Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860--1890

Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860--1890

Fitzgerald, Michael W.

Paperback

Series: Southern Biography

Black American StudiesGeneral Political ScienceGeneral Racism & Ethnic Studies

ISBN10: 0807128376
ISBN13: 9780807128374
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: Sep 1 2002
Pages: 320
Weight: 1.07
Height: 0.89 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.16
Language: English

Scholars of Reconstruction have generally described Republican party factional conflicts in racial terms, as if the Radical agenda evoked unified black support. As Michael W. Fitzgerald shows in the first major study of black popular politics in the urban South in the years surrounding the Civil War, that depiction oversimplifies a contentious and often overlooked intraracial dynamic. Republican political power, he argues, heightened divisions within the African American community, divisions that were ultimately a major factor in the failure of Reconstruction.

Focusing on Mobile, the Confederacy's fourth largest city, Fitzgerald traces how the rivalry between longtime black residents and destitute freedmen fleeing the countryside yielded a startlingly antagonistic political scene. He demonstrates that the Republican factionalism that helped doom Reconstruction went beyond competing cliques of white officeholders. Boldly challenging reigning theories about the nature of post-Civil War politics, Urban Emancipation will spark historical debate for years to come.

2 different editions

Also available

Also in

Black American Studies

View All