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Copyright © 1979 by Leon F. Litwack

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in May 1979.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Litwack, Leon F.

Been in the storm so long.

1. Afro-Americans—History—1863-1877. 2. Reconstruction. 3. Southern States—History—1865-1877. 4. Southern States—Social conditions. 5. Afro-Americans—Southern States—History.

I. Title.

[E185.2.L57 1979b] 973′.0496073 80-11073

eISBN: 978-0-307-77361-6

v3.1

For Rhoda with love

Been in the Storm So Long

I’ve been in the storm so long,

You know I’ve been in the storm so long,

Oh Lord, give me more time to pray,

I’ve been in the storm so long.

I am a motherless child,

Singin’ I am a motherless child,

Singin’ Oh Lord, give me more time to pray,

I’ve been in the storm so long.

This is a needy time,

This is a needy time,

Singin’ Oh Lord, give me more time to pray,

I’ve been in the storm so long.

Lord, I need you now,

Lord, I need you now,

Singin’ Oh Lord, give me more time to pray,

I’ve been in the storm so long.

My neighbors need you now,

My neighbors need you now,

Singin’ Oh Lord, give me more time to pray,

I’ve been in the storm so long.

My children need you now,

My children need you now,

Singin’ Oh Lord, give me more time to pray,

I’ve been in the storm so long.

Just look what a shape I’m in,

Just look what a shape I’m in,

Cryin’ Oh Lord, give me more time to pray,

I’ve been in the storm so long.

—NINETEENTH-CENTURY BLACK SPIRITUAL

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Preface

Acknowledgments

One “The Faithful Slave”

Two Black Liberators

Three Kingdom Comin’

Four Slaves No More

Five How Free Is Free?

Six The Feel of Freedom: Moving About

Seven Back to Work: The Old Compulsions

Eight Back to Work: The New Dependency

Nine The Gospel and the Primer

Ten Becoming a People

Notes

Selected Bibliography and Manuscript Sources

Preface

TO DESCRIBE the end of slavery in the South is to re-create a profound human drama. The story begins with the outbreak of the Civil War, when the South’s quest for independence immediately underscored its dependence on black labor and black loyalty and set in motion a social upheaval that proved impossible to contain. Throughout this devastating war, and in the immediate aftermath, the two races in the South interacted in ways that dramatized not only a mutual dependency but the frightening tensions and ambiguities that had always characterized the “peculiar institution.” The extent to which blacks and whites shaped each other’s lives and destinies and were forced to respond to each other’s presence had never been more starkly apparent. The truth of W. J. Cash’s observation—“Negro entered into white man as profoundly as white man entered into Negro, subtly influencing every gesture, every word, every emotion and idea, every attitude”—has never been more poignantly acted out. Under the stress of war, invading armies, and emerging black freedom, pretensions and disguises fell away and illusions were dissolved, revealing more about the character of slavery and racial relationships than many white men and women wished to know or to believe.

The various dimensions of slavery’s collapse—the political machinations, the government edicts, the military occupation—should not be permitted to obscure the principal actors in this drama: the four million black men and women for whom enslavement composed their entire memory. For many of them, the only world they knew ended at the boundaries of the plantations and farms on which they toiled; most of them were several generations removed from the African immigrants who had been torn from their homeland and shipped in chains to the New World. The distant voices of Africa still echoed in their music, in their folk