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Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow Hardcover – April 2, 2019

by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Author)

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“Stony the Road presents a bracing alternative to Trump-era white nationalism. . . . In our current politics we recognize African-American history—the spot under our country’s rug where the terrorism and injustices of white supremacy are habitually swept. Stony the Road lifts the rug." —Nell Irvin Painter, New York Times Book Review

A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that resubjugated them, as seen through the prism of the war of images and ideas that have left an enduring racist stain on the American mind.

The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked "a new birth of freedom" in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the "nadir" of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance.

Through his close reading of the visual culture of this tragic era, Gates reveals the many faces of Jim Crow and how, together, they reinforced a stark color line between white and black Americans. Bringing a lifetime of wisdom to bear as a scholar, filmmaker, and public intellectual, Gates uncovers the roots of structural racism in our own time, while showing how African Americans after slavery combatted it by articulating a vision of a "New Negro" to force the nation to recognize their humanity and unique contributions to America as it hurtled toward the modern age.

The story Gates tells begins with great hope, with the Emancipation Proclamation, Union victory, and the liberation of nearly 4 million enslaved African-Americans. Until 1877, the federal government, goaded by the activism of Frederick Douglass and many others, tried at various turns to sustain their new rights. But the terror unleashed by white paramilitary groups in the former Confederacy, combined with deteriorating economic conditions and a loss of Northern will, restored "home rule" to the South. The retreat from Reconstruction was followed by one of the most violent periods in our history, with thousands of black people murdered or lynched and many more afflicted by the degrading impositions of Jim Crow segregation.

An essential tour through one of America's fundamental historical tragedies, Stony the Road is also a story of heroic resistance, as figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells fought to create a counter-narrative, and culture, inside the lion's mouth. As sobering as this tale is, it also has within it the inspiration that comes with encountering the hopes our ancestors advanced against the longest odds.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

One of the New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2019
One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2019
Finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Nonfiction Literature

“Stony the Road presents a bracing alternative to Trump-era white nationalism. . . . In our current politics we recognize African-American history—the spot under our country’s rug where the terrorism and injustices of white supremacy are habitually swept. Stony the Road lifts the rug. . . . essential . . . a history that very much needs telling and hearing in these times.” —Nell Irvin Painter, New York Times Book Review

“[A] luminous history of Reconstruction, and the savage white backlash that derailed it. . . . Few authors approach such difficult history with the unblinking clarity of Gates, the esteemed Harvard professor, historian, and scholar . . . If anyone wants to understand how the groundbreaking election of Barack Obama as this nation’s first black president was answered with Donald Trump’s feral white nationalism, Gates has provided a road map.” —The Boston Globe

“Concise, powerful . . . an important addition to America’s evolving view of its own history.” –The Economist

“If you will read the first 38 pages of Stony the Road by Henry Louis Gates Jr., I believe several things are likely to happen: You will commit to reading the rest of the book. Any remaining illusions about a prevailing racial harmony you may have brought to the Trump era will dissipate. And on reflection, you’ll pretty much completely understand how we got into our national racial consciousness, as well as our current national political pickle.” —Martha's Vineyard Times

“A necessary—and disturbingly relevant—read.” —People magazine

"The academics study the tides of history, while the popular historians go out fishing to find (and tag) the big fish that presumably make the ocean worth watching. The tidalists have the tenure, but the fishermen sell all the books. Gates, who is expert at both, catching fish while seeing tides, leaves us with a simple, implicit moral: a long fight for freedom, with too many losses along the way, can be sustained only by a rich and complicated culture. Resilience and resistance are the same activity, seen at different moments in the struggle. It’s a good thought to hold on to now." —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

“Lively . . . A compressed, yet surprisingly comprehensive narrative sweep . . . With a dazzling selection of cartoon stereotypes, the author shows that in the white-supremacist reaction ‘all along, the issue had been about the fabrication of hateful imagery in order to justify robbing black people of their constitutional rights and their economic potential.’” —The Washington Post

“Gates' book is a fascinating social and intellectual history of the time between Reconstruction and the rise of the Jim Crow period of American history. It's an absorbing and necessary look at an era in which the hard-fought gains of African-Americans were rolled back by embittered Southern whites — an era that, in some ways, has never really ended. . . . Gates' analysis is predictably brilliant, but he's also just a joy to read.” —NPR

“Harrowing but necessary.” —Time

"A timely chronicle of the battle to define blackness that raged from the Civil War through civil rights . . . Gates, whose own portrait hangs in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, writes not only as a scholar of this culture war but as an influential participant." —Julian Lucas, Harper’s

“Insightfully demonstrates how history repeats itself . . . This excellent text, augmented by a disturbing collection of late-19th- and early-20th-century racist images, is indispensable for understanding American history.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A provocative, lucid, and urgent contribution to the study of race in America. “ —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“In Stony the Road, Gates demonstrates his chops as a lyrical narrative historian. He surveys an era full of pain and loss but also human persistence and astonishing cultural renewal in African American life. Reconstruction and its long aftermath down to the 1920s was a series of revolutions and counter-revolutions and Gates's success here is in telling it as a moving and complex story about politics, science, art, and ideas all wrapped in one form after another of racism, managed and blunted by resistance. White supremacy triumphs in this long dark era; it left many casualties along the by-ways of America's worst sins. But this is a work that shows that good history can also rise up as a redemption song when we know the facts of what happened and why and how people endure, thrive and create their own new worlds.” —David W. Blight, Yale University, and author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

“In this insightful, provocative book, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., reminds us how the hopes inspired by emancipation and Reconstruction were dashed by a racist backlash, and how a new system of inequality found cultural expression in Lost Cause mythology and degrading visual images of African Americans. With debate raging over how we should remember the Confederacy, and basic rights again under threat, this unflinching look at our history could not be more timely.” —Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor Emeritus of History, Columbia University, and author of Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution and the forthcoming The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution

“How does white supremacy work? What does it look like? In this piercing, haunting study, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., chronicles an American tragedy, the story of how white supremacy and Jim Crow became the South’s—and white America’s—brutal answer to Emancipation and Reconstruction. Who has best dismantled white supremacy, and how? Gates tells those powerful stories, too, from Frederick Douglass to Ida B. Wells to W. E. B. DuBois, through generations of New Negroes, and New, New Negroes, battling back, in struggles not yet ended.” —Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States

“Stony the Road, a must-read post Reconstruction history from one of the foremost historians of our time, proves that the past can be prologue. It is the history we are doomed to repeat if we remain unwilling to build a democracy at peace with itself in America, a democracy that respects the dignity and worth of every human being.” —Rep. John Lewis

“Drawing on the finest current scholarship, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., offers a chilling account of Reconstruction's overthrow and the rise of American apartheid. His book then forcefully recasts the rise of the concept of the New Negro as a weapon in the war against a resurgent white racism and the phantasmagoria of Jim Crow popular culture that was all too real and all too pervasive. As elements of that culture persist, Stony the Road is all the more timely.” —Sean Wilentz, author of Bancroft Prize winner The Rise of American Democracy

"With vivid frankness, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., confronts how the creation of the mythical 'Old Negro,' a subordinate, nearly undercut black America's best hopes. Redemption only came through African American self-invention. The 'New Negro' was a citizen who carved out a way forward with brilliance and beauty as expressed in pictures, politics, and prose. With the lyrical grace of a storyteller and the sage insight of a master teacher, Professor Gates's Stony the Road tells how one people's struggle came to define the best of America's ideals." —Martha S. Jones, Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of Birthright Citizens

“In [Gates’s] signature lucid and compelling approach to history . . . a fresh, much-needed inquiry into a misunderstood yet urgently relevant era.” — Booklist, starred review

About the Author

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. An award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Professor Gates has authored or coauthored twenty-two books and created eighteen documentary films, including Finding Your Roots. His six-part PBS documentary, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, earned an Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program-Long Form, as well as a Peabody Award, Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, and NAACP Image Award.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Press; First Edition (April 2, 2019)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0525559531
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0525559535
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.69 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.44 x 0.9 x 9.39 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #417,385 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #604 in Black & African American History (Books)
- #1,086 in U.S. Civil War History
- #1,545 in African American Demographic Studies (Books)

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Kristin Bounds

The Best

Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2023

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My book came in as described condition and I am very happy to add it to my collection and catch up where I left off. Thank you!

Also, Henry Louis Gates Jr is wonderful man, and a fantastic author. He work makes you think about yourself and how to be a better person! :)

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Keith Harris

Stony the Road

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2019

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I watched Henry Louis Gates’s new documentary, Reconstruction: Life After the Civil War with great interest. To be honest, I have waited for something like this with anticipation for some time. I’ve often felt like Reconstruction, a profoundly important era in our history, is overshadowed by the war years. Admittedly, the Civil War looms large - but the aftermath is at least as important in terms of defining (or not) the meaning of freedom and citizenship moving beyond the sectional conflict...in a reunited nation. Like many, I would be very much like it if this media event inspired a documentary filmmaker to address the Civil War from a fresh perspective, perhaps dethroning Ken Burns as the reigning documentarian on the topic. In fact, I recently spoke with historian Keri Leigh Merritt, who has been vociferously advocating for such an thing, on exactly this idea. We had plenty to say on the subject.

Of course I ran right out and bought Gates’s new book, Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow. I rather enjoyed the book. It makes for a wonderful companion piece to the documentary and I highly recommend it. Now, I have at times questioned Gates’s judgement. For example, in 2009 he concluded that black soldiers served in the Confederate Army, a myth masterfully debunked over the years by historian Kevin Levin on his blog Civil War Memory and in his recent publication, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth. Honestly - I think Gates was mislead by some of the more problematic evidence of the period…while trying to to make sense of the complexity of the Confederate cause. In addition, Gates was charged with violating PBS editorial standards when the program Finding Your Roots - a show he produced - agreed not to air an episode that exposed the slave-holding history of a famous actor. We are all human and thus all flawed. Gates made a mistake, and he apologized. I tend not to hold a grudge, and despite these rather troublesome shortcomings, I still respect Gates, his dedication to scholarship, and his drive to understand the black experience in American history.

And so his look at the trajectory and legacy of Reconstruction piqued my interest. The potential of Republican leadership, black self-advocacy temporarily realized, the redemption movement by white supremacists reversing the black community’s gains post slavery, and the depths of racist support for Jim Crow segregation all make for a compelling story - and Gates tells it well. This book is accessible, concise, and beautifully supported by visual resources.

W.E.B. Du Bois famously stated in his 1935 publication, Black Reconstruction in America: “The slave went free, stood for a brief moment in the sun, then moved back again toward slavery.” Stony the Road struck me as an important broad view of how this happened…of how the pernicious racism that informed the latter third of the 19th century - a racism, built on the racist policies and racist ideas that Ibram X. Kendi clearly explains in Stamped from the Beginning - forced black people back into quasi-slavery.

Black people - their voices, their aspirations, their actions - take center stage in Gates’s book, and rightfully so. It is often tempting to accentuate the tragic elements of this story and emphasize the victimhood of formerly enslaved people who find themselves facing trials similar to slavery. But simply reducing these narratives to stories of victimization tends to rob human beings of their agency, in essence denying them their humanity - which is precisely what the white supremacists had in mind when they rolled back Reconstruction era Civil Rights legislation. Black people made strides in this era, they redefined freedom, and they created institutions, both cultural and political. I am pleased that Gates chose the framework he did to illuminate the human experiences of the Reconstruction years.

Gates also explains the ideology of white supremacist resistance to black agency and the development of Jim Crow segregation by looking closely at the pseudo-scientific foundation of racist ideas and the visual imagery that supported it. This is an especially important aspect of the book. As Gates shows, there was not such a great leap from the “scientific” evidence of black inferiority to the caricatured images used to sell soap and other consumer products. These “race characteristics,” as Gates demonstrates, were the differences that “became the evidence in the argument for de jure (legal) segregation” (56).

Students of the early-20th century will find Gates’s chapter on the so-called New Negro instructive, as he unfolds the ways in which black people redeemed the race from the redeemers, as it were. New Negroes - a leadership class created two decades after the end of Reconstruction, as the story goes, saw themselves as best suited to combat entrenched racist policies that had spread throughout the nation. They were “young, post-slavery, modern, culturally sophisticated, and thoroughly middle class and most effectively equipped to combat the mounting injustices that the mass of black people were facing [at the turn of the century]” (186). There is a good deal to ponder here about class as a category of distinction and analysis within a very large (10 million perhaps) group of people, while keeping in mind that the law only knew black people in monolithic terms.

My final thoughts on Stony the Road have to do with D. W. Griffith’s 1915 silent film, The Birth of a Nation, which appears frequently in the book as one of the most significant cultural iterations of pervasive racism. I’ve been working for a while now on a book on this film so Gates’s comments have got me to wondering…particularly about his framing of the movie as propaganda. I believe he is correct in that the film empowered racist whites to act. Scholars have long pointed out how the film helped inspire the 1920s incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan and how the Klan used the film as a recruiting tool. In my recent interview with historian and memory scholar Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders, she rather astutely pointed out how the film grew in popularity roughly at the same time as black people began to migrate out of the South to northern destinations such as Detroit, Chicago, and New York. The film most certainly inspired (or justified…) racial violence in these northern regions - what folks in groups such as the NAACP, who resolutely condemned the film, feared the most.

But we might also look at this film as confirmation bias blown into gargantuan proportions on the big screen - the harnessing of a new medium to confirm for white Americans what they already knew. And if anyone asked, they had their receipts. In an even more pernicious sense that Gates suggests, the racism in The Birth of a Nation was a reflection of the film’s profound connections with academic scholarship. The most distinguished scholars of the era provided the intellectual support for this film (and the novel on which Griffith based the film, The Clansman by Thomas Dixon), and when former Princeton University scholar Woodrow Wilson gladly welcomed a screening in the White House, Griffith had his intellectual endorsement. Propaganda strikes me as the willful manipulation of evidence to convince someone to change their mind. According to Gates’s own evidence, this was certainly not a issue for whites in America educated and well-versed in racist ideas. Neither was it an issue for D. W. Griffith, who claimed to have authored the authentic history of the Civil War and Reconstruction for the movie-going public. He even offered to pay anyone a hefty sum if they could prove his “history” was ahistorical. Honestly, I wish he hadn’t squandered his fortune before he dropped dead. I would love to connect with the executor of his estate and cash in on that offer.

With compliments,
Keith

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imaloserdude

Shocking to learn the ugly truth of American history...

Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2019

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Sometimes you read a book and walk away shaking your head at the stupidity of people, at the cruelty of humans to-ward other humans, at the selfishness and abuse by those in power against those they want to take advantage of. I’m shaking my head right now at the European Americans of the 1800s and 1900s, ancestors of mine who lived and worked and participated in this atrocity. Shame. On. Them. They say that your character is shown by how you treat a child or a dog when you know that no one else is watching. Well, I point the finger right now at my ancestors. I didn’t know this stuff, the actual history of abuse that occurred after the Civil War, but now I do. Wow! They were horrible human beings! There is no excuse, no justification for how white people treated black people.
I learned a lot of things as I read this book for a book club at my Unitarian Universalist church. Yep, we met last night and discussed it. Here are a ten things that I picked up from the book that I want to share with you.
ONE…A lot of Northern politicians and leaders were anti-slavery, but they were not pro-Negro. They didn’t like the system of slavery, but they did not view black people as equals. Simply put, they thought that black people were (as a group) unable to think, unable to control their actions, and unable to achieve success without their (white) help. Wow! Schools don’t teach this history. They act like the North cared about morality and ethics while the South simply didn’t want its system of income to be messed with by the North. Hmph! Really?
TWO…Cotton production in the South picked up after the Civil War as black people moved from slavery-status to share croppers, a replacement system that kept them working in the fields. I find it telling that money still ruled in the South, and that decisions were made by the North that kept money flowing into and through the hands of those in power (both in the North and South). The rich wanted to stay rich. The leaders wanted to continue leading and reaping the rewards that this brought them.
THREE…Southerners promoted the theory after the war that the Civil War was not treason (rebelling from the Union), but was a revolt against the overreaching federal government. They rewrote the story in order to make themselves look good, look like they had the individual’s interests at heart. What. A. Lie. How they treated black people showed the depth of their hatred (for sub-human blacks), the depth of their views of themselves (as superior whites). White supremacy, with whites as the supreme power brokers, the only ones deserving of good and fair treatment. The “I am better than you” view that lies at the heart of -isms (racism, sexism, elitism, colonialism, expansionism, etc.).
FOUR…Even though the federal government abolished slavery and gave black people the right to vote, state delegations in the South revised their constitutions to take away those rights. And those in power (President, leaders in the North) let this happen. While the North won the war, within a few years everything was back to the way it used to be in the South. Blacks still couldn’t vote, couldn’t hold public office, couldn’t win a legal battle against a white person, couldn’t achieve success through hard work, couldn’t recreate alongside white people, couldn’t walk freely in the land of the free, etc.
FIVE…Haters and elitists used pseudoscience to show how the skulls and brains of black people were smaller and shaped differently than white people, connecting intelligence and rights to false ideas and fakery. Psychologists made up fake diseases to show how black people weren’t sane, like drapetomonia, a disease causing Negros to run away. The suggested treatment was infantilization, treating them like a child. Really? Yes. These were men with formal education, with degrees, with status and reputation, saying this stuff. And they were believed.
SIX…In 1907, the Supreme Court ruled that Indiana could continue to sterilize people. Indiana adopted sterilization as a tool against the poor, against minorities, and against criminals. And all but one member of the Supreme Court voted that this was a legal and justified response. Really? How can I ever trust the Supreme Court again?
SEVEN…Eugenics was all the rave and taught at schools like Stanford, Yale, the University of Virginia, and Harvard. Yes, the very concept that turned Hitler’s Germany a few years later into a hotbed of killing and burning and horror was widespread across America. Our universities supported this idea and offered numerous classes to its students. If educated people thought that it made sense, then how could the average person in America question it. Just ridiculous. Yet this is our history.
EIGHT…Some argue that the injustices against blacks were only a few bad apples. Wrong! The system as a whole, all across America, in big cities and small towns, was filled with people who viewed black people as things, as objects, not as humans. Yes, it was strongest in the South, but people every-where were fooled into believing the lies.
NINE…The “black problem” didn’t exist. There never was a black problem. There was a white problem, though. White exploitation of black people. Period! That is what this was. Taking advantage of others. Cruelty. Rudeness. Injustice. It was the whites who were the problem, who cause the pain and death and fear among blacks.
TEN…DNA analysis of African American men living today shows that one in three carry the Y-DNA signature from a direct white ancestor. Was that sex consensual? I think not. I suspect that it is there in their DNA due to one and only one factor…the rape of black women by white men. And yet, it was the white man claiming that black men would rape white women if given their freedom. How sad that the very children and grandchildren of rapists would turn the tables on reality.
Oh, there was more that made me angry and disappointed in my white ancestors, so much more that I picked up as I read through this book, but I will stop right here and encourage you to read the book yourself. Look, if you want to know real history, then read this book. It will show you that life after the Civil War was just as horrible for black people as life before. Despite what modern day politicians say, the ending of the American Civil War did not turn the lives of black Americans from pain to pleasure, or slavery to freedom of action. The war didn’t solve our problems or create a fair and just America. Those who lost the war chose ignore its outcome and keep causing harm to black Americans for another hundred and fifty years. It’s sad, but you should know the truth. Read this book!

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Jim C

Not a history book - this book examines the intellectuel basis behind Jim Crow

Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2020

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I wanted to read a history of the reconstruction and Jim Crow and this book is not a history so in one sense I was disappointed.

Instead this book examines the intellectual basis of the Jim Crow South or redemption as it is referred in this book. Some sections are very hard to follow (the first 1/4 of the book) but where this book is excellent is its study, with the shocking pictures, of the intellectual basis behind Jim Crow justified racism. Reading this book you will realize how racist pictures developed to justify "Jim Crow" seep into our society.

Reading this book made me realize that growing up white in the 1970s in the Midwest, I was fully exposed to the images used to justify Jim Crow in the 1880s. Its an example of how powerful the pen is, and how repugnant and far reaching it can be. In this sense, the book is excellent, and the books sections describing this should be required reading.

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Eric Pearson

H.L.G Jr. One of the greatest historians of our time!

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2024

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The disrespect was REAL! Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs, Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, Elmer Fudd & Bugs...all these famous cartoons, national anthem, capitalism, democracy, the entire country.. all built off of the hard working back breaking forced brutal labor of African Americans and all the anti black racism we had to navigate & still do today. Read this book!!!

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Joseph Somma

Amazing historical review

Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2022

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This well written study will provide a critical review of US slave history. This book is an excellent first step into our history. It should be required reading ( do you hear that DeSantis and Abbot). The history of slavery IS US history.

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Top reviews from other countries

Pat Richards

If you want to understand the cycle of white supremacy in US history, read this book.

Reviewed in Canada on July 22, 2021

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Prof. Gates provides the context for white supremacy’s rise in US history. Gaslighting is a policy, not a new phenomenon, in the white supremacy tool box. Don’t think it will work this time; the educated and the exposure provided by the media, should be able to mitigate against the sickness of white supremacy. Read, read, read.

michael

History book for all

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 27, 2020

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Interesting read for all

Alex C. Michalos

Necessary reading to understand america’s Racial divides

Reviewed in Canada on June 14, 2019

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This is an excellent history of the destruction of reconstruction following the US civil war and the long, incomplete recapturing of the initiatives at a new, permanent reconstruction.

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