Been in the Storm So Long

It was one of the most extraordinary events in American history—the deliverance of nearly four million black men and women in the South from the bondage of slavery. They were people for whom enslavement composed their entire memory, and the story of how they passed through the momentous experience of becoming free constitutes a profound human drama.

Leon Litwack begins his book with the outbreak of the Civil War, when the South's struggle for separation from the Union soon emphasized its dependence on black labor and black loyalty and set in motion a social upheaval that would prove impossible to contain. Basing his work almost entirely on primary sources—interviews with ex-slaves and diaries and accounts written by former slaveholders—he shows how under the stress of war, invading armies, and emerging black freedom, pretensions and disguises fell away and illusions dissolved, revealing more about the character of slavery and racial relationships than many whites wished to acknowledge or believe. For the blacks, war and freedom brought the excitement of anticipation, encouraged a new confidence in their own capabilities, and afforded rare insight into the vulnerability and dependency of their "white folks." And there would come a time when the ex-slaves learned a complex of new truths: that they were no longer bondsmen; that they were free to leave the families they had server; that they could negotiate the terms of their labor and could aspire, however remotely, to the same rights and privileges enjoyed by their former owners. At the same time, Litwack described the behavior, expectations, and attitudes of the masters who were compelled to free the slaves, as well as of the northern blacks and whites who came to the South to uplift and remold them.

Been in the Storm So Long is a brilliant recreation of a crucial time in America, when blacks and whites who for so long had subtly shaped each other's lives and destinies suddenly found themselves responding to the other's presence in new ways they could scarcely have foreseen.