Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920

Paul Ortiz

Published by University of California Press 2005

Emancipation Betrayed

The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920

Paul Ortiz

Volume 16 in the series American Crossroads

https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520940390

Overview
Contents

About this book

In this penetrating examination of African American politics and culture, Paul Ortiz throws a powerful light on the struggle of black Floridians to create the first statewide civil rights movement against Jim Crow. Concentrating on the period between the end of slavery and the election of 1920, Emancipation Betrayed vividly demonstrates that the decades leading up to the historic voter registration drive of 1919-20 were marked by intense battles during which African Americans struck for higher wages, took up arms to prevent lynching, forged independent political alliances, boycotted segregated streetcars, and created a democratic historical memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Contrary to previous claims that African Americans made few strides toward building an effective civil rights movement during this period, Ortiz documents how black Floridians formed mutual aid organizations—secret societies, women's clubs, labor unions, and churches—to bolster dignity and survival in the harsh climate of Florida, which had the highest lynching rate of any state in the union. African Americans called on these institutions to build a statewide movement to regain the right to vote after World War I. African American women played a decisive role in the campaign as they mobilized in the months leading up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. The 1920 contest culminated in the bloodiest Election Day in modern American history, when white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan violently, and with state sanction, prevented African Americans from voting. Ortiz's eloquent interpretation of the many ways that black Floridians fought to expand the meaning of freedom beyond formal equality and his broader consideration of how people resist oppression and create new social movements illuminate a strategic era of United States history and reveal how the legacy of legal segregation continues to play itself out to this day.

Author / Editor information

Ortiz Paul :

Paul Ortiz is Director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program and Associate Professor of History at the University of Florida and the coeditor of Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell about Life in the Segregated South (2001).

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
List of Tables Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Preface: Election Day in Florida Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xxiii
Prologue: Slavery and Civil War Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. The Promise Of Reconstruction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
2. The Struggle To Save Democracy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
3. We Are In The Hands Of The Devil Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
4. To Gain These Fruits That Have Been Earned Emancipation Day Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
5. To See That None Suffer Mutual Aid and Resistance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
6. Looking For A Free State To Live In Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
7. Echoes Of Emancipation The Great War in Florida Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	142
8. With Babies In Their Arms The Voter Registration Movement Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
9. Election Day, 1920 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205
Conclusion: Legacies Of The Florida Movement Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
Selected Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	339
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	369

Language: English
Publisher: University of California Press
Pages
- Main content: 430

eBook

Published: March 29, 2005
ISBN: 9780520940390