Been in Storm So Long

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.