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Wade Hampton’s Last Parade: Memory of Reconstruction in the 1970 South Carolina Tricentennial

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Bruce Baker discusses how the second Reconstruction changed South Carolina and the way its residents saw the history of their state

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 30, 2024

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This video is a detailed discussion by a historian reflecting on their research and findings regarding the memory and interpretation of Reconstruction in South Carolina. The historian traces their scholarly work back to their PhD dissertation and first book, "What Reconstruction Meant," published in 2007. This video book focused on the historical memory of Reconstruction, particularly in South Carolina, highlighting how it differs from the predominant Civil War narratives.

The historian notes that while many scholars have extensively examined Civil War memories, Reconstruction has often been overlooked. They emphasize that Reconstruction was a critical period wherein formerly enslaved African Americans quickly gained political rights and even held office, a remarkable historical occurrence. However, this progress was met with significant resistance from white Southerners, leading to the eventual disenfranchisement of African Americans and the rise of white supremacist narratives, which portrayed Reconstruction as a disaster.

This video elaborates on two contrasting narratives emerging from this era: the white supremacist narrative that cast African American enfranchisement as misguided and harmful, and the African American perspective that celebrated the advancements made during Reconstruction as a golden era of rights and citizenship.

The historian describes the commemorative practices surrounding South Carolina's Tricentennial celebration in 1970, illustrating an evolving awareness around the state's complex history. The discussion extends to modern developments in recognizing and memorializing positive aspects of Reconstruction, including the establishment of historical markers and museums reflecting contemporary views.

Overall, the historian expresses hope for improved recognition of African American contributions and experiences during Reconstruction and emphasizes the importance of reexamining historical narratives to foster a more inclusive understanding of the past. This video serves as both a scholarly analysis of Reconstruction’s legacy in South Carolina and a reflection on the evolving nature of collective memory and historical interpretation.

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This was sort of a follow up on the project

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that had been my PhD dissertation.

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And then my first book,

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that book was called What Reconstruction Meant,

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and it was published in 2007,

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and that was a study of historical memory

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of reconstruction in the American South,

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but really focusing primarily just on south,

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the state of South Carolina.

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And a lot of scholars for a long time had focused a lot on

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how people remembered and commemorated the Civil War,

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but they hadn't really looked at reconstruction.

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And in a lot of ways, reconstruction was very important,

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and it was a different sort

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of experience than the Civil War.

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The white Confederate Southerners obviously lost the Civil

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War, but you could argue that

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after a lot of determined resistance for a few years,

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they won, they won reconstruction in the sense

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of they eliminated African American political participation.

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So when I did the original research for that, I, as,

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as you always do with these research projects,

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you gather up a bunch of stuff and you use a lot of it,

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but then there's bits and pieces that you don't use.

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So one of the things that I had looked at

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and hadn't ultimately used was documentation

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around the tricentennial celebration in

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the state of South Carolina.

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So South Carolinas traces its history as a,

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a European colony.

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Anyway, back

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to the English settlement in Charleston in 1670.

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So when 1970 came around,

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there was a 300 year anniversary celebration.

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And I was curious about this pattern of

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how reconstruction had been remembered to sort of see how

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that persists up through the civil rights era

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and in the period right after that.

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So just to sort of backtrack a little bit

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and sort of say, here's the, the key point of

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what I found in, in what reconstruction meant is that the,

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the period of reconstruction.

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So we're talking about the working out of the consequences

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of confederate defeat and of emancipation

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and the end of slavery as, a labor system

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and of political and social organizing principle

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for the south and the very swift enfranchisement

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of African Americans in the South.

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So this is pretty, this, it's actually unique in,

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in world history where you have a population who were

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enslaved until summer of 1865,

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and then in summer of 1867, they're registering to vote.

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And by summer of 1868, many

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of them are actually holding political office

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and writing the state constitution in January of that year.

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So that process happens, not surprisingly,

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as we probably all know, a lot of white southerners,

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ex confederates are very opposed to it.

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There's a lot of, violent resistance.

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A lot of political organization.

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The Republican party in the North,

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which is controlling the presidency through this time period

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is supportive of it for a few years,

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but eventually they sort of run out of steam

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to support this level of change and sort of withdraw support

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and white Democrats,

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white supremacist Democrats in the South regain political

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control by, in, in all states.

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By 1877, South Carolina was one of the last states where

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that happens with a really dramatic

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political campaign in 1876

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and a standoff that lasts for a few months

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until April of 1877.

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So in the years after that, when people in South Carolina,

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or looking back on that period winds up happening,

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is you wind up with two different versions,

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basically two different versions of history,

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a white supremacist version

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and a non-white supremacist version,

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which is overwhelmingly the view of African Americans

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and a few white people.

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Although most white people in South Carolina

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who had previously supported reconstruction at the time

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and there were not in consider considerable number who did,

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they, they sort of fell into line afterwards

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and, you know, represented themselves

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as having always been against it and so forth.

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But through the end of the 19th century

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and through the middle of the 20th century,

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you get the development of what I refer to

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as the white supremacist narrative of reconstruction,

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which said that enfranchising African Americans

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and giving them political rights was,

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yet another attempt by the the north to punish the south

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for the Civil War.

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And African Americans were incapable of

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being active citizens

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and should never have been given the right to vote

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and wasn't it a disaster?

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And it was a very good thing that white

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Southern Confederates regained control, through,

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through violence, which was unfortunate, but, but necessary

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and that everything was better since then.

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But the key lesson here was

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reconstruction was a big disaster.

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It was terrible to allow African Americans to have rights,

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and therefore we should be sure

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and do anything that it takes

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to never allow that to happen again.

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So we get this white supremacist narrative of reconstruction

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as the really kind of foundational myth

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of the Jim Crow system, a justification, a sort

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of historical and moral justification for

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disenfranchising African-Americans for 70 or or 80 years.

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On the other side of things, African Americans looking back

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on that period is the period when they've come out

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of slavery, it's the period when they have,

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you know, some autonomy.

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They, they have more, opportunities

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to reassemble their families to sort

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of make economic advances.

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And they look at it as a period when they had equal rights,

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when they had citizenship status.

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And it becomes sort of a golden era

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and an idea sort of inspiration that in the darkest times

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of the Jim Crow period when they're not allowed to vote

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and racial violence is running unchecked

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and so forth, that African Americans can look back

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and think, but I know a time when my father

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or my grandfather could vote when my great uncle was in the

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state legislature, and it did happen before,

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and it can happen again.

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So it becomes a very direct inspiration

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for the Civil rights movement.

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So that's where this book chapter comes out of.

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It was material which just didn't fit into the book,

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but I was looking around for, kind

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of had it sitting on my shelf as I have lots of bits

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and pieces of research, that are sort of half done or,

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or half-baked research projects.

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And in about 2013, Carol Berton,

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a really excellent historian, got in touch

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and proposed doing an edited collection about memory

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of reconstruction, because

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by this point there were several other people

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who had been pursuing things that fit into this category.

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And so we did, we co-edited this book called

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Remembering Reconstruction that was published

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by Louisiana State University Press.

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And this is a chapter that I, contributed to that.

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The way that I did the research was a, as I said,

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it's a little bit like,

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it's a little bit like when people make

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sourdough bread, right?

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So I don't do this, but I sort of like know about it, right?

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And you sort of keep a little bit of the dough to act

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as a starter for the next batch.

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Right. And I would say that historical research

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as I undertake it anyway, is very much like that.

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You know, it's, or a little bit like, you know,

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when you take apart a car engine and put it back together

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and you have a few pieces left over.

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So it's a bit like that. You always have pieces left over

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when you do one historical project,

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and sometimes those can sort of

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become whole separate projects or,

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or smaller projects themselves.

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And that was the case for this.

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So I had been at, at some point, and,

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and I think it was while I was doing the book,

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not the PhD dissertation,

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but I had been back to South Carolina

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and doing research in the South Carolina Department

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of Archives and history,

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and they have primarily the state government documents

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and also county government and some private papers.

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But I looked at and did a lot of photocopying

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and, you know, taking digital images of the papers

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of the South Carolina Tricentennial Commission,

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which was the state government body that was set up

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to spearhead and organize this celebration.

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Um, it was put together in the late sixties, about maybe

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1966

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or 67 in the run up to this, celebration in 1970.

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And there was a lot

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of correspondence from the little county organizations.

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So I was able to get a lot

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of detailed information about not just sort of the,

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the ideas behind it at a state level

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and what they were trying to accomplish

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and the economic boost

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that they hoped the tourism would bring and and so forth.

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But I was also able to see

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what each little county in the state was doing

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and the events they were putting on

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and some of the conflicts that arose

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and, and that sort of thing.

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So I had that core of documentary material,

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and when I started to look into it more, I, I then,

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as I've learned to do working in, in this country, in,

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in the United Kingdom

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and studying US history for the past 20 years, I made use

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of digitized material, very extensively.

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So a lot of digitized newspapers, a lot

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of stuff on Google books, and just sort of digging around

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and finding, you know, online digitized primary sources

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of one sort or another.

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Then I also hired a researcher, historian

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who was finishing up her PhD at Duke University at the time,

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named Elizabeth Break to do some research

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for me in the papers of a historian from

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who was based in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

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Uh, Dr. Lawrence Bryant

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and his papers were at Duke University,

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and she was able to sort of go have a look at those

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and, send me copies.

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I think she posted me actual physical photocopies.

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Um, so that was basically how I did the research.

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And of course, usual, you know,

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working in the British Library

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and I think the National Library of Scotland,

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Edinburg University Library for all

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of the secondary literature, in a way we can sort of think

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that the, the civil rights era and,

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and the second reconstruction as it comes to be called

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is is very distant now, right?

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So it's, you know, 60 years in the past.

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And I actually moved

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to upstate South Carolina in 1980 when I was nine years

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old from South Florida.

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And one thing that immediately hit me was

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that racial divisions as, as a white person, I, I noticed

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that racial divisions were much stronger

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or seemed much more salient in South Carolina than they had

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in in Florida, which is partly something to do

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with my age, I suppose.

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But what I didn't realize until quite a number

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of years later, I suppose when I was

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probably in graduate school, is that when I was going

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to school, to elementary school in South Carolina in 1980,

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that a lot of the schools in South Carolina

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had only integrated 10 years previously, right?

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So we all hear about Brown, brown versus Board

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of Education in 1954, Supreme Court decision

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that outlaws segregation, but it's easy to, to overlook

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unless you study this

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and sort of pay attention to it, that

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that was not implemented everywhere immediately.

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It, it was in implemented piecemeal some places

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did it other places didn't.

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Lots of places dragged their heels.

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And eventually there was a Supreme Court case,

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called Alexander versus Holmes County that required,

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you know, that finally said,

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enough is enough, you know, you have to

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Integrate now.

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So it was, it was actually quite recent.

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And so there were still sort

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of racial divisions that continued.

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I would say that, you know, and obviously I didn't,

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you know, live in South Carolina

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before the Civil Rights movement,

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although I've talked to a lot of people who did, of course.

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And I think it did make a, a huge difference in, in terms

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of opportunities.

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And I think one of the things that,

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that made a difference was that

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the civil rights movement went

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reasonably smoothly in South Carolina, certainly compared to

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how it went in a lot of other places in the south.

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South Carolina was not Alabama, it wasn't Arkansas,

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it wasn't Mississippi and so forth.

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Uh, and anybody who studies history

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will be a bit surprised about that

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because South Carolina has a long

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and very well deserved reputation

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for political extremism on the eve of the Civil War,

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as South Carolina was getting ready to secede

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and spark the Civil War,

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a politician named James Petare in South Carolina said he,

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he was very skeptical about this idea

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and said, this isn't gonna end well.

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And he said, South Carolina is too small for a republic

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and too large for an insane asylum.

13:05.745 --> 13:07.485
And that sort of sums things up.

13:07.545 --> 13:10.045
So South Carolina had been at the forefront

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of the nullification crisis in the 1830s,

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and then of course, the session

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and the, early 20th century, late 19th century, they had

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as many racist demagogues as you could ask for.

13:21.705 --> 13:25.365
But they got very lucky in the period after World War ii

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because in some ways,

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because the Democratic Party, the party of white supremacy

13:33.225 --> 13:36.245
was so strong, there were a number of very strong kind

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of political machines

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and political factions that remained very vigorous

13:40.965 --> 13:42.005
and, and very strong.

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There weren't a lot of internal challenges.

13:44.045 --> 13:47.165
A lot of that is down to, Ben Tillman

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that I mentioned in the 1890s, 19 hundreds.

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But because that remains so strong, there wasn't a lot

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of factional fighting inside the Democratic Party,

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and that sort of damped down the kind

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of ex extreme extremism.

14:01.945 --> 14:04.605
So you didn't have somebody with the kind

14:04.605 --> 14:08.125
of political trajectory that George Wallace had in Alabama

14:08.135 --> 14:10.605
where he was a bit of a liberal in the years right

14:10.605 --> 14:14.365
after World War ii, but he very quickly saw that the way

14:14.425 --> 14:17.685
to win votes was to be more extreme on the race question.

14:17.705 --> 14:19.925
He just took that as far as he could take it.

14:20.415 --> 14:21.805
South Carolina was lucky

14:22.075 --> 14:24.525
that the political structure wasn't like that.

14:24.825 --> 14:27.725
And they also had a handful of very good, what,

14:27.825 --> 14:30.885
one historian called polite segregationists, right?

14:30.905 --> 14:33.365
So they were dedicated to segregation,

14:33.825 --> 14:37.285
but they weren't violent yahoos about it.

14:37.385 --> 14:42.365
So people like, Robert McNair and Fritz Hollings

14:42.585 --> 14:44.765
and later the first Republican governor

14:44.765 --> 14:47.965
of South Carolina since Reconstruction man named John West,

14:48.905 --> 14:53.095
they, they didn't go for the sort

14:53.095 --> 14:54.175
of violent resistance.

14:54.175 --> 14:56.335
They, they pushed in the courts,

14:56.435 --> 14:58.095
but when they ran out of courts,

14:58.325 --> 15:00.655
they acquiesced and integrated.

15:01.195 --> 15:04.575
And it also was a time, really the, the 1970s, sort

15:04.575 --> 15:08.895
of late 1960s, 1970s, was actually a bit of a bright spot

15:09.195 --> 15:12.495
for South Carolina economically, it probably the best period

15:12.995 --> 15:16.775
for the state economically since maybe the, 1850s,

15:17.015 --> 15:19.175
I suppose, in the big cotton boom of that time.

15:19.675 --> 15:23.975
So I think those things meant that the 1970s was

15:24.535 --> 15:26.495
a period of real social

15:26.635 --> 15:29.375
and political optimism in South Carolina

15:29.405 --> 15:33.215
that really is probably the, the best time for the state.

15:33.335 --> 15:34.895
I mean, it's not to say that there weren't a lot

15:34.895 --> 15:37.615
of bad things happening as well in that period,

15:37.875 --> 15:40.415
but compared to the, the big sweep

15:40.415 --> 15:41.695
of South Carolina history,

15:41.715 --> 15:43.615
the 1970s was actually a pretty good time.

15:44.315 --> 15:47.095
And then 1980 came and, Reagan

15:47.315 --> 15:49.735
and the sort of right word swing of politics

15:49.875 --> 15:52.255
and the collapse of the textile industry,

15:52.555 --> 15:55.935
and it's been pretty bad news since in a lot of ways,

15:56.395 --> 15:58.935
the way that memory of reconstruction, the, the way

15:58.935 --> 16:01.855
that reconstruction had been publicly commemorated in,

16:01.855 --> 16:06.175
in South Carolina really since the 1890s, from the 1890s up

16:06.175 --> 16:09.775
through about maybe the beginning of the 1960s, was

16:09.925 --> 16:13.415
that it was this white supremacist sort of story, this,

16:13.445 --> 16:16.055
this story that said people like Wade Hampton,

16:16.235 --> 16:18.255
who was a big plantation owner,

16:18.275 --> 16:19.895
and then a Confederate Cavalry general,

16:20.355 --> 16:24.695
and then campaigned in 1876 to be elected governor

16:25.675 --> 16:27.855
on, on a platform of, you know,

16:27.855 --> 16:29.655
putting white people back in charge.

16:30.275 --> 16:31.935
He was the big hero, you know,

16:32.115 --> 16:35.335
it was a very anti-democratic sort of view of things.

16:35.435 --> 16:37.815
And it ushered in, it set the stage

16:37.835 --> 16:40.655
for people like Ben Tillman 15, 20 years later

16:40.995 --> 16:44.375
to bring in full force Jim Crow,

16:44.435 --> 16:46.175
people like Governor kli

16:46.395 --> 16:49.695
to support lynching very openly, that sort of thing.

16:50.155 --> 16:52.615
And that was the vision of reconstruction

16:52.615 --> 16:54.415
that had been commemorated for a long time.

16:54.515 --> 16:57.135
Now, there was a African American counter memory

16:57.405 --> 16:58.615
that I talked about earlier,

16:59.435 --> 17:02.815
but that never really got any space publicly.

17:03.115 --> 17:07.735
So when I say that, that the changes were a sort

17:07.735 --> 17:10.495
of success, I guess what I mean is that there were a lot of

17:11.035 --> 17:13.215
bad things, you know, in terms of violence

17:13.475 --> 17:16.455
and, you know, ending democracy and racial prejudice

17:16.455 --> 17:19.015
and so forth in the version of reconstruction

17:19.015 --> 17:20.295
that had been commemorated.

17:20.755 --> 17:23.735
Um, so in South Carolina, they,

17:24.045 --> 17:27.775
they stopped commemorating publicly the bad

17:27.775 --> 17:28.935
side of reconstruction.

17:29.235 --> 17:32.135
Now, they didn't really start commemorating the good side.

17:32.405 --> 17:35.695
That is to say slavery is over. That's pretty good.

17:35.995 --> 17:38.575
People have more rights, that's pretty good.

17:38.675 --> 17:40.255
You have more people taking part in

17:40.255 --> 17:41.775
politics, healthier debate.

17:42.075 --> 17:44.855
You have the state providing better schooling

17:44.875 --> 17:46.895
and public services, all these sorts of things.

17:47.275 --> 17:49.405
You know, economic recovery after a war.

17:49.405 --> 17:52.685
There's a big success story to be told about reconstruction.

17:53.505 --> 17:58.005
And what happens in the wake of the civil rights movement is

17:58.005 --> 18:01.245
that it's no longer politically viable, I would say

18:01.825 --> 18:02.925
for people campaigning.

18:02.925 --> 18:06.925
That is to say, white politicians campaigning to say,

18:06.985 --> 18:10.325
as they had said for a long, long time, well, my dad

18:10.425 --> 18:13.005
or my granddaddy was riding around

18:13.035 --> 18:17.005
with his red shirt terrorizing black voters in 1876.

18:17.135 --> 18:18.165
Isn't that a great thing?

18:18.545 --> 18:21.165
And you know, I support that, so you should vote for me.

18:21.425 --> 18:23.005
And that wins, he loads of votes in

18:23.285 --> 18:28.085
19 10, 19, 20 19 40, 19 50, but especially

18:28.255 --> 18:31.645
after the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

18:32.265 --> 18:34.965
You know, all of a sudden that's not gonna win you a lot

18:34.965 --> 18:36.525
of black votes in South Carolina,

18:36.905 --> 18:38.205
you know, to say, vote for me.

18:38.345 --> 18:40.685
My, you know, I'm upholding the strong tradition

18:40.705 --> 18:44.605
of violently suppressing interracial democracy.

18:45.225 --> 18:49.125
Uh, so I think the, the political utility of it disappears

18:49.145 --> 18:52.405
and, and that combativeness had been ameliorated

18:52.545 --> 18:55.525
by people like Hollings and McNair and so forth.

18:55.525 --> 18:58.005
Anyway, so the political direction was changing.

18:58.665 --> 19:02.045
Um, they, so I, so I would say it's sort

19:02.045 --> 19:03.405
of a qualified victory in

19:03.485 --> 19:05.565
that they're not celebrating the bad stuff anymore.

19:05.565 --> 19:07.845
They're not celebrating the good stuff, you know,

19:07.845 --> 19:09.325
like we might like them to,

19:09.465 --> 19:12.485
but at least they're not celebrating the, the bad stuff.

19:12.705 --> 19:14.605
Uh, now there is still a lot of things

19:14.605 --> 19:16.685
that are named for Wade Hampton.

19:16.715 --> 19:19.285
There's Wade Hampton High School in Greenville,

19:19.285 --> 19:22.125
which sits on Wade Hampton Boulevard, which is one of the,

19:22.385 --> 19:23.765
the main streets in town.

19:24.385 --> 19:27.165
But whereas in, in 1950

19:27.225 --> 19:30.325
or 1960, everybody would know who Wade Hampton was

19:30.325 --> 19:31.765
and what he stood for and so forth.

19:32.075 --> 19:35.005
When I was growing up in the next town over in the 1980s,

19:35.265 --> 19:36.525
you know, I'd heard of Wade Hampton.

19:36.645 --> 19:39.045
I knew he was some old historical person,

19:39.345 --> 19:42.565
but I had no idea that he was, you know, the, the governor

19:42.565 --> 19:43.885
who ended reconstruction

19:43.885 --> 19:46.085
and sort of saved white people in

19:46.085 --> 19:47.365
South Carolina and so forth.

19:47.365 --> 19:51.525
That was just not part of the, part of the culture anymore,

19:51.555 --> 19:53.485
part of the public culture anymore.

19:53.485 --> 19:55.645
Yeah, and that's a good thing. A couple of things I,

19:55.725 --> 20:00.415
I think would be sort of, I mean, lessons, I,

20:00.535 --> 20:02.935
I suppose we could say things that I hope readers will,

20:02.965 --> 20:04.215
will remember and,

20:04.435 --> 20:06.615
and maybe bear in mind when they're looking at other things.

20:07.275 --> 20:11.115
And one of those is that despite everything,

20:11.295 --> 20:12.555
things can get better.

20:13.135 --> 20:15.715
And when you study the history of South Carolina, that comes

20:15.715 --> 20:17.475
as a very refreshing surprise

20:17.945 --> 20:20.635
because mostly it's just sort of a, a parade of,

20:20.855 --> 20:22.875
of horribleness of various kinds.

20:23.295 --> 20:27.435
But here's a situation where, you know, the, the state had

20:28.145 --> 20:31.075
done such terrible things to itself,

20:31.095 --> 20:34.155
and its people with the misuse of its history

20:34.175 --> 20:35.275
for such a long time.

20:36.095 --> 20:38.915
But for the reasons that I was sort of alluding to

20:38.935 --> 20:41.515
and kind of how the Civil Rights movement unfolded

20:41.895 --> 20:45.475
and the hard work of a lot of citizens, a lot

20:45.475 --> 20:48.885
of South Carolinians, white and black, there was a real,

20:49.385 --> 20:52.005
and I I would say a genuine attempt by most people

20:52.925 --> 20:56.085
involved in the tricentennial at creating,

20:57.155 --> 21:01.435
a non-racist, racially inclusive story of South Carolina.

21:01.775 --> 21:02.835
The exception is,

21:02.975 --> 21:06.475
as is the article talks about in the town of Anderson.

21:07.015 --> 21:08.195
Um, but that was

21:08.195 --> 21:11.315
because of some very particular historical circumstances.

21:11.455 --> 21:14.915
So maybe we can't be optimistic in Anderson, South Carolina,

21:15.015 --> 21:16.395
but, and apologize

21:16.455 --> 21:18.035
to anybody watching this who's from there.

21:18.095 --> 21:20.755
But, but everywhere else it's quite

21:20.795 --> 21:21.955
a positive sort of story.

21:22.735 --> 21:27.075
And it also, hey, there's been maybe some politically not

21:27.095 --> 21:30.155
so optimistic things happening in the year since then,

21:30.215 --> 21:32.315
but there is a brief period of optimism.

21:32.775 --> 21:36.515
And there's also what I was saying about it, it being sort

21:36.515 --> 21:40.435
of a success because they're not celebrating the bad stuff,

21:40.435 --> 21:42.355
even if they're not celebrating the good stuff.

21:42.785 --> 21:45.995
Well, the good stuff of reconstruction is starting

21:45.995 --> 21:47.195
to be celebrated now.

21:47.775 --> 21:51.235
So the 1868 Constitutional convention

21:51.235 --> 21:53.355
that happened in Charleston, it was the first time

21:53.935 --> 21:57.515
in the state's history that white and black people, all men,

21:57.615 --> 22:00.955
but you know, it's some progress anyway, but that white

22:01.115 --> 22:04.395
and black men had sat down together as political equals

22:04.415 --> 22:06.155
and to take part in, in politics

22:06.155 --> 22:07.515
and write a new constitution.

22:08.135 --> 22:11.635
And there was a historical marker put up in Charleston in

22:11.635 --> 22:13.475
2018 to commemorate that.

22:13.505 --> 22:17.475
It's really the first, the first such thing there, the

22:17.995 --> 22:22.595
reconstruction era, national Historical Park opened in,

22:23.215 --> 22:24.635
in Beaufort, South Carolina.

22:25.175 --> 22:29.675
And I think that was 19, sorry, not 19, 2017.

22:30.655 --> 22:33.955
And also the International African American Museum in

22:33.955 --> 22:36.795
Charleston, which just opened last year in 2023.

22:37.195 --> 22:39.035
I haven't had the chance to, to go to it,

22:39.135 --> 22:41.795
but I assume they say stuff about reconstruction,

22:41.855 --> 22:46.065
and I would assume that it represents sort of modern views

22:46.085 --> 22:49.185
of it, rather than the very, very outdated view that

22:49.725 --> 22:52.905
really was, reigning supreme in South Carolina

22:53.085 --> 22:54.585
for the better part of a hundred years.

"Revisiting Reconstruction: Historical Memory and Commemoration in South Carolina"

00:00:00 - This was sort of a follow up on the project that had been my PhD dissertation. And then my first book, that book was called What Reconstruction Meant, and it was published in 2007, and that was a study of historical memory of reconstruction in the American South, but really focusing primarily just on south, the state of South Carolina. And a lot of scholars for a long time had focused a lot on how people remembered and commemorated the Civil War, but they hadn't really looked at reconstruction. And in a lot of ways, reconstruction was very important, and it was a different sort of experience than the Civil War. The white Confederate Southerners obviously lost the Civil
00:00:45 - after a lot of determined resistance for a few years, they won, they won reconstruction in the sense of they eliminated African American political participation. So when I did the original research for that, I, as, as you always do with these research projects, you gather up a bunch of stuff and you use a lot of it, but then there's bits and pieces that you don't use. So one of the things that I had looked at and hadn't ultimately used was documentation around the tricentennial celebration in the state of South Carolina. So South Carolinas traces its history as a, a European colony.
00:01:25 - to the English settlement in Charleston in 1670. So when 1970 came around, there was a 300 year anniversary celebration. And I was curious about this pattern of how reconstruction had been remembered to sort of see how that persists up through the civil rights era and in the period right after that. So just to sort of backtrack a little bit and sort of say, here's the, the key point of what I found in, in what reconstruction meant is that the, the period of reconstruction. So we're talking about the working out of the consequences of confederate defeat and of emancipation
00:02:10 - and of political and social organizing principle for the south and the very swift enfranchisement of African Americans in the South. So this is pretty, this, it's actually unique in, in world history where you have a population who were enslaved until summer of 1865, and then in summer of 1867, they're registering to vote. And by summer of 1868, many of them are actually holding political office and writing the state constitution in January of that year. So that process happens, not surprisingly, as we probably all know, a lot of white southerners,
00:02:50 - There's a lot of, violent resistance. A lot of political organization. The Republican party in the North, which is controlling the presidency through this time period is supportive of it for a few years, but eventually they sort of run out of steam to support this level of change and sort of withdraw support and white Democrats, white supremacist Democrats in the South regain political control by, in, in all states. By 1877, South Carolina was one of the last states where that happens with a really dramatic political campaign in 1876 and a standoff that lasts for a few months
00:03:32 - So in the years after that, when people in South Carolina, or looking back on that period winds up happening, is you wind up with two different versions, basically two different versions of history, a white supremacist version and a non-white supremacist version, which is overwhelmingly the view of African Americans and a few white people. Although most white people in South Carolina who had previously supported reconstruction at the time and there were not in consider considerable number who did, they, they sort of fell into line afterwards and, you know, represented themselves as having always been against it and so forth. But through the end of the 19th century

"Competing Narratives of Reconstruction: White Supremacy vs. African American Agency"

00:04:14 - you get the development of what I refer to as the white supremacist narrative of reconstruction, which said that enfranchising African Americans and giving them political rights was, yet another attempt by the the north to punish the south for the Civil War. And African Americans were incapable of being active citizens and should never have been given the right to vote and wasn't it a disaster? And it was a very good thing that white Southern Confederates regained control, through, through violence, which was unfortunate, but, but necessary
00:04:55 - But the key lesson here was reconstruction was a big disaster. It was terrible to allow African Americans to have rights, and therefore we should be sure and do anything that it takes to never allow that to happen again. So we get this white supremacist narrative of reconstruction as the really kind of foundational myth of the Jim Crow system, a justification, a sort of historical and moral justification for disenfranchising African-Americans for 70 or or 80 years. On the other side of things, African Americans looking back on that period is the period when they've come out
00:05:37 - you know, some autonomy. They, they have more, opportunities to reassemble their families to sort of make economic advances. And they look at it as a period when they had equal rights, when they had citizenship status. And it becomes sort of a golden era and an idea sort of inspiration that in the darkest times of the Jim Crow period when they're not allowed to vote and racial violence is running unchecked and so forth, that African Americans can look back and think, but I know a time when my father or my grandfather could vote when my great uncle was in the
00:06:19 - and it can happen again. So it becomes a very direct inspiration for the Civil rights movement. So that's where this book chapter comes out of. It was material which just didn't fit into the book, but I was looking around for, kind of had it sitting on my shelf as I have lots of bits and pieces of research, that are sort of half done or, or half-baked research projects. And in about 2013, Carol Berton, a really excellent historian, got in touch and proposed doing an edited collection about memory of reconstruction, because by this point there were several other people who had been pursuing things that fit into this category.
00:07:04 - Remembering Reconstruction that was published by Louisiana State University Press. And this is a chapter that I, contributed to that. The way that I did the research was a, as I said, it's a little bit like, it's a little bit like when people make sourdough bread, right? So I don't do this, but I sort of like know about it, right? And you sort of keep a little bit of the dough to act as a starter for the next batch. Right. And I would say that historical research as I undertake it anyway, is very much like that. You know, it's, or a little bit like, you know, when you take apart a car engine and put it back together and you have a few pieces left over.
00:07:43 - when you do one historical project, and sometimes those can sort of become whole separate projects or, or smaller projects themselves. And that was the case for this. So I had been at, at some point, and, and I think it was while I was doing the book, not the PhD dissertation, but I had been back to South Carolina and doing research in the South Carolina Department of Archives and history, and they have primarily the state government documents and also county government and some private papers. But I looked at and did a lot of photocopying and, you know, taking digital images of the papers

"Researching Historical Celebration and Racial Integration in South Carolina"

00:08:26 - which was the state government body that was set up to spearhead and organize this celebration. it was put together in the late sixties, about maybe 1966 or 67 in the run up to this, celebration in 1970. And there was a lot of correspondence from the little county organizations. So I was able to get a lot of detailed information about not just sort of the, the ideas behind it at a state level and what they were trying to accomplish and the economic boost that they hoped the tourism would bring and and so forth. But I was also able to see
00:09:08 - and the events they were putting on and some of the conflicts that arose and, and that sort of thing. So I had that core of documentary material, and when I started to look into it more, I, I then, as I've learned to do working in, in this country, in, in the United Kingdom and studying US history for the past 20 years, I made use of digitized material, very extensively. So a lot of digitized newspapers, a lot of stuff on Google books, and just sort of digging around and finding, you know, online digitized primary sources of one sort or another. Then I also hired a researcher, historian
00:09:50 - named Elizabeth Break to do some research for me in the papers of a historian from who was based in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Dr. Lawrence Bryant and his papers were at Duke University, and she was able to sort of go have a look at those and, send me copies. I think she posted me actual physical photocopies. so that was basically how I did the research. And of course, usual, you know, working in the British Library and I think the National Library of Scotland, Edinburg University Library for all of the secondary literature, in a way we can sort of think that the, the civil rights era and,
00:10:31 - is is very distant now, right? So it's, you know, 60 years in the past. And I actually moved to upstate South Carolina in 1980 when I was nine years old from South Florida. And one thing that immediately hit me was that racial divisions as, as a white person, I, I noticed that racial divisions were much stronger or seemed much more salient in South Carolina than they had in in Florida, which is partly something to do with my age, I suppose. But what I didn't realize until quite a number of years later, I suppose when I was probably in graduate school, is that when I was going to school, to elementary school in South Carolina in 1980,
00:11:16 - had only integrated 10 years previously, right? So we all hear about Brown, brown versus Board of Education in 1954, Supreme Court decision that outlaws segregation, but it's easy to, to overlook unless you study this and sort of pay attention to it, that that was not implemented everywhere immediately. It, it was in implemented piecemeal some places did it other places didn't. Lots of places dragged their heels. And eventually there was a Supreme Court case, called Alexander versus Holmes County that required, you know, that finally said, enough is enough, you know, you have to Integrate now.
00:11:56 - And so there were still sort of racial divisions that continued. I would say that, you know, and obviously I didn't, you know, live in South Carolina before the Civil Rights movement, although I've talked to a lot of people who did, of course. And I think it did make a, a huge difference in, in terms of opportunities. And I think one of the things that, that made a difference was that the civil rights movement went reasonably smoothly in South Carolina, certainly compared to how it went in a lot of other places in the south. South Carolina was not Alabama, it wasn't Arkansas, it wasn't Mississippi and so forth.

"The Complex Legacy of South Carolina: Political Extremism and Social Change"

00:12:36 - will be a bit surprised about that because South Carolina has a long and very well deserved reputation for political extremism on the eve of the Civil War, as South Carolina was getting ready to secede and spark the Civil War, a politician named James Petare in South Carolina said he, he was very skeptical about this idea and said, this isn't gonna end well. And he said, South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum. And that sort of sums things up. So South Carolina had been at the forefront of the nullification crisis in the 1830s, and then of course, the session
00:13:19 - as many racist demagogues as you could ask for. But they got very lucky in the period after World War ii because in some ways, because the Democratic Party, the party of white supremacy was so strong, there were a number of very strong kind of political machines and political factions that remained very vigorous and, and very strong. There weren't a lot of internal challenges. A lot of that is down to, Ben Tillman that I mentioned in the 1890s, 19 hundreds. But because that remains so strong, there wasn't a lot
00:13:58 - and that sort of damped down the kind of ex extreme extremism. So you didn't have somebody with the kind of political trajectory that George Wallace had in Alabama where he was a bit of a liberal in the years right after World War ii, but he very quickly saw that the way to win votes was to be more extreme on the race question. He just took that as far as he could take it. South Carolina was lucky that the political structure wasn't like that. And they also had a handful of very good, what, one historian called polite segregationists, right? So they were dedicated to segregation, but they weren't violent yahoos about it.
00:14:42 - and later the first Republican governor of South Carolina since Reconstruction man named John West, they, they didn't go for the sort of violent resistance. They, they pushed in the courts, but when they ran out of courts, they acquiesced and integrated. And it also was a time, really the, the 1970s, sort of late 1960s, 1970s, was actually a bit of a bright spot for South Carolina economically, it probably the best period for the state economically since maybe the, 1850s, I suppose, in the big cotton boom of that time.
00:15:24 - a period of real social and political optimism in South Carolina that really is probably the, the best time for the state. I mean, it's not to say that there weren't a lot of bad things happening as well in that period, but compared to the, the big sweep of South Carolina history, the 1970s was actually a pretty good time. And then 1980 came and, Reagan and the sort of right word swing of politics and the collapse of the textile industry, and it's been pretty bad news since in a lot of ways, the way that memory of reconstruction, the, the way that reconstruction had been publicly commemorated in,
00:16:06 - through about maybe the beginning of the 1960s, was that it was this white supremacist sort of story, this, this story that said people like Wade Hampton, who was a big plantation owner, and then a Confederate Cavalry general, and then campaigned in 1876 to be elected governor on, on a platform of, you know, putting white people back in charge. He was the big hero, you know, it was a very anti-democratic sort of view of things. And it ushered in, it set the stage for people like Ben Tillman 15, 20 years later to bring in full force Jim Crow,

"Shifting Narratives: A Complex Reflection on Reconstruction in South Carolina"

00:16:46 - to support lynching very openly, that sort of thing. And that was the vision of reconstruction that had been commemorated for a long time. Now, there was a African American counter memory that I talked about earlier, but that never really got any space publicly. So when I say that, that the changes were a sort of success, I guess what I mean is that there were a lot of bad things, you know, in terms of violence and, you know, ending democracy and racial prejudice and so forth in the version of reconstruction that had been commemorated. so in South Carolina, they, they stopped commemorating publicly the bad
00:17:29 - Now, they didn't really start commemorating the good side. That is to say slavery is over. That's pretty good. People have more rights, that's pretty good. You have more people taking part in politics, healthier debate. You have the state providing better schooling and public services, all these sorts of things. You know, economic recovery after a war. There's a big success story to be told about reconstruction. And what happens in the wake of the civil rights movement is that it's no longer politically viable, I would say for people campaigning. That is to say, white politicians campaigning to say, as they had said for a long, long time, well, my dad
00:18:13 - with his red shirt terrorizing black voters in 1876. Isn't that a great thing? And you know, I support that, so you should vote for me. And that wins, he loads of votes in 19 10, 19, 20 19 40, 19 50, but especially after the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. You know, all of a sudden that's not gonna win you a lot of black votes in South Carolina, you know, to say, vote for me. My, you know, I'm upholding the strong tradition of violently suppressing interracial democracy. so I think the, the political utility of it disappears and, and that combativeness had been ameliorated
00:18:55 - Anyway, so the political direction was changing. they, so I, so I would say it's sort of a qualified victory in that they're not celebrating the bad stuff anymore. They're not celebrating the good stuff, you know, like we might like them to, but at least they're not celebrating the, the bad stuff. now there is still a lot of things that are named for Wade Hampton. There's Wade Hampton High School in Greenville, which sits on Wade Hampton Boulevard, which is one of the, the main streets in town. But whereas in, in 1950 or 1960, everybody would know who Wade Hampton was and what he stood for and so forth. When I was growing up in the next town over in the 1980s,
00:19:36 - I knew he was some old historical person, but I had no idea that he was, you know, the, the governor who ended reconstruction and sort of saved white people in South Carolina and so forth. That was just not part of the, part of the culture anymore, part of the public culture anymore. Yeah, and that's a good thing. A couple of things I, I think would be sort of, I mean, lessons, I, I suppose we could say things that I hope readers will, will remember and, and maybe bear in mind when they're looking at other things. And one of those is that despite everything, things can get better. And when you study the history of South Carolina, that comes
00:20:17 - because mostly it's just sort of a, a parade of, of horribleness of various kinds. But here's a situation where, you know, the, the state had done such terrible things to itself, and its people with the misuse of its history for such a long time. But for the reasons that I was sort of alluding to and kind of how the Civil Rights movement unfolded and the hard work of a lot of citizens, a lot of South Carolinians, white and black, there was a real, and I I would say a genuine attempt by most people involved in the tricentennial at creating,

"Shifting Narratives: A Glimpse of Optimism in South Carolina's Reconstruction Commemoration"

00:21:01 - The exception is, as is the article talks about in the town of Anderson. but that was because of some very particular historical circumstances. So maybe we can't be optimistic in Anderson, South Carolina, but, and apologize to anybody watching this who's from there. But, but everywhere else it's quite a positive sort of story. And it also, hey, there's been maybe some politically not so optimistic things happening in the year since then, but there is a brief period of optimism. And there's also what I was saying about it, it being sort of a success because they're not celebrating the bad stuff,
00:21:42 - Well, the good stuff of reconstruction is starting to be celebrated now. So the 1868 Constitutional convention that happened in Charleston, it was the first time in the state's history that white and black people, all men, but you know, it's some progress anyway, but that white and black men had sat down together as political equals and to take part in, in politics and write a new constitution. And there was a historical marker put up in Charleston in 2018 to commemorate that. It's really the first, the first such thing there, the reconstruction era, national Historical Park opened in,
00:22:53 - And I think that was 19, sorry, not 19, 2017. And also the International African American Museum in Charleston, which just opened last year in 2023. I haven't had the chance to, to go to it, but I assume they say stuff about reconstruction, and I would assume that it represents sort of modern views of it, rather than the very, very outdated view that really was, reigning supreme in South Carolina for the better part of a hundred years.

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