First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction (Contributions in American History)

Book by Kolchin, PeterIntroduction
I
For many years, when most historians wrote about blacks during
Reconstruction, they depicted a topsy-turvy world in which igno¬
rant freedmen, only a stage or two removed from barbarism,
wreaked havoc upon the civilized South. Some of these historians
believed that Negroes were members of a naturally interior race
while others suggested that they were not yet ready tor equality,
but all of them saw Reconstruction as a tragic era in which the
“bottom rail was on the top.” The questions they asked about
Negroes during Reconstruction were “did they behave them¬
selves properly,’’ and “if not, why not?’ I he usual answer to the
first question was that there were both good darkeys and uppity
niggers throughout the South. I he answer to the second question
was that there would have been little trouble had not self-seeking
Northern whites — the proverbial outside agitators — descended
on the South and, for their own nefarious purposes, aroused the
naturally submissive Negroes to unnatural thoughts and actions.1