Michael Sokolow on Boston Confronts Jim Crow, 1890-1920
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Mark R. Schneider. Boston Confronts Jim Crow, 1890-1920. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997. xiii + 262 pp. $45.00, library, ISBN 978-1-55553-296-3. Reviewed by Michael Sokolow Published on H-Urban (November, 1998) The dawn of the twentieth century represent‐ In Boston Confronts Jim Crow, 1890-1920, ed one of the historical low points of the African- Mark Schneider seeks to illuminate how the resi‐ American experience. The changes wrought by dents of Boston, a city with a long antislavery tra‐ the Republican Reconstruction of the South had dition and a historical commitment to improving collapsed and faded into memory, and the many the welfare of African-Americans, reacted to this black Americans who remained there now faced phenomenon. Boston's long-standing antiracist the loss of their hard-won civil rights. As the nine‐ reputation stemmed from the antebellum efforts teenth century gave way to the twentieth, south‐ of abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wen‐ ern blacks contended with disfranchisement, seg‐ dell Phillips, politicians John Andrews and regation, economic repression, and a rise in racial Charles Sumner, and reform-minded idealists violence and lynchings. With the hardening of the Harriet Beecher Stowe and Ralph Waldo Emerson. color line in the South, northern whites also re‐ Late-nineteenth century Bostonians professed to treated from their dedication to the principles of honor this antislavery legacy through statues and racial equality that had brought about the passage monuments that depicted the antiracist heroes of of the fourteenth and ffteenth amendments to the past. Yet this myth of Boston as a "bastion of the Constitution. During this period the U.S. freedom" was not always consistent with the ways Supreme Court legitimized segregation in Plessy turn-of-the-century Bostonians viewed the Jim vs. Ferguson, American political leaders aban‐ Crow South. doned blacks and black civil rights, and racist cur‐ Schneider's study is divided into seven the‐ rents pervaded even popular culture as the flm matic chapters, each examining a different aspect Birth of a Nation became a national sensation. In of the relationship between prominent Bostonians the words of historian Rayford Logan, the ad‐ and the rise of Jim Crow. Thus the opening chap‐ vance of Jim Crow in the New South betokened a ter's discussion of the failed Federal Elections Bill "nadir" for African-Americans. of 1890, which sought to protect black suffrage in H-Net Reviews the South, revolves around the Boston Brahmins This trend affected Boston's black community, affiliated with the measure, Republican congress‐ as well. The city's leading African-Americans did men Henry Cabot Lodge and George Frisbie Hoar. very little to counter the rising tide of racism. Elite Ensuing chapters examine Booker T. Washington's blacks, already rendered ineffectual by their lack support network among elite black Bostonians, of economic and political clout, mostly took white suffragist Lucy Stone, black militant refuge in the accommodationist camp of Booker T. William Monroe Trotter, the leadership cadre of Washington and his Tuskegee Machine. Even Boston's branch of the NAACP, the Irish-born black militant William Monroe Trotter undercut Bostonian John Boyle O'Reilly, and fnally the ca‐ his own activist efforts through his divisive and reers of three highly prominent "Boston jurists" inconsistent behavior. For Schneider, the one (p. 187), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wen‐ bright spot in this dim picture was the creation dell Holmes, black attorney William Henry Lewis, and growth of the NAACP, a biracial organization and NAACP president and co-founder Moorfield whose supporters included key black fgures Storey. As Schneider states in his Preface, these W.E.B. DuBois and Butler and Mary Wilson, as disparate subjects serve as "representative types well as white "neo-abolitionists" Moorfield Storey who acted on the race problem in this period" (p. and Francis Garrison, scion of William Lloyd Gar‐ xi). Together, these individual portrayals show rison. "the political and intellectual lives of activists as Author Mark Schneider (who teaches Ameri‐ they looked outward at the race relations of the can History not in Boston itself, but in nearby nation as a whole, and how they relied on their Cambridge at Lesley College) writes in a clear, fu‐ sense of the past" (p. xiii). id prose. His detailed depictions of the book's par‐ In its entirety, Boston Confronts Jim Crow is a ticular "representative types" creates a sense of tale of decline and retreat. Bostonians had played inclusion, in which the attitudes of Boston Brah‐ leading roles in abolitionism and Reconstruction, mins can be examined alongside those of elite fighting for and attaining black emancipation and blacks, immigrants, and feminists. There are mo‐ civil rights. But in the face of the discriminatory ments, however, when this works to the book's policies of the New South, the heirs to this tradi‐ detriment. While chapters on elite white and tion failed to live up to the model of earlier gener‐ black Bostonians are entirely relevant to Schnei‐ ations. Boston's wealthy Brahmin class gave up der's argument, the lengthy chapter on Irish- the fght for African-American equality early on, Americans is less germane. Much of its focus is as leading political fgures and newspaper editors the experience of two Irish-born activists, neither abandoned black causes after their abortive ef‐ of whom was even alive during the period under forts to pass the elections bill in 1890. Bostonian discussion (Catholic Emancipator Daniel leaders of the women's suffrage movement not O'Connell, referred to as "the Martin Luther King only ignored black women in their efforts, but of Irish politics" on p.163, never even came to even embraced white supremacy as a means of America prior to his death sometime around expanding their popularity in southern states. 1850--Schneider does not furnish the specific Whites in positions of power, including both a year--and immigrant John Boyle O'Reilly died in new cadre of Irish-American politicians and 1890). The full chapter devoted to these men and prominent legal personalities such as Oliver Wen‐ later generations of Irish-Americans, who had lit‐ dell Holmes showed little inclination to use their tle apparent reason to concern themselves with influence on behalf of black advancements. the race question and thus essentially ignored it, seems superfluous. 2 H-Net Reviews Some of the author's other individual chapter American Magazine; the history of a second black choices are also questionable. The book's fnal Bostonian publication, Alexander's Magazine, chapter, which examines three of Boston's best- which lasted from 1905 through 1909; the story of known legal fgures, is one such example. Each of the Bookerite National Negro Business League be‐ these men had a story that could easily be sub‐ ginning back in 1900 up until 1915; and fnally the sumed within the fow of earlier, broader chap‐ white Bostonian supporters of Washington from ters: Oliver Wendell Holmes' racial inaction fts 1895 through Washington's death in 1915. Schnei‐ squarely into the Boston Brahmin class examined der's piece on William Monroe Trotter shares this in Chapter One, African-American attorney disjointed approach toward chronology. After dis‐ William Henry Lewis is a prime example of Chap‐ cussing Trotter's life and career from his birth in ter Two's discussion of the ineffectiveness of elite 1854 through 1920, the chapter backtracks to ex‐ blacks, and Moorfield Storey, co-founder of the amine the period from 1902-1907 in greater de‐ NAACP, could and should have been incorporated tail. A chronologically-arranged narrative might into the chapter devoted to the early history of have mitigated some of the confusion created by that organization. A separate chapter on the suf‐ the book's thematic structure. frage movement, subtitled "The Legacy of Lucy Furthermore, despite its inclusiveness Boston Stone," begins with a feminist and former aboli‐ Confronts Jim Crow is notable for some of its ex‐ tionist who actually died in 1893, at the outset of clusions. That two marginal Irish fgures merit the period covered in the book. While much of the their own chapter while W.E.B. DuBois, regarded chapter offers an informative discussion of how as a linchpin in Schneider's discussions of Wash‐ later suffragists came to embrace white suprema‐ ington, Trotter, and the NAACP, does not is inex‐ cy, that argument is not advanced by the juxtapo‐ plicable. The chapter on Trotter, "perhaps the sin‐ sition of two black elite women, neither of whom gle most important fgure in all of Boston's were active suffragists, with Lucy Stone and her African-American history" (p. 109), is unaccount‐ heirs. While these female fgures had their gender ably the shortest in the book at only twenty-one in common, there is little other reason to lump pages. In it, Schneider gives only a perfunctory them together in a chapter on suffrage. Although examination of the "Boston Riot," which he identi‐ its attempt at inclusiveness is admirable, Boston fies as a seminal event in the history of race rela‐ Confronts Jim Crow suffers from its desire to tions in Boston; such important details as the date leave no one out of the story. of the "Riot," an explicit description of Trotter's At times, the author's decision to structure the disruptive behavior and the ensuing melee, and book in self-contained thematic chapters proves some indication of Trotter's intentions in precipi‐ to be less than ideal. The frst chapter on the Fed‐ tating the "Riot," are all omitted. eral Elections Bill of 1890 begins with a tight focus Boston Confronts Jim Crow also restricts itself on the last decade of the nineteenth century.