Bogen om et stort politisk forræderi. Efter beskrivelsen - måske det største i USAs historie. Fast er fantastisk dygtig til at sætte personer på en vigtig politisk begivenhed. Hele troværdige personer med privatliv. Det giver en spændende, letlæst og interessant bog.
Bogen centreres om (den fiktive) slave Gideon Jackson, der bliver soldat i den nordamerikanske hær, der befrier slaverne og gør kål på sydstaternes plantageejere. Jackson bliver medlem af Repræsentanternes Hus for de frihedselskende republikanere.
Forræderiet kommer ved afslutningen af Ulysses Grants præsidentperiode i 1877.
Han skriver selv om bogen i sit: An Afterword: You may ask, and with justice, is there any truth in this tale? And if there is, why has it not been told before?
As to the first question, all the essentials of this story are true. There was not one Carwell in the south at that period, but a thousand, both larger and smaller. All that I have told about as being done at Carwell was duplicated in many other places. White men and black men lived together, worked together, and built together, much as I have described here. In many, many places, they died together, in defense of what they had built. There are enough sources for the person who cares to check on these facts. On the Ku Klux Conspiracy, there is the testimony taken by the Joint Select Committee to inquire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrectionary etates, thirteen volumes of incredible material. 245
Jeg har kontrolleret årstal, præsidentnavne, sorte valgt i South Carolina i Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States og ikke fundet modstrid.
Bogen udkom i 1944 og var dedikeret til: "De mænd og kvinder, sorte og hvide, gule og brune, som gav deres liv i kampen mod fascismen." Fast fik Stalin Fredsprisen i 1953.
Der er ikke meget, der er anderledes i dag. Det meget fjerne, flerlags "demokrati" - som det er svært at undgå i så stor en union - se bare hvor demokratisk EU er/bliver. Ulækre politiske studehandler. Egentlig valgfusk. Og selv Ku Klux Klan findes endnu. En rimelig sygesikring, forskning i andet end det Tom Lehrer sang om som "diseases of the rich" er stadig lige så sjælden som en landreform.
"Don't be offended, Mr. Jackson," Cardozo persisted.
Gideon nodded. "I aint high. I guess you want an answer. Talk about a man can't read, can't write, just an old nigger come walking out of the cotton fields, that's me. What I want from Constitution? Maybe it ain't what you folks want - want learning, want it for all, black and white. Want a freedom that's sure as an iron fencepost. Want no man should push me off the street. Want a little farm where a nigger can put in a crop and take out a crop all his days. That's what I want" 50
'Uncle, why don't vou niggers open your eyes? This equality thing ain't going to hold water unless you put your shoulders under it. Sure they'll talk you down; they'll talk me down. You're a nigger; I'm white trash. White trash elected me and niggers elected you, and maybe there was a few of your kind in my vote and a few of my kind in yours. I'm no nigger lover, but I like the kind of thinking that makes two and two add up to four. That kind of thinking tells me what we can do if we keep our senses; but it don't tell me they're going to stop calling us animals." 56
"No land's going to come out of this Convention; if we want land, we're going to work and sweat and buy it"
"Ain't we worked that land for maybe a hundred years? Ain't we put in the crop and take it out? Then they go try to smash up the country. Who got a better right to the land?"
"It ain't a question of right uncle, it's a question of property. 56
... as a motion was passed to petition the Government to buy and subdivide great land holdings. The last was a great uncertainty; that the Federal Government would destroy the plantation system was more than could be expected, yet the proposition was adopted out of principle... 76
"Yes, but this time, we know. We start slowly - organization and nothing but organization to begin. We enter the Klan, we subsidize it gentlemen, yes, with what little we have left, we subsidize it. While the occupation troops are here, we do nothing - that is, nothing they could counter. A few acts, a nigger put in his place, a rape scare, a lynching - those will come about naturally; and when they come, the Klan can ride. As a matter of advertisement you might say, romantic hooded figures dashing through the night; but only as a matter of advertisement We wait; we organize; we do nothing premature. Concurrent with that, those of us who can enter politics, not as an opposition, but as men who wish to work with the reconstructionists. I propose to do that; others must join me. We move step by step, and we wait. " 87
When he yelled at him, in relation to the land question in debate at the Convention:
"You were a fool, Jackson, you and all the rest! Stevens was alive then; did you consult him? Did you ask for support from Washington? No, all by yourself you were going to remake civilization! Thats Cardozo! That's all your narrow, cultured imbeciles! Well, you missed a historic opportunity! You could have destroyed the plantations then and there - you didn't -"
When he yelled at Gideon that way, he was screaming at his equal, not at a black man, not at a white man, no courtesy here, no barriers. 126
He ran his hand over the boy's skin, "All right son, put on your clothes. You see, Jackson, the ills of society have their different faces. We fought and died to free your people while our own cesspool was bred right here. It is not pretty, is it when we who call ourselves civilized cannot provide free medicine, no, cannot even provide a little adequate research so that we may understand this black art called medicine. Here, in this rich land, people sicken and die of starvation, of the lack of fresh air, sunlight. 133
Brother Peter told him; sometimes, the others filled in. One saw one part of it; others saw another part of it. It happened four days after he had gone - something they had heard about but never seen before in the vicinity of Carwell. About nine o'clock in the evening, they were coming from the vespers, which Brother Peter had held in the barn, there being a chill in the air. That night his text had been from Psalms, 100, he couldnt forget "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness." They came out of the barn and didn't go home immediately, but stood around in little clusters for a while, as people do after church services. Then they saw it on the hillock beyond the west pastures, a giant burning cross, something that flared into light all in a moment, one of the women screaming out and attracting the attention of the others.
Others of the women screamed and some of the children became sick with terror. Yes, Gideon could understand that there being nothing but the soft peace of sunset first and then the grim sudden outline of the burning cross. Yet the men managed to calm the women and children soon enough. Brother Peter said, very matter of factly, that the sign of the holy cross, whether in blood or fire, could work evil to no man. Some of them took comfort from that; others, having heard of a thing called the Ku Klux Klan, tightened their lips but kept their knowledge inside their heads. The people stood around until the cross had burned itself out and then went tome to their houses, many of them still considerably upset.
"Then," Hannibal Washington told Gideon, "I figured that something to look about, crosses dont burn in air without someone to light them up, no sir. Seem there something mighty strange, and I tell Trooper, you and me, we going to look at that piece of hill."
Taking their rifles, he and Trooper circled the pasture and cut up in back of the hill. No one was there, but as they had expected, there was a charred cross made of two pieces of blackjack pine. A strong smell of kerosene filled the air and there were wisps of hay on the ground. It was not difficult for them to surmise what had happened. Someone had set up cross, bound it up and down with hay, soaked it with kerosene, and then set flame to it. It was the sort of childish, terroristic, imbecilic thing they had heard rumors of; and being that, it puzzled and disturbed them more than any real menace would have. 138-9
"I don't accept that Gideon. I don't accept your accusation of Hayes. I don't accept your fanciful notion of the power of the Klan. This is 1877."
"You wanted proof," Gideon said. "I have the proof." He took some papers out of his pocket spread them on the desk in the lamplight. "Here are the statistics of the election. The popular vote for Tilden is 4,300,000, and Hayes' popular vote is 4,036,000. That is the first lie; I say that half a million Negroes' and whites in the south who voted the Republican ticket had their votes destroyed, miscounted, tampered with. 157
Even our Congress, which fears democracy and the people more than anything on earth, will let me establish my facts when I rise to speak. 158
You cannot reason with them; they've corrupted reason! It's because we've misjudged them, because we were such fools as to consider them bound by the rules that bind men because we laid before them, on a silver platter, decency, right, and justice, that we're here today. That's why they are winning! 239
Afterword
Powerful forces did not hold it to be a good thing for the American people to know that once there had been such an experiment - and that the experiment had worked. That the Negro had been given the right to exist in this nation as a free man. a man who stood on equal ground with his neighbor, that he had been given the right to work out his own destiny in conjunction with the southern poor whites, and that in an eight-year period of working out that destiny he had created a fine, a just, and a truly democratic civilization. 246
Orla Jordal, 2007
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