| Title | : | Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0520250036 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780520250031 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 430 |
| Publication | : | First published February 27, 2005 |
Concentrating on the period between the end of slavery and the election of 1920, Emancipation Betrayed vividly demonstrates that the decades leading up to the historic voter registration drive of 1919-20 were marked by intense battles during which African Americans struck for higher wages, took up arms to prevent lynching, forged independent political alliances, boycotted segregated streetcars, and created a democratic historical memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Contrary to previous claims that African Americans made few strides toward building an effective civil rights movement during this period, Ortiz documents how black Floridians formed mutual aid organizations—secret societies, women's clubs, labor unions, and churches—to bolster dignity and survival in the harsh climate of Florida, which had the highest lynching rate of any state in the union.
African Americans called on these institutions to build a statewide movement to regain the right to vote after World War I. African American women played a decisive role in the campaign as they mobilized in the months leading up to the passage of the 19th Amendment. The 1920 contest culminated in the bloodiest Election Day in modern American history, when white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan violently, and with state sanction, prevented African Americans from voting.
Ortiz's eloquent interpretation of the many ways that black Floridians fought to expand the meaning of freedom beyond formal equality and his broader consideration of how people resist oppression and create new social movements illuminate a strategic era of U.S. history and reveal how the legacy of legal segregation continues to play out to this day.
Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 Reviews
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If your high school lessons on post-Civil War history came, as mine did, with a heavy side of Lost Cause mythology, "go home, Yankee carpetbaggers!," or deliberately obfuscating silences, then Paul Ortiz's Emancipation Betrayed is a heavy but necessary read.
Ortiz, a Duke alum who currently teaches at University of Florida, starts out by contesting the long-standing belief that the New Negro Movement was in any way new, taking as his centerpiece the civil rights struggle surrounding Florida's 1920 presidential election and carefully laying out the case that the protests and voter registration drives that marked that period were actually rooted in decades of social and political activism by Florida's black communities. Along the way he touches on the history of lynching in Florida (friendly reminder: in 1920, Florida boasted the highest lynching rate per capita in the country), the role played by social institutions like the Knights of Pythias in helping organize and support civil rights movements, and how much of the heavy lifting was done by black women.
Several other reviewers have commented on the repetitive nature of Emancipation Betrayed, but I found it no more so than any other academic book, most of which are stitched together from articles written by the author and therefore tend to spend the beginning of each chapter recontextualizing. I'd also argue that given how weighty and emotionally exhausting a read this is, most people are likely to pick it up and put it down over time, so a bit of repetition might come in handy. Aside from that, I found Ortiz to be a clear and relatively compelling writer, and one whose endnotes are absolute fire. (Well done citations are my personal kryptonite.)
Readers who come to this book, as I did, looking to fill in some blanks in Jacksonville's history will find plenty to interest them. While Ortiz's focus is Florida as a whole, Jacksonville's position as a tourist and industry mecca in the late 19th and early 20th century means that it tended to be at the forefront of everything, including racial terror and civil unrest. Bethel Baptist Church, Eartha White, and James Weldon Johnson all make appearances in these pages, and the struggle over streetcar segregation and resulting strikes and protests receive in-depth coverage.
As someone who took more than her share of AP history classes at a Florida high school but whose knowledge of Reconstruction somehow wound up being based mostly on what she learned reading Gone with the Wind, I found Emancipation Betrayed hugely informative. It's also the rare book that manages to be simultaneously depressing as hell and completely inspiring, and stands as a stark reminder of just how hard some people had to fight for rights most of us take so much for granted today. -
A little known period is explored, from the end of slavery (The Emancipation Proclamation) to the bloody 1920 Presidential Election. The Jim Crow laws legitimizing disenfranchisement of Black people were in full effect. Black Floridians struggled ceaselessly by many means to achieve respect, equality & the right to vote. It was basically legal for whites to kill blacks at the time, lynchings were common & numerous in Florida. With the advent of Women's suffrage just before the election, Black Women tried to register to vote as well.
The chapter on the election itself is heartbreaking. The vicious & deadly reaction of white Floridians, including the KKK crushed the Black voting effort. There was no support from the authorities, Federal, State down to the County Sheriffs allowed harrowing vengeance to be inflicted on Black Citizens for trying to vote.
All Floridians & any Southerners should read this. It is not taught in public schools. We have to understand & remember to keep this kind of stuff from happening again. This history echoes to me loudly today, now. -
The violence of the Reconstruction period has long been overlooked. Ortiz does a good job of reminding us of the conditions faced by former slaves in the south following the Civil War, continuing into the 20th century. The violence culminated in the bloody election of 1920, during which upwards of 75 people were killed in Florida alone. This book highlights an era that, unfortunately, has been largely forgotten.
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Amazing! A part of our history that needs to be taught.
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Very informative but too repetitive.
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It is unfortunate that a book whose subject is so riveting can be so boring because of its repetitive narrative. Where was the editor?
