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Apr. 25th, 2011 11:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsIt isn't that most books about race relations after the Civil War and the slow reconstruction slide into a fully segregated south aren't depressing, but Mary Frances Berry's My Face is Black is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations felt almost extra depressing to read because it was such a distillation of the story of postwar optimism constantly crushed by banal depressing bureaucracy. Like, this is a very simplified version of how Callie House's Ex-Slave Reparations Movement went down:
SHADY WHITE DUDE WALTER VAUGHAN: It'd be great to improve the economy down here by getting the government to provide pensions for former slaves as a compensation for all their years of unclaimed forced labor! Because quite frankly no one down here wants to provide for them.
SEVERAL ACTUAL EX-SLAVES, INCLUDING CALLIE HOUSE: The pension idea's a great one, but, um, Walter Vaughan, you are kind of shady, so we're going to turn this into a grassroots movement and go around raising money and signing petitions to push through a pension bill.
THE US POST OFFICE: LOLOLOL like that would ever pass. This movement is clearly hopeless and Walter Vaughan is totally shady, therefore this must be an attempt to defraud poor black people out of their money, we are denying mail services to EVERYONE INVOLVED.
CALLIE HOUSE: If I explain to the post office that we are just exercising our political rights to organize and influence the government, surely they will understand!
THE US POST OFFICE: And not just that, their most outspoken member is female? There is NO WAY this is real. *bans Callie House from sending mail to anyone*
CALLIE HOUSE: All right, I will try to get someone to explain for me -
THE US POST OFFICE: Fraud fraud fraud fraud fraud!
[rinse, repeat]
And that is pretty much the book: Callie House vs. the US Government, Especially the Post Office, rounds one through thirty-eight, and three guesses who wins every one. It's worth reading - the prose is fairly workmanlike, but there's a lot of really good information there about the post-reconstruction era and black political movements - but man, it is not a book that leaves you feeling optimistic about the possibility of using the system for political change.
SHADY WHITE DUDE WALTER VAUGHAN: It'd be great to improve the economy down here by getting the government to provide pensions for former slaves as a compensation for all their years of unclaimed forced labor! Because quite frankly no one down here wants to provide for them.
SEVERAL ACTUAL EX-SLAVES, INCLUDING CALLIE HOUSE: The pension idea's a great one, but, um, Walter Vaughan, you are kind of shady, so we're going to turn this into a grassroots movement and go around raising money and signing petitions to push through a pension bill.
THE US POST OFFICE: LOLOLOL like that would ever pass. This movement is clearly hopeless and Walter Vaughan is totally shady, therefore this must be an attempt to defraud poor black people out of their money, we are denying mail services to EVERYONE INVOLVED.
CALLIE HOUSE: If I explain to the post office that we are just exercising our political rights to organize and influence the government, surely they will understand!
THE US POST OFFICE: And not just that, their most outspoken member is female? There is NO WAY this is real. *bans Callie House from sending mail to anyone*
CALLIE HOUSE: All right, I will try to get someone to explain for me -
THE US POST OFFICE: Fraud fraud fraud fraud fraud!
[rinse, repeat]
And that is pretty much the book: Callie House vs. the US Government, Especially the Post Office, rounds one through thirty-eight, and three guesses who wins every one. It's worth reading - the prose is fairly workmanlike, but there's a lot of really good information there about the post-reconstruction era and black political movements - but man, it is not a book that leaves you feeling optimistic about the possibility of using the system for political change.
