| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Michael W. Fitzgerald. Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860–1890. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 2002. Pp. xvi, 301. Cloth $67.50, paper $24.95.
Michael W. Fitzgerald's previously published work deals with the political history of Alabama and Mississippi during the Reconstruction era, and in this volume he turns his attention to an often overlooked city. Fitzgerald's description of politics in post-Civil War Mobile, Alabama, demonstrates that it has a colorful history rivaling its more famous gulf coast neighbor, New Orleans. The Louisiana city has a well-earned historical reputation as a sinful place of vice and corruption, run by officials actively engaged in or tolerant of the illegal activity in their midst. Mobile has also been an "easy" city, despite its location in the Bible Belt, and anyone doubting its historical lack of virtue need look no further than this book. If the Gilded Age was, as one historian has put it, an "Era of Good Stealings" for politicians, Mobile's leaders energetically joined in the spirit of the times. The corruption was not limited to a particular race or party. Race was the controlling factor in Mobile's public affairs, but Fitzgerald's story is by no means a simple one of black versus white. Anyone looking for the author to take sides with a particular "school" of Reconstruction historians will be disappointed. Even a Dunningite, if any are left, could find much to support his views here, and much to disagree with.	1
Fitzgerald concentrates most of his efforts on the politics of African Americans, but makes it clear that there was no unified "black community." Instead, there were different groups or "factions," each with an African heritage, that fought for power against whites and against each other. African Americans had been factionalized since the 1850s, when it became apparent that a group of free Creoles (people of French-Spanish, Indian, and Anglo as well as African heritage) had better jobs and more privileges than other free people of African descent and looked down their noses at those who were enslaved. The Creoles fought to maintain their separation from black society after the Civil War. Mobile had a large antebellum non-Creole free black group that also played a major role after the war, and its members also stood above the former slaves. Newly freed blacks from rural areas near Mobile who moved into town after the fighting were even further down the social ladder than ex-slaves who were city natives. According to Fitzgerald, these various groups continued their stratification throughout the last three decades of the century, and this had much to do with the inability of blacks to gain more power, but the intransigent opposition of a majority of whites to racial change was the most important factor.	2
Even though Mobile had a sizeable core of white Republicans sometimes willing to make common cause with blacks, their support for racial change was always limited. Fitzgerald describes most of them as "moderates" willing to accept a modicum of black involvement, but drawing a hard and fast line before real political equality. They counseled blacks to accept lesser positions and even to stay in the background of Republican politics in order to molify Mobile's white majority. This refusal to include blacks in top positions was often the result of the desire of white Republicans to keep political patronage under their control. For a couple of years blacks were willing to go along with this in order to keep peace, but not all of them remained content.	3
After the advent of Congressional Reconstruction, they began to change their tune. One of the most surprising aspects of Fitzgerald's story is the number of incidents of black militance. Mobs, riots, shootings, and carefully planned demonstrations were a lively part of the city's political life from 1867 to 1874. While whites engaged in these activities, it seems clear that blacks were even more active and sometimes just as violent. It was often difficult to tell who was responsible for the outbreaks of violence, but it was clear that each incident of black militance drove the conservative white majority into even deeper opposition to equality.	. . .

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