November 22, 2019 • 44 mins
During the 1870s, more than a dozen African American men, many of whom had been born into slavery, were elected to the U.S. Congress. These political pioneers symbolized the sky high hopes of millions of former slaves during the years right after the Civil War. It was a period that ended all too quickly. But it happened. Mo talks to Professor Henry Louis Gates, Reconstruction historian Eric Foner, and a descendant of one of the legendary lawmakers.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
That is amazing. It's like three D. I'm at the
Houghton Rare Books Library at Harvard University with Professor Henry
Lewis Gates Jr. You may recognize him as the host
of the PBS show Finding Your Roots. Who are looking
at a print an original lithograph from the nineteenth century.
Pictured in it are seven men. The depth of field
(00:26):
is so striking. I've never seen the original. The men
are all distinguished looking, dressed in three piece suits, some
in bow ties. They're elegant. It's not surprising. The print
says they're congressman from the eighteen seventies. But there's something
else about the scene that seems out of time and place.
(00:48):
All of these congressmen are African American. When you see
the copies, that looks essentially like newspaper print. But when
you look at it here like look at the hair texture.
See the hair texture. The caption reads the first colored
Senator and Representatives in the forty one and forty two Congress.
It was created by the famed printing company Courier and Ives,
(01:13):
and it really is a powerful image. You should stop
what you're doing right now and google it. These men
Hiram Rhodes Revels, Joseph Rainey, Benjamin Turner, Josiah Walls, Jefferson Long,
Robert de Large, Robert Brown, Elliott don't just have great names,
(01:34):
they've got absolutely fierce facial hair. But to me, it's
that year that really sticks out. Entered according to Act
of Congress, in the year eighteen seventy two. So some
of these men seven years before are slaves, that's right. Absolutely,
There are only two of these men who were born free. Now,
(01:54):
I have to confess something. If you'd asked me when
the first African Americans to serving Congress were I would
have said the nineteen fifties or nineteen sixties, maybe the
nineteen seventies, but not the eighteen seventies. The men in
this image all Republicans, all representing Southern states, served in
(02:17):
Congress during the period right after the Civil War known
as Reconstruction. That's when the formerly rebel states were re
absorbed into the Union and four million newly freed slaves
were made citizens. So it was a time of unparalleled hope.
Black man could vote and they were about to elect
(02:38):
congressmen to represent them throughout the South. Look at Hiram Revels,
there now he looks like a senator. Senator Revels from
Mississippi was the very first African American to serving Congress.
In the print, he seated majestically all the way to
the left. When Frederick Douglas saw the portrait of Hiram Revels,
(02:59):
he said, last, the black man that's represented something other
than a monkey. Are they hopeful here? Oh? Yeah, they're hopeful.
They're exemplars of the race, you know, the best and
the brightest. And I'm sure that they believe that they're
the vanguard of legions to come. They have no idea.
(03:20):
What's about the hither From CBS Sunday Morning and Simon
and Schuster, I'm Morocca and this is mobituaries. This mobid
the pioneering black Congressman of Reconstruction January death of representation. Now,
(04:01):
if you blinked during high school history class, you might
have missed Reconstruction. There's a movie about it, though. It
was a really big movie, and that movie, whether you've
seen it or not, has a lot to do with
what you don't know about this story. The Birth of
(04:22):
a Nation was that film, and it was a sensation
when it premiered. In nineteen fifteen. A sweeping epoch. It
told the story of the Civil War and its aftermath
from a distinctly Southern point of view. The Confederacy may
have gone down in defeat, but it did so nobly.
The ku Klux Klan who rise up afterward are valiant
(04:45):
defenders of Southern virtue, and in a notorious scene midway
through the film, the eighteen seventy one South Carolina Statehouse
is depicted. The lawmakers are mostly black, and they're a disgrace,
drinking whiskey, eating chicken bare feet on their desks. The message,
(05:05):
fifty years after the end of the Civil War was
clear Reconstruction was a failure and the election of black
officeholders a desecration. But the lives of the actual black
congressman of Reconstruction tell a story that's very different from
the birth of a nation and no less epic. In
(05:29):
this episode, I'm going to tell you about three of
those men. We start with a great escape. When you're
hearing do you imagine what it was like back in
every time? That's Michael Bullware Moore and we're on a
(05:52):
boat in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor. Oh my god, look
at that all of them. We're not far from Fort Sumter,
where the of the war's first shots were fired. Michael's
great great grandfather was an enslaved man from Beaufort, South Carolina,
(06:12):
named Robert Smalls. Robert was still owned by his master
and Beaufort, but at the age of twelve had been
sent to Charleston to work and to send his wages back.
And very quickly Robert was drawn to the docks where
for different jobs and ended up on this boat, the Planter, which,
(06:33):
once the Civil War broke out, was taken by the
Confederacy and configured into a military vessel, and so he
effectively was the pilot of the ship. He knew all
of the waterways and was an expert seaman. Maybe because
of his expertise, maybe it was because he was believed
to be the son of his owner, Smalls was treated
(06:54):
more leniently than other slaves. He had negotiated with his
master and with his wife's mask or for them to
be able to live independently in an apartment, but he
knew that his family, his wife and children, could be
sold away in an instant and the prospect of that,
as it would for anybody, was just a very difficult
(07:14):
thing to deal with, and so he had freedom on
his mind. The crew members of the Planter used to
joke with Smalls, who was mixed race, about his resemblance
to the ship's white captain, and those jokes inspired an
audacious plan. In the early morning hours of May thirteenth,
eighteen sixty two, Robert Small's set that plan into motion.
(07:37):
So he saw that the Confederate crew had left, and
he knew that oftentimes they left for the evening, not
to come back until the next day, where they offered
them drinking, they carousing, just having a good time in
the big city. And you know, certainly there was a
lot about this endeavor that was a calculated risk. I mean,
he and Hannah, my great great and mother, his wife.
(08:01):
His wife had basically said this was a do or
die proposition that they knew that if they got caught
that they would be not just killed, but probably tortured
in a particularly egregious and public manner as an example
for others. So they lined the bottom of the boat
with dynamite, and they knew that, you know, if they
got caught or something went wrong, and there were a
(08:22):
myriad of things that could have gone wrong, but that
they were going to blow themselves up. And how many
children do they have? Two at the time, and come
with them, absolutely, absolutely, including my great grandmother Elizabeth, who
at the time was maybe four years old. Smalls disguised
himself in a straw hat and long overcoat similar to
(08:43):
what the ship's captain wore. With more than a dozen
black passengers on board, most of them hiding below. He
set sail towards the Union blockade and freedom, but the
harbor was heavily fortified with Confederate sentries chained closely, and
he knew all the pass codes because he was the
(09:04):
pilot of the boat. And so every time he passed by,
they were about five or six forts along the way
here that he would have to blow the appropriate pass
going on the whistle one by one. Smalls, playing it cool,
gave the right pass codes and so so yeah, so
they let him pass. And the last big obstacle is
(09:24):
which fort is Fort Sumter, which is the largest and
most dangerous fort in the harbor, and you know, the
place where the Civil War began and just a place
of enormous historical sort of gravity and wait, it was
captured that point by the Confederacy, and there were enormous
guns on Fort Sumter. When Smalls got to the point
(09:50):
where he believed he was safely beyond the range of cannons,
he fired up the engine and it was full steam ahead.
But while Smalls and his crew had otherwise meticulously planned
this escape, they'd overlooked one key detail. Their ship, speeding
straight toward the Union blockade, was still flying a giant
(10:11):
Confederate flag. Luckily, his wife Hannah, my great great grandmother,
so together some white bedsheets, and so they quickly lowered
the Confederate flag, raised the flag of surrender the white sheets,
and they were greeted at the Union blockade of the
USS onward, the Union forces had suddenly gained a heavily
(10:32):
armed ship ideal for navigating Charleston's Harbor. Even more valuable
than the ship, though, was the pilot's expert knowledge of
the harbor, and the fledgling Northern War effort suddenly gained
an honest to goodness war hero. I mean, there are
all kinds of articles about how what Robert did was
(10:54):
just sort of mind boggling. Of course, Robert was persona
on grata in the South. There was a bounty on
his head, but in the North he was received as
a as a hero. You read these contemporaneous accounts, this
is not a modern day sort of inflation of what
happened at the time, and it was a really big deal.
(11:17):
It's interesting to remember that at that point in time
people thought of of enslaved people as African Americans, really
as beasts of burden, but really blew people's minds because
it just was beyond what people thought an enslaved person
could do. Robert Smalls received fifteen hundred dollars as a
reward for delivering the Planter, enough for him to hire
(11:40):
private tutors and sent his children to the best schools
that would accept African Americans at that time. And just
three months after stepping aboard the US is onward, Robert
Smalls met with President Abraham Lincoln himself. Lincoln had been
cautious about employing runaway slaves in the Union military, but
(12:00):
Smalls helped to make the case to the Great Bearded
One that black men should be allowed to serve in
the Union ranks. Lincoln eventually relented, clearing the way for
some two hundred thousand African Americans to serve, including Robert Smalls,
who went on to fight in seventeen naval battles, rising
(12:21):
to the rank of captain. Why didn't he just take
his winnings and settle into a comfortable life up north.
I think he could have it. It would. He earned
his freedom, he earned the future of just relaxing and
living the life of a Civil War hero. But it
wasn't enough for him, and he he came back, and
(12:43):
he fought for others to gain them the same freedom
that he had already won for himself. After the war,
Smalls returned to Beauford, South Carolina, and, in a sign
of how radically things had shifted in such a short time,
he purchased the home of his former master. In eighteen
(13:04):
sixty eight, as a delegate to South Carolina's Constitutional Convention,
he helped to ratify an amendment that banned discrimination quote
on account of race or color in any case. He
then won a seat in the South Carolina State Legislature.
That same state house depicted in such a demeaning way
(13:24):
in the Birth of a Nation, but in the real
world version of events, small spot for compulsory public schooling
for all children black and white, and in eighteen seventy four,
Robert Smalls was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives.
Once black people get the right to vote in the South,
they start electing people to office, which is one of
(13:46):
the most remarkable changes in this whole period. That's Columbia
University history professor Eric Foner, his landmark book on Reconstruction
inspired a modern day reevaluation of the period. His latest
book is about fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the U. S. Constitution.
(14:07):
Those are the ones ratified in the years after the
Civil War that banned slavery, extended citizenship to all people
born in the US, and effectively gave the vote to
African American men the last most women of any race
would have to wait another half century to vote. Well,
when I look back at Reconstruction, I think of it
(14:29):
as a pivotal moment in the history of American democracy.
It's the first time in this country or really anywhere,
that an interracial democracy was created. That's a really big deal,
by the way, to say that the first time in history. Yes, yes,
you don't have any examples of this in other countries. Really.
Of course, slavery is abolished in many plots of the
(14:51):
Western hemisphere in the nineteenth century. But a functioning interracial
democracy is not really created in any of those places.
And here you have it. You have people who a
few years before with slaves now holding political office. My
estimate is that about two thousand African American men held
(15:13):
some kind of public office. I'm talking about from Congress
down to members of the legislature, down to sheriff and
school board official and Justice of the Piece. I think
Robert Smalls was the type of individual who rolled up
his sleeves and stuck his neck out to make things happen.
(15:33):
Robert Smalls's tenure in Congress coincided with the rise of
a black political elite in the nation's capital and in
emerging social one too. Next the story of the black
senator from Mississippi and his socialite wife. There was a
(15:56):
time where like all I did was think, eat and sleep.
Josephine Bruce Alison Hobbs is a director of African American
Studies at Stanford University. A few years back, she wrote
about the June eight wedding of Mississippi Senator Blanche K.
Bruce to the former Josephine Wilson. This would have been
(16:23):
the wedding of the century. We can imagine this very
well appointed, gorgeous home where this very fancy wedding is
taking place. Crowds gathered outside that home, hoping for a glimpse.
(16:43):
But the house belonged not to the senator, but to
the bride's father, a wealthy African American dentist in Cleveland.
The beautiful Josephine was a socialite in a burgeoning black
upper class, So it was the senator who was marrying up.
Blanche Bruce is going to look out on the family
(17:07):
and friends that have gathered and not see one person
from his own family, and perhaps not even see one
familiar face. And this is a sitting US senator right right.
Perhaps Josephine's family did not want any kind of reminders
of the slave past at this wedding. That most of
(17:31):
Blanche Bruce's family members had been enslaved, while Josephine's family
were born free. Bruce had been enslaved for more than
half of his life, and so that automatically places him
in a very different kind of category than Josephine Bruce
(17:52):
and her circle and her parents circle. Blanche Bruce was
living in Missouri at the start of the Civil War,
he led to the Free State of Kansas, and after
the war studied at Oberlin College in Ohio before making
his way to Mississippi. There he bought a plantation, got
involved in local politics, and in eighteen seventy five was
(18:14):
sworn in as the state's junior U. S. Senator, occupying
the very same seat once held by Jefferson Davis, the
former President of the Confederacy. This was not a man
who was not ready for prime time. Is that someone
who was in over there had. This was someone who,
despite all the odds against him, succeeded enormously. Lawrence Otis
(18:36):
Graham is the author of a history of the Bruce
family called The Senator and the Socialite. You write that
he had the manners of a Chesterfield. What does that mean?
He was sort of an upper class gentleman who, you know,
carried the walking stick and was finally groomed and almost
British in his carriage and behavior. He knew that even
(18:59):
though he at this slave heritage and people were always
going to know that he needs to present himself as
a sophisticated Washington political leader. Sophistication came more naturally to Josephine.
She grew up ensconced in a world of privilege unattainable
for all but the wealthiest Americans at the time, black
(19:20):
or white. After the couple's wedding, they set sail on
a four month European honeymoon, which stops in Germany, Holland,
and Switzerland. The newly weds attended the theater in London
and shopped in Paris. If half is true, that is
(19:40):
told of her beauty and accomplishments, The Washington Post gushed
just before their wedding, her entry here as a senator's
wife is likely to create a sensation for this is phenomenal.
Graham and I visited the five story read Rick Washington,
(20:00):
d c. Townhouse the Bruces called home, and some of
these windows are almost Florida ceiling. You must have been
so happy to find out that the house is still here. Oh, absolutely,
just a mile from the White House. This was an
integrated neighborhood in the eighteen seventies. To be able to
(20:22):
walk down the steps and feel like I would understand
the life of this wealthy, black, powerful couple at a
time when you didn't even think blacks existed in a
lifestyle like this. That house became an important stop on
the Washington social circuit. If Bravo had been around back
(20:43):
then would Blanche and Josephine have been on it. They
would have come after them for a TV show. Oh
my gosh, they would be the great reality show. Can
you imagine this living in a home like this and
you know, socializing in because they're moving from the black world.
There's their black world and then there's their white world.
And she's terrific looking. Oh, she's of and she knows
how that. She knows how to pull it off. She
knew how to enter a room, she knew how to
(21:04):
make people want to know her. But she was not
doing it for herself. She was doing it for her husband,
and she was doing it for his career. So she
would invite and host the wives of senators, on the
wives of Supreme Court justices, and these women would come,
they would come, they would come, and because of their presence,
the society columns would cover them. But news accounts also
(21:26):
made constant, unsettling reference to Josephine's light complexion. It requires
much more than usual attention to notice that she has
any African blood in her veins. Read one dispatch on
the front page of the New York Times. Her looks,
along with her wealth and bearing, made Josephine particularly vexing
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to many in the Washington political establishment, And in some
ways that was exactly what was so disturbing to many
of the members of the Senate and their wives, was
that she just acted like a white woman to them.
And in many cases, she's more refined, she's more well
(22:07):
educated than any of the white senators wives. One paper
went so far as to run an article titled ought
we to visit Her, describing the dilemma many white senators
wives faced. I mean, you could imagine that these white
women who are in Washington, who are married to senators,
(22:30):
they perceived themselves as being at the very top of
the social ladder, and then a black woman comes, and
all of the sudden, she is the topic that everyone
can't stop talking about, and she's the one that the
(22:53):
newspapers want to write about. There was no rule book
for how to receive the wife of an African American senator,
and so all of these white women are sort of
making it up as they go along, and some seem
to do it with some grace, and others don't now.
(23:19):
It probably won't surprise you that some politicians and their
wives did snub the Bruces. But what's interesting to me
is the disapproval those politicians were met with. For example,
there's this eight seventy nine editorial from a Wisconsin newspaper
that scolds the politicians who have quote studiously ignored Josephine
(23:42):
Bruce's existence. The editorial concludes, they have allowed themselves to
be controlled by that old race prejudice. To me, it's
so striking that this editorial is not making any excuses
for the white editors and their wives who have not
received the Bruces right, which is so interesting. It seems
(24:06):
surprising that anyone would be surprised that there were white
wives who did not visit the Bruces. I mean, it
seems like that would have been what people would have
expected at the time. And so that's where I think
we do have to kind of think, well, maybe there
(24:26):
were people who really did believe that a social revolution
had happened and that people needed to accept that and
move on and move ahead. As Senator Blanche Cave, Bruce
advocated not only for the rights of black people, but
also Native Americans and Chinese immigrant laborers. He was the
(24:50):
first African American to preside over the Senate. He even
chaired a Republican national Convention. For many Americans, the Bruce's
wealth and status must have embodied the heights to which
African Americans could aspire in a reconstructed America. But the
uneasiness some felt about them being part of the Washington
(25:12):
establishment would be a sign of things to come back.
In eighteen sixty one, on the eve of the Civil War,
Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the newly formed Confederate
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States of America, delivered a speech laying out the reasoning
behind the nascent rebellion. The great truth, he proclaimed, was
that the negro is not equal to the white man,
that slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural
and normal condition. But by eighteen seventy four a lot
(25:59):
had changed. Over six hundred thousand Americans had died in
the war that followed that speech, four million slaves were freed,
and many of them now held public office throughout the South,
and the US Congress was fiercely debating a Republican backed
civil rights bill that would outlaw discrimination based on race.
(26:22):
In hotels, theaters, and railway cars. The Democratic opposition to
the law was being led by none other than former
Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stevens. He was now
back in Congress from Georgia again, Professor Eric Fohner, and
he'd given a speech denouncing the civil Rights law and
(26:45):
really defending slavery and saying the Civil War had nothing
to do with slavery. It was all local rights. Remember
when the South seceded, Stevens gave a speech saying slavery
is the cornerstone of the Confederacy. Fast forward fifteen years
and he's, oh, no, no, it wasn't about slavery. And anyway,
black people don't deserve these rights anyway. We don't want
(27:05):
to be in a hotel with a black person, or
a railroad with a black person, or anything like that.
And the Republican floor leader, when Stevens was finished, said,
you know, it's kind of late. Now. We're gonna adjourn
until tomorrow morning when Robert B. Elliott will give the
Republican response. South Carolina Congressman Robert Brown. Elliott was famous
(27:28):
for his sterling oratory, his effortless display of classical learning,
and his eloquence in debate. He was also black, but
among his African American colleagues, most of whom were mixed race,
Elliott stood out for his darker skin, A living, breathing
rebuttal to racist ideology of the time. If you were
(27:50):
an intelligent black person and you were mixed, like Frederick Douglas,
of course racists would say, yes, of course, your braun
comes from your freaking heritage. Your brain comes from your
European heritings. So I think he must have caused quite
as their Elliott was also more radical in his politics
(28:12):
than his black colleagues were. He had opposed granting amnesty
to former Confederates, so when word got out that he
would give the response to Steven's, African Americans filled the
house galleries. They came to see what one paper dubbed
as quote the African take on the quote brain of
the Confederacy. Elliott began his response to Stevens by insisting
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that the rights guaranteed by this bill were quite simply inalienable.
Here are Elliot's words, read by actor Delroy Lindo. While
I am sincerely grateful for this high mark of courtesy
that has been accorded to me by this House. It
is a matter of regret to me that it is
(28:58):
necessary at this that I should rise in the presence
of an American Congress to advocate a bill which simply
asserts equal rights and equal public privileges for all classes
of American citizens. I regret, sir, that the dark hue
of my skin may lend the color to the imputation
(29:19):
that I am controlled by motives personal to myself in
my advocacy of this great measure of national justice. Elliott
then faced down the aged, stooped and Billius Stevens and
his colleagues, calling them out for their Confederate past. It
is scarcely twelve years since that gentleman shocked the civilized
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world by announcing the birth of a government which rested
on human slavery as its cornerstone. The progress of events
has swept away that pseudo government, which rested on greed, pride,
and tyranny, and the race whom he then ruthlessly spurned
and trampled on are here to meet him in debate. Sir,
(30:11):
the gentleman from Georgia has not much since eighteen sixty one,
but he is still a laggered now that he's addressing
the vice President of the Confederacy, you know, who wasn't
used to black people talking about him that way, And
I wonder what the protocol was. Did people cheer? I mean,
I mean, well, they weren't supposed to cheer, but they did.
(30:33):
Elliott concluded the speech by citing biblical precedent and making
the case that this bill would serve as the capstone
to Reconstruction itself. The results of the war, as seen
in Reconstruction, have settled forever the political status of my race.
The passage of this bill will determine the civil status
(30:56):
not only of the Negro, but if any other class
of citizens who may feel themselves discriminated against. It will
form the capstone of that temple of liberty begun on
this continent under discouraging circumstances, carried on in spite of
the sneers of monarchists and the cavils of pretended friends
(31:18):
of freedom, until the last it stands, in all its
beautiful symmetry and proportions, a building the grandest of which
the world has ever seen. And the speech was widely
reported in the press. It was widely hailed. One Kentucky
(31:40):
newspaper said, this was the most impressive speech by a
black man in American history. Now that's saying something when
you had Frederick Douglas out there getting brilliant speeches. But
it made an impact. Elliot became a nationally known figure
because of his speech on the Civil Rights Bill. With
the votes of African American cong Risman Joseph Rainey, Richard Kane,
(32:03):
James t Rapier, and John Roy Lynch, that Civil Rights
Bill passed, and on March one, eight President Ulysses S.
Grant signed it into law. Discrimination in restaurants, theaters, and
street cars was now illegal in the United States, at
least it was on paper. The slave went free stood
(32:38):
a brief moment in the sun. That's how the great
writer and civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois
described Reconstruction. Sadly, that moment in the sun wouldn't last. All.
Throughout Reconstruction, white supremacist groups terrorized black voters and office
(33:01):
holders in the South with violence and intimidation, slowly eroding
their power. And then in eighteen seventy six, a dispute
over who won the presidential election I think Bush v. Gore,
but without the hanging chads, led to a deal, Republicans
could have the White House as long as they agreed
to the demands of the Southern Democrats also known as
(33:24):
the former Confederates, to withdraw federal troops from the South.
Those federal troops were essential to protecting the rights of
the newly emancipated black population, rights that included voting. Just
a few years later, the Civil Rights Bill of eighteen
seventy five, which had never really been enforced, was struck
down by the Supreme Court. Reconstruction doesn't end immediately. It
(33:49):
loses impetus, it loses power. But like in the eighteen eighties,
black people are still voting in many parts of the South.
There was still black congressman in the eighties, still black
office holders, less political power than they had had during Reconstruction.
But it's not until really the turn of the century
that a whole new system of racial equality is put
(34:11):
into place, what we call Jim Crow as a shorthand.
By the year nineteen hundred, there was just one African
American in Congress, George White. He chose not to run
for re election that year after his home state of
North Carolina passed laws restricting black voting in his farewell
(34:34):
Address of January one, White addressed the US House in
words that managed to capture both the deep disappointment of
reconstruction and the fierce determination for a better future that
it had inspired. I asked Henry Lewis Gates to read
white speech. This Mr. Chairman is perhaps the nig temporary
(35:01):
farewell to the American Congress. But let me say phoenix
like he will rise up someday and come again. These
parting words are in behalf of an outraged, heartbroken, bruised
and bleeding, but God fearing people. After that speech, it
(35:30):
took twenty seven years before another African American would be
elected to the US House. Over on the Senate side,
Blanche K. Bruce left office in He and Josephine remained
for much of their lives in Washington, d C. Where
she founded the National Association of Colored Women. Bruce's Senate
(35:53):
seat went to a former Confederate general. Five years went
by before another Frican American was elected to the U.
S Senate. Not long after his famous speech on the
floor of the House, Robert Brown Elliott resigned his House
seat and returned to South Carolina. He started a law practice,
(36:14):
but it attracted few clients, and Elliott died in poverty
in four As for naval hero turned congressman Robert Smalls,
he served five terms in the House. After losing his
last election, he returned to Beauford, South Carolina, and died
in ninetift That same year, the Birth of a Nation
(36:41):
was released. You remember the Birth of a Nation. That
was the movie I told you about at the start
of this episode, with that disgraceful scene depicting black lawmaker
as a drinking eating chicken, their bare feet up on
desks in the South Carolina State House. Now remember, by
(37:02):
that time, blacks had lost the right to vote throughout
the South, and Birth of a Nation is telling you
that is justifiable. Why because look what happened when black
people held office. It was a travesty of government. This
is a complete fabrication. It's what you would call today
fake history. But it had a powerful impact on public
(37:23):
sentiment in the early twentieth century. Now, the Birth of
a Nation wasn't just some indie flick playing down at
the one art house in town. Director D. W. Griffith's
epic was one of the highest grossing films of the
Silent era. It's star Lillian Gish was known as the
first Lady of American cinema, and despite protests from the
(37:46):
n double A c P. And there were protests, President
Woodrow Wilson hosted a screening of the movie at the
White House. That image, that scene was that than and
the dominant view of how blacks had held office and
how they had comported themselves during Reconstruction. By the time
(38:08):
Birth of a Nation came out, you already had scholars,
my predecessors at Columbia University among them, who had, in
a more academic way, written that black suffrage was a
terrible mistake, that black people are incapable of holding political
office or taking part in democracy. So those ideas were
(38:28):
out there, But a film like Birth of a Nation
conveys those ideas to far more people than an academic
treatise is ever going to do. The North and may
have won the war, but the South won the movie
houses and the text books. Henry Lewis Gates remembers how
he was taught about Reconstruction in his West Virginia High
(38:51):
school history class. Was it really embarrassing? It was? You
can't imagine how embarrassing it was. We with the few
black people to claim we had hold her books in
her face and sort of slide down because Abraham Lincoln,
the greatest American since George Washington, had given his life
for you people, and when you people were freed, he
(39:14):
squandered the opportunity in this embarrassing period called Reconstruction. That's personally.
I grew up in Long Island, near New York City suburb.
That's what I was taught in high school in the
nineteen fifties. Reconstruction was the worst period in American history.
It was a travesty of democracy. Black people misused the
(39:38):
right to vote, were not capable of serving in public office.
You know that that was toward everywhere, and it's still
has a hold on an older generation of people who
learned this in school. So you know, it's a very
pernicious set of myths. But it shows you that history matters.
What people think about history matters. But what if the
(39:59):
story way of Reconstruction had been told differently? What if
instead of the birth of a nation, people thought of
that beautiful eight seventy two courier and ives lithograph, the
one of the Black Congressman of Reconstruction. When Henry Lewis
Gates and I were admiring it. I asked him if
maybe it was time that Hollywood reconsider Reconstruction. I hate
(40:21):
to produce everything to casting, but I do think that
John Amos could play Hiram Revels. I love Johnny. So
you have Billy Dee Williams. Billy Billy d Williams is
just u Mersila Ali Ali as would be Robert Brown Elliott.
(40:43):
One last thing. When I started this story, I thought
of the black Congressman of Reconstruction as forgotten forerunners, and
they were forgotten by Hollywood, by high school history books,
by most of us. But it turns out they weren't
forgotten by everyone. During the Great Depression in the late
(41:07):
nineteen thirties, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration sent
out of work writers into the South to document the
lives of now elderly former slaves. And one of the
coolest things is that when w p A workers would
go into sharecroppers homes in the South and they find
(41:29):
faded copies of the lithograp still on the wall, people
keeping in line the memory of the apex of black achievement.
Immediately following the Civil War, so when I was growing up,
it's a picture. There was Jesus and John Kennedy and
Martin Lure the King, but at that time there was
this lithograph. Next time on Mobituaries, we take the show
(42:00):
on the road, Seth Paul Prudeome is not altogether now,
Oh my god, I just got a whole audience to say,
Don Deloise and Unison, I certainly hope you enjoyed this moment.
May I ask you to please rate and review the podcast.
You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and
(42:22):
you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. For more
great content, go to mobituaries dot com. You can subscribe
to Mobituaries wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of
Mobituaries was produced by Kate mccauliffe and Mark Hudspeth. It
was edited by Michael Levine. Our team of producers also
(42:43):
includes Megan Marcus, Harry Wood, and me Morocca. It was
engineered by Dan Gazula special thanks to Harvard University's Hoton Library.
Charleston Harbord tours everyone in Beaufort, South Carolina, home of
the Reconstruction Era National Historic Park and my friend the
Great del Roy Lindo, who you can see on The
(43:05):
Good Fight streaming on CBS All Access. To learn more
about reconstruction, be sure to check out Henry Lewis Gates's
latest book, Dark Sky Rising, and Philip Dre's Gripping Capital Men.
Indispensable support from Genius Donski, Richard Rorer and everyone at
CBS News Radio. Our theme music is written by Daniel
(43:28):
Hart and as always, undying thanks to Rand Morrison and
John Carp without whom Mobituaries couldn't live. Hi, It's mo.
If you're enjoying Mobituaries the podcast, may I invite you
to check out Mobituaries the book. It's chock full of
(43:51):
stories not in the podcast. Celebrities who put their butts
on the line, sports teams that threw in the towel
for good, for fashions, defunct diagnoses presidential candidacies that cratered
whole countries that went to put and dragons, Yes, dragons,
you see. People used to believe the dragons will real
until just get the book. You can order Mobituaries the
(44:15):
Book from any online bookseller, or stop by your local
bookstore and look for me when I come to your city.
Tour information and lots more at mobituaries dot com.
That is amazing. It's like three D. I'm at the
Houghton Rare Books Library at Harvard University with Professor Henry
Lewis Gates Jr. You may recognize him as the host
of the PBS show Finding Your Roots. Who are looking
at a print an original lithograph from the nineteenth century.
Pictured in it are seven men. The depth of field
(00:26):
is so striking. I've never seen the original. The men
are all distinguished looking, dressed in three piece suits, some
in bow ties. They're elegant. It's not surprising. The print
says they're congressman from the eighteen seventies. But there's something
else about the scene that seems out of time and place.
(00:48):
All of these congressmen are African American. When you see
the copies, that looks essentially like newspaper print. But when
you look at it here like look at the hair texture.
See the hair texture. The caption reads the first colored
Senator and Representatives in the forty one and forty two Congress.
It was created by the famed printing company Courier and Ives,
(01:13):
and it really is a powerful image. You should stop
what you're doing right now and google it. These men
Hiram Rhodes Revels, Joseph Rainey, Benjamin Turner, Josiah Walls, Jefferson Long,
Robert de Large, Robert Brown, Elliott don't just have great names,
(01:34):
they've got absolutely fierce facial hair. But to me, it's
that year that really sticks out. Entered according to Act
of Congress, in the year eighteen seventy two. So some
of these men seven years before are slaves, that's right. Absolutely,
There are only two of these men who were born free. Now,
(01:54):
I have to confess something. If you'd asked me when
the first African Americans to serving Congress were I would
have said the nineteen fifties or nineteen sixties, maybe the
nineteen seventies, but not the eighteen seventies. The men in
this image all Republicans, all representing Southern states, served in
(02:17):
Congress during the period right after the Civil War known
as Reconstruction. That's when the formerly rebel states were re
absorbed into the Union and four million newly freed slaves
were made citizens. So it was a time of unparalleled hope.
Black man could vote and they were about to elect
(02:38):
congressmen to represent them throughout the South. Look at Hiram Revels,
there now he looks like a senator. Senator Revels from
Mississippi was the very first African American to serving Congress.
In the print, he seated majestically all the way to
the left. When Frederick Douglas saw the portrait of Hiram Revels,
(02:59):
he said, last, the black man that's represented something other
than a monkey. Are they hopeful here? Oh? Yeah, they're hopeful.
They're exemplars of the race, you know, the best and
the brightest. And I'm sure that they believe that they're
the vanguard of legions to come. They have no idea.
(03:20):
What's about the hither From CBS Sunday Morning and Simon
and Schuster, I'm Morocca and this is mobituaries. This mobid
the pioneering black Congressman of Reconstruction January death of representation. Now,
(04:01):
if you blinked during high school history class, you might
have missed Reconstruction. There's a movie about it, though. It
was a really big movie, and that movie, whether you've
seen it or not, has a lot to do with
what you don't know about this story. The Birth of
(04:22):
a Nation was that film, and it was a sensation
when it premiered. In nineteen fifteen. A sweeping epoch. It
told the story of the Civil War and its aftermath
from a distinctly Southern point of view. The Confederacy may
have gone down in defeat, but it did so nobly.
The ku Klux Klan who rise up afterward are valiant
(04:45):
defenders of Southern virtue, and in a notorious scene midway
through the film, the eighteen seventy one South Carolina Statehouse
is depicted. The lawmakers are mostly black, and they're a disgrace,
drinking whiskey, eating chicken bare feet on their desks. The message,
(05:05):
fifty years after the end of the Civil War was
clear Reconstruction was a failure and the election of black
officeholders a desecration. But the lives of the actual black
congressman of Reconstruction tell a story that's very different from
the birth of a nation and no less epic. In
(05:29):
this episode, I'm going to tell you about three of
those men. We start with a great escape. When you're
hearing do you imagine what it was like back in
every time? That's Michael Bullware Moore and we're on a
(05:52):
boat in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor. Oh my god, look
at that all of them. We're not far from Fort Sumter,
where the of the war's first shots were fired. Michael's
great great grandfather was an enslaved man from Beaufort, South Carolina,
(06:12):
named Robert Smalls. Robert was still owned by his master
and Beaufort, but at the age of twelve had been
sent to Charleston to work and to send his wages back.
And very quickly Robert was drawn to the docks where
for different jobs and ended up on this boat, the Planter, which,
(06:33):
once the Civil War broke out, was taken by the
Confederacy and configured into a military vessel, and so he
effectively was the pilot of the ship. He knew all
of the waterways and was an expert seaman. Maybe because
of his expertise, maybe it was because he was believed
to be the son of his owner, Smalls was treated
(06:54):
more leniently than other slaves. He had negotiated with his
master and with his wife's mask or for them to
be able to live independently in an apartment, but he
knew that his family, his wife and children, could be
sold away in an instant and the prospect of that,
as it would for anybody, was just a very difficult
(07:14):
thing to deal with, and so he had freedom on
his mind. The crew members of the Planter used to
joke with Smalls, who was mixed race, about his resemblance
to the ship's white captain, and those jokes inspired an
audacious plan. In the early morning hours of May thirteenth,
eighteen sixty two, Robert Small's set that plan into motion.
(07:37):
So he saw that the Confederate crew had left, and
he knew that oftentimes they left for the evening, not
to come back until the next day, where they offered
them drinking, they carousing, just having a good time in
the big city. And you know, certainly there was a
lot about this endeavor that was a calculated risk. I mean,
he and Hannah, my great great and mother, his wife.
(08:01):
His wife had basically said this was a do or
die proposition that they knew that if they got caught
that they would be not just killed, but probably tortured
in a particularly egregious and public manner as an example
for others. So they lined the bottom of the boat
with dynamite, and they knew that, you know, if they
got caught or something went wrong, and there were a
(08:22):
myriad of things that could have gone wrong, but that
they were going to blow themselves up. And how many
children do they have? Two at the time, and come
with them, absolutely, absolutely, including my great grandmother Elizabeth, who
at the time was maybe four years old. Smalls disguised
himself in a straw hat and long overcoat similar to
(08:43):
what the ship's captain wore. With more than a dozen
black passengers on board, most of them hiding below. He
set sail towards the Union blockade and freedom, but the
harbor was heavily fortified with Confederate sentries chained closely, and
he knew all the pass codes because he was the
(09:04):
pilot of the boat. And so every time he passed by,
they were about five or six forts along the way
here that he would have to blow the appropriate pass
going on the whistle one by one. Smalls, playing it cool,
gave the right pass codes and so so yeah, so
they let him pass. And the last big obstacle is
(09:24):
which fort is Fort Sumter, which is the largest and
most dangerous fort in the harbor, and you know, the
place where the Civil War began and just a place
of enormous historical sort of gravity and wait, it was
captured that point by the Confederacy, and there were enormous
guns on Fort Sumter. When Smalls got to the point
(09:50):
where he believed he was safely beyond the range of cannons,
he fired up the engine and it was full steam ahead.
But while Smalls and his crew had otherwise meticulously planned
this escape, they'd overlooked one key detail. Their ship, speeding
straight toward the Union blockade, was still flying a giant
(10:11):
Confederate flag. Luckily, his wife Hannah, my great great grandmother,
so together some white bedsheets, and so they quickly lowered
the Confederate flag, raised the flag of surrender the white sheets,
and they were greeted at the Union blockade of the
USS onward, the Union forces had suddenly gained a heavily
(10:32):
armed ship ideal for navigating Charleston's Harbor. Even more valuable
than the ship, though, was the pilot's expert knowledge of
the harbor, and the fledgling Northern War effort suddenly gained
an honest to goodness war hero. I mean, there are
all kinds of articles about how what Robert did was
(10:54):
just sort of mind boggling. Of course, Robert was persona
on grata in the South. There was a bounty on
his head, but in the North he was received as
a as a hero. You read these contemporaneous accounts, this
is not a modern day sort of inflation of what
happened at the time, and it was a really big deal.
(11:17):
It's interesting to remember that at that point in time
people thought of of enslaved people as African Americans, really
as beasts of burden, but really blew people's minds because
it just was beyond what people thought an enslaved person
could do. Robert Smalls received fifteen hundred dollars as a
reward for delivering the Planter, enough for him to hire
(11:40):
private tutors and sent his children to the best schools
that would accept African Americans at that time. And just
three months after stepping aboard the US is onward, Robert
Smalls met with President Abraham Lincoln himself. Lincoln had been
cautious about employing runaway slaves in the Union military, but
(12:00):
Smalls helped to make the case to the Great Bearded
One that black men should be allowed to serve in
the Union ranks. Lincoln eventually relented, clearing the way for
some two hundred thousand African Americans to serve, including Robert Smalls,
who went on to fight in seventeen naval battles, rising
(12:21):
to the rank of captain. Why didn't he just take
his winnings and settle into a comfortable life up north.
I think he could have it. It would. He earned
his freedom, he earned the future of just relaxing and
living the life of a Civil War hero. But it
wasn't enough for him, and he he came back, and
(12:43):
he fought for others to gain them the same freedom
that he had already won for himself. After the war,
Smalls returned to Beauford, South Carolina, and, in a sign
of how radically things had shifted in such a short time,
he purchased the home of his former master. In eighteen
(13:04):
sixty eight, as a delegate to South Carolina's Constitutional Convention,
he helped to ratify an amendment that banned discrimination quote
on account of race or color in any case. He
then won a seat in the South Carolina State Legislature.
That same state house depicted in such a demeaning way
(13:24):
in the Birth of a Nation, but in the real
world version of events, small spot for compulsory public schooling
for all children black and white, and in eighteen seventy four,
Robert Smalls was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives.
Once black people get the right to vote in the South,
they start electing people to office, which is one of
(13:46):
the most remarkable changes in this whole period. That's Columbia
University history professor Eric Foner, his landmark book on Reconstruction
inspired a modern day reevaluation of the period. His latest
book is about fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the U. S. Constitution.
(14:07):
Those are the ones ratified in the years after the
Civil War that banned slavery, extended citizenship to all people
born in the US, and effectively gave the vote to
African American men the last most women of any race
would have to wait another half century to vote. Well,
when I look back at Reconstruction, I think of it
(14:29):
as a pivotal moment in the history of American democracy.
It's the first time in this country or really anywhere,
that an interracial democracy was created. That's a really big deal,
by the way, to say that the first time in history. Yes, yes,
you don't have any examples of this in other countries. Really.
Of course, slavery is abolished in many plots of the
(14:51):
Western hemisphere in the nineteenth century. But a functioning interracial
democracy is not really created in any of those places.
And here you have it. You have people who a
few years before with slaves now holding political office. My
estimate is that about two thousand African American men held
(15:13):
some kind of public office. I'm talking about from Congress
down to members of the legislature, down to sheriff and
school board official and Justice of the Piece. I think
Robert Smalls was the type of individual who rolled up
his sleeves and stuck his neck out to make things happen.
(15:33):
Robert Smalls's tenure in Congress coincided with the rise of
a black political elite in the nation's capital and in
emerging social one too. Next the story of the black
senator from Mississippi and his socialite wife. There was a
(15:56):
time where like all I did was think, eat and sleep.
Josephine Bruce Alison Hobbs is a director of African American
Studies at Stanford University. A few years back, she wrote
about the June eight wedding of Mississippi Senator Blanche K.
Bruce to the former Josephine Wilson. This would have been
(16:23):
the wedding of the century. We can imagine this very
well appointed, gorgeous home where this very fancy wedding is
taking place. Crowds gathered outside that home, hoping for a glimpse.
(16:43):
But the house belonged not to the senator, but to
the bride's father, a wealthy African American dentist in Cleveland.
The beautiful Josephine was a socialite in a burgeoning black
upper class, So it was the senator who was marrying up.
Blanche Bruce is going to look out on the family
(17:07):
and friends that have gathered and not see one person
from his own family, and perhaps not even see one
familiar face. And this is a sitting US senator right right.
Perhaps Josephine's family did not want any kind of reminders
of the slave past at this wedding. That most of
(17:31):
Blanche Bruce's family members had been enslaved, while Josephine's family
were born free. Bruce had been enslaved for more than
half of his life, and so that automatically places him
in a very different kind of category than Josephine Bruce
(17:52):
and her circle and her parents circle. Blanche Bruce was
living in Missouri at the start of the Civil War,
he led to the Free State of Kansas, and after
the war studied at Oberlin College in Ohio before making
his way to Mississippi. There he bought a plantation, got
involved in local politics, and in eighteen seventy five was
(18:14):
sworn in as the state's junior U. S. Senator, occupying
the very same seat once held by Jefferson Davis, the
former President of the Confederacy. This was not a man
who was not ready for prime time. Is that someone
who was in over there had. This was someone who,
despite all the odds against him, succeeded enormously. Lawrence Otis
(18:36):
Graham is the author of a history of the Bruce
family called The Senator and the Socialite. You write that
he had the manners of a Chesterfield. What does that mean?
He was sort of an upper class gentleman who, you know,
carried the walking stick and was finally groomed and almost
British in his carriage and behavior. He knew that even
(18:59):
though he at this slave heritage and people were always
going to know that he needs to present himself as
a sophisticated Washington political leader. Sophistication came more naturally to Josephine.
She grew up ensconced in a world of privilege unattainable
for all but the wealthiest Americans at the time, black
(19:20):
or white. After the couple's wedding, they set sail on
a four month European honeymoon, which stops in Germany, Holland,
and Switzerland. The newly weds attended the theater in London
and shopped in Paris. If half is true, that is
(19:40):
told of her beauty and accomplishments, The Washington Post gushed
just before their wedding, her entry here as a senator's
wife is likely to create a sensation for this is phenomenal.
Graham and I visited the five story read Rick Washington,
(20:00):
d c. Townhouse the Bruces called home, and some of
these windows are almost Florida ceiling. You must have been
so happy to find out that the house is still here. Oh, absolutely,
just a mile from the White House. This was an
integrated neighborhood in the eighteen seventies. To be able to
(20:22):
walk down the steps and feel like I would understand
the life of this wealthy, black, powerful couple at a
time when you didn't even think blacks existed in a
lifestyle like this. That house became an important stop on
the Washington social circuit. If Bravo had been around back
(20:43):
then would Blanche and Josephine have been on it. They
would have come after them for a TV show. Oh
my gosh, they would be the great reality show. Can
you imagine this living in a home like this and
you know, socializing in because they're moving from the black world.
There's their black world and then there's their white world.
And she's terrific looking. Oh, she's of and she knows
how that. She knows how to pull it off. She
knew how to enter a room, she knew how to
(21:04):
make people want to know her. But she was not
doing it for herself. She was doing it for her husband,
and she was doing it for his career. So she
would invite and host the wives of senators, on the
wives of Supreme Court justices, and these women would come,
they would come, they would come, and because of their presence,
the society columns would cover them. But news accounts also
(21:26):
made constant, unsettling reference to Josephine's light complexion. It requires
much more than usual attention to notice that she has
any African blood in her veins. Read one dispatch on
the front page of the New York Times. Her looks,
along with her wealth and bearing, made Josephine particularly vexing
(21:47):
to many in the Washington political establishment, And in some
ways that was exactly what was so disturbing to many
of the members of the Senate and their wives, was
that she just acted like a white woman to them.
And in many cases, she's more refined, she's more well
(22:07):
educated than any of the white senators wives. One paper
went so far as to run an article titled ought
we to visit Her, describing the dilemma many white senators
wives faced. I mean, you could imagine that these white
women who are in Washington, who are married to senators,
(22:30):
they perceived themselves as being at the very top of
the social ladder, and then a black woman comes, and
all of the sudden, she is the topic that everyone
can't stop talking about, and she's the one that the
(22:53):
newspapers want to write about. There was no rule book
for how to receive the wife of an African American senator,
and so all of these white women are sort of
making it up as they go along, and some seem
to do it with some grace, and others don't now.
(23:19):
It probably won't surprise you that some politicians and their
wives did snub the Bruces. But what's interesting to me
is the disapproval those politicians were met with. For example,
there's this eight seventy nine editorial from a Wisconsin newspaper
that scolds the politicians who have quote studiously ignored Josephine
(23:42):
Bruce's existence. The editorial concludes, they have allowed themselves to
be controlled by that old race prejudice. To me, it's
so striking that this editorial is not making any excuses
for the white editors and their wives who have not
received the Bruces right, which is so interesting. It seems
(24:06):
surprising that anyone would be surprised that there were white
wives who did not visit the Bruces. I mean, it
seems like that would have been what people would have
expected at the time. And so that's where I think
we do have to kind of think, well, maybe there
(24:26):
were people who really did believe that a social revolution
had happened and that people needed to accept that and
move on and move ahead. As Senator Blanche Cave, Bruce
advocated not only for the rights of black people, but
also Native Americans and Chinese immigrant laborers. He was the
(24:50):
first African American to preside over the Senate. He even
chaired a Republican national Convention. For many Americans, the Bruce's
wealth and status must have embodied the heights to which
African Americans could aspire in a reconstructed America. But the
uneasiness some felt about them being part of the Washington
(25:12):
establishment would be a sign of things to come back.
In eighteen sixty one, on the eve of the Civil War,
Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the newly formed Confederate
(25:36):
States of America, delivered a speech laying out the reasoning
behind the nascent rebellion. The great truth, he proclaimed, was
that the negro is not equal to the white man,
that slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural
and normal condition. But by eighteen seventy four a lot
(25:59):
had changed. Over six hundred thousand Americans had died in
the war that followed that speech, four million slaves were freed,
and many of them now held public office throughout the South,
and the US Congress was fiercely debating a Republican backed
civil rights bill that would outlaw discrimination based on race.
(26:22):
In hotels, theaters, and railway cars. The Democratic opposition to
the law was being led by none other than former
Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stevens. He was now
back in Congress from Georgia again, Professor Eric Fohner, and
he'd given a speech denouncing the civil Rights law and
(26:45):
really defending slavery and saying the Civil War had nothing
to do with slavery. It was all local rights. Remember
when the South seceded, Stevens gave a speech saying slavery
is the cornerstone of the Confederacy. Fast forward fifteen years
and he's, oh, no, no, it wasn't about slavery. And anyway,
black people don't deserve these rights anyway. We don't want
(27:05):
to be in a hotel with a black person, or
a railroad with a black person, or anything like that.
And the Republican floor leader, when Stevens was finished, said,
you know, it's kind of late. Now. We're gonna adjourn
until tomorrow morning when Robert B. Elliott will give the
Republican response. South Carolina Congressman Robert Brown. Elliott was famous
(27:28):
for his sterling oratory, his effortless display of classical learning,
and his eloquence in debate. He was also black, but
among his African American colleagues, most of whom were mixed race,
Elliott stood out for his darker skin, A living, breathing
rebuttal to racist ideology of the time. If you were
(27:50):
an intelligent black person and you were mixed, like Frederick Douglas,
of course racists would say, yes, of course, your braun
comes from your freaking heritage. Your brain comes from your
European heritings. So I think he must have caused quite
as their Elliott was also more radical in his politics
(28:12):
than his black colleagues were. He had opposed granting amnesty
to former Confederates, so when word got out that he
would give the response to Steven's, African Americans filled the
house galleries. They came to see what one paper dubbed
as quote the African take on the quote brain of
the Confederacy. Elliott began his response to Stevens by insisting
(28:37):
that the rights guaranteed by this bill were quite simply inalienable.
Here are Elliot's words, read by actor Delroy Lindo. While
I am sincerely grateful for this high mark of courtesy
that has been accorded to me by this House. It
is a matter of regret to me that it is
(28:58):
necessary at this that I should rise in the presence
of an American Congress to advocate a bill which simply
asserts equal rights and equal public privileges for all classes
of American citizens. I regret, sir, that the dark hue
of my skin may lend the color to the imputation
(29:19):
that I am controlled by motives personal to myself in
my advocacy of this great measure of national justice. Elliott
then faced down the aged, stooped and Billius Stevens and
his colleagues, calling them out for their Confederate past. It
is scarcely twelve years since that gentleman shocked the civilized
(29:43):
world by announcing the birth of a government which rested
on human slavery as its cornerstone. The progress of events
has swept away that pseudo government, which rested on greed, pride,
and tyranny, and the race whom he then ruthlessly spurned
and trampled on are here to meet him in debate. Sir,
(30:11):
the gentleman from Georgia has not much since eighteen sixty one,
but he is still a laggered now that he's addressing
the vice President of the Confederacy, you know, who wasn't
used to black people talking about him that way, And
I wonder what the protocol was. Did people cheer? I mean,
I mean, well, they weren't supposed to cheer, but they did.
(30:33):
Elliott concluded the speech by citing biblical precedent and making
the case that this bill would serve as the capstone
to Reconstruction itself. The results of the war, as seen
in Reconstruction, have settled forever the political status of my race.
The passage of this bill will determine the civil status
(30:56):
not only of the Negro, but if any other class
of citizens who may feel themselves discriminated against. It will
form the capstone of that temple of liberty begun on
this continent under discouraging circumstances, carried on in spite of
the sneers of monarchists and the cavils of pretended friends
(31:18):
of freedom, until the last it stands, in all its
beautiful symmetry and proportions, a building the grandest of which
the world has ever seen. And the speech was widely
reported in the press. It was widely hailed. One Kentucky
(31:40):
newspaper said, this was the most impressive speech by a
black man in American history. Now that's saying something when
you had Frederick Douglas out there getting brilliant speeches. But
it made an impact. Elliot became a nationally known figure
because of his speech on the Civil Rights Bill. With
the votes of African American cong Risman Joseph Rainey, Richard Kane,
(32:03):
James t Rapier, and John Roy Lynch, that Civil Rights
Bill passed, and on March one, eight President Ulysses S.
Grant signed it into law. Discrimination in restaurants, theaters, and
street cars was now illegal in the United States, at
least it was on paper. The slave went free stood
(32:38):
a brief moment in the sun. That's how the great
writer and civil rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois
described Reconstruction. Sadly, that moment in the sun wouldn't last. All.
Throughout Reconstruction, white supremacist groups terrorized black voters and office
(33:01):
holders in the South with violence and intimidation, slowly eroding
their power. And then in eighteen seventy six, a dispute
over who won the presidential election I think Bush v. Gore,
but without the hanging chads, led to a deal, Republicans
could have the White House as long as they agreed
to the demands of the Southern Democrats also known as
(33:24):
the former Confederates, to withdraw federal troops from the South.
Those federal troops were essential to protecting the rights of
the newly emancipated black population, rights that included voting. Just
a few years later, the Civil Rights Bill of eighteen
seventy five, which had never really been enforced, was struck
down by the Supreme Court. Reconstruction doesn't end immediately. It
(33:49):
loses impetus, it loses power. But like in the eighteen eighties,
black people are still voting in many parts of the South.
There was still black congressman in the eighties, still black
office holders, less political power than they had had during Reconstruction.
But it's not until really the turn of the century
that a whole new system of racial equality is put
(34:11):
into place, what we call Jim Crow as a shorthand.
By the year nineteen hundred, there was just one African
American in Congress, George White. He chose not to run
for re election that year after his home state of
North Carolina passed laws restricting black voting in his farewell
(34:34):
Address of January one, White addressed the US House in
words that managed to capture both the deep disappointment of
reconstruction and the fierce determination for a better future that
it had inspired. I asked Henry Lewis Gates to read
white speech. This Mr. Chairman is perhaps the nig temporary
(35:01):
farewell to the American Congress. But let me say phoenix
like he will rise up someday and come again. These
parting words are in behalf of an outraged, heartbroken, bruised
and bleeding, but God fearing people. After that speech, it
(35:30):
took twenty seven years before another African American would be
elected to the US House. Over on the Senate side,
Blanche K. Bruce left office in He and Josephine remained
for much of their lives in Washington, d C. Where
she founded the National Association of Colored Women. Bruce's Senate
(35:53):
seat went to a former Confederate general. Five years went
by before another Frican American was elected to the U.
S Senate. Not long after his famous speech on the
floor of the House, Robert Brown Elliott resigned his House
seat and returned to South Carolina. He started a law practice,
(36:14):
but it attracted few clients, and Elliott died in poverty
in four As for naval hero turned congressman Robert Smalls,
he served five terms in the House. After losing his
last election, he returned to Beauford, South Carolina, and died
in ninetift That same year, the Birth of a Nation
(36:41):
was released. You remember the Birth of a Nation. That
was the movie I told you about at the start
of this episode, with that disgraceful scene depicting black lawmaker
as a drinking eating chicken, their bare feet up on
desks in the South Carolina State House. Now remember, by
(37:02):
that time, blacks had lost the right to vote throughout
the South, and Birth of a Nation is telling you
that is justifiable. Why because look what happened when black
people held office. It was a travesty of government. This
is a complete fabrication. It's what you would call today
fake history. But it had a powerful impact on public
(37:23):
sentiment in the early twentieth century. Now, the Birth of
a Nation wasn't just some indie flick playing down at
the one art house in town. Director D. W. Griffith's
epic was one of the highest grossing films of the
Silent era. It's star Lillian Gish was known as the
first Lady of American cinema, and despite protests from the
(37:46):
n double A c P. And there were protests, President
Woodrow Wilson hosted a screening of the movie at the
White House. That image, that scene was that than and
the dominant view of how blacks had held office and
how they had comported themselves during Reconstruction. By the time
(38:08):
Birth of a Nation came out, you already had scholars,
my predecessors at Columbia University among them, who had, in
a more academic way, written that black suffrage was a
terrible mistake, that black people are incapable of holding political
office or taking part in democracy. So those ideas were
(38:28):
out there, But a film like Birth of a Nation
conveys those ideas to far more people than an academic
treatise is ever going to do. The North and may
have won the war, but the South won the movie
houses and the text books. Henry Lewis Gates remembers how
he was taught about Reconstruction in his West Virginia High
(38:51):
school history class. Was it really embarrassing? It was? You
can't imagine how embarrassing it was. We with the few
black people to claim we had hold her books in
her face and sort of slide down because Abraham Lincoln,
the greatest American since George Washington, had given his life
for you people, and when you people were freed, he
(39:14):
squandered the opportunity in this embarrassing period called Reconstruction. That's personally.
I grew up in Long Island, near New York City suburb.
That's what I was taught in high school in the
nineteen fifties. Reconstruction was the worst period in American history.
It was a travesty of democracy. Black people misused the
(39:38):
right to vote, were not capable of serving in public office.
You know that that was toward everywhere, and it's still
has a hold on an older generation of people who
learned this in school. So you know, it's a very
pernicious set of myths. But it shows you that history matters.
What people think about history matters. But what if the
(39:59):
story way of Reconstruction had been told differently? What if
instead of the birth of a nation, people thought of
that beautiful eight seventy two courier and ives lithograph, the
one of the Black Congressman of Reconstruction. When Henry Lewis
Gates and I were admiring it. I asked him if
maybe it was time that Hollywood reconsider Reconstruction. I hate
(40:21):
to produce everything to casting, but I do think that
John Amos could play Hiram Revels. I love Johnny. So
you have Billy Dee Williams. Billy Billy d Williams is
just u Mersila Ali Ali as would be Robert Brown Elliott.
(40:43):
One last thing. When I started this story, I thought
of the black Congressman of Reconstruction as forgotten forerunners, and
they were forgotten by Hollywood, by high school history books,
by most of us. But it turns out they weren't
forgotten by everyone. During the Great Depression in the late
(41:07):
nineteen thirties, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration sent
out of work writers into the South to document the
lives of now elderly former slaves. And one of the
coolest things is that when w p A workers would
go into sharecroppers homes in the South and they find
(41:29):
faded copies of the lithograp still on the wall, people
keeping in line the memory of the apex of black achievement.
Immediately following the Civil War, so when I was growing up,
it's a picture. There was Jesus and John Kennedy and
Martin Lure the King, but at that time there was
this lithograph. Next time on Mobituaries, we take the show
(42:00):
on the road, Seth Paul Prudeome is not altogether now,
Oh my god, I just got a whole audience to say,
Don Deloise and Unison, I certainly hope you enjoyed this moment.
May I ask you to please rate and review the podcast.
You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and
(42:22):
you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. For more
great content, go to mobituaries dot com. You can subscribe
to Mobituaries wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of
Mobituaries was produced by Kate mccauliffe and Mark Hudspeth. It
was edited by Michael Levine. Our team of producers also
(42:43):
includes Megan Marcus, Harry Wood, and me Morocca. It was
engineered by Dan Gazula special thanks to Harvard University's Hoton Library.
Charleston Harbord tours everyone in Beaufort, South Carolina, home of
the Reconstruction Era National Historic Park and my friend the
Great del Roy Lindo, who you can see on The
(43:05):
Good Fight streaming on CBS All Access. To learn more
about reconstruction, be sure to check out Henry Lewis Gates's
latest book, Dark Sky Rising, and Philip Dre's Gripping Capital Men.
Indispensable support from Genius Donski, Richard Rorer and everyone at
CBS News Radio. Our theme music is written by Daniel
(43:28):
Hart and as always, undying thanks to Rand Morrison and
John Carp without whom Mobituaries couldn't live. Hi, It's mo.
If you're enjoying Mobituaries the podcast, may I invite you
to check out Mobituaries the book. It's chock full of
(43:51):
stories not in the podcast. Celebrities who put their butts
on the line, sports teams that threw in the towel
for good, for fashions, defunct diagnoses presidential candidacies that cratered
whole countries that went to put and dragons, Yes, dragons,
you see. People used to believe the dragons will real
until just get the book. You can order Mobituaries the
(44:15):
Book from any online bookseller, or stop by your local
bookstore and look for me when I come to your city.
Tour information and lots more at mobituaries dot com.
Host
Mo Rocca
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