Lifting the Chains
The Black Freedom Struggle Since Reconstruction
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- US$22.99
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All-Black institutions and local community groups have been at the forefront of the freedom struggle since the beginning.
Lifting the Chains is a history of the Black experience in America since the Civil War, told by one of our most
distinguished historians of modern America, William H. Chafe. He argues that, despite the wishes and arguments of many whites to the contrary, the struggle for freedom has been carried out primarily by Black Americans, with only occasional assistance from whites. Chafe highlights the role of all-black institutions--especially the churches, lodges, local gangs, neighborhood women's groups, and the Black college clubs that gathered at local pool halls--that talked up the issues, examined different courses of action, and then put their lives on the line to make change happen.
The book draws heavily on the tremendous oral history archives at Duke that Chafe founded and nurtured, much of which is previously unpublished. The archives are now a collection of more than 3,600 oral histories tracing the evolution of Black activism, managed under the auspices of the Duke Center for Documentary History. The project uncovered the degree to which Blacks never gave up the struggle against racism, even during the height of Jim Crow segregation from 1900 to 1950. Chafe draws on these valuable resources to build this definitive history of African American activism, a history that can and should inform Black Lives Matter and other contemporary social justice movements.
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Duke University historian Chafe (Remembering Jim Crow) asserts in this persuasive study that previous accounts of the fight for racial equality in the U.S. have not acknowledged that "change happens from the bottom up, not the top down." Grounding his analysis in the archive of oral histories and documentary films that he and a colleague established at Duke 50 years ago, Chafe highlights lesser-known moments in the freedom struggle that reveal strong grassroots networks. Among other insights, he points out that all-Black institutions like churches, schools, and fraternal lodges were hotbeds of Black activism where new generations were educated about the history of the struggle. Elsewhere, he spotlights instances of militant resistance, noting that Black residents of Guilford County, N.C., took up arms in 1895 to defend a courthouse and prevent a Black prisoner from being lynched, and recounting how the North Carolina A&T football team protected student protesters from white gangs during a 1960 lunch counter sit-in in Greensboro, N.C. This bottom-up approach supports Chafe's claim that Black communities were responsible for advances in African American life, with white allies playing a supportive but marginal role and politicians rarely taking the lead. Drawing on a deep well of firsthand accounts, Chafe paints a vivid, lively portrait of Black political life in America. It's an important contribution to the history of race in America.
