participate, and inspire future acts of civil defiance such as the March on Washington, the Freedom Summer, and various voting registration drives (507). Arsenault is perhaps a bit guilty of overstating the importance of the movement itself. While the Freedom Rides no doubt inspired many, and many future Civil Rights activists would look back to the bravery of the riders for guidance, the Freedom Riders were one of several groups functioning. King and the NAACP had voting registration projects distinct from anything the Freedom Riders did, for instance. If anything, the experience gained by all of the Freedom Riders as they challenged racism head on would equip them to lead and teach others, and Arsenault is right to point this out. By participating in the Freedom Rides, many young students developed a taste for action. After surviving the violence of the KKK in Alabama and Mississippi, there was little left for them to fear of the white South, though they never underestimated the violence possible. This bravery would disseminate throughout the movement and inspire, and tested practices of nonviolence and passive resistance would be adopted by other groups. Arsenault was correct in this conclusion. The Freedom Rides was part of a whole rather than a pinnacle.

Another one of the major successes of the book is how Arsenault fits the Freedom Riders into the political culture of the time, and also within what is happening throughout the world. Again, Arsenault removes the rides from isolation, and this time to surround them in a national and world context. In terms of the federal government, Arsenault adequately shows that the Freedom Riders exposed the tensions between federal and state governments, and also forced the national government to act in favor of them if only to protect the image of the country from bad media coverage. The federal government, as Arsenault depicts, was relatively inadequate to the task of forcing state and local governments to comply with their terms. The weaknesses of the Kennedy Administration, Hoover and the FBI, and the Supreme Court is at center stage with the Freedom Riders. Yet Arsenault rightfully too inserts further complexity in matters of election; President John F. Kennedy could not risk losing support and thus had to act in a manner that would anger his supporters the least (221-222, 244-246). Attorney General Robert Kennedy worried over whether to send federal marshals into Montgomery to quell the hostile situation there because he did not want the moral authority of the United States to be mitigated by much publicized white violence (221). The Freedom Riders, too, were very aware of what was happening in the world. African Americans throughout the United States simultaneously applauded South African apartheid protestors and lamented their similar struggles, and felt that if Africans could bring an end to colonialism and gain independence, so too could they gain their freedom (201, 431).

The Freedom Rides were a complex series of rides with a rotating cast of participants who came and went over the course. Different organizations and student groups started rides of their own such as the Nashville group who decided to continue after the first Freedom Ride lest white violence become the norm against them. As a result, tracing the pattern of rides and people can get a bit difficult to follow. Thankfully, Arsenault provides maps that trace the routes of different groups, and maps that section parts of major cities off to give a geographical sense of the project. However, his text would have been easier to follow had he found a way to identify the different Freedom Ride groups in a distinct and consistent manner. Referring to every different ride as just Freedom Ride or the riders as only Freedom Riders makes for a confusing chronology. It would benefit readers more had Arsenault named each group in a manner that would recognize them more specifically, such as Nashville Freedom Riders or Mississippi Freedom Rides like he does on his map routes. The consistency alone would help connect the text to the maps and make them work in better support of each other. This does not in any way diminish the work Arsenault has produced. He states that he has set out to describe the Freedom Rides and place them back on the list of momentous Civil Rights events, and he does. The Freedom Rides are no longer just a marginal event overshadowed by King or NAACP, but an individual movement that too would motivate others while drawing the overall movement into the national eye.
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Disclaimer(s):

- More can be found in my Reviews section or on my Biblio page. If you would like to see my book list for 2009, go here.

- If you would like me to review your book, send an email to me at morbidromantic@gmail.com. Read my Book Review Policy for more information.

1. This review was done as part of a graded assignment [↩]
2. David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr., and the Southern Leadership Conference (New York: Perennial Classics, 2004): 67-70. [↩]

Title: The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries¹
Author(s): Carlo Ginzburg
Genre: Nonfiction – History
Finished: March 1, 2010
Rating: 4 Stars

In The Night Battles, Carlo Ginzburg looks at a small group of northeastern Italian people from the area of Friuli who claimed to be ‘benandanti.’ The benandanti, according to their legend, were people born with “the caul,” and battled witches to protect the harvest and people, and to heal people bewitched. A second strand of benandanti claimed to be witness to processions of the dead. Using a small set of inquisition documents to do his microhistory, Ginzburg claims that he can reconstruct the progression of benandanti identity from their perspective from those who battle witches to those who are witches. This new identity was imposed, according to Ginzburg, by the inquisitors who used leading questions and other devices such as fear to convince the accused benandanti into altering their confessions to fit the new model of witchcraft, which can be traced through the confession transcripts. The book contains four chapters and an appendix with a few of the transcripts included for reference. Chapter one introduces the benandanti, their beliefs, and the inquisitors; chapter two describes the benandanti who associate with the dead and traces possible links of origin; chapter three returns to the benandanti and the inquisitors, and to the evolution of the benandanti identity; and chapter four sees the conclusion of the benandanti fitting themselves into the accepted mold of witchcraft.

There is no way Ginzburg can support, with his available evidence, what the true intentions of the benandanti were when they confessed to witchcraft practices. Was it that they became convinced of their own evil, or simply became indoctrinated out of fear and insistence to change stories to fit what they knew the inquisitors wanted regardless of what they knew to be truth? There is simply no way to know if the benandanti were only saying what they felt needed to be said, or if they actually accepted it as truth. Ginzburg does, unfortunately, make a lot of claims that cannot be substantiated. For example, he tells the story of a woman named Anna la Rossa who he admits never claimed to be a benandanti (35). Yet later on, Ginzburg refers to her as one of the benandanti (41 & 43) without ever proving that she was one. If anything, Ginzburg is merely reasserting that many different beliefs had origins in the same pagan traditions, or that ideas filtered through geographical space. In another case, Ginzburg claims that the trances during which benandanti left their bodies were ointment induced or caused by illness (59). Again, this is not something he can adequately support and therefore cannot state it as unquestionable. Regardless of this, Ginzburg’s greatest achievements are two. First, he does a good job in his outlining of the various pagan traditional origins of witchcraft and other cults. Second, he has great success in showing how the inquisitorial process was able to impose beliefs with such effectiveness that people would admit to them even when they knew giving the answer that was desired would surely bring harm to them. It sheds light on the nature of the witch hunts and trials, and the confessions rendered.

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Disclaimer(s):

- More can be found in my Reviews section or on my Biblio page. If you would like to see my book list for 2009, go here.

- If you would like me to review your book, send an email to me at morbidromantic@gmail.com. Read my Book Review Policy for more information.

1. The following review was done as part of an assignment and turned in for a grade. [↩]

Title: Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice
Author(s): Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
Genre: Nonfiction – History
Finished: February 22, 2010
Rating: 4 Stars

In Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice, Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks examines how Christian and Protestant ideas altered and defined sexuality and sexual behavior. The geographical focus of Wiesner-Hanks extends beyond the European continent. She writes about the colonial experience of Europeans bringing Christianity into Latin America, Asia, Africa, and North America, all of which were already inhabited by groups possessing their own native beliefs about sexuality, the changing of which was not done without challenge and compromise. Reconstructing the pre-colonial world of Latin and North American presents a problem, as Wiesner-Hanks notes, because documents are scarce, and as a result she cannot give a complete description of native beliefs. The first three chapters of the book are loosely chronological within topically based chapters, beginning with Christianity before 1500, then moving on to Protestantism, and finally to Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy. The final three chapters shift to the overseas colonies discussed above.

In investigating sexuality, Wiesner-Hanks looks at how earlier civilizations influenced later ideas of early Christian writers, and then in turn how these Christian writers shaped opinions on marriage, divorce, fornication, prostitution, sodomy, and witchcraft, to name a few. As Wiesner-Hanks traces how these ideas evolved over time, she also compares them to one another, letting readers see not only how ideas shifted over time, but how Catholicism differed from both Protestantism and Orthodoxy. The chapters are short and succinct, but detailed enough that in every case there is a clear picture of the time and group change. The book is more than a mere generalized overview even though its length is small, though some generalization is necessary and involved, because Wiesner-Hanks looks at specifics and fills her pages with one detail after another. As a result, very little space is given to stories or narratives, which perhaps would have been a nice addition to break up her dense fact-based approach. In fact, it is all too easy to get lost or confused within the barrage of facts and details as, for example, Wiesner-Hanks moves from infanticide to women’s bodies to unmarried women and men to craft guilds all in the same two page spread.

That being said, there is a lot that Wiesner-Hanks does not say or does not explain, which leaves one with many questions. For instance, when Wiesner-Hanks discusses the Roman model of marriage and sexuality, she fails to mention that the Romans too had their own form of spiritual virginity in the Vestal Virgins, which would be an interesting parallel to Catholic convent life. In another part of the book, Wiesner-Hanks states that religious wars increased the number of people, both men and women, who worked in prostitution (89). Yet she does not explain how that link is made. In many places she describes a situation or a law but then finishes up with the note that the event was rare or the law was rarely enforced, which makes one wonder why it was ultimately significant to mention. It would be a lot to expect one writer to include every detail or point, so the unstated or unanswered in no way mitigates what a good book Wiesner-Hanks has written on the topic of sexuality and religion.

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Disclaimer(s):

- More can be found in my Reviews section or on my Biblio page. If you would like to see my book list for 2009, go here.

- If you would like me to review your book, send an email to me at morbidromantic@gmail.com. Read my Book Review Policy for more information.

Title: Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr., and the Southern Leadership Conference¹
Author(s): David J. Garrow
Genre: Nonfiction – History
Finished: March 3, 2010
Rating: 3 Stars

David J. Garrow has provided an extensive study of Martin Luther King Jr. and his work within the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in his book Bearing the Cross. With a title that portrays the religious and spiritual aspect of King’s personal civil rights vision, as well as the exhaustive extent of the undertaking that would take its toll on King both physically and mentally, Garrow too has undertaken quite a task in writing his in depth and fact filled study. Using hundreds of sources, in fact over 600 interviews alone, Garrow has compiled a complete record of King’s civil rights journey from the moment he entered the Montgomery Improvement Association’s (MIA) bus boycott all the way to his death. However, the book is about more than just King, and that is one of the greatest strengths of Bearing the Cross. The story is really the story of a wider Civil Rights Movement, one in which King would become a leading figure and icon of. Bearing the Cross is undoubtedly a personal story, and everything within is connected to King in some form be it through his participation, association, support, or opposition. King had so many connections in the Civil Rights Movement that to tell his story is to tell each individual story, which Garrow attempts to do when he delves into subjects such as the Freedom Rides, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Selma, the Voting Rights Act, Northern ghettos, and Vietnam, just to name a few. Not only does this portray just how much momentum the movement had, which grew in fervor and activity as the years progressed, and how large it grew, but also what King himself took on when he shouldered the responsibility of becoming one of the major leaders.

As reviewers David Herbert Donald and William C. Stinchcombe have noted, Garrow misses occasional opportunities to analyze King, and we are therefore sometimes made to take King at face value with just a selection of his decisions or quotes to flesh out his intentions and feelings.² While there are moments when we can see the personality and intentions of King come through his words as he speaks for himself to explain his motivations, especially when he talks about his passion for the Civil Rights Movement and his willingness to die for it, other times are a bit more obscure and we are left to wonder why King did some of what he did. For example, Garrow writes that King had expressed some hesitation to be included on a petition to help activist Carl Braden out of a charge of contempt of court. The wife of Carl, Anne, was disappointed that she would likely not get King’s support. However, King changed his mind and phoned her to ask that she place his name on the petition because he had prayed over it and decided it was right (155). This would have been a perfect time for Garrow to attempt an analysis of the whys of King’s action, yet he does not take advantage of the opportunity to use his vast knowledge of King to explain this change of heart, or why King would put himself in such a politically precarious position by association. Perhaps in the cases where Garrow did not analyze, he hoped that his facts would speak for themselves and he was wary of trying to get into the head of King for fear of making too many assumptions that he could not support.

Yet Garrow attempts to create a narrative out of the intense amount of facts he includes, and this leads him in some cases to make a few assumptions of King that he cannot, or rather does not, substantiate. For instance, in one of the many discussions of the SCLC’s financial mismanagement, Garrow writes that King brushed off the accusations made at the SCLC’s leaders, but felt they were accurate when he truly thought about it (469). Garrow leaves the statement at that and does not attempt to follow up with any evidence to support it. It seems that Garrow is trying to create a more enjoyable story by including elements of intimate understanding, yet they are not always satisfactory and the text is still dense with dates and an intense volume of fact. That is not to say that a reader will come off not knowing who King was. In fact, Garrow is very adept at including aspects of King’s personality and life that many people do not know or consider. There is a definite evolution of character from King’s kitchen revelation (58), to his trip to India where he refined his own method of resistance as he learned more about Gandhi (114), all the way to his ultimate loss of faith in white men and democracy (604). It is also surprising to learn that King, known as such a great rhetorician, often had others write his speeches and chapters in his books. This aspect almost makes it seem as if King was a popular figure speaking out the ideas of groups, and more pessimistically, a pawn of other thinkers since so many of his ideas were molded by others who could influence or persuade him (139). This does not, of course, tarnish his reputation or his much deserved respect, it merely opens up a new facet to King’s overall focus on collectivity. King did, after all, assert many times that he acted for his people and that the movement did not depend on him and would continue on without him, which means there were other thinkers in the background. Also surprising were the revelations Garrow made about King’s misogyny and views on sex (141 & 374-376). King is an icon, certainly, but now also a man who had his own faults, and at times very fatalistic (232).

One other objection to be taken with this novel is its treatment of the NAACP. Garrow is in no way objective when he discusses the animosity that began to grow around the NAACP and King/SCLC. As described by Garrow, the NAACP on various occasions attempted to smear the SCLC or hinder them in their progress in voting rights. The NAACP would naturally take a special exception to King’s assertion that attempting to change the country in front of a judge and appealing for change was not the proper approach, but rather that resistance such as they had been done in Montgomery was vital (87). The two groups had a natural ideological difference. Garrow is unfair in his language, and even goes so far as to include the statement, “With allies like the NAACP, SCLC’s effort had little chance of success” (103). Granted, the NAACP was in conflict with King, Garrow should have exercised a little more neutrality and fairness when discussing these occasions.

A final thing must be said about Garrows endnotes. Though he provides a glossary of his abbreviations in the back of the text, his endnotes are still confusing and hard to sift through. Maybe it is his sheer volume of sources that complicates the system, but it does not help that much of his citations are made up of letter and number combinations. When perusing through to find a source, one must flip back and forth to try to make sense of what is being identified and where to finally find it. Though the short form of the citations clears up space, it leads to too much confusion for students and scholars who may want to follow up on his research. It may seem as if there is nothing good about this book since most of what has been written about it so far has been critical, but the sheer extent of Garrow’s research should be praised. When writing on a figure as big and as important as Martin Luther King, Jr., a man who has had much already written about him, one naturally has an understanding of him that they approach studies of him with. Even lacking in the occasional analysis, Garrow provides a vast array of information that pieces together King’s life into one continuous and chronological story. Even if we do not come off understanding the finer details of King’s mentality, we still see how events flowed along a never ebbing, but wavering line, and how ideas melded and split. It is this dynamic that is important to understanding the larger picture of the Civil Rights Movement. So much is encompassed in Garrow’s story that it is almost too much to read and remember in one reading. Despite some of its faults, it is without a doubt a vital book to the history of African Americans, Civil Rights, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Disclaimer(s):

- More can be found in my Reviews section or on my Biblio page. If you would like to see my book list for 2009, go here.

- If you would like me to review your book, send an email to me at morbidromantic@gmail.com. Read my Book Review Policy for more information.

1. The following review was part of an assignment and turned in for a grade. [↩]
2. David Herbert Donald, “Review: [untitled],” The Journal of Southern History 54, no 1 (February 1988): 135-137; William C. Stinchcombe, “Review: [untitled],” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 19, no. 2 (Autumn 1988): 367-369. [↩]

Title: The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement in the Urban South, 1918-1942¹
Author(s): Claudrena N. Harold
Genre: Nonfiction – History
Finished: February 17, 2010
Rating: 2 Stars

Historians writing of Marcus Garvey and the Garvey movement, according to Claudrena N. Harold, have paid scant attention to the work of the organization in the South. Though the Jim Crow South is not entirely ignored by historians, Harold states that there has yet to be a systematic study of Garveyism’s successes and failures in the urban South (3). Her effort to do so in her book The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement in the Urban South, 1918-1942 focuses on three major urban areas in the South: New Orleans, Louisiana; Miami, Florida; and Hampton Roads, Virginia. Not only does Harold intend to document the rise and fall of Garveyism in the three locations she has selected, but also to describe how each branch became individual entities within the larger movement as local communities and culture influenced the manner in which Garveyism was accepted and followed. It is the reception of Garvey’s ideals of racial purity, repatriation, race solidarity, and self-reliance in a cultural context as described by Harold that shows she made an attempt in each case to understand the political and social atmosphere Garveyism was entering as it flowed from its Parent Body in New York down South. Organized on geographical lines rather than chronological, Harold examines her cities one at a time, beginning in each where Garveyism takes off and following through until decline makes fall imminent.

While Harold shows an aptness for understanding cultural context and how this fit within the development of the movement, parts of The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement lack in information or description that would provide useful for understanding some of what that cultural make up was. For example, when describing the racial tensions in New Orleans, Harold states that American blacks were in conflict with Creoles of Color, yet she does not expound her point in the text itself to state why there was this racial fission, which would have helped the reader understand the complex scope of the social context UNIA members were enmeshed in (31-32). Instead, Harold pushes back her explanation to the notes for readers to dig out. Yet not every case of the unexplained is satisfied with note page clarification. Harold makes a point that elections of John M. Parker and Andrew McShane created tensions between the government and those working for better labor conditions (33). While it can be derived from this point that Parker and McShane had something to do with the labor movement, and in fact negatively, there is no further information given to explain how and why. It leaves a gap in understanding and Harold does not include information in her notes to fill in the gap left by these men’s names; we have their names and the setting, but not their true significance and therefore must question why they are important to mention at all.

In fact, a good portion of information is placed in the notes section, which varies in length from small sentences to at times being as extensive as multiple paragraphs per note. For the most part it appears that Harold made this a rational choice to keep her story on topic by placing explanatory information in the notes and leaving it out of the text lest the reader begin to lose focus of her intent. She manages to balance a delicate line between telling her story fluidly and fleshing out details by utilizing her endnotes to their purpose. For example, Harold tells the story of a woman named Laura Kofey who becomes quite popular among the Miami Garveyites for her own message of racial purity and repatriation (78). It is stated that there were issues about her fundraising schemes, but then without explanation as to where the controversy lies, Harold moves on to how Garvey and Garveyites reacted to Kofey. It is ultimately unimportant the exact problems people had with Kofey’s fundraising, so Harold leaves it out of her text. However, to satisfy the curiosity of those who want to fill in the blanks, Harold describes in her notes section just where the conflict was centered (149). Though this does not always work for Harold, and in some cases adding the information in the notes to the text instead of leaving in the back of the book would aid in understanding some of the importance of what is being said, as stated above with the example about the NOLA conflict between American blacks and Creoles of Color. Another example comes in when Harold makes mention of Garvey meeting with members of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan group in 1922 (38). She does not illuminate what the meeting was about or what happened, only that it causes contention. The reader must flip back to the notes to find out what the meeting was all about (139). Considering that Harold later places a lot of importance on blacks working with white supremacists in Virginia, it would have expanded on that point more to express that Garvey and Garveyites had been working through this route since early on and more widespread.

Harold leaves a lot of questions unanswered. It is certainly unfair to expect an author to be able to answer every question, especially since not every question can be addressed with available historical evidence. Yet to recognize the existence of the unanswerable question leads historians to new fields of study and sates the curiosity of readers who will ask the questions themselves and feel that the book has left out answers. In acknowledging the questions that still exist for which there are no satisfactory answers, Harold would have closed gaps that may arise in the minds of readers. Yet, effort must be made to fulfill the expectations of readers by giving answers that do exist. For example, Harold writes of the community medical project initiated by NOLA Garveyites of the NOD. In the relatively short section, Harold explains why the project was started and how, but she does not bother to detail ultimately how successful the project was (53). The issue of unaddressed questions and contradictions becomes more problematic later on in the text. Early on in her section on Miami Garveyites, a group made up mostly of Bahamians entering Florida, she points out that a cultural divergence existed between the immigrants and the native African Blacks. The Bahamians saw the natives as submitting to the power of whites because the native blacks were more likely to work within the white power structure (66). Harold does not address how the Miami Garveyites could reconcile this conflict with the fact that they too adopted conservative views in certain respects (72-73). She also fails to recognize the contradiction and difficulty Miami Garveyites faced within their mission statement, which claimed to desire the uniting of Africans all over the globe. Yet, they could not breech the gap between them and native African Americans (82). Her story is therefore a narrative and lacks analysis. The bulk of her sources are secondary, and her major primary source is an edited volume of the Negro World paper, which leads to the question of how much editing was involved in its compiling and how correct her information is

Ultimately, Harold’s greatest achievement is in the way she fused three different stories together as unique examples on one hand, but on the other hand part of the same movement and influenced by some of the same situations such as the end of the Black Star Line and Garvey’s arrest. In all three cases, her argument is that pervading difficulties aside, it was the Great Depression that acted as the true catalyst to the end of Garveyism. In each of the three cases, according to Harold, the Great Depression left such an economic mark throughout the country and changed ideals so much that Garvey’s organization could not be monetarily sustained and people fell out of line with many of Garvey’s points such as self-sufficiency and economic power. The message became irrelevant. The Garvey movement was damaged not only by the internal influences chronicles throughout, but one of many victims of an economic disaster that hurt many. This, of course, calls into question the scope of the title, dates which promise to trace events from 1918 to 1942. Since the Great Depression caused a general decline in the first portion of the 1930s, Harold continues the chronology of her narrative beyond to show how Garveyites used their political training to move on to different causes. Some formed new groups, some joined radical groups, and some grew increasingly supportive of the NAACP. According to Harold, it was the activity of the Garvey movement that trained participants for a political, activist life. In this way, Harold shows the lasting legacy of the Garvey movement to later pushes for civil rights, placing her work within this historical chronology.

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1. The following review was part of an assignment and was turned in for a grade. [↩]