Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You

Robust antislavery campaigns like Garrison’s met the continued assault of old racist ideas like polygenesis, slavery as a good and benevolent practice, and new “scientific” advances in the pseudoscientific field of phrenology that sought to prove “that White people had bigger skulls and therefore greater intellectual capacity” (91) than Black people. The same scientist pioneering the field of phrenology also recast historical narratives to depict white Egyptians holding Black enslaved people in captivity in the ancient world. Reynolds reminds the reader that this was all propaganda, “Anything to justify supremacy and slavery” (92).

Reynolds introduces some important historical figures in this chapter. The first is South Carolina senator John C. Calhoun—“the emcee for slavery” (92)—a man vehemently opposed to Black freedom and equality, period. The other is Frederick Douglass, who escaped his bondage and published his autobiography in 1845. Reynolds also mentions Sojourner Truth, who publicized a woman’s experience in bondage, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, the white author of the famous book Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Reynolds outlines the major plot events of Uncle Tom’s Cabin all to stress that the “moral of the story” was that “We all must be slaves…to God” (96). The book was more about shaming white Christians than advocating for Black humanity. Despite that problematic premise, it became immensely popular and garnered support among northerners, particularly women, for the abolitionist movement.

The title of the chapter refers to President Abraham Lincoln. Reynolds pushes back against the image of “Honest Abe” that glorified Lincoln since the late 19th century. He explains that Lincoln entered the antislavery mindset “not because of the human horror,” but, “[b]ecause if labor was free, what exactly were poor White people expected to do to make money?” (100). He pitched the benefits of abolition in terms of how it could help white communities, while also being openly “against racial equality” and promising “not to challenge southern slavery” (102).

The chapter quickly mentions the Civil War, emphasizing that in the beginning of the war, Union soldiers often upheld the Fugitive Slave Act, returning runaways to their owners. By the end of the war, however, “Black people were emancipating themselves” (104) permanently. Enslaved people escaped bondage and joined Union lines.

Lincoln received the credit for this emancipation and garnered praise among Black people who acknowledged his role in ending slavery in the US. Reynolds reminds the reader that these efforts and sympathies also led to a “shot in the back of the head” (105) shortly after the end of the war.

After the war, momentum shifted. In the immediate post-war period, antiracists in Congress tried to pass legislation ensuring Black voting rights and equality but met barriers in the form of black codes—“social codes used to stop Black people from living freely” (108)—that morphed into Jim Crow Laws which legalized segregation.

Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the US, was a force of “evil” working against Black freedom, writes Reynolds. Without centralized support and resources from the government, “Black people had to fight to build their own institutions” (109), including Historically Black Colleges and Universities and political platforms. In 1870, Congress passed the 15th Amendment, which safeguarded the Black men’s right to vote, albeit with significant “racist loopholes” (110).

The appearance of progress led Garrison to dissolve the American Anti-Slavery Society and largely bow out of politics in old age and poor health. The 1870s, however, brought new levels of white terrorism and “more propaganda about brute and savage Blacks” (111).

Resistance to oppression took the forms of Black empowerment and women’s empowerment, which Reynolds highlights in large, bold font in the text. Many Black people moved in droves out of the South, especially to Kansas. Garrison supported this domestic migration but died without ever witnessing Black equality.