Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Gates writes in a scholarly, but never dry; informative, but never preachy style that gives his subject matter an excellent showing. This book is assembled from lectures Dr. Gates has given (revised many times over the years, in accordance with the kind of questions and responses he has received from his students) in his Harvard African American Studies courses. The basic topic here is how the Black community has worked toward acceptance, respect and identity through literacy and the arts show more since before the Civil War. He discusses in some detail the many sides of the question "What does it mean to BE African American?", including the evolution of both Black and white stances over time, and the moral, ethical and political complexities of even trying to define what it means to be Black in America. Exceptional, and difficult to process with a single reading, through no fault of the author. Highly recommended. show less

This memoir of childhood and very early adulthood is just excellent. Dr. Gates grew up in a small mill town in West Virginia, where he experienced the beginnings of desegregation without the trauma it generated in so many places. His childhood was a happy one, his colored community a strong support system for its members, and most of his interactions with white people unremarkable. When he left home for college in 1968, his horizons broadened and he became more worldly, more political, yet show more realized that the struggle for a full recognition of black identity ironically brought about a certain loss of the feeling of safety and security he had known growing up. This is a thought-provoking read from the perspective of a very thoughtful man. Highly recommended. show less

The story of the failure of Reconstruction and the rise of the "Reedemed" South with its virulent white supremacy in the late 19th and most of the 20th centuries is critical to fully understand the painful state of political and social injustice that persisted throughout most of the 20th century, and whose effects linger today. Only when one when comes to terms with the emergence of and magnitude of racially grounded stereotyping of African-Americans from the end of Reconstruction to the show more civil rights breakthroughs in the 1960's can one fully grasp how great is the blot this era on the purported values and principles of the republic. [The idea that the supremacy of the white race existed only in the South is incorrect; the North had no less of this view in the antebellum and post war years.] Professor Gates, in the companion book to the PBS documentray series on Reconstruction, provides scholarly but eye opening insights in the methods by which white supremacy and its manifestation --Jim Crow strictures -- took hold and persisted for the better part of a century.

The passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution and enabling legisation (augmented by stringent conditions placed on Southern states for reentry to the union) gave freed people a full panoply of civic rights, most especially the franchise. Newly freed slaves gained substantial political power, and elected offices, as the result of the vote. Dating from the presidential election of 1877, where an orchestrated compromise gave the presidency to Hayes in exchange for removing federal oversight of several formerly confederate states, the national concern for civil rights for the emancipated population waned considerably. The so-called "Lost Cause" mythology emerged that held that South failed in its rupture from the union only because of the overwhelming military and industral superiority of the North, but the merits of the Southern ethos on the hierarchy of the races still held. The never-settled question of the respective powers of the federal government v state's rights played a significant role in several Supreme Court decisions that eviscerated civil rights legislation combined with growing indifference in the North to the affairs of the South, led to the resurgance of white suzerainty over political and social matters in the South.

Gates tells us how this push toward reestablishing white supremacy was instilled in the public psyche. Much of this focused on dehumanizing African-Americans, usually through ascribing characteritics portraying them as sub human. Commentators on the Old Testament came forth with the preposterous exigesis that held blacks were shunned by God to be a separate species as descendents from Hamm in the Noah tale. Another idea to justify the low caste of blacks was that human kind was created as separate species, the whites from Adam and Eve and blacks and other races in some other process. Gates also describes how pseudo scientific ideas of the era posited a biological basis for the inferiority of the African race employing such quackery as phrenology and misconstrual of Darwin's theories evolutionary theories that had so recently taken hold in the intellectual world. This distorted view linked with the onset of the eugenics theory about the necessity for controlling the breeding of so-called inferiors. This, as we know, extended, with loathsome consequences, well into the 20th century.

The depiction of blacks in publications, black face minstrelsy and new forms of media was aimed at reinforcing the low class and inferiority of blacks. Gates gives a scathing review of white supremacistthe literature and early movies like "The Birth of a Nation" (screened to positive response in Wilson's White House). Throughout this glossy and well-produced book are sections depicting images that underscore the ideas Gates is conveying. The pictures of scientific renderings of racial types, advertisements, post cards, posters and more convey quite viscerally how casually and widespread were the demeaning stereotypes prevalent for many decades. One is reminded of the Disney production of the "Songs of the South" with its (Old Negro) Uncle Remus, that many of us saw as children, to appreciate how accepted were the racist portrayals of African-Americans even within our lifetimes. Who can forget the images of blacks in one of the most popular movies of all times -- "Gone with the Wind".

Another path to white domination over blacks was to promote the nostalgic sentiment that freedmen and women were like children, simple people whose best interests could be achieved through the paternalistic nurturing of their beneficent former masters, and that the freed slaves longed for the security of thise times. (The image of a contended, compliant "Uncle Tom" under the gentle treatment of his first masters comports with this meme.) Contrary to this theme was the image of black men as licentious brutes whose sexual appetites posed real danger to the sanctity of white womenhood. This, of course, led to the scourge of lynchings that afflicted black men for decades. This was terrorism in its fullest form.

Gates makes the point effectively that a principal motivation to reestablish white domination was economic; that the labor needed from former slaves to sustain cotton production was essential to the return of economic prosperity of the landed class.

The last quarter of the book describes responses of the African-American community to the overt subjection in the Jim Crow era, particularly through its intellectual leaders. This was an attempt to supplant the idea of the "Old Negro" (compliant, lazy, no ambition, etc.) with a vision of the "New Negro" (competent, accomplished, independent of reliance on whites). One strand of this movement, led by Booker T. Washington, advocated that growing competence of blacks in the trades would bring about self-sufficiency that would lead intentionally to separation of dependence on the white world. This was contrary to an alternative concept of the "New Negro" whose intellectual, literary and artistic accomplishments were to demonstrate that blacks were ever so much the equals of whites. Gates portrays leaders such as W.E.B. Dubois as exemplars of this effort, along with some figures that are lesser known now. The Harlem Renaissance with its outpouring of grat literature, art and music was the zenith of this movement among literary and artistic leaders of the era.

The Jim Crow era and its gross inequity and distortion of history was a part of my teenage years. I grew up in the deep South at the time when whites-only strictures were everywhere. Was I as appalled about that then as I am now? I hope so. I do recall the teaching of Reconstruction during high school history class with its assertion that it was black inferiority that caused its (justified) passing (the so-called Dunning school of history), along with the return to right relations of the races. i.e. white supremacy.

Someone once said history is the way in which we betray the past and never is this more apt than in the distorted history of Reconstruction and Redemption taught for decades. This version can be rightfully said to have retarded for years the justice due to our fellow citizens show less

Summary: A companion to the PBS series on the Black church, surveying the history of the Black church in America focusing on why the church has been central to the life of the Black community.

It is practically a truism that the church is a central reality in the Black experience, and in many local Black communities. But why is this? That is the question Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores in this companion book to the PBS series, “The Black Church.”

Gates contends that the church provided a show more place, first of all, for refuge that they could control and find hope in, when they were brutally subjugated, whether under slavery or Jim Crow. It was fascinating to learn that Spanish Catholics were responsible for the conversions of African-Americans in the early year. Gates also traces the elements of Muslim and traditional religion back to the earliest periods of slavery. White slave owners often were resistant to the conversion of slaves, recognizing the liberating messages to be found in the Bible, Anglican missionaries persuaded slave owners that it could be taught in ways that supported their control. What they couldn’t control was the introduction of music and dance that reflected African heritage, including the “ring shout.” and the unofficial gatherings in “praise houses.”

Many more were converted during the Methodist revivals, but when they were segregated, Richard Allen led the formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Gates traces how the church increasingly becomes a force for abolition (and in the case of Nat Turner, for uprising) as well as renewal. Then with Emancipation, Gates traces the further growth of the churches of the south, the Bible women who helped spread the gospel message, and the “frenzy” that presaged Pentecostalism, which can trace its roots to William Joseph Seymour, who led the Azusa Street Revival, leading to the formation of the Church of God in Christ, the largest Pentecostal body in the country.

With the Great Migration, Gates traces the growth of Black megachurches in northern cities like Chicago and New York, and with this the growth of Gospel music from the Fisk Jubilee Singers to Shirley Caesar, and from this, the development of blues and jazz. This led to a growing tension between the music of the clubs on Saturday night and the music of the service on Sunday. The music and the preaching connected, nowhere more so than at the March on Washington when Mahalia Jackson urged King to “Tell them about the dream.” The gospel songs morphed into the freedom songs and sustained the movement.

Gates describes the period after King as a “crisis of faith.” He describes the development of Black theology, including the thought of James Cone and Jeremiah Wright, the pastor who married the Obamas. He observes the tensions around sexuality, the patriarchy of churches, and the conservatism around LGBT sexuality as well as the ascent of Blacks into the middle class, the ministries of pastors like T.D. Jakes, and how Obama revealed different sides of the church to white America. The chapter concludes with the resurgent white nationalism and Black Lives Matter.

An epilogue traces Gates own religious journey, his decision to join the church, his fear of “the Frenzy” and speaking in tongues and the irony that DuBois “Talented Tenth” were less the missionaries of culture than the Pentecostals, whose experience did more to uplift the marginalized. Gates observes that the experiential connected back to the African religious roots of the Black church.

Gates gives us an account of the Black church that both traces history, and enriches it with interviews with contemporary Black leaders and celebrities, drawing out the experienced significance of the Black church. The church that emerges is one of refuge and uplift, of resistance and abolition, of music and ecstasy. It is also an account of Black pulpiteers and the development of Black preaching from Richard Allen to Raphael Warnock. The appendix includes an alphabetical list of the great preachers of the Black church. Here as throughout this history, Gates does not confine his account to Christians, including figures like Malcolm X.

As history, this is more popular survey than an in-depth, scholarly account. Gates use of contemporary interviews interlaced with his history creates a much richer sense of the ethos of the Black church than one might get from a historical narrative alone. He captures the various ways the church epitomizes and sustains the identity of Black people. He concludes:

“It’s that cultural space in which we can bathe freely in the comfort of our cultural heritage, and where everyone knows their part, and where everyone can judge everyone else’s performance of their part, often out loud with amens, with laughter, with clapping, or with silence. It’s the space that we created to find rest in the gathering storm. It’s the place where we made a way out of no way. It’s the place to which, after a long and wearisome journey, we can return and find rest before we cross the river. It’s the place we call, simply, the Black Church” (p. 219). show less