Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery

During the Civil War and the years of reconstruction which immediately followed, blacks experienced an interlude of optimism and hope from the harshness and repression of slavery. It was a time of great social upheaval and former masters and slaves were forced to adjust to a new order. In, "Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery, "Litwack writes of slavery's aftermath with a slave's point of view from contemporary accounts, diaries, and interviews conducted under the Federal Writer's Project. We learn how blacks perceived and experienced freedom. Freedmen articulated their independence in many and varied ways, but fundamental to being free, was having one's own land. Former slaves soon found that land was not easily acquired despite their newfound freedom. Powerful forces conspired against them. Their fate became tied to plantations, working in the fields, just as before but now as contract laborers. The new relationship as planters and laborers kept blacks from exercising the full range of privileges which should have belonged to them as citizens. Land ownership should have meant independence and self-sufficiency to former slaves. In slavery, they had worked the land and harvested its bounty but they were not the beneficiaries of their labor. With emancipation the idea of owning land "remained the most exciting prospect of all." (399) It epitomized the meaning of freedom. The expectation of land redistribution, "forty acres and a mule," was ill founded and unrealized. The success of "such experiments [that] took place at Davis Bend, Mississippi, where blacks secured leases on six extensive plantations...[and] repaid the government for the initial costs, managed their own affairs, raised and sold their own crops, and realized impressive profits"(376)was an aberation. Any lingering hope that the government would redistribute land were dashed when on May 29, 1865, President Andrew Johnson pardoned former Confederates and permitted them to reclaim confiscated or occupied lands. Thereafter the Freedman's Bureau and Federal troops enforced the restoration of lands to their former owners. Not only was redistribution denied to freedmen, but fundamental legal rights were limited as well. What did freedom mean to an emancipated slave who had never experienced it? According to Litwack, "newly liberated slaves adopted different priorities and chose different ways in which to express themselves, ranging from dramatic breaks with the past, to subtle and barely perceptible changes in demeanor and behavior." (292) Initial uncertainty about what to do gave way to "the urge toward personal autonomy"(293), which meant leaving the plantation or farm. To move about is so fundamental to our society today that we take it for granted, but to an emancipated slave it must have been nirvana. In contrast, former slave owners emmitted "cries of ingratitude and betrayal [that] were repeated with even greater vigor and frequency than during the war, compoun

I was surprise that a non-black person could actually have the courage and the sensibility to write an unbiased history of folks of African descent. My spirit was touched by the plight of my ancestors and their ordeal after slavery. The government promised them their 40 acres and a mule. However, very few of them receive anything to start their free life. Without land and the tools to work it, they would be at the mercy of the former ruling elite, slave owners, and other whites that had the inkling to exploit them. Image being freed from centuries of brutal toil, physical, emotional, and sexual exploitation with no resources to start your life in a society that despised you and those in your image? The author does an excellent job. I must commend him. What made me laugh is the response of the whites to the changes in the blacks when they learned they were free and the union army was in the neighborhood. They dropped their masks and showed them their true face. Don't they know their survival was dependent of keeping their mask in place? I am reminded of one of favorite poems. We Wear the Mask by Laurence Dunbar We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-- This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be overwise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask! Preach brotha preach? This poem always tries to bring down the spirits on me. I have to fight it. If I am in a public place, I don't want the Holy Ghost get on me. Smiling. This is one of those books that touched my spirit. It stayed with me for a long time. This is the mark of good writer. Though it is a history book, it is not a bore, with dry facts. It is written like a novel. I give this book a five star, and highly recommend it.

Anyone with a serious interest in the Civil War should read Been in the Storm So Long. Litwacks's work is more than just black history; it explores the principle cause and consequence of the war. Unlike many general histories that preceded it, "Been in the Storm" relies heavily on primary sources. War-era diaries and letters of whites, Union Army records, Freedman's bureau reports, and Depression-era interviews of former slaves and their children, provide most of the material. The outrage of southern whites who watched trusted slaves pick up and leave when freedom came, echoes throughout the book. So too does the uncertainty of the era. Some blacks may have dreamed big, but most just wanted freedom, security, and opportunity. Though some lasting gains were made, the struggle for full freedom would be much longer. Certainly, "Been in the Storm" is the place to start for Emancipation reading. Though the coverage of early black politics was not as strong as in Eric Foner' Reconstruction, I know of no equal for the early social consequences of Emancipation.

Few populations in history have gone through the dramatic changes that African Americans underwent at the end of the Civil War. People who had suffered slavery for generations suddenly found themselves free, a welcome yet uncertain status that required considerable exploration and adjustment. Leon Litwack's book examines this transition, concentrating on how freed African Americans perceived freedom and how they shaped the conditions of their freedom in the aftermath of the Civil War. For many African Americans, change began with the Civil War. Slaves in areas occupied by Union soldiers would be liberated from bondage, while many African Americans took up arms as the war went on. The end of the war and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment meant freedom for African Americans, freedom to live their lives as they wanted. For most, the first step was finding their scattered families and coming to terms with their time as slaves. Freedom also meant discovering a new identity, especially with regards to their former masters, as African Americans now had to deal with whites in new ways both socially and in the workplace. Finally, African Americans faced the challenge of creating a new society free of the restrictions of slave life, which led to the establishment of modes of religion, politics, and the press to serve their particular interests. Litwack's book is an indispensable study of African Americans in the aftermath of emancipation. Based on a wealth of primary sources (including the invaluable collection of oral interviews conducted by the Federal Writers' Project during the 1930s), he argues that no set experience defined how African Americans dealt with freedom. What emancipation demonstrated was the interdependence that existed between African Americans and whites, an interdependence that did not end with freedom but was shaped by attitudes and tensions that remained from the experience of slavery. The result is a book that is essential reading for any student of the era, as well as for those seeking insight into race relations in America today.