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Denmark Vesey's Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy
In the tradition of James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me, a deeply researched book that uncovers competing histories of how slavery is remembered in Charleston, South Carolina—the heart of Dixie
A book that strikes at the heart of the recent flare-ups over Confederate symbols in Charlottesville, New Orleans, and elsewhere, Denmark Vesey’s Garden reveals the deep roots of these controversies and traces them to the heart of slavery in the United States: Charleston, South Carolina, where almost half of the U.S. slave population stepped onto our shores, where the first shot at Fort Sumter began the Civil War, and where Dylann Roof shot nine people at Emanuel A.M.E. Church, the congregation of Denmark Vesey, a black revolutionary who plotted a massive slave insurrection in 1822.
As early as 1865, former slaveholders and their descendants began working to preserve a romanticized memory of the antebellum South. In contrast, former slaves, their descendants, and some white allies have worked to preserve an honest, unvarnished account of slavery as the cruel system it was.
Examining public rituals, controversial monuments, and whitewashed historical tourism, Denmark Vesey’s Garden tracks these two rival memories from the Civil War all the way to contemporary times, where two segregated tourism industries still reflect these opposing impressions of the past, exposing a hidden dimension of America’s deep racial divide. Denmark Vesey’s Garden joins the small bookshelf of major, paradigm-shifting new interpretations of slavery’s enduring legacy in the United States.
A book that strikes at the heart of the recent flare-ups over Confederate symbols in Charlottesville, New Orleans, and elsewhere, Denmark Vesey’s Garden reveals the deep roots of these controversies and traces them to the heart of slavery in the United States: Charleston, South Carolina, where almost half of the U.S. slave population stepped onto our shores, where the first shot at Fort Sumter began the Civil War, and where Dylann Roof shot nine people at Emanuel A.M.E. Church, the congregation of Denmark Vesey, a black revolutionary who plotted a massive slave insurrection in 1822.
As early as 1865, former slaveholders and their descendants began working to preserve a romanticized memory of the antebellum South. In contrast, former slaves, their descendants, and some white allies have worked to preserve an honest, unvarnished account of slavery as the cruel system it was.
Examining public rituals, controversial monuments, and whitewashed historical tourism, Denmark Vesey’s Garden tracks these two rival memories from the Civil War all the way to contemporary times, where two segregated tourism industries still reflect these opposing impressions of the past, exposing a hidden dimension of America’s deep racial divide. Denmark Vesey’s Garden joins the small bookshelf of major, paradigm-shifting new interpretations of slavery’s enduring legacy in the United States.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published April 3, 2018
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March 30, 2018Charleston offers an unusually clear window into the genealogy of social memory. It reveals how personal memories of the past coalesced into collective, social memory—the aggregation of individual remembrances. Neither white nor black Charlestonians could easily forget slavery, though some certainly tried.
The book begins with a look at the way this memory is mapped over the landscape in statues, flags, and other symbols that celebrate a myth of the chivalric, romantic Lost Cause, and suppress how that entire economy was built on the scarred backs of slaves.
It begins with Dylann Roof’s recent shooting of nine people in one of Charleston’s oldest churches—after months of careful research, punctuated by proud selfies posted on the Internet along with Confederate flags, which touched off a firestorm of reaction for and against the many symbols of the Confederacy all over the south, from those ever-present flags to enormous, expensive statues.
Early on, the authors’ claim that “modern historians’ near unanimous agreement that slavery was the central cause of the conflict,” might be seen as a simplification of the fundamental divide between the Founding Fathers, as exemplified in Thomas Jefferson’s belief that the new republic ought to be a nation of yeoman farmers, and Alexander Hamilton, who saw the republic’s future success lying in manufacturing and trade, or industry.
The point that most historians I’ve read caution moderns to keep in mind is that slavery was fundamental to Jefferson’s romantic yeoman farm dream, for as those early pilgrims and explorers discovered, somebody has to do the backbreaking work of turning land into food, homes, cities. And Jefferson was A-okay with that work being done by slaves; meanwhile, the north was moving firmly away from slavery as it became industrialized.
This divide only grew as the republic grew. For this book, the authors focus in on the history of Charleston, which was the largest center of the slave trade. They begin with the history of Denmark Vesey, a slave who managed to win his freedom in a lottery, but who couldn’t afford to free his family. Desperate and angry at a system that guaranteed him no justice or rights, he organized an uprising that resulted in the arrest of over a hundred slaves, many of whom were tortured, and thirty-four (along with Vesey) executed.
Thereafter comes a grim history of policing slaves in case of real, or even imagined, slave risings. Slaves could be punished or killed for imagined “crimes”—the only problem being that their labor is lost. Slaves outnumbered whites by a margin, increasing white fears of slave revolt, and so governmentally sanctioned groups as well as local lynch mobs roamed around seeking “uppity” slaves.
Not all landowners were vicious on the surface. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison all talked up slavery as a benevolent system, positing the (white) male owner as father, and slaves as permanent children. According to the authors, James Henry Hammond, after seeing to it that petitions about slavery were declined by the Congressional House of Representatives, wrote in a masterpiece of hypocrisy, “Our patriarchal scene of domestic servitude is indeed well calculated to awaken the higher and finer feelings of our nature.”
Easy to feel benevolent when you are waited on hand and foot by silent, submissive slaves!
That sense of superiority comes to life in the early chapter, as the story of the Civil War is summarized from the black Charlestonian point of view, ending with snide, superior, and horrified newspaper accounts of blacks being able to congregate in places that had previous been reserved to whites, such as the race track and public parks.
So began the difficulties of Reconstruction. The authors’ careful, well-documented account can be summed up by the reflection that white politicians were forced to accept that black people could now vote. And so the Jim Crow era began, as money and effort was spent on erecting monuments to famous Southerners such as Calhoun, in salute to the once-glorious past.
Subsequent chapters illustrate how nostalgia for those gracious and chivalric days before the Civil War lived on after those who lived through it began dying off, as for blacks, segregation deepened and sharpened—which included divisions among African American citizens.
The authors also delve, with plentiful personal accounts, into the problem of teaching, distortion of, and erasure of black history. Some of the erasure was not due to whites covering up what’s inconvenient in extolling their grand view of the chivalric pre-Civil War South: many older blacks did not want their progeny hearing about their lives as slaves, or poking into their roots, deeply buried as they were in slavery.
Meanwhile, as tourism was on the rise during the early twentieth century, tourists were treated to white-written fictions about the faithful, loyal “mammy” and other sanitized views of the past. But counter to those, scholars and artists of various sorts began to delve into history to find the truth; the spirituals the blacks sang were hailed as a remarkable form of music in their own right, and at least one scholar studied Gullah, the slaves’ own language, which mixed English and African vocabulary. Meanwhile groups rose who performed black music—which included whites.
The authors takes some time with the vexed question of how primary sources are handled when gathering information. The authors furnish plenty of data on the manner in which early scholars obtained oral accounts from aging former slaves; leading questions being one issue, and another, these frail elderly folk out of sheer self-preservation telling these white visitors what they wanted to hear, and not necessarily the truth.
The second half of the book illustrates the difficulties of ending segregation, and the cultural and social cost as well as the political and economic, spinning out in eddies around symbols, such as the portrait of Denmark Vesey to hang in City Hall. This struggle in the mid-seventies, a handful of years after the school system finally agreed that American History from the black point of view might be worth of study, exemplified the fractures that reach back to those early days. Meanwhile, black tourism was on the rise, which meant a strong interest in black history, which dovetails into celebrations and reenactments.
The authors wind up the account by bringing it back to Dylann Roof’s cold-blooded massacre, and Denmark Vesey’s place in history, acknowledging that though tour guides now speak frankly about the black’ slave experience—unheard of a decade or two ago—it’s clear that someone like Roof can stand at the terminus of the Middle Passage and not see the site of so much human suffering, but a place that once trumpeted the dominance of the whites.
It’s a terrific book, academically sound, full of quotations from primary sources, and indicative of how far the city of Charleston has come, but how far it still needs to go.
The last third is entirely notes and an impressive bibliography.
Copy provided by NetGalley
The book begins with a look at the way this memory is mapped over the landscape in statues, flags, and other symbols that celebrate a myth of the chivalric, romantic Lost Cause, and suppress how that entire economy was built on the scarred backs of slaves.
It begins with Dylann Roof’s recent shooting of nine people in one of Charleston’s oldest churches—after months of careful research, punctuated by proud selfies posted on the Internet along with Confederate flags, which touched off a firestorm of reaction for and against the many symbols of the Confederacy all over the south, from those ever-present flags to enormous, expensive statues.
Early on, the authors’ claim that “modern historians’ near unanimous agreement that slavery was the central cause of the conflict,” might be seen as a simplification of the fundamental divide between the Founding Fathers, as exemplified in Thomas Jefferson’s belief that the new republic ought to be a nation of yeoman farmers, and Alexander Hamilton, who saw the republic’s future success lying in manufacturing and trade, or industry.
The point that most historians I’ve read caution moderns to keep in mind is that slavery was fundamental to Jefferson’s romantic yeoman farm dream, for as those early pilgrims and explorers discovered, somebody has to do the backbreaking work of turning land into food, homes, cities. And Jefferson was A-okay with that work being done by slaves; meanwhile, the north was moving firmly away from slavery as it became industrialized.
This divide only grew as the republic grew. For this book, the authors focus in on the history of Charleston, which was the largest center of the slave trade. They begin with the history of Denmark Vesey, a slave who managed to win his freedom in a lottery, but who couldn’t afford to free his family. Desperate and angry at a system that guaranteed him no justice or rights, he organized an uprising that resulted in the arrest of over a hundred slaves, many of whom were tortured, and thirty-four (along with Vesey) executed.
Thereafter comes a grim history of policing slaves in case of real, or even imagined, slave risings. Slaves could be punished or killed for imagined “crimes”—the only problem being that their labor is lost. Slaves outnumbered whites by a margin, increasing white fears of slave revolt, and so governmentally sanctioned groups as well as local lynch mobs roamed around seeking “uppity” slaves.
Not all landowners were vicious on the surface. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison all talked up slavery as a benevolent system, positing the (white) male owner as father, and slaves as permanent children. According to the authors, James Henry Hammond, after seeing to it that petitions about slavery were declined by the Congressional House of Representatives, wrote in a masterpiece of hypocrisy, “Our patriarchal scene of domestic servitude is indeed well calculated to awaken the higher and finer feelings of our nature.”
Easy to feel benevolent when you are waited on hand and foot by silent, submissive slaves!
That sense of superiority comes to life in the early chapter, as the story of the Civil War is summarized from the black Charlestonian point of view, ending with snide, superior, and horrified newspaper accounts of blacks being able to congregate in places that had previous been reserved to whites, such as the race track and public parks.
So began the difficulties of Reconstruction. The authors’ careful, well-documented account can be summed up by the reflection that white politicians were forced to accept that black people could now vote. And so the Jim Crow era began, as money and effort was spent on erecting monuments to famous Southerners such as Calhoun, in salute to the once-glorious past.
Subsequent chapters illustrate how nostalgia for those gracious and chivalric days before the Civil War lived on after those who lived through it began dying off, as for blacks, segregation deepened and sharpened—which included divisions among African American citizens.
The authors also delve, with plentiful personal accounts, into the problem of teaching, distortion of, and erasure of black history. Some of the erasure was not due to whites covering up what’s inconvenient in extolling their grand view of the chivalric pre-Civil War South: many older blacks did not want their progeny hearing about their lives as slaves, or poking into their roots, deeply buried as they were in slavery.
Meanwhile, as tourism was on the rise during the early twentieth century, tourists were treated to white-written fictions about the faithful, loyal “mammy” and other sanitized views of the past. But counter to those, scholars and artists of various sorts began to delve into history to find the truth; the spirituals the blacks sang were hailed as a remarkable form of music in their own right, and at least one scholar studied Gullah, the slaves’ own language, which mixed English and African vocabulary. Meanwhile groups rose who performed black music—which included whites.
The authors takes some time with the vexed question of how primary sources are handled when gathering information. The authors furnish plenty of data on the manner in which early scholars obtained oral accounts from aging former slaves; leading questions being one issue, and another, these frail elderly folk out of sheer self-preservation telling these white visitors what they wanted to hear, and not necessarily the truth.
The second half of the book illustrates the difficulties of ending segregation, and the cultural and social cost as well as the political and economic, spinning out in eddies around symbols, such as the portrait of Denmark Vesey to hang in City Hall. This struggle in the mid-seventies, a handful of years after the school system finally agreed that American History from the black point of view might be worth of study, exemplified the fractures that reach back to those early days. Meanwhile, black tourism was on the rise, which meant a strong interest in black history, which dovetails into celebrations and reenactments.
The authors wind up the account by bringing it back to Dylann Roof’s cold-blooded massacre, and Denmark Vesey’s place in history, acknowledging that though tour guides now speak frankly about the black’ slave experience—unheard of a decade or two ago—it’s clear that someone like Roof can stand at the terminus of the Middle Passage and not see the site of so much human suffering, but a place that once trumpeted the dominance of the whites.
It’s a terrific book, academically sound, full of quotations from primary sources, and indicative of how far the city of Charleston has come, but how far it still needs to go.
The last third is entirely notes and an impressive bibliography.
Copy provided by NetGalley
February 24, 2020
Thoughts soon.
February 16, 2020
Five years ago a tragedy occurred in Charleston S.C. A white supremacist Dylan Roof walked into one of the oldest black churches and murdered 9 people. While I had majored in history at college, it had been years since I had seriously read history.
After the shooting, the role of the Battle Flag was thrust into the public eye. Many living in former Confederate States were claiming that the flag held and older purer understanding than what the media and rest of the Country thought it meant; people claiming that’s real intention had been usurped by White Supremacist.
I wanted to better understand the subject so I picked up The Confederate Nation, 1861-1865. I liked that book, but realized that I did not have the knowledge to appreciate or understand its nuisances. This created an insatiable appetite for knowledge that has continued to this day.
I am not going to say that this is the best book I've ever read, but considering the fact that the author starts from the same point that I started---trying to understand Dylan Roof and the subsequent controversies---I think the author does an excellent job at presenting the myriad of facts and history.
The book focuses on Charleston which adds an element to the story that keeps it fresh and interesting. Many of the overarching ideas/concepts I was familiar with, but the local flavor adds to it. It really takes off when it starts talking about modern Charleston and the imagery therein.
As a person with an interest in flags, I particularly enjoyed the history behind this flag:
https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/ima...
After the shooting, the role of the Battle Flag was thrust into the public eye. Many living in former Confederate States were claiming that the flag held and older purer understanding than what the media and rest of the Country thought it meant; people claiming that’s real intention had been usurped by White Supremacist.
I wanted to better understand the subject so I picked up The Confederate Nation, 1861-1865. I liked that book, but realized that I did not have the knowledge to appreciate or understand its nuisances. This created an insatiable appetite for knowledge that has continued to this day.
I am not going to say that this is the best book I've ever read, but considering the fact that the author starts from the same point that I started---trying to understand Dylan Roof and the subsequent controversies---I think the author does an excellent job at presenting the myriad of facts and history.
The book focuses on Charleston which adds an element to the story that keeps it fresh and interesting. Many of the overarching ideas/concepts I was familiar with, but the local flavor adds to it. It really takes off when it starts talking about modern Charleston and the imagery therein.
As a person with an interest in flags, I particularly enjoyed the history behind this flag:
https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/ima...
May 28, 2018
Of the countless books covering the Civil War and slavery, many of which I've read, I don't know of a single one that so perfectly shows us the humanity - and inhumanity - of it all from a southern perspective.
This book is exceptionally well researched and well written. It's not at all 'text book dry', but instead comes alive with the sights and sounds of the south.
The focus is on one city, Charleston, South Carolina, which is essentially where it all began. This narrow focus manages to encompass the crux of the war; before, during, and after. Here we see how and why the US came away with two opposing views of what caused this war, what we were fighting for and about, and what it all means to us today.
I was born and raised in the Northeast, at the time when Black Americans were fighting for equality and desegregation in the south. As a young child, I didn't know racism was "a thing". I had no idea that the black family at the table beside us at a restaurant would not have those same rights in a southern town. I couldn't fathom such a world as a child, and I had no reason to imagine it. During my early teens, as we learned about the Civil War, we were taught, without question, that it was about slavery. Then, I moved to the south, and suddenly I see rebel flags and my children were being taught that the Civil War was about States' rights, not slavery. (In my mind, the two issues are essentially the same thing, with the southern states wanting the right to own slaves, but what do I know?) That was my first exposure to the opposing views, and I didn't understand it at all. This book captures it perfectly, from beginning to end, showing the struggle from both the white and black perspectives, so that I now understand the division in ways I never had before.
This country is fractured. This book gives us tremendous insight into where the fracture began and why it persists.
*The publisher provided me with a review copy, via Amazon Vine.*
This book is exceptionally well researched and well written. It's not at all 'text book dry', but instead comes alive with the sights and sounds of the south.
The focus is on one city, Charleston, South Carolina, which is essentially where it all began. This narrow focus manages to encompass the crux of the war; before, during, and after. Here we see how and why the US came away with two opposing views of what caused this war, what we were fighting for and about, and what it all means to us today.
I was born and raised in the Northeast, at the time when Black Americans were fighting for equality and desegregation in the south. As a young child, I didn't know racism was "a thing". I had no idea that the black family at the table beside us at a restaurant would not have those same rights in a southern town. I couldn't fathom such a world as a child, and I had no reason to imagine it. During my early teens, as we learned about the Civil War, we were taught, without question, that it was about slavery. Then, I moved to the south, and suddenly I see rebel flags and my children were being taught that the Civil War was about States' rights, not slavery. (In my mind, the two issues are essentially the same thing, with the southern states wanting the right to own slaves, but what do I know?) That was my first exposure to the opposing views, and I didn't understand it at all. This book captures it perfectly, from beginning to end, showing the struggle from both the white and black perspectives, so that I now understand the division in ways I never had before.
This country is fractured. This book gives us tremendous insight into where the fracture began and why it persists.
*The publisher provided me with a review copy, via Amazon Vine.*
August 5, 2018
The best educational read I have ever consumed. The authors produce factual and detailed revelations of how the narrative of slavery in American history was developed.
This novel explains the author's discovery of how the cradle of America's slave imports to the city Charleston South Carolina has a warped and unrecognizable perception of slavery.
They present the origins of slavery and its impact beginning with Denmark Vessy's attempted slave uprising which had fueled the perceptions and fears of African-Americans allowing a country of immigrants to turn a blind eye as African_ American Citizens were never considered since before America was formed.
"Throughout the existence of humanity, the dominant cultures write the history to their advantage applauding their victorious battles to honor their dead with speeches of gallantry."
The American Civil War's Confederate Army lost a war yet its supporters to this day revere its losing Generals with state holidays in Virginia, Alabama, and Mississippi, while never admitting, describing, or acknowledging Slavery as one of the pillars for the war.
The authors repeatedly identify's the US Government's lack of and failure to assist and support the fundamental human rights for African-Americans which reveals our current racial problems.
This novel amazingly explains why and how the incredible Gulf of perception and understanding between White American's and African-Americans about race in America has developed under the guise of education.
Please complete this novel, to develop a better understanding of race in America and pass it on to as many people as possible.
This novel explains the author's discovery of how the cradle of America's slave imports to the city Charleston South Carolina has a warped and unrecognizable perception of slavery.
They present the origins of slavery and its impact beginning with Denmark Vessy's attempted slave uprising which had fueled the perceptions and fears of African-Americans allowing a country of immigrants to turn a blind eye as African_ American Citizens were never considered since before America was formed.
"Throughout the existence of humanity, the dominant cultures write the history to their advantage applauding their victorious battles to honor their dead with speeches of gallantry."
The American Civil War's Confederate Army lost a war yet its supporters to this day revere its losing Generals with state holidays in Virginia, Alabama, and Mississippi, while never admitting, describing, or acknowledging Slavery as one of the pillars for the war.
The authors repeatedly identify's the US Government's lack of and failure to assist and support the fundamental human rights for African-Americans which reveals our current racial problems.
This novel amazingly explains why and how the incredible Gulf of perception and understanding between White American's and African-Americans about race in America has developed under the guise of education.
Please complete this novel, to develop a better understanding of race in America and pass it on to as many people as possible.
July 18, 2018
Denmarck Vesey was a free black man living in antebellum Charleston, South Carolina in the 1820’s. He had a job and a few resources, but he was fiercely angry about the slavery that poisoned the lives of his fellow blacks. And so in 1822 he used his meager earnings to buy weapons in the hopes of beginning a slave rebellion that would spread quickly, much like the one that John Brown planned 30 years later. His small conspiracy was soon discovered, however, the conspirators were killed, and Denmarck Vesey himself was publicly executed. But his name and story lived on in Charleston, as a cautionary tale to white slave owners and as a model of resistance to the blacks who were to remain in slavery for another 40 years.
The good white people of antebellum Charleston were not overly endowed with moral intelligence, but they could count. Blacks, most of them slaves, outnumbered whites by a factor of nine to one from 1800 until at least emancipation in the low country. The idea of an armed slave rebellion was for several reasons a recurring nightmare for the white population, especially for those wealthy enough to own slaves. First, of course, that population understood that they would probably lose their lives in such a rebellion. But they also knew that they would lose their wealth since most of that wealth was embodied in the slaves that they traded, raped, and overworked to maintain their life style. Slaves, in other words, not only produced wealth for their owners, they were themselves a form of human currency.
Denmarck Vesey’s Garden is a remarkably insightful and detailed history of slavery as seen through the very specific lens of Charleston’s white and black populations. It moves from the late 18th century, by which time Charleston had become the largest slave-trading center in America, through the Civil War when Charleston lost its wealth, to Reconstruction, the long Jim Crow era, the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement, all the way to the Obama administration. It is a complicated and tortured history, but what makes the book worth reading is that it documents how the city’s leaders, newspapers, intellectuals, and citizens spent more than 150 years denying that its actual history was real. Through multiple acts of willful amnesia, erasure, and outright deceit, the city of Charleston literally whitewashed its fierce commitment to slavery and its long abuse of black citizens. Most of Charleston’s history of itself is, in other words, a carefully crafted fantasy that has more in common with Disney World than with the lives people actually lived there.
The revisionist history began, of course, with the need for money. The Civil War was not kind to Charleston. The Union Army never forgot that the war began in the Charleston harbor when Confederate soldiers fired at Fort Sumter or that South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union. So it seemed to take special care to attack the city as vigorously as possible. Union ships fired on Charleston almost continuously throughout the conflict. Houses were burned or otherwise destroyed, public buildings and private businesses were left in ruins, the slaves were freed, and Confederate currency was rendered worthless. From the end of the Civil War until the end of Reconstruction in 1876, whites were almost as poor as blacks and were no more likely to hold political office than their former slaves. All that ended however, when Union soldiers left the south—a moment that the south called “Redemption.” Blacks were stripped of their right to vote, arbitrarily arrested, tethered to jobs without compensation as punishment, and, of course, lynched with horrifying frequency.
But that didn’t solve the money problem. To address that issue, Charleston had to cast off its reputation as the Wall Street of slave sales and reinvent itself as a “lost cause” theme park. Starting in the 1890’s, tourism became the major industry. Homes were rebuilt, sometimes with cheap materials, to resemble the look of the Old South. Some lucky blacks were hired to serve as token “darkies” in the streets and on the rehabilitated, but unproductive plantations. They told scripted stories of how happy they had been as slaves and how kindly their masters had treated them. The map of the city was changed. What was the center of the slave trade, the centrally located Ryan’s Market, was erased from the city’s grid. It had never existed. The slave quarters that were a part of every plantation and many of the large houses in town became “carriage houses.” Slaves were actually “servants.” And the cause of the Civil War was never slavery. It was about states’ rights, about freedom of choice, about honoring community and tradition, about old time religion, and about protecting and supporting the poor, illiterate black people who couldn’t really look out for themselves.
The revisionist project was the work of many hands. In order to protect the young, history textbooks had to be re-written by southern scholars, many of them sons and daughters of confederate veterans, who would tell the truth about slavery, about the Civil War, and later about Jim Crow. Newspapers were at pains to make black crime, ignorance, and sexual danger as visible as possible. Tours of the city and the surrounding plantations always emphasized the period before the Civil War. In Charleston, it was as if history stopped in 1861.
Beginning in 1910, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of South Carolina’s secession from the Union, white Charleston held its first annual “Secession Ball” at which women dressed in southern belle fashions complete with parasols while men wore plantation era suits, and all drank mint juleps in quantity. Blacks in white jackets were allowed to serve.
Some white social clubs, nostalgic for the old days of contented slaves, sought to revive the musical spirituals that blacks had created in their communities as a stay against despair. Those spirituals were in fact, beginning to be forgotten because they had seldom been written down and even more seldom set to written music. So the white clubs learned the words from their servants and wrote down the music as their servants sang them, and then gave concerts around town, again dressed in plantation chic.
These social clubs had names, of course—the Daughters of the Confederacy, the Sons of the Confederacy, and perhaps the most chilling, the “Children of the Confederacy.” In meetings of the latter, children beginning at about the age of 8 would be told to memorize answers from “The Confederate Catechism” (2014), a copy of which I was able to easily find on the web. This review is going long, so I’m only going to quote one question and answer.
“Was slavery the cause of secession or the war?”
“No. Slavery existed previous to the Constitution and the Union was formed in spite of it. Both from the standpoint of the Constitution and sound statesmanship it was not slavery, but the vindictive, intemperate anti-slavery movement that was at the bottom of the troubles. The North having formed a union with a lot of States inheriting slavery, common honesty dictated that it should respect the institutions of the South, or, in the case of a change of conscience, should secede from the Union. But it did neither. Having possessed itself of the Federal Government, it set up abolition as it’s particular champion, made war upon the South, freed the Negroes without regard to time or consequences, and held the South as conquered.”
Over the last ten years (roughly corresponding to the election of a black person as president), Charleston has become much more inclusive in the stories it tells about itself. The slave trading center that for a 100 years had never existed can now be visited, bus tours can be taken that focus on the African-American experience in the city, and concerts can now be heard where African-Americans themselves sing the spirituals that their forbearers created. Still, Charleston is a place where one can study how history really is a story that can always be revised. This book is a good place to begin that study.
The good white people of antebellum Charleston were not overly endowed with moral intelligence, but they could count. Blacks, most of them slaves, outnumbered whites by a factor of nine to one from 1800 until at least emancipation in the low country. The idea of an armed slave rebellion was for several reasons a recurring nightmare for the white population, especially for those wealthy enough to own slaves. First, of course, that population understood that they would probably lose their lives in such a rebellion. But they also knew that they would lose their wealth since most of that wealth was embodied in the slaves that they traded, raped, and overworked to maintain their life style. Slaves, in other words, not only produced wealth for their owners, they were themselves a form of human currency.
Denmarck Vesey’s Garden is a remarkably insightful and detailed history of slavery as seen through the very specific lens of Charleston’s white and black populations. It moves from the late 18th century, by which time Charleston had become the largest slave-trading center in America, through the Civil War when Charleston lost its wealth, to Reconstruction, the long Jim Crow era, the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement, all the way to the Obama administration. It is a complicated and tortured history, but what makes the book worth reading is that it documents how the city’s leaders, newspapers, intellectuals, and citizens spent more than 150 years denying that its actual history was real. Through multiple acts of willful amnesia, erasure, and outright deceit, the city of Charleston literally whitewashed its fierce commitment to slavery and its long abuse of black citizens. Most of Charleston’s history of itself is, in other words, a carefully crafted fantasy that has more in common with Disney World than with the lives people actually lived there.
The revisionist history began, of course, with the need for money. The Civil War was not kind to Charleston. The Union Army never forgot that the war began in the Charleston harbor when Confederate soldiers fired at Fort Sumter or that South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union. So it seemed to take special care to attack the city as vigorously as possible. Union ships fired on Charleston almost continuously throughout the conflict. Houses were burned or otherwise destroyed, public buildings and private businesses were left in ruins, the slaves were freed, and Confederate currency was rendered worthless. From the end of the Civil War until the end of Reconstruction in 1876, whites were almost as poor as blacks and were no more likely to hold political office than their former slaves. All that ended however, when Union soldiers left the south—a moment that the south called “Redemption.” Blacks were stripped of their right to vote, arbitrarily arrested, tethered to jobs without compensation as punishment, and, of course, lynched with horrifying frequency.
But that didn’t solve the money problem. To address that issue, Charleston had to cast off its reputation as the Wall Street of slave sales and reinvent itself as a “lost cause” theme park. Starting in the 1890’s, tourism became the major industry. Homes were rebuilt, sometimes with cheap materials, to resemble the look of the Old South. Some lucky blacks were hired to serve as token “darkies” in the streets and on the rehabilitated, but unproductive plantations. They told scripted stories of how happy they had been as slaves and how kindly their masters had treated them. The map of the city was changed. What was the center of the slave trade, the centrally located Ryan’s Market, was erased from the city’s grid. It had never existed. The slave quarters that were a part of every plantation and many of the large houses in town became “carriage houses.” Slaves were actually “servants.” And the cause of the Civil War was never slavery. It was about states’ rights, about freedom of choice, about honoring community and tradition, about old time religion, and about protecting and supporting the poor, illiterate black people who couldn’t really look out for themselves.
The revisionist project was the work of many hands. In order to protect the young, history textbooks had to be re-written by southern scholars, many of them sons and daughters of confederate veterans, who would tell the truth about slavery, about the Civil War, and later about Jim Crow. Newspapers were at pains to make black crime, ignorance, and sexual danger as visible as possible. Tours of the city and the surrounding plantations always emphasized the period before the Civil War. In Charleston, it was as if history stopped in 1861.
Beginning in 1910, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of South Carolina’s secession from the Union, white Charleston held its first annual “Secession Ball” at which women dressed in southern belle fashions complete with parasols while men wore plantation era suits, and all drank mint juleps in quantity. Blacks in white jackets were allowed to serve.
Some white social clubs, nostalgic for the old days of contented slaves, sought to revive the musical spirituals that blacks had created in their communities as a stay against despair. Those spirituals were in fact, beginning to be forgotten because they had seldom been written down and even more seldom set to written music. So the white clubs learned the words from their servants and wrote down the music as their servants sang them, and then gave concerts around town, again dressed in plantation chic.
These social clubs had names, of course—the Daughters of the Confederacy, the Sons of the Confederacy, and perhaps the most chilling, the “Children of the Confederacy.” In meetings of the latter, children beginning at about the age of 8 would be told to memorize answers from “The Confederate Catechism” (2014), a copy of which I was able to easily find on the web. This review is going long, so I’m only going to quote one question and answer.
“Was slavery the cause of secession or the war?”
“No. Slavery existed previous to the Constitution and the Union was formed in spite of it. Both from the standpoint of the Constitution and sound statesmanship it was not slavery, but the vindictive, intemperate anti-slavery movement that was at the bottom of the troubles. The North having formed a union with a lot of States inheriting slavery, common honesty dictated that it should respect the institutions of the South, or, in the case of a change of conscience, should secede from the Union. But it did neither. Having possessed itself of the Federal Government, it set up abolition as it’s particular champion, made war upon the South, freed the Negroes without regard to time or consequences, and held the South as conquered.”
Over the last ten years (roughly corresponding to the election of a black person as president), Charleston has become much more inclusive in the stories it tells about itself. The slave trading center that for a 100 years had never existed can now be visited, bus tours can be taken that focus on the African-American experience in the city, and concerts can now be heard where African-Americans themselves sing the spirituals that their forbearers created. Still, Charleston is a place where one can study how history really is a story that can always be revised. This book is a good place to begin that study.
June 28, 2020
Really good. A must read.
November 4, 2018
A thought provoking work. Perhaps a little disjointed at times but overall certainly worth the effort. I think I found the summary statements the most influential ... “We should not be expected to reject our ancestors for their moral failings. And we certainly should not be held responsible for their actions. This does not give us license, however, to turn a blind eye to our forebesrs’ flaws or the complexity of the world in which they lived ... while it is unfair to ask white Americans today to accept blame for the sin of slavery, it is entirely reasonable to ask that they understand how its memory and legacies continue to shape the daily experiences of whites and African Americans in very different ways.”
September 3, 2018
It may seem odd to call a book "riveting," but that's what this is, a riveting account of the disputes over memory in Charleston, SC. Disclaimer: I'm interested in the subject. But the authors have done an excellent job making their case about the way Lost Cause nostalgia has warped the way we tell stories of the past. They bring the history right up to the present day, with the murders in Mother Emanuel, the decision to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol and continuing controversy over the Calhoun statue. To get a deeper sense of the monuments debate, this is an essential read.
August 28, 2020
This book is so much more than a history of Charleston, South Carolina. It's the most insightful book I've ever read about historical memory and race in America. Nearly every chapter was so fascinating it could have been a book in its own right. I wanted to hear so much more about Denmark Vesey, the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals, and almost every other topic that was discussed.
December 23, 2023
Reading the Landscape, Reading the Record
Charleston has done a lot to restore old landmark sites to reflect the city's past. This thick hardback has detailed history, photos, and good maps. I picked it up at the Charleston Slave Mart Museum. It is well worth reading because it draws together the history of the city for those interested, whether you visit the city or not. This book covers the history of Charleston, SC the former Slavery Capital of the US. It begins with Emancipation and Reconstruction, moving through Jim Crow Era and the Civil Rights Movement, and on up to the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church and the dedication of a garden for Denmark Vesey in a public space, not far from the old slave holder monument of John C. Calhoun, (which was finally removed later in 2020.)
I had the opportunity this Fall to visit numerous landmarks of the South: from plantations, antebellum homes, slave auction sites and slave markets, to Underground Railroad stops, landmark school desegregation sites, bus boycott museums, a lynching memorial, civil rights centers, and various sites that demonstrate industry and the way of life for people living in the South throughout American history. These sites were outside my home state of Georgia, in cities across Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, and Arkansas. There is more I would like to see next year. It is remarkable how much is really visible for those who choose to witness history.
My goal in doing so is to gain a better understanding of slavery; including the political dynamics, the impact on individuals, economy, society, and the broader historical geographical context across the past and present Southeast. But, people visit these locations for various reasons. Most of them offer tours tailored to individual views. If you want to see the "Glory of the Old South" or "Black History" or "The Lost Cause" ideology, or Civil War history, you can do so at the same sites. Ironically, you may even see white supremacists at these sites. But, landmarks bring people together to examine our past and our beliefs.
Memory is real estate, just like the internet and your computer screen. We live in our memories. Our geographical landmarks are meant to reflect the written record and our memories of history. History must be lived. All humans have a real need to physically witness our landmarks. They are all around us. But, many people of all races feel uncomfortable with visiting sites associated with slavery and civil unrest. While I understand the sensitive nature of this 'loaded' history (visiting locations associated with the suffering and exploitation of human beings,) I do not see history as black and white. I see history as a human thing. We only have human history. Therefore, it seems to me that we should have permission to see and witness human history whatever and wherever it is.
Charleston has done a lot to restore old landmark sites to reflect the city's past. This thick hardback has detailed history, photos, and good maps. I picked it up at the Charleston Slave Mart Museum. It is well worth reading because it draws together the history of the city for those interested, whether you visit the city or not. This book covers the history of Charleston, SC the former Slavery Capital of the US. It begins with Emancipation and Reconstruction, moving through Jim Crow Era and the Civil Rights Movement, and on up to the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church and the dedication of a garden for Denmark Vesey in a public space, not far from the old slave holder monument of John C. Calhoun, (which was finally removed later in 2020.)
I had the opportunity this Fall to visit numerous landmarks of the South: from plantations, antebellum homes, slave auction sites and slave markets, to Underground Railroad stops, landmark school desegregation sites, bus boycott museums, a lynching memorial, civil rights centers, and various sites that demonstrate industry and the way of life for people living in the South throughout American history. These sites were outside my home state of Georgia, in cities across Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, and Arkansas. There is more I would like to see next year. It is remarkable how much is really visible for those who choose to witness history.
My goal in doing so is to gain a better understanding of slavery; including the political dynamics, the impact on individuals, economy, society, and the broader historical geographical context across the past and present Southeast. But, people visit these locations for various reasons. Most of them offer tours tailored to individual views. If you want to see the "Glory of the Old South" or "Black History" or "The Lost Cause" ideology, or Civil War history, you can do so at the same sites. Ironically, you may even see white supremacists at these sites. But, landmarks bring people together to examine our past and our beliefs.
Memory is real estate, just like the internet and your computer screen. We live in our memories. Our geographical landmarks are meant to reflect the written record and our memories of history. History must be lived. All humans have a real need to physically witness our landmarks. They are all around us. But, many people of all races feel uncomfortable with visiting sites associated with slavery and civil unrest. While I understand the sensitive nature of this 'loaded' history (visiting locations associated with the suffering and exploitation of human beings,) I do not see history as black and white. I see history as a human thing. We only have human history. Therefore, it seems to me that we should have permission to see and witness human history whatever and wherever it is.
March 30, 2020
Admittedly, this was a difficult book for me to read. Not because it isn't well written - it is. The subject certainly needs to be openly discussed since South Carolina history (and other former Confederate states) have basically been 'white-washed' into a delusion that plantation owners were benevolent, paternal figures that worked to civilize the African 'servants' cause they didn't own slaves.
From the Reconstruction with the Lost Cause that venerated the Confederacy that was only fighting for the state's rights and the staunch supporters of the benevolent good of slavery to the twenty-first century and the continued work in equal rights for all the residents. That's what is all about - the cultural blinders that Charleston and the nearby areas completely encouraged. The black slaves were faithful and happy with their antebellum masters. That Rhode Island merchants were the ones that brought the slaves to South Carolina plantations which took them in and trained them in various skills that would help eventually help integrate them into southern society. Talking about the plantations as gardens. That slavery was slowly being erased from the state's history.
Not the same opinion came from the former slaves and their descendants. The festivals that followed their freedom. Their true feelings about their 'masters'. The truth about what happened in the building which now houses the Old Slave Market Museum. The teaching of black history in segregated schools and the Jim Crow laws that piled restrictions onto the African American population.
As the 1960's and the civil rights movement gained momentum, the two worlds clashed and are slowly changing. Tourists that originally traveled to find the South celebrated by the blockbuster Gone With the Wind eventually wanted to see a more-truthful memory of Charleston. And it's still a work in progress especially since the book starts and ends with the attack performed by Dylann Roof on the congregation of the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in 2015.
An interesting and riveting book that was well-researched.
2020-062
From the Reconstruction with the Lost Cause that venerated the Confederacy that was only fighting for the state's rights and the staunch supporters of the benevolent good of slavery to the twenty-first century and the continued work in equal rights for all the residents. That's what is all about - the cultural blinders that Charleston and the nearby areas completely encouraged. The black slaves were faithful and happy with their antebellum masters. That Rhode Island merchants were the ones that brought the slaves to South Carolina plantations which took them in and trained them in various skills that would help eventually help integrate them into southern society. Talking about the plantations as gardens. That slavery was slowly being erased from the state's history.
Not the same opinion came from the former slaves and their descendants. The festivals that followed their freedom. Their true feelings about their 'masters'. The truth about what happened in the building which now houses the Old Slave Market Museum. The teaching of black history in segregated schools and the Jim Crow laws that piled restrictions onto the African American population.
As the 1960's and the civil rights movement gained momentum, the two worlds clashed and are slowly changing. Tourists that originally traveled to find the South celebrated by the blockbuster Gone With the Wind eventually wanted to see a more-truthful memory of Charleston. And it's still a work in progress especially since the book starts and ends with the attack performed by Dylann Roof on the congregation of the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in 2015.
An interesting and riveting book that was well-researched.
2020-062
March 30, 2022
Really interesting. Great idea to look at public history and memory in this kind of focused way, examining just one city and the changes within that city. I appreciated that about the book. They never even really dealt much with what was happening in Columbia SC, or Atlanta. Laser focused on Charleston. It made it easier to draw parallels too - I kept thinking about the way history is interpreted in Salem, Massachusetts. It was sort of hotly contested, in that early 20th century period when tourism was growing, whether Salem was going to be about witches or about sailing ships, and the witches won. Partly because the tourists demanded it. And a similar dynamic seems to have happened in Charleston, where the people kind of wanted to be a historic colonial city, and then in part because of tourist demands became this antebellum, "Old South" city instead. But of course, many of the people presenting the history did not really want to talk about slavery, or at least, wanted to minimize it as much as possible.
The material on the dueling public history visions of the 1980s and 90s was fascinating too - black Charlestonians leading tours that present one version of the city's history, while the old slavery-minimizing tour narratives were still going on along the same streets. I have never been to Charleston, but this really made me want to go and take some of these tours. I spend a lot of time talking with my students about the narratives that Boston presents to tourists downtown, and I have some experience with the narratives of New York, and Portland, Maine...a little bit in Atlanta. I want to go experience some Charleston narratives. It would make a fascinating Boston comparison.
The material on the dueling public history visions of the 1980s and 90s was fascinating too - black Charlestonians leading tours that present one version of the city's history, while the old slavery-minimizing tour narratives were still going on along the same streets. I have never been to Charleston, but this really made me want to go and take some of these tours. I spend a lot of time talking with my students about the narratives that Boston presents to tourists downtown, and I have some experience with the narratives of New York, and Portland, Maine...a little bit in Atlanta. I want to go experience some Charleston narratives. It would make a fascinating Boston comparison.
October 25, 2020
An excellent micro-history on Charleston’s 150 year struggle to come to grips with its prominent role in slavery, slave trading and post Civil War racism. It begins with Denmark Vesey’s revolt forty years before the Civil War and continues to contemporary times.
There are so many interesting details in this book. Very well researched.
Footnote. This book contains several chapters on the slave owner and politician John C. Calhoun who died in 1850 and the prominent monument dedicated to him in 1896 during the rise of Jim Crow. In June 2020 the monument was taken down, just a few months after this book was published.
5 stars
There are so many interesting details in this book. Very well researched.
Footnote. This book contains several chapters on the slave owner and politician John C. Calhoun who died in 1850 and the prominent monument dedicated to him in 1896 during the rise of Jim Crow. In June 2020 the monument was taken down, just a few months after this book was published.
5 stars
April 16, 2024
Interesting read that looks at how Charleston, South Carolina's social landscape in the postbellum period was indelibly shaped by race and the memory of antebellum slavery. The specter of slave rebellions such as that carried out by Denmark Vesey underscored White Charlestonians' racism and suspicion of their Black neighbors and Black Charlestonians' derision of monuments and symbols that glorified the Confederacy and the institution of Slavery. Such symbols included the construction of a monument at the end of the 19th Century to early 19th Century statesman John Calhoun who called Slavery a "positive good". Later on, the 1920s and 1930s witnessed a revival of tourism in Charleston which touted the city's Black population and antiquated housing stock as examples of an ideal antebellum culture. The decades leading up to the Civil Rights movement witnessed the attempts of some White Charlestonians' along with some Blacks, to revive Gullah spirituals as a form of ethnic identification and connection to Africa. Although some Whites did this in a patronizing way, again linking the Negro spiritual tradition to a more supposedly pure antebellum era, the revival of the spiritual tradition also served to emphasize the autonomy and resilience of the Lowcountry's African-American population as seen through the lens of the preservation of its religious and cultural heritage. The development of the Old Slave Mart Museum to commemorate the statistical reality that 1 out of 4 Africans brought to America came through Charleston provides perhaps the best synopsis of the historical trajectory charted by the book. The Museum, under the leadership of Ohio native Miriam Wilson, essentially adopted a political line that mirrored the typical Southern apologist view common in South Carolina since the Nadir of Race Relations. Later the Museum transformed into a site that documented the cruelty of both the Slave trade and the institution of Slavery itself. Overall Kytle's work provides an informative look at the memory of Slavery in Charleston's historic preservation efforts through time, challenging narratives about the city's gentility and progressivism compared with other Southern cities, as well as the City's overall identity as the center of the South Carolina Lowcountry and the transition of the overall region from an agricultural-based to a tourism-based economy (a parallel here can be found in the story of how Black coastal communities were transformed into White beach communities from the mid-2oth Century (See Andrew W. Kahrl's
The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in the Coastal South)
The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in the Coastal South)
February 28, 2019
An exceptionally researched and written study of Charleston, South Carolina as the capital of slavery in the United States and the cradle of the Confederacy, which the authors conivncingly argue, makes it the place where the ways slavery and the Civil War are remembered matter most. A timely, insightful, important work essential to understanding the past, present, and future.
May 25, 2019
An extraordinary look at the real South and the American memory.
This book explains so much about ails us.
This book explains so much about ails us.
June 17, 2023
A must-read to better understand Charleston history. Should be a mandatory read for all of the tourists visiting the area.
July 14, 2023
Excellent history of the memory of slavery in Charleston. Well organized, well researched, well written. A little too caught up in 2010s politics at times.
February 14, 2020
An incredible work of history. Highlighting Charleston as an example city in the white washing of this history of slavery that has led to decades of racism and the correlation to an increase in hate crimes and even the election of Donald Trump. So well done. This should be REQUIRED reading in classrooms across the country and especially in the south where I live.
Also covers the African American spiritual in much detail, the confederate monument backlash of recent years, devastating effects of years of mis-education in the South.
Also covers the African American spiritual in much detail, the confederate monument backlash of recent years, devastating effects of years of mis-education in the South.
May 31, 2018
The focus is on Charleston SC, the port that brought in more new slaves than any other city and the home of Fort Sumter where the American Civil War began. Told by Caucasian authors, this is a summary of shifting perspectives and politics in regard to slavery that covers prevailing opinions from before the war up until present times.
The primary focus is on white citizens who originally defended slavery and then had to shape the dialogue after the war as they rebuilt their community and documented their history. This covers a broad spectrum of ways to talk about the war and slavery. Were they just 'servants' and were the slaves cared for. When did the Jim Crow laws begin? Why did white people perform and preserve the old spirituals and why were African Americans left out of this valuable historical step? Why were black citizens not more involved in documentary history until many decades after the war?
There is a lot to cover in 150 years and these authors did not include much about modern race issues and the Great Migration though there is a final summary that includes the 2015 shooting in the Emanuel Episcopal Church by a white terrorist. What it does well is show how both blacks and whites adapted to major upheavals in both positive and negative ways. It carefully segues through the decades to show how racism is alive and well today.
This is a different kind of book about slavery as it works to delve into the thought processes of ordinary people in a new and rapidly changing country.
The primary focus is on white citizens who originally defended slavery and then had to shape the dialogue after the war as they rebuilt their community and documented their history. This covers a broad spectrum of ways to talk about the war and slavery. Were they just 'servants' and were the slaves cared for. When did the Jim Crow laws begin? Why did white people perform and preserve the old spirituals and why were African Americans left out of this valuable historical step? Why were black citizens not more involved in documentary history until many decades after the war?
There is a lot to cover in 150 years and these authors did not include much about modern race issues and the Great Migration though there is a final summary that includes the 2015 shooting in the Emanuel Episcopal Church by a white terrorist. What it does well is show how both blacks and whites adapted to major upheavals in both positive and negative ways. It carefully segues through the decades to show how racism is alive and well today.
This is a different kind of book about slavery as it works to delve into the thought processes of ordinary people in a new and rapidly changing country.
December 30, 2020
This is a review of the audiobook.
Kytle and Roberts (a white married couple (Blain Roberts is a woman), I looked it up because the ancedote that begins the book discusses a "we" looking to rent a home in Charleston) focus on a narrow topic, the memory of slavery and the confederacy in Charleston, over a long stretch of time, from the last days of the civil war up until the present day and the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The book tries to cover both white and Black memories of slavery and how those memories were transmitted, but it felt like the sections on the dominant, white narrative predominated and were stronger. Whether that was a result of the fact that the authors are white, or because the historical record is more developed in terms of what white folks were doing, I'm not sure, but in any event, the denial/gaslighting/whitewashing of history that the white community in Charleston participated is fascinating in its own right, and so the book is valuable even if it didn't do as thorough of a job describing the memory of slavery among Charleston's Black population.
Almost immediately after the end of the Civil War, Charleston became a destination for (largely white) tourists to visit to experience the center of the United State's slave trade. The keepers of that history that presented it to those tourists were white, and often descended from slave owners.
The book does a deep dive into the history of spiritual singing groups in Charleston. Unbelievably, the sons and daughters of enslavers who had grown up on plantations before the Civil War founded and participated in these groups of all-white singers who catered to tourists. These shows depicted a romanticized and sanitized image of slavery and did much to popularize the genre of music throughout the country while removing the meaning related to the struggle of living under slavery and hope for emancipation. There were some white spiritual enthusiasts who promoted Black singers as well, but for decades, white spiritual groups dominated popular culture's understanding of spiritual music.
Perhaps more directly relevant to the current debate over confederate monuments, the book discusses the history of monuments to John C. Calhoun--which from the beginning was seen as a symbol of pro-slavery, white supremacy.
All in all, it's an important read for anyone wanting to understand why it seems like this country has a split perception of its own history.
Kytle and Roberts (a white married couple (Blain Roberts is a woman), I looked it up because the ancedote that begins the book discusses a "we" looking to rent a home in Charleston) focus on a narrow topic, the memory of slavery and the confederacy in Charleston, over a long stretch of time, from the last days of the civil war up until the present day and the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The book tries to cover both white and Black memories of slavery and how those memories were transmitted, but it felt like the sections on the dominant, white narrative predominated and were stronger. Whether that was a result of the fact that the authors are white, or because the historical record is more developed in terms of what white folks were doing, I'm not sure, but in any event, the denial/gaslighting/whitewashing of history that the white community in Charleston participated is fascinating in its own right, and so the book is valuable even if it didn't do as thorough of a job describing the memory of slavery among Charleston's Black population.
Almost immediately after the end of the Civil War, Charleston became a destination for (largely white) tourists to visit to experience the center of the United State's slave trade. The keepers of that history that presented it to those tourists were white, and often descended from slave owners.
The book does a deep dive into the history of spiritual singing groups in Charleston. Unbelievably, the sons and daughters of enslavers who had grown up on plantations before the Civil War founded and participated in these groups of all-white singers who catered to tourists. These shows depicted a romanticized and sanitized image of slavery and did much to popularize the genre of music throughout the country while removing the meaning related to the struggle of living under slavery and hope for emancipation. There were some white spiritual enthusiasts who promoted Black singers as well, but for decades, white spiritual groups dominated popular culture's understanding of spiritual music.
Perhaps more directly relevant to the current debate over confederate monuments, the book discusses the history of monuments to John C. Calhoun--which from the beginning was seen as a symbol of pro-slavery, white supremacy.
All in all, it's an important read for anyone wanting to understand why it seems like this country has a split perception of its own history.
May 5, 2019
I wrongly assumed that this book was going to be primarily about the history of Denmark Vesey and the slave rebellion that he intended to lead in the early 1820's. While the book does make reference to that event, this is a study of historiography, not simply history. The authors, who lived in Charleston, South Carolina for two years, have written a book that examines the institution of slavery as it existed in that city and, more importantly, the historical memory of Charleston concerning the characteristics of slavery and the meaning of the Civil War (which began right there at Fort Sumter). The book does a n excellent job of presenting the contributions of Charleston to the creation and perpetuation of the entire "Lost Cause" myth through the way that it has chosen to mark and commemorate its history. It contains a great many very enlightening vignettes, from the story of the white singing group that claimed sole ownership of the right to perform slave spirituals to the way that the Federal Writers Project in the 1930's recorded the memories of former Charleston slaves to the transformation of the presentation of Charleston's history that came about during, and because of, the modern civil rights movement. The book takes the reader right into the present and the current debates over the Confederate flag and Confederate memorials. Indeed, the authors were visiting Charleston to wrap up their research on the night in 2015 that Dylan Roof massacred the people at the Emmanuel A.M.E. Church. The photographic image of the John Calhoun memorial overlooking that church's spire really sums up the challenges that Charleston continues to face. My only complaint about the book is that it was very narrowly focused on that one city, and did not always connect Charleston's story to a bigger picture. It was strange that in a 350 page book set in South Carolina, Strom Thurmond only got one brief mention. But this is a minor quibble about a very powerful book that really illustrates William Faulkner's quote: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
January 10, 2024
Summary: An exploration of how historical memory has changed over time using Charleston, SC, as an example.
I have been fascinated with the concept of historical memory. I was introduced to the concept earlier, but the first book I read that concentrated on historical memory is Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory by David Blight. Since then, I have read several books that take on more aspects of historical memory, like Myth America and A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History by Jeanne Theoharis.
Denmark Vesey's Garden is similar to Race and Reunion. Still, instead of an expansive look at a shorter time (a national look at the 50 years after the Civil War in Race and Reunion), Denmark Vesey's Garden was a narrow geography but went from the Antebellum era until the 2010s. This means they complement one another well. What I wanted more from Race and Reunion was a more extended period, and Denmark Vesey's Garden was able to show not just the intentional misremembering of history but also the movement back toward a more accurate memory.
There was a good section on music, especially the spirituals and their role in historical memory. By this account, it was primarily white preservationists who maintained the Gullah spirituals. There was an intentional preservation aspect to these (segregated) white choirs who performed spirituals. Still, their preservation work also assumed white supremacy because they did not believe that Black musicians could preserve the spirituals. These white groups ignored the Black, often church-based, musicians preserving the music in parallel. In addition to the paternalistic attitudes that believed that white preservation was needed, there was a reluctance for many Black singers to perform for white audiences because of the ways that white audiences expected stereotyped performances. This book cites Howard Thurman's autobiography, discussing how Thurman, as a student, did not like singing for white audiences because of the cultural prejudice about what white audiences understood spirituals to be about. It is not that Thurman did not like the spirituals; he has a book about their importance; it is that he did not like how white audiences coded their prejudice on the music and performance.
I was surprised how early tourism impacted the historical memory in Charleston. Tourism arose as a significant part of the Charleston economy within a few years of the end of the Civil War, and by the mid-1930s, an estimated 300,000 tourists a year were visiting. These tourists came from the north and south and had different expectations of what they would see. It is frankly shocking to me that through the mid-20th century, there was a denial of slave trading as an actual thing that happened in Charleston, even though we know today that Charleston was the largest entry point of enslaved people in the US. In some ways, the reality of how tourism works is part of the development of historical memory. The US has always wanted its tourism to be educational, but a particular type of educational. Tourists mostly wanted to see big houses and stereotypical plantations influenced by media like Gone With the Wind. Understanding how slavery actually worked was not high on the list of the type of education most tourists were looking for. It was not until the 1990s that National Parks and museums or other tours started even to offer a more balanced historical approach to slavery. How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith is very good at exploring how slavery is handled at tourist sites today, but Denmark Vesey's Garden gives some historical background.
We must grapple with historical memory because our current memory is distorted. I live in Georgia; in 2021, a law about how schools can handle controversial topics was passed. As part of the law, it says that the country cannot be presented as being systemically racist. There are some exceptions for presenting history, but what I think is important for topics like the Dred Scott ruling and the Civil War and issues of historical memory is that the country was systemically racist. I am curious to know how it is possible to meet the requirements of the GA law and accurately teach Dred Scott, an 8th-grade social studies standard. Nikki Haley's comments about the cause of the Civil War were influenced by Lost Cause mythology. And while South Carolina stopped flying the Confederate Battle Flag over the capitol while she was governor, perceptions of what people are willing to hear will influence what politicians are willing to say.
If we do not know how history was repressed and how it has been rediscovered again, we will not understand how false memory influences current reality. I know some reasons why, but it is common that reports on the historical influences of slavery or racism on institutions tend to stop before confronting current history. Southern Baptist Seminary's 2018 report on its history stopped in the 1960s. Wheaton College's report stopped at about 2000. One of the encouraging facts of this book is that it went up until about 2015, just before the book was published. That recent history and a clear-eyed look at how recently false memories were taught as fact must be understood and addressed.
I have been fascinated with the concept of historical memory. I was introduced to the concept earlier, but the first book I read that concentrated on historical memory is Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory by David Blight. Since then, I have read several books that take on more aspects of historical memory, like Myth America and A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History by Jeanne Theoharis.
Denmark Vesey's Garden is similar to Race and Reunion. Still, instead of an expansive look at a shorter time (a national look at the 50 years after the Civil War in Race and Reunion), Denmark Vesey's Garden was a narrow geography but went from the Antebellum era until the 2010s. This means they complement one another well. What I wanted more from Race and Reunion was a more extended period, and Denmark Vesey's Garden was able to show not just the intentional misremembering of history but also the movement back toward a more accurate memory.
There was a good section on music, especially the spirituals and their role in historical memory. By this account, it was primarily white preservationists who maintained the Gullah spirituals. There was an intentional preservation aspect to these (segregated) white choirs who performed spirituals. Still, their preservation work also assumed white supremacy because they did not believe that Black musicians could preserve the spirituals. These white groups ignored the Black, often church-based, musicians preserving the music in parallel. In addition to the paternalistic attitudes that believed that white preservation was needed, there was a reluctance for many Black singers to perform for white audiences because of the ways that white audiences expected stereotyped performances. This book cites Howard Thurman's autobiography, discussing how Thurman, as a student, did not like singing for white audiences because of the cultural prejudice about what white audiences understood spirituals to be about. It is not that Thurman did not like the spirituals; he has a book about their importance; it is that he did not like how white audiences coded their prejudice on the music and performance.
I was surprised how early tourism impacted the historical memory in Charleston. Tourism arose as a significant part of the Charleston economy within a few years of the end of the Civil War, and by the mid-1930s, an estimated 300,000 tourists a year were visiting. These tourists came from the north and south and had different expectations of what they would see. It is frankly shocking to me that through the mid-20th century, there was a denial of slave trading as an actual thing that happened in Charleston, even though we know today that Charleston was the largest entry point of enslaved people in the US. In some ways, the reality of how tourism works is part of the development of historical memory. The US has always wanted its tourism to be educational, but a particular type of educational. Tourists mostly wanted to see big houses and stereotypical plantations influenced by media like Gone With the Wind. Understanding how slavery actually worked was not high on the list of the type of education most tourists were looking for. It was not until the 1990s that National Parks and museums or other tours started even to offer a more balanced historical approach to slavery. How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith is very good at exploring how slavery is handled at tourist sites today, but Denmark Vesey's Garden gives some historical background.
We must grapple with historical memory because our current memory is distorted. I live in Georgia; in 2021, a law about how schools can handle controversial topics was passed. As part of the law, it says that the country cannot be presented as being systemically racist. There are some exceptions for presenting history, but what I think is important for topics like the Dred Scott ruling and the Civil War and issues of historical memory is that the country was systemically racist. I am curious to know how it is possible to meet the requirements of the GA law and accurately teach Dred Scott, an 8th-grade social studies standard. Nikki Haley's comments about the cause of the Civil War were influenced by Lost Cause mythology. And while South Carolina stopped flying the Confederate Battle Flag over the capitol while she was governor, perceptions of what people are willing to hear will influence what politicians are willing to say.
If we do not know how history was repressed and how it has been rediscovered again, we will not understand how false memory influences current reality. I know some reasons why, but it is common that reports on the historical influences of slavery or racism on institutions tend to stop before confronting current history. Southern Baptist Seminary's 2018 report on its history stopped in the 1960s. Wheaton College's report stopped at about 2000. One of the encouraging facts of this book is that it went up until about 2015, just before the book was published. That recent history and a clear-eyed look at how recently false memories were taught as fact must be understood and addressed.
June 26, 2019
Easily one of the most important books I've ever read. This book explains the history of Charleston in terms of racial inequalities and highlights the significance of the city and race relations in terms of US history. I'm incredibly grateful to have had this book recommended to me.
April 8, 2019
This is a superb study of the whitewashing of slavery, the Confederacy, post-Reconstruction Southern leaders (Redeemers), and Jim Crow laws in American memory, specifically relating to Charleston, South Carolina. It's admirable for its in-depth research, readability, and the ways it brings little known people--black and white--to the forefront of the narrative. It also highlights sources that have not been quoted in depth before--offering details of life in Charleston in the years after the Civil War, especially the joyous ceremonies and celebrations that African-American created to commemorate their new freedoms, and the spirited political battles of the era.
Denmark Vesey's Garden is a history monograph by two history professors and so it includes hundreds of footnotes, references, and impressive bibliography backing up its scholarly claims. But it also offers a plentitude of numbing detail about long-ago public events like political rallies, and public commemorations with long quotes from participants speeches, newspaper articles discussing the speeches, followed by authorial analysis of the same. One of the reasons for reliance on discussing ceremonies, speeches and other formal occasions along with newspaper articles describing them is that these comprise the surviving primary source material for the era.
The authors skillfully weave together a thesis that illustrates how post-Civil War Southern elites--political, literary, and artistic--created and sold version of slavery that not only defiantly lied about the realities of this brutal institution, but actively repressed African-American participation in post 1876 society throughout the South. It is this white elite narrative that formed the basis of how slavery, the Reconstruction, and the repressive Jim Crow era was described in American popular media and taught in classrooms until late in the 20th century.
The final sections of Denmark Vesey's Garden describe the Civil Rights movement and African American efforts to counter this whitewashed narrative. They are among the most interesting and thought-provoking parts of the work, which ends in the aftermath of the mass murder at Mother Emanuel AME church in 2015.
Denmark Vesey's Garden is a history monograph by two history professors and so it includes hundreds of footnotes, references, and impressive bibliography backing up its scholarly claims. But it also offers a plentitude of numbing detail about long-ago public events like political rallies, and public commemorations with long quotes from participants speeches, newspaper articles discussing the speeches, followed by authorial analysis of the same. One of the reasons for reliance on discussing ceremonies, speeches and other formal occasions along with newspaper articles describing them is that these comprise the surviving primary source material for the era.
The authors skillfully weave together a thesis that illustrates how post-Civil War Southern elites--political, literary, and artistic--created and sold version of slavery that not only defiantly lied about the realities of this brutal institution, but actively repressed African-American participation in post 1876 society throughout the South. It is this white elite narrative that formed the basis of how slavery, the Reconstruction, and the repressive Jim Crow era was described in American popular media and taught in classrooms until late in the 20th century.
The final sections of Denmark Vesey's Garden describe the Civil Rights movement and African American efforts to counter this whitewashed narrative. They are among the most interesting and thought-provoking parts of the work, which ends in the aftermath of the mass murder at Mother Emanuel AME church in 2015.
October 12, 2020
This book is excellent at its stated purpose of tracing the development of the Lost Cause memory of the Civil War in Charleston, South Carolina. It does that very effectively through with a detailed history of the efforts to downplay slavery's cruelties and to emphasize a more palatable story for white residents and tourists.
There were times when the absurdity of these efforts was so obvious that I literally laughed out loud, like
There were times when the absurdity of these efforts was so obvious that I literally laughed out loud, like
July 20, 2018
Primarily set in the context of how slavery is remembered in Charleston, SC, this is a well researched and densely written history of how the white citizens and descendants of Confederates and the black citizens and descendants of slaves remember history, and the resulting effect on their city, state, and the country. It is particularly compelling in showing what a struggle it was to bring the black version of the story to the surface, given that white remembrance was the dominant version for so many years. I consider myself fairly well read in this topic, but there was plenty to learn. For the most part, the authors are faithful to their research and as faithful as possible to history. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is trying to increase their understanding of the Civil War as well as current race relations. My only quibble is a slight tendency in the book for "conservative" to be conflated with "white supremacist," and "progressive" with "not racist" which, while a common practice in our current political climate, I find to be inaccurate and unhelpful in terms of fostering better communication.
June 29, 2018
This is the kind of book that seemed totally made for me. It was a real joy to read. The prose held up throughout (which is something I'm concerned with when I read history books), and I learned so much from its pages. Charleston is my favorite city. I love it so much, and I love its people. This book starts with the horrible shooting at Mother Emanuel Church, and that hit home hard for me even though I wasn't currently living in Charleston. Framing a history of Charleston around it's slave legacy and the way the city viewed it was fascinating. I kept checking the footnotes and formed a reading list to tackle to get even more info on the topic. Though this is an excellent read for a Charleston lover like me, it also makes for a microcosm of slavery, Lost Cause mythology, and racism in the South in general. The book traces the many filters the question of slavery has been put through over the past few centuries, and how it's evolved and been remembered. Highly recommend for the history buff!
January 13, 2019
Four stars for reporting material not usually covered and/or focused in this way. This is a history of the role and pubic presentation of slavery in Charleston. The bulk of the book recounts how whites portrayed and fictionalized slavery in Charleston from 1877 up to now (though with significant shift towards facts after 1980 or so). The passion with which the myth of the "lost cause"and the faithful mammy," was created and promulgated, the denial that there was ever active slave trading in Charleston, along with the concept that slavery was actually benevolent and that it all came from Rhode Island slave traders and that it would have been phased out in the south soon anyway if the south had just been let alone (the contradictions in these ideas not a problem, apparently) is astonishing and vividly reported. The flaw of the book, for me, lies with the tendency, all too frequent among enthusiastic academics, to believe that if the authors have 40 notecards, they need to use all 40 of them, whereas 15 might made their case quite as well.
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