I have more than usual to say about Four Hundred Souls, so I thought I'd go ahead and do an individual post rather than make my next bimonthly post extra long.
Four Hundred Souls is a uniquely organized history book that I think people who don't enjoy reading long narrative histories that remind them of their high school history texts might find more pleasurable. And it is definitely thought-provoking and informative.
The editors of Four Hundred Souls asked 90 people to each contribute a relatively brief piece on a five-year period of American history, with a focus on African Americans in that period. Every 40 years, they include a poem. The book starts with journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones writing about the arrival of Africans to North America in 1619 and ends with activist Alicia Garza discussing the Black Lives Matter movement. In between are contributions from other journalists and activists as well as numerous historians plus a few philosophers, memoirists, anthropologists, novelists, and political operatives.
The essays focus on individuals, events, and movements. Some are familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of U.S. history: Anita Hill, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Dred Scott, Jack Johnson, lynching, Plessy v. Ferguson, the Middle Passage, etc. But they provide new insight or deeper background than you might have gained in a survey course or even from watching the news about an event. For example, Hurricane Katrina is examined from the perspective of black women's "depresenceing" in the aftermath. Blair L.M. Kelley's essay on Plessy v. Ferguson puts this test case mounted by the Citizens Committee in the context of black life in New Orleans (and also reveals that the pictures of Homer Plessy that appear in texts and pop up when you google his name are not of the defendant in the case).
Other essays are about lesser-known people and events--the Virginia Law on Baptism, Lucy Terry Prince, Elizabeth Keye, the black press at various points in history, the Combahee River Collective to name a few. One story that everyone should know is that of Eddie Lee Holloway, Jr., who moved from Illinois to Wisconsin, took his documents to get the ID needed to register to vote in the state, and was unable to do so because of an error on his birth certificate (which had not prevented his voting in Illinois). After investing $200 (and numerous visits to government offices) in trying to straighten the situation out, he was still unable to vote and eventually moved back to Illinois in frustration. This happened not in the Jim Crow era, but in 2016! In formerly progressive Wisconsin!
Many of the authors draw explicit connections between the history they write about and subsequent historical and contemporary developments. Among the themes that emerge are inhuman oppression, resistance, struggle, creativity, and achievement. But the unique way the book is put together also makes clear that African American history is not one story but innumerable stories.
I hope that others will consider constructing histories of other groups or developments in this way. Meanwhile, I highly recommend Four Hundred Souls.
Favorite passages:
Who we are and who belongs is the most fundamental question that we have ever asked or can ever ask. We are still struggling to get the answer to this question right. We are still coming up short.
--John A. Powell in an essay on Dred Scott
No war is civil.
--Michael Harriot in an essay on the Civil War (which he also calls the War on White Tears, War for White Supremacy, War for Slaveholders' Rights, and Conflict for Future Racist Monuments)
Change does not occur without backlash, at least any change worth having. And that backlash is an indicator that the change is so powerful that the opposing forces resist that change with everything they have.
--Alicia Garza in an essay on Black Lives Matter
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