| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Kirt H. Wilson. The Reconstruction Desegregation Debate: The Politics of Equality and the Rhetoric of Place, 1870–1875. (Rhetoric and Public Affairs Series.) East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. 2002. Pp. xviii, 276. $54.95.
Kirt H. Wilson has written a very fine book on one aspect of late nineteenth-century racial rhetoric. His study centers on the 1875 Civil Rights Act. This piece of legislation was one of the last gasps of Reconstruction, attempting to desegregate hotels, restaurants, stagecoaches, and railroads. The act is generally given short shrift by historians because of its compromises (schools were excluded), limitations (its provisions made enforcement very difficult), and consequences (the act did not do much to end segregation). It was declared unconstitutional in 1883. Wilson argues that historians should take the Civil Rights Act of 1875 more seriously because it was hugely important symbolically for African Americans, and because response to it tells us much about late nineteenth-century political culture.	1
Wilson discusses the legislative history of the act as well as the expedient arguments made for and against it, which generally revolved around whether desegregation of public facilities would in the long term help or hurt race relations. He also catalogues the constitutional arguments, which hashed out issues of nationalism versus federalism. What is most interesting in the book, however, is Wilson's discussion of basic political values. What was actually meant by glittering generalities like "equality" or "liberty"?	. . .

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