FRIDAY

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Archives
• Young Voices
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis

FEATURES

• Election 2008
• Road to Wealth
• Examining Hip-Hop

RELATED LINKS

• Daily Pennsylvanian article on Dr. Hahn
• Q & A with Dr. Hahn
• Dr. Hahn's bio

E-mail a friend

Tavis: Steven Hahn is a professor of American history at the University of Pennsylvania and the winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for history. His terrific book is called 'A Nation Under our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South From Slavery to the Great Migration.' The book is the story of the African American political movement during and after slavery. Professor Hahn, nice to have you here.

Steven Hahn: Pleasure to be here, Tavis.

Tavis: Pleasure to have you. Congratulations on winning the Pulitzer for this. Well deserved. Well deserved.

Hahn: Well, I feel very fortunate.

Tavis: I think a lot of people perhaps are shocked to consider that there was a great political struggle, that there was a great political process that was begun in fact by slaves.

Hahn: I think that's true, and in fact this was part of the process of discovery that I engaged in with this book. As I was looking at the process of political organization after slavery, I began asking myself how in fact this was possible in so short a time after slavery had ended if it didn't really build effectively on important foundations that were built under slavery. So I began to look back and ask questions about whether we ought to think about slaves in serious and meaningful ways as political people, which generally is not done.

Tavis: When you think of them, when you consider them in those terms, what does one have to wrestle with?

Hahn: Well, I think one has to wrestle with the fact that officially they had no standing in civil and political society. I mean, they were slaves and effectively the property of others, the extension of the wills of their owners. That was at least the theory, and in many ways that was a fiction. But in fact, slaves were people, and everything you learn about slave society suggests that their activities, their own forms of organizations, their ideas as to what they wanted for themselves were central to how those societies operated. So the question is really if we were going to be willing to challenge the official script, and then conceive of slaves in different ways.

Tavis: When one is, to your point a moment ago, when one is essentially chattel, when one does not essentially exist in the body politic, how does one even--I'm just trying to figure out how these slaves during that time even began to process, to think strategically about--

Hahn: Well, that's exactly right. You know, this was an enormous challenge to them, and also it's important to point out that this was an incredibly dangerous world in which they were operating. To constitute themselves, to take any sort of public political position was suicidal. So in fact, one has to look at all sorts of other things. I was interested in a number of things. I was interested in the way in which they formed their own social networks, where kinship was extremely important. I was looking at the labor relationships and the way in which they organized themselves to limit their exploitation. I also got interested in forms of communication, and forms of communication like rumor, by which they in effect engaged with each other politically. And I think it ended up being extremely consequential. Just to give you one example, on the eve of the Civil War, I was struck by how many slaves all over the south seemed to be aware of the election of 1860, of the Republican Party being an anti-slavery party, knew about Lincoln. Now, their interpretation of what this meant didn't necessarily accord with what the Republican party intended, but it mobilized them, and it raised their own expectations, and in fact it's one of the very important reasons why, when the union army invaded the south, they responded by rebelling against their own masters and leaving their plantations and farms and heading to Union lines, and in effect forcing the Union side to deal with the question that the Union side really didn't want to deal with during the war.

Tavis: Tell me how their political--I'm almost afraid to say activism, but I guess that's what it was for them. How was their political activism, quiet though it might have been, interpreted by, dealt with by, persons who happened not to be of African descent at that time?

Hahn: Well, you know, this also is an important issue and an important challenge, because in American society even on the eve of the Civil War, people who were in conditions of legal or customary dependency were not imagined to be members of the body politic at all. Slaves were included, women were included, people under the age--minors, children. Even when emancipation took place, and in the context of civil war and the military defeat of the confederacy and the slave-owning class, there was enormous opposition, especially in the south, but not exclusively in the south, to the idea of extending the elective franchise to African Americans, former slaves and free African Americans in the north. Had it not, in some ways it raises all sorts of fascinating questions about the Civil War, since we tend to look at the Civil War as a great tragedy in American history. But had it not been for the Civil War, no 13th Amendment, no 14th Amendment, no 15th Amendment, no Reconstruction Act. The process of enfranchisement that really gave African Americans new forms of political power just would not have taken place.

Tavis: The Civil War--this may sound funny telling this to a professor. You know this better than I do. The Civil War, of course, was fought over the institution of slavery, in large measure. And so I hear the point you're making about what might not have happened had there not been a Civil War. Let me ask a slightly different question. What, though, did the slaves do--how can I phrase this? What did the slaves do most importantly politically to hasten that day which, of course, took a long time coming, to hasten the day when the right to vote would, in fact, be realized?

Hahn: Well, they did a lot of different things. They did a lot of different things as both slaves and as free people. Free people in the north, many of whom were fugitives from slavery, in the decades before slavery were mobilizing for the African American franchise. Runaway slaves themselves deepened the crisis of the union because it made it clear, as Lincoln himself pointed out, it was going to be impossible to maintain a union that seemed to be half slave and half free. Once the Civil War took place and as growing numbers of African Americans not only deserted their owners and fled to union lines, but in fact enlisted in the Union Army, by the end of the Civil War, there were almost 200,000 African Americans who were in the Union Army and who make an absolutely central difference in the military outcome of the war. They also begin to take on the large question, which is not the fate of slavery, which is disintegrating, but what will freedom mean. And one of the most important things to them had to do with establishing themselves in civil and political society and demanding the right to vote and pointing to their military experience and to the role that they played in saving the union as a very, very vital aspect of this.

Tavis: You are not an African American, obviously. I am, obviously, and this might be a strange question. Let me ask you anyway, though. When I recall these Africans standing in line for miles to vote for Nelson Mandela in South Africa, that was the most poignant picture I'd seen in my young lifetime, reminding me of how precious this right to vote is. In the research and the writing of this book, tell me what your best guess would be, your best answer would be to the story that would most resonate with African Americans today about what their ancestors did to ensure years later that they could be actively engaged in the body politic, so that we could have a Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate even today.

Hahn: Absolutely.

Tavis: What's the connection?

Hahn: Well, I think--you know, I have related themes in my book, and that has to do with what I call the making of 2 nations and the role of African Americans in this process. One is in remaking the United States in the 19th century. The country that came out of the Civil War was a very, very different country than went into the Civil War. And, also, the process of making themselves as a new political people. The thing that really jumped out at me, in fact, one of the formative moments in my own research was years ago when I was doing this research and found complaints from white employers in Mississippi, as it turned out, in the first couple of years after emancipation, complaining about newly enfranchised African American men and women, against their wishes, walking 25 miles to go to a political meeting. Now, I was stunned by this because they did so in the face of intimidation and harassment, oftentimes in the face of a double-barrel shotgun. From the point of view of the late 20th century and the 21st century, this is really an astonishing thing.

Tavis: So they couldn't vote. They were walking 25 miles just to go to a meeting?

Hahn: No, they had just won the elective franchise, but this happened within--you know, this is 1868, so within a year, and, it was really an astonishing thing. When voter registration took place, an enormous number of African Americans signed up to vote, again in conditions of tremendous danger, and voting was a tremendously difficult undertaking because of the violence and intimidation that they faced. It was almost a paramilitary operation, going from their plantations and farms to the voting booths--the poll, but not the booth, but the polling places. They oftentimes had to gather on a plantation the night before. They had to send scouts ahead to prevent ambushes. They had to show up in large numbers so that they wouldn't be intimidated or harassed at the polls. They had to make sure that those votes would be counted. What happened in Florida in 2000--in 2000 was not a new story in the history of the south.

Tavis: I'm glad you said that 'cause I wanted to close our conversation, which I could go on for hours to have with you about this fascinating subject. Let me close with that very point, back to the year 2000. I hope, at least, that in this country, the right of one person, one vote is still one of the most precious things we have. I hope in fact, that is the case. If in fact that is the case, that's not a black thing or a white thing. That is an American thing. So you've answered the question as to what African Americans in a contemporary sense ought to get from the sacrifice and struggles of the slaves. What in fact, should Americans take from this wonderful piece of work you've done here?

Hahn: Well, I think one of the things they ought to take from this is the importance of American democracy and the need for us to think very, very hard about what that democracy means. Part of the contribution that African Americans made was to revitalize American democracy at a moment where its future was in real doubt, and yet their own experience suggests that our democracy has had a longstanding problem with the full participation of people who are working people in American society, who are poor people in American society, whether they're African American, whether members of other minority or ethnic groups, of the working class more generally, and I don't know how you have a democracy that's a meaningful democracy unless participation is something that includes everybody. It's active, it's vital, and that we're not looking for ways to make it difficult for people to participate, but in fact, we do whatever we can to get the largest participation possible. I think that's what African Americans in the 19th century left for us, which was an incredible commitment to the meaning of full participatory democracy.

Tavis: Never mind my recommendation, although I do highly recommend it. It is the winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in history. Professor Steven Hahn's book, 'A Nation Under Our Feet.' Professor, nice to have you on the program.

Hahn: Thanks for having me.

Tavis: All the best to you. Up next on this program, singer Nikka Costa. Stay with us.