RECONSTRUCTION TO THE NEW NEGRO RENAISSANCE
In this section you will learn about the legislative, political, social, and cultural contexts which informed the writings of the period of Reconstruction to the New Negro Renaissance.
Enslaved Africans in America received word regarding limited, legal reconstruction which began a year on Jan 1, 1863 with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Various Jubilee Days occurred depending on Sherman’s March and the encampment of Union soldiers. After the proclamation, the black population then waited for the end of The Civil War and binding constitutional relief. April 9, 1865 was the date marked as the end of The Civil War. Then, they had to wait and watch again for passage of the 13th Amendment that forever abolished slavery beginning Dec. 6, 1865. Prior to that day, ‘freedom’ differed depending on where the enslaved were held. For example, Savannahians were socially and circumstantially freed due to the occupation of Union soldiers on Nov. 12, 1864. All Blacks, no matter status of freedom, enslavement, or residency, became constitutionally free. Africans in America could then legally behold the reforms of reconstruction to come.
Next came additional constitutional reforms. On July 9, 1868 passage of the 14th Amendment granted citizenship to the formerly enslaved. This insured life, liberty, due process, and the right to own land. The 15th Amendment followed on Feb. 3, 1870, and as the first voting rights provision, it granted African American men the right to vote. Further Legislative changes advanced what are referred to as the Reconstruction Acts passed by the U.S. Congress in 1867- 1869. Passage of the Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 required the confederate states to comply with conditions for readmission to the union.
The formerly enslaved needed the tools and infrastructure to transition as citizens. Therefore the Freedman’s Bureau was tasked with this purpose. The bureau was a place for the newly emancipated to collect what we might consider ‘stimulus’ funds today. The bureau oversaw the construction of schools, farming co-ops, and citizenship training. We glean much about Reconstruction from recorded slave narratives collected and recorded by Zora Neale Hurston as she worked for the Federal Writers Project as a way to earn money during The Great Depression of the 1930’s. The story told by Mr. Wallace Quarterman of St. Simons Island, GA provides a description of his day of Jubilee and the reconstruction behaviors which followed. Because ethnographers like Hurston conducted this field research on survivors of enslavement, the encounters impacted their fiction and essay-writing.
Because of their new-found freedoms, there was an increase in unification of the black family and black marriages previously not legal. Such information is verified by wide-spread family anecdotes, deeds showing the acquisition of land ownership, letters, and even Reconstruction studio photography. Reconstruction manifested itself in many ways--attire and style being one. Proud and full of dreams, they would strip away the clothing for fieldwork and dress up in the latest styles to pose with heads held high.
Another major outcome was the establishment of land-grant colleges for black youth, which we now refer to as HBCU’s, or historically black colleges and universities. Of course, they were not historical then, but fledgling—struggling to survive under their leaders, such as emancipated Major Richard Robert Wright of Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth (1898), Mary McLeod Bethune of Bethune-Cookman College (1904), and Atlanta University (1865), now Clark-Atlanta, which accepted the famed author and researcher W.E.B. DuBois on its faculty. Another HBCU pertinent to the creation and inspiration of African American literature include Tuskegee Institute (1881) and Booker T. Washington. Of course, there are others too many to name, but these make the point about the importance of these first schools. Writers now had the means to write and reproduce in a safe, literate environment.
This section of the anthology includes entries from The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimke In May 1864, Atlantic Monthly published her essay, “Life on the Sea Islands,” sharing her experiences as an abolitionist living among fellow blacks in Beaufort County, SC known as the Gullah Geechee people.
Grimké’s journals and essay are followed by the autobiography of Booker T. Washington (1900). From the famed historian W.E. B. Du Bois, this textbook offers nonfiction, poetry, and short fiction. In The Souls of Black Folk, you will discover the origin of his famous quote regarding double-consciousness. “A Litany of Atlanta” is DuBois’s response to the 1906 race riots in Atlanta which put his wife and baby at risk, making him an early exclaimer of the mantra “black lives matter.” At the close of the Reconstruction era, his short story “The Comet” helped to launch the thread of Afrofuturism and science fiction.
Ida B. Wells Barnett and Angelina Weld Grimké both used their talents and access to publication to address reconstruction terrorism. Her 1892 pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynching in all its Phases, is a journalistic document that was written when she faced threats against her life and actual loss of business property. On a similar mission is Angelina Weld Grimké with her drama, Rachel, the first anti-lynching play. Additional selections are included from Charles W. Chesnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alice Dunbar Nelson, and James Weldon Johnson.
The Reconstruction Period from 1865 to 1919 is complex. It opens with the dawning of freedom for the formerly enslaved and ends with the Americans, including Black Americans off to the great war. One war ends and another begins. In between, African American authors showed that the gifts and intellect brought from Africa translated well to English and could be mastered and applied to poetry, short fiction, the novel, journalism, argumentation, drama, and criticism.