Neoabolitionist
Encyclopedia
Neoabolitionist is a term used by some historians to refer to the heightened activity of the civil rights
movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Later the term began to be used among historians for those who led a re-evaluation of Reconstruction and its aftermath that focused on the significance of full citizenship and suffrage for African Americans.
Abolition
refers to the moral and political position that advocated the abolition of slavery
and granting of citizenship to African Americans in the United States
. Following the American Revolution with its proposition of human equality, a number of slaveholders freed their slaves, or provided for their freedom in wills, in the early Republic period, 1783-1818. Slaveholders became alarmed about the existence of free Negroes in their societies and passed legislation in most Southern states to make it more difficult for owners to free slaves. In addition, states restricted residency, and sometimes work and other living conditions of free Negroes. Some states extended suffrage to free Negroes but withdrew it in decades before the Civil War.
Later in the 19th century, from 1840 through 1865, American proponents of abolition became more active. They condemned slavery as a sin and offense against human dignity. They demanded an end to plantation owners' profiting from slavery. Despite opponents' attempts to suppress individuals, the abolitionist movement became quite influential in the North. The abolitionist movement thus contributed to the Northern anti-slavery sentiment that was one of the factors involved in the Civil War.
and Avery Craven
labeled abolitionists as fanatics who caused a "needless war" that they argued should have been resolved by compromise. Most textbooks in the first half of the 20th century followed the early 20th century Dunning School
narrative, later in the 20th century widely condemned by contemporary historians as deeply racist. It endorsed former white southern Confederates who called themselves "Redeemers
". To regain political power, whites murdered and terrorized thousands of African Americans, favored White Power after the Civil War ended to stop African Americans from voting, and to keep African-American people in inferior and unequal status.
After the Civil War, former abolitionists, especially African-American
historians, such as Frederick Douglass
, and much later, Harvard-trained historian W. E. B. Du Bois, presented positive views of the achievements of Reconstruction: for its advocacy of civil rights for African Americans and expanded suffrage to include poor whites. They held that the desire of Southern slave states to preserve the long-term future of slavery was the primary cause of Southern secession and the Civil War, and that the nation had a moral debt to abolish slavery, and to guarantee equal rights for former slaves, especially to guarantee voting rights.
W.E.B. Du Bois
, a founder of the NAACP, observed that economic equality among black and white people would lead to equality for all. Fisk University
historian Alrutheus Taylor described the period of Reconstruction in North Carolina and Tennessee in several books and articles. The Dunning School
of white historians discounted the memoirs of John R. Lynch
, one of the first African-American members of Congress during Reconstruction, in favor of their own narratives that claimed African Americans were incompetent to vote or to participate in government.
In the mid-1870s, the Redeemers
(the Southern wing of the Democratic Party
) overthrew the Republican coalition that had controlled the southern states for a brief period after 1867. The Redeemers replaced the civil rights
reforms of Reconstruction with Jim Crow laws
that legalized racial segregation in public places. Through murder, terror and procedural barriers,, the Redeemers curtailed or eliminated African-American voting rights. They replaced the short period when African Americans enjoyed some legal rights with segregation
laws that reduced African-Americans civil rights socially, politically, and economically for the next 80 years or more. Public opinion, among northern whites, and most opinion by white scholars, accepted or applauded the Redeemers, but some clung to the abolitionist viewpoint. James McPherson
reports that 15 of 24 ex-abolitionists who wrote about Reconstruction called it a "qualified success."
of the 1950s and 1960s had a major impact on historians. Howard Zinn
identified the movement as a revival of the old in SNCC: The New Abolitionists. Zinn popularized the term as it applied to civil rights activists, but he does not refer to historians as "neoabolitionist."
Beginning in the 1960s and strongly influenced by the Civil Rights movement, historians writing about slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, emphasized the human advancement achieved by the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of those who had been enslaved. Eric Foner
dated his major survey of Reconstruction from 1863 to emphasize the success of abolition (via the Emancipation Proclamation
). Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988) emphasized the "unfinished" theme in its subtitle, explicitly connecting the 1860s to the second half of the 20th century when the issues of civil rights gained passage of federal legislation to overturn state discrimination. At no point in his many books and articles does Foner refer to himself or other historians as "neoabolitionists."
Many 20th century historians admired the original abolitionists and wrote about them (as did James McPherson and Martin Duberman), echoing their moral values. Contemporary historians, including David W. Blight, Michael Les Benedict, James McPherson, John Hope Franklin, and Steven Hahn rejected the Dunning School
notion that Reconstruction was overwhelmingly corrupt. They evaluated the postwar period as not more corrupt than many times of social change and turmoil in American history. They argued that Reconstruction had positive elements: most significantly, the enfranchisement of African Americans, both free men and former slaves; the extension of citizenship and civil rights to four million African Americans; and the introduction of public schools for both blacks and poor whites throughout the South where such schools generally had not existed. Franklin, for example, points to the founding of historically black universities Howard
and Fisk
as two major successes of Reconstruction.
Contemporary historians observed that depriving African Americans of suffrage and civil rights was a terrible form of corruption and violation of tenets of representative government.
The term Neoabolition or neo-abolitionist is considered by the historian Harvard Sitkoff to sometimes be a derisive term.
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Later the term began to be used among historians for those who led a re-evaluation of Reconstruction and its aftermath that focused on the significance of full citizenship and suffrage for African Americans.
Abolition
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
refers to the moral and political position that advocated the abolition of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
and granting of citizenship to African Americans in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Following the American Revolution with its proposition of human equality, a number of slaveholders freed their slaves, or provided for their freedom in wills, in the early Republic period, 1783-1818. Slaveholders became alarmed about the existence of free Negroes in their societies and passed legislation in most Southern states to make it more difficult for owners to free slaves. In addition, states restricted residency, and sometimes work and other living conditions of free Negroes. Some states extended suffrage to free Negroes but withdrew it in decades before the Civil War.
Later in the 19th century, from 1840 through 1865, American proponents of abolition became more active. They condemned slavery as a sin and offense against human dignity. They demanded an end to plantation owners' profiting from slavery. Despite opponents' attempts to suppress individuals, the abolitionist movement became quite influential in the North. The abolitionist movement thus contributed to the Northern anti-slavery sentiment that was one of the factors involved in the Civil War.
Early 20th century: Dunning School historians hostile to abolition
Early 20th century historical treatments of the abolitionists and of the era of Reconstruction were negative. Historians like James G. RandallJames G. Randall
James G. Randall was an American historian, specializing on Abraham Lincoln and the era of the American Civil War. He taught at the University of Illinois, , where David Herbert Donald was one of his students and continued his traditions. Born in Indiana, he took a B.A. degree from Butler College...
and Avery Craven
Avery Craven
Avery Odelle Craven was a historian who specialized in the study of the nineteenth-century United States and the American Civil War....
labeled abolitionists as fanatics who caused a "needless war" that they argued should have been resolved by compromise. Most textbooks in the first half of the 20th century followed the early 20th century Dunning School
Dunning School
The Dunning School refers to a group of historians who shared a historiographical school of thought regarding the Reconstruction period of American history .-About:...
narrative, later in the 20th century widely condemned by contemporary historians as deeply racist. It endorsed former white southern Confederates who called themselves "Redeemers
Redeemers
In United States history, "Redeemers" and "Redemption" were terms used by white Southerners to describe a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era which followed the American Civil War...
". To regain political power, whites murdered and terrorized thousands of African Americans, favored White Power after the Civil War ended to stop African Americans from voting, and to keep African-American people in inferior and unequal status.
After the Civil War, former abolitionists, especially African-American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
historians, such as Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing...
, and much later, Harvard-trained historian W. E. B. Du Bois, presented positive views of the achievements of Reconstruction: for its advocacy of civil rights for African Americans and expanded suffrage to include poor whites. They held that the desire of Southern slave states to preserve the long-term future of slavery was the primary cause of Southern secession and the Civil War, and that the nation had a moral debt to abolish slavery, and to guarantee equal rights for former slaves, especially to guarantee voting rights.
W.E.B. Du Bois
W.E.B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor. Born in Massachusetts, Du Bois attended Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate...
, a founder of the NAACP, observed that economic equality among black and white people would lead to equality for all. Fisk University
Fisk University
Fisk University is an historically black university founded in 1866 in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. The world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers started as a group of students who performed to earn enough money to save the school at a critical time of financial shortages. They toured to raise funds to...
historian Alrutheus Taylor described the period of Reconstruction in North Carolina and Tennessee in several books and articles. The Dunning School
Dunning School
The Dunning School refers to a group of historians who shared a historiographical school of thought regarding the Reconstruction period of American history .-About:...
of white historians discounted the memoirs of John R. Lynch
John R. Lynch
John Roy Lynch was the first African-American Speaker of the House in Mississippi. He was also one of the first African-Americans elected to the U.S House of Representatives during Reconstruction, the period in United States history after the Civil War.-Biography:Lynch was born a slave near...
, one of the first African-American members of Congress during Reconstruction, in favor of their own narratives that claimed African Americans were incompetent to vote or to participate in government.
In the mid-1870s, the Redeemers
Redeemers
In United States history, "Redeemers" and "Redemption" were terms used by white Southerners to describe a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era which followed the American Civil War...
(the Southern wing of the Democratic Party
History of the United States Democratic Party
The history of the Democratic Party of the United States is an account of the oldest political party in the United States and arguably the oldest democratic party in the world....
) overthrew the Republican coalition that had controlled the southern states for a brief period after 1867. The Redeemers replaced the civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
reforms of Reconstruction with Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
that legalized racial segregation in public places. Through murder, terror and procedural barriers,, the Redeemers curtailed or eliminated African-American voting rights. They replaced the short period when African Americans enjoyed some legal rights with segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
laws that reduced African-Americans civil rights socially, politically, and economically for the next 80 years or more. Public opinion, among northern whites, and most opinion by white scholars, accepted or applauded the Redeemers, but some clung to the abolitionist viewpoint. James McPherson
James M. McPherson
James M. McPherson is an American Civil War historian, and is the George Henry Davis '86 Professor Emeritus of United States History at Princeton University. He received the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Battle Cry of Freedom, his most famous book...
reports that 15 of 24 ex-abolitionists who wrote about Reconstruction called it a "qualified success."
Civil Rights Movement as "new abolitionists"
The Civil Rights MovementCivil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
of the 1950s and 1960s had a major impact on historians. Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn was an American historian, academic, author, playwright, and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88 he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United...
identified the movement as a revival of the old in SNCC: The New Abolitionists. Zinn popularized the term as it applied to civil rights activists, but he does not refer to historians as "neoabolitionist."
Beginning in the 1960s and strongly influenced by the Civil Rights movement, historians writing about slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, emphasized the human advancement achieved by the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of those who had been enslaved. Eric Foner
Eric Foner
Eric Foner is an American historian. On the faculty of the Department of History at Columbia University since 1982, he writes extensively on political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African American biography, Reconstruction, and historiography...
dated his major survey of Reconstruction from 1863 to emphasize the success of abolition (via the Emancipation Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War using his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them, with nearly...
). Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988) emphasized the "unfinished" theme in its subtitle, explicitly connecting the 1860s to the second half of the 20th century when the issues of civil rights gained passage of federal legislation to overturn state discrimination. At no point in his many books and articles does Foner refer to himself or other historians as "neoabolitionists."
Many 20th century historians admired the original abolitionists and wrote about them (as did James McPherson and Martin Duberman), echoing their moral values. Contemporary historians, including David W. Blight, Michael Les Benedict, James McPherson, John Hope Franklin, and Steven Hahn rejected the Dunning School
Dunning School
The Dunning School refers to a group of historians who shared a historiographical school of thought regarding the Reconstruction period of American history .-About:...
notion that Reconstruction was overwhelmingly corrupt. They evaluated the postwar period as not more corrupt than many times of social change and turmoil in American history. They argued that Reconstruction had positive elements: most significantly, the enfranchisement of African Americans, both free men and former slaves; the extension of citizenship and civil rights to four million African Americans; and the introduction of public schools for both blacks and poor whites throughout the South where such schools generally had not existed. Franklin, for example, points to the founding of historically black universities Howard
Howard University
Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...
and Fisk
Fisk University
Fisk University is an historically black university founded in 1866 in Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. The world-famous Fisk Jubilee Singers started as a group of students who performed to earn enough money to save the school at a critical time of financial shortages. They toured to raise funds to...
as two major successes of Reconstruction.
Contemporary historians observed that depriving African Americans of suffrage and civil rights was a terrible form of corruption and violation of tenets of representative government.
Usage history
- The NAACP in 1910 called itself a "New Abolition Movement." Du Bois often used the term, as did newspapers.
- In 1952 Kenneth Stampp, discussing the revisionist historians of slavery (including himself), called them "scholarly descendants of the northern abolitionists."
- In 1964, historian George B. Tindall said that in the 1920s H. L. MenckenH. L. MenckenHenry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...
was the "guiding genius" behind "the neoabolitionist myth of the Savage South." That is, Mencken was breaking with the "lost cause" heroic image of the South and sharply criticizing it, as did the abolitionists. - In the 1960s, the term was popularized by the young radical historian Howard ZinnHoward ZinnHoward Zinn was an American historian, academic, author, playwright, and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88 he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United...
, who in 1964 called the activists in the Civil Rights MovementCivil rights movementThe civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
who fought to overturn Jim Crow segregation the "new abolitionists." Zinn did not use the term "neoabolitionist" nor did he apply the term to contemporary historians. - In 1969, Stanford historian Don Fehrenbacher in the American Historical Review wrote about, "today's neoabolitionist historians, whose own social roles often intensify their sense of identity with the antislavery radicals."
- In 1974 C. Vann WoodwardC. Vann WoodwardComer Vann Woodward was a preeminent American historian focusing primarily on the American South and race relations. He was considered, along with Richard Hofstadter and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., to be one of the most influential historians of the postwar era, 1940s-1970s, both by scholars and by...
noted that, "by the 1950s a neoabolitionist mood prevailed among historians of slavery. - In 1975 Princeton professor James McPhersonJames McPhersonJames McPherson may refer to:* James Alan McPherson, American short story writer and essayist, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction* James Alpin McPherson, Australian bushranger* James B. McPherson, General in the United States Civil War...
's Abolitionist Legacy used "neo-abolitionist" more than 50 times to characterize 20th century activists and historians. - Yale professor David W. Blight writes the following: "In the end this is a story of how the forces of reconciliation overwhelmed the emancipationist vision in the national culture, how the inexorable drive for reunion both used and trumped race. But the story does not merely dead-end in the bleakness of the age of segregation; so much of the emancipationist vision persisted in American culture during the early twentieth century, upheld by blacks and a fledgling neo-abolitionist tradition, that it never died a permanent death on the landscape of Civil War memory. That persistence made the revival of the emancipationist memory of the war and the transformation of American society possible in the last third of the twentieth century."
- The conservative National ReviewNational ReviewNational Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
commented in 2003 that "This general perspective on the sectional conflict is already well represented by the Neoabolitionist school of Early American historians, and informs important works by scholars such as Paul Finkelman, Leonard Richards, Donald Robinson, and William Wiecek."http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_24_55/ai_n13606723 - The following appeared in the (Feb 2005 issue of The American Historical Review p 215: ("the iconoclastic historian Stanley M. Elkins reinterpreted the rebellious slave as a neoabolitionist fantasy.")
- In 2006 one popular Civil Rights magazine calls itself The Journal of the Neoabolitionist Movement of the 21st Century.http://www.newliberator.org/
The term Neoabolition or neo-abolitionist is considered by the historian Harvard Sitkoff to sometimes be a derisive term.
- Michael Fellman in 2006 wrote: "Starting in the late 1950s and continuing through the next decade, in tandem with the rise of the civil rights movement, many progressive historians reevaluated the abolitionists, even referring to the contemporary movement for change in America's perception of race as the 'new abolitionism.'"
See also
- Second RedemptionSecond RedemptionSecond Redemption refers to the period following the election of 1968 characterized by more conservatism, and a retreat from governmental and judicial activism on issues of civil rights. The period was reactionary, and was filled with controversies, such as the issue of school busing in Boston and...
- Second ReconstructionSecond ReconstructionSecond Reconstruction is a term, coined by historian C. Vann Woodward, that refers to the American Civil Rights Movement. In many respects, the mass movement against segregation and discrimination that erupted following World War II, shared many similarities with the period of Reconstruction which...
- Reconstruction
- Redemption (U.S. history)
- American Civil WarAmerican Civil WarThe American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
- American Civil Rights MovementAfrican-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)The African-American Civil Rights Movement refers to the movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring voting rights to them. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1955 and 1968, particularly in the South...
Sources
- W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (Free Press: 1998) with introduction by David Levering Lewis ISBN 0-684-85657-3.
- Michael Fellman and Lewis Perry, eds., Antislavery Reconsidered, Louisiana State University Press: 1981.
- Michael Fellman, Prophets of Protests, New Press, 2006.
- Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John Stauffer, eds., Prophets of Protest: Reconsidering the History of American Abolitionism, The New Press, 2006.
- Lewis Perry. "Psychology and the Abolitionists: Reflections on Martin Duberman and the Neoabolitionism of the 1960s" Reviews in American History Vol. 2, No. 3 (Sep., 1974), pp. 309–322
- Taylor, Alrutheus A., Negro in Tennessee 1865-1880 (Reprint Co, June 1, 1974) ISBN 0-87152-165-2
- Taylor, Alrutheus, Negro in South Carolina During the Reconstruction (Ams Press: June 1924) ISBN 0-404-00216-1
- Taylor, Alrutheus, The Negro In The Reconstruction Of Virginia (Washington, DC: The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History: 1926)
External links
- "Reconstruction Historiography: A Source of Teaching Ideas" by Robert P. Green, Jr. (1991)
- "The Avenging Angel" By Martin Duberman, The NationThe NationThe Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, May 4, 2005.