RECONSTRUCTION JUNCTION, WHAT'S YOUR FUNCTION?

(DON'T WORRY IF THE TITLE DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU. IT'S A JOKE FOR THOSE OF US WHO WATCHED TOO MUCH SATURDAY MORNING TV IN THE '70s. THE 1970s, THAT IS.)

So I had to put aside my thesis for a few weeks because I signed on to present a paper on the Reconstruction press in Mississippi. The Southwest Conference is in New Orleans at the end of March and the papers were supposed to be done several weeks ago and I haven't done mine yet. But I have a good excuse. Usually, your paper is based on your research. But my research only covers the period up to 1865. So for the conference, I have to do a certain amount of research and writing that has little (at best) to do with my research.

Why did I agree to this? A very good question. Let me think about a way to answer that without any name-calling. Hmmm. Mmmm. Er, uh ... mmmm. Sorry, can't be done. Dr. Davis and I are both raving lunatics. And Sheryl too. Sheryl organized the panel and asked me to be on it, and when I tried to get out of it, she started bawling and I had to say yes so we could all get back to work without everyone thinking I was a terrible person because I made Sheryl cry.

So, I'm digging through old Natchez newspapers from 1865 to 1877. I don't know if I will ever stop hating the South. Not only am I sick of these people and their lies and their hypocrisy and their racism, but I am now being forced to study a period of history that I have always tried to veer away from.

Reconstruction is so depressing. The antebellum period and the Civil War have a lot of awful incidents, but it is all very interesting and it seems to be headed somewhere. I love the suspense of the 1850s especially, as the tensions between North and South almost reach crisis point, but then they subside as more and more Southerners eventually realize that war is NOT in their best interests and war is averted. The Secession Crisis of 1850, Bleeding Kansas, the Dred Scott decision, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry and the election of 1860 are all incidents where the war almost happens and then, until the Spring of 1861, somebody blinks. And then the war comes and everybody runs around in the latest fashions of blue and grey and there's a bunch of cool battles and the slaves are free and Lee surrenders and Lincoln is shot and the war is over.

Except it isn't. For the nexy twelve years, the Federal government works hard to secure freedom and security for Southerners, black and white, but most of the Southerners are not having it! They enact restrictive codes on the newly-freed slaves and then they get all whiny when the Federal government steps in and says, "Alright, guys, these state governments are bullshit! If you can't play fair with the black man, then you are forcing us to abolish your racist governments and to come up with a new plan." And the South acts all innocent. "No, we were dealing with the lazy negros in our own way and we understand them and everything would have been peachy if you had let us handle it but, no, you had to come in and let the negros take over the government and ruin the land and try to be equal and rape all the white women." And then the Southerners started the Klan and attacked and harrassed the freedmen and the carpetbaggers and the teachers until the North got sick of the South's bullshit and pulled out in 1877. And the new rights of the black man disappeared real fast and there wasn't much progrss until almost a hundred years later.

It's so anticlimatic. If somebody was making it up, the editor would say, "You know, this Reconstruction part, get rid of it. Nobody wants to read this, unless you punch it up a bit, find some more colorful heroes. Like the Ku Klux Klan fellows. Make them the heroes. They're like the Knights of the Round Table or the Justice League. Yeah, there's your second half, how the Ku Klux Klan saves the country from the negros and the evil careptbaggers."

Which is how the story was told for a hundred years, and even longer in some places. Even though this version is easily proven to be bullshit by a cursory examination of the primary sources, this is the version that the South liked, the version in several novels of the late 1800s, in history books like those written by Dunning and Woodrow Wilson, in Thomas Dixon's "The Clansmen," and, most notoriously, in D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation." The North didn't really care enough to protest too much and eventually, the South's version was the one taught in the schools until the 1950s and 1960s, when a lot of people started saying, "This is fucking bullshit!"

Which is what my presentation is about, how the Reconstruction press laid the ground work for this little fantasy in the 1860s and 1870s, by exaggerating the sins of the freedmen and the carpetbaggers, rationalizing the virulent racism of the South, denying or minimizing the excesses of the Ku Klux Klan, and a general campaign of anti-Negro propaganda.

America needs to get into a 12-step program and start making amends for some of her bullshit. It is the only way to ever make any progress.

"Hello, I'm America, and I'm an empire-oholic."

Maybe some day, I'll get back to my thesis. "Grumble, grumble, stupid Ku Klux Klan."