Dear Friends,
Happy new year! I know it has been a solid minute since I last communicated to you. This is because there has been far too much football to watch, including an ethically compromised, likely criminally operated World Cup with a thrilling final, and Liverpool returning to being shite (see below). But I’ve also been working on book stuff, with much of the fall going to cobbling together archival materials from various archives throughout the country, transcribing photos from special collections at Tulane, the University of Minnesota, the “SHISMO” or Missouri historical thing, and elsewhere. All of this has been to move into making sense of the white supremacist history of Reconstruction, and my reading of the evidence has led to what I think is a fundamental reinterpretation of the era.
All of this research is now destined to become chapter 6 of The Book, which I’m calling “The Two Reconstructions,” and it focuses in on how white supremacist paramilitary and vigilante groups like the KKK saw themselves, not as vigilantes, but as the law, as the state. Doing so necessitates rethinking what the American state was, which I point to below.
But here’s a fascinating little archival bit from this research:
When the White League initiated the Battle of Liberty Place in New Orleans on September 14, 1874, these members of the “Roman Rifle” did not hide their allegiance. Note also that their military organization and use of military ranks. Seen in one light, what happened at Liberty Place will sound familiar today: people deny the outcome of an election, arm themselves, and try to take over the government. One might envision a history of this type of American insurrection that begins in the Revolutionary and concludes, at least for now, on January 6, 2021. But for my purposes in this book, the White League and its offensive at Liberty Place were part of a broader pattern of an attempt to reconstitute as much of the white supremacist rule of law as their progenitors had been able to establish in preceding centuries.
Citation: Roll of Officers, Roman Rifle, MSS 30, Historic New Orleans Collection, New Orleans, Louisiana.
W.E.B. Du Bois and the American State
I think everyone who takes history classes at the University of Chicago reads Du Bois at least once. I remember studying Souls of Black Folk in the Social Sciences core classes and piecing together the connection between Du Bois concept of “double consciousness” with the work of Fanon and Marx with a brilliant anthropologist, Nadia abu el Haj (who, incidentally, has a new book out on the problem of PTSD and other “combat trauma” in modern America, that is on my to-read list). So I guess that I always understood Du Bois as a social theorist—as a “critic of modernity” as another Chicago theory influencer, Moishe Postone, used to say—so when I returned to reading Du Bois after a long hiatus, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I once again was thinking about the broad theoretical ramifications of this ideas, especially as pertaining to the idea of law, and the state.
I’ve started working on something that might become an article at some point about an argument that Du Bois seems to offer in little bits in different pieces of his earlier writings: the question of whether the rule of law—represented at the turn of the 20th century by the “color line”—was itself white supremacist? or whether it had been captured by white supremacism? I suspect that Du Bois believed the former, as he saw the rule of law as inextricably connected to white supremacist violence by governing institutions as well as by individuals—like those that composed the lynch mob—who claimed to act in lieu of the state, or where the state had failed. So what does it mean if we put this insight in dialogue with other understandings of the emergence of the modern state that prioritize, instead of rights and privileges, subjectivity, coercion and violence?
Revisiting the scholarship of Christopher Waldrep
Over the past several weeks, I've been diving back into the scholarship of Christopher Waldrep, which centers on the legal history of lynching as well as the legacy of lynching on race relations and governance in the 20th century United States. Perhaps more than any other legal historian of the last several decades, Waldrep focused our attention on the importance of lynching, not as an aberration from the rule of law in the antebellum South and Reconstruction-era South (and beyond), but rather as part of the fabric of legal culture.
When I first encountered Waldrep's work, I was a graduate student interested in figuring out how local officeholders balanced their legal duties handed down from Congress and other bodies, with the social, political, and economic contexts of their immediate communities. Now, as I work on a legal history of white supremacy over the broad expanse of American history, I am interested in how Waldrep so sagely figured out the permeability of public law and private violence when it came to enslavers and unrepentant racists seeking to subjugate (or otherwise subordinate) formerly enslaved Black Americans after the Civil War.
Waldrep published several major works, but here are a few of my favorites:
Night Riders: Defending Community in the Black Patch, 1890-1915 (Duke University Press, 1993)
Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817-80 (University of Illinois Press, 1998)
"War of Words: The Controversy over the Definition of Lynching, 1899-1940," Journal of Southern History 66, no. 1 (Feb., 2000), 75-100.
Many Faces of Judge Lynch: Extralegal Violence and Punishment in America (Palgrave MacMillan, 2002)
"Law and Society: Structuring Legal Revolutions, 1870-1920," Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 5, no. 4 (Oct., 2006), 309-323.
"National Policing, Lynching, and Constitutional Change," Journal of Southern History 74, no. 3 (Aug., 2008), 589-626.
African Americans Confront Lynching: Strategies of Resistance from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Era (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009).
On a personal note, I have missed talking with Waldrep at the annual meetings of the American Society for Legal History for a few years now since Chris had some significant health difficulties. But he was always extraordinarily kind to me and was generous enough to offer me some really helpful advice over the years. A real model for how an established scholar can be a meaningful mentor!
In any case, as I re-read Waldrep's work, I'm taken with his broad rejection of formalistic paradigms for making sense of how law worked--and indeed what governance was. Avoid things like "center-and-peripheries," warns Waldrep in his 2006 piece, "Law and Society" (citation above) and embrace the messiness! Find the chasms between formal legal articulations and the spaces in which they unfolded, and figure out what power relations, power structures, -isms and other structural forces, traditions, norms, and other frameworks were significant. Not doing so risks conflating the outcomes of legal contestation for the processes that determined their outcomes, warns Waldrep. Back in 2006, he wrote, "The best legal and constitutional history today no longer seems entirely dominated by scholars seeking paradigmatic formulations for the next generation of lawyers. If this new scholarship takes root, historians may learn a new appreciation for the power of law in society." What was true in 2006 remains so today.
The New(est) Approaches to the History of Federalism in US History
I'm playing with this idea that we are awash in a transformative historiographical moment about federalism in American history. There are methodological and thematic sources of this transformation. All of this is inspired by commenting on some papers and panels in recent conferences, most notably work by Grace Mallon; and books by Greg Ablavsky, Rob Harper, Jesse Olsavsky, Kristin Olbertston, and many others.
Methodological:
Studying agents and officers who are trying to balance personal status and legitimacy with implementing laws
Corollary to 1: the meaning of legal doctrines change the moment they are enunciated and directed to agents/officers
federal supremacy should not be assumed
primacy of local and statewide political economy, regional networks of capital; local power relations
Corollary to 4: extractive and exploitative economic regimes directed to labor, energy, and space
Political borders less significant than those imposed by economic regimes referenced in 5
Blurred lines between public power and private power, whether through capture, associationalism, cartels, coercive monopoly
Thematic:
study of governmental regulation of normativity: family, gender, childhood
study of governmental regulation of ethnic and racial difference: Natives, free Black and ethnic minorities, enslaved populations
settler colonialism as the norm and not the exception
financialization of capitalist relations in early America
legal pluralism that accounts for blurred public and private lines; jurisdictions that transcend established political boundaries; focus on non-elite arenas of lawmaking
study of transmission of information over space and time; manipulation of information markets to benefit local lawmaking
The 'old' federalism was too wedded to the U.S. Supreme Court's development, undevelopment, redevelopment, and manipulation of the idea of power sharing to be true to what was actually happening in early America. The "new" disregards this framework entirely, and proceeds from a number of fields and subfields that have not traditionally identified as "legal history."
I'm hoping to build this into a broader project. Perhaps a conference or symposium? A historiographical article? Edited volume (gasps!)? I think there is a great deal to say here, and an extraordinarily large amount to gain for historians of early America and beyond.
Food
The Mesmeric Greater Roman (and now Southern Italian) Universe of Katie Parla
If you don’t own Katie Parla’s book, The Food of the Italian South, and you like food, you should have a word with yourself. It is brilliant—full of recipes as one might expect, but also food history and local color.
She’s also got an awesome show, “Katie Parla’s Roman Kitchen,” on Recipe TV, which you get as part of Youtube TV. It is, as the kids say, “bussin.”
Recipe: South Indian style green beans and tofu
Ingredients:
1 block extra firm tofu, sliced into 1/2 inch slabs and pressed; then cut into bite-sized cubes
1 lb string beens, trimmed and chopped into 1/4 inch pieces
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp chili powder (optional)
2 tbsp vegetable oil
Tempering spices:
handful curry leaves
1 tbsp cumin seed
1 tbsp mustard seed
1 dried red chili (optional)
1/2 tsp asofetida powder
Marinade:
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and cut into slices
1 tbsp chaat masala
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
Technique
Combine marinade ingredients; coat tofu; refrigerate for 24-48 hours.
Combine tempering ingredients into a small bowl and keep ready. Also have the marinated tofu and green beans ready to go.
Heat large cast iron on medium high until hot, add the 2 tbsp oil, and then quickly add the tempering ingredients from the bowl. Heat until the seeds pop.
Add the green beans and combine with the tempering ingredients with a spatula. Add turmeric, chili powder, ginger. Cook for 5 minutes. You don’t want the beans to get mushy.
Increase the heat to high, move the beans to the edges of the pan, and add the tofu to the pan—don’t stir immediately. After about a minute, gently begin to combine. Cook for 3 minutes. Serve with rice and ghee.
Mets Magic, Liverpool Tragic
Baseball season cannot come soon enough. Uncle Steve Cohen has worked his magic and signed players—actually signed players!!!—for the New York Metropolitans. Please excuse my shock. This is a new feeling for a Mets fan.
I’m particularly enthused about Kodai Senga, the Japanese ace who features a “ghost” pitch forkball that makes hitters look silly. Mid-90s heater, curveball, yes. But its all about the ghost pitch that just disappears on hitters. Can. Not. Wait. I’m also a fan of Jose Quintana, who has great stuff and is the kind of lefty arm this team hasn’t had in a long time. Because of my undying love for Jacob DeGrom, it is hard to get the same level of emotion going for Verlander, but he’s a true ace. And then there is Edwin Diaz…one of my favorite things is how much my younger kid loves Edwin Diaz and relishes in his entrance ritual at Citi to the blaring trumpets of Timmy Trumpets “Narco.” Hoping to get to see it in person this year.
Special mention goes to Uncle Steve re-signing my favorite Met, and my favorite baseball player since Edgardo Alfonzo: Jeff McNeil. The reigning NL batting champion and league leader (probably) in dirty uniforms. Macca will do anything to win and can’t bear losing. He specializes in cerebral hitting—aka “cheap hits”—and getting on base. Great baserunner. Just a joy to watch. And he’s going to be a Met for a long time thanks to a new long term contract.
My anticipation of the Mets season-to-come is matched only by my disappointment with Liverpool’s season thus far. It is like a malaise has captured the team. Like the superhero powers have been neutralized by some sort of curse. The players who looked like they would give everything, every time, to try to win—and who almost won everything just months ago—now look deeply human and frail. A case in point is Mohammed Salah. Just months ago, every team that played Liverpool had to have a “Salah plan.” Usually this consisted of a leftback, a midfielder, and a centreback who conspired to keep him contained. This season, no such plan is necessary. While Jurgen Klopp denies that any big tactical switch has occurred, Salah’s average position is now further away from goal. When he does shoot he misses, but often he doesn’t shoot. What’s happened?
When a football side’s best player is the goalkeeper, it isn’t a great sign. And that is where Liverpool is right now. Without the demigod that is Alisson Becker, the team would be in the relegation places. United suffered through years of this where De Gea was their best. Spurs too. Now Liverpool. What’s happened?
“What’s happened?” is indeed the overriding sentiment about the club this season. What was once widely hailed as the best run club in Europe is now sputtering at every level, from the mysterious search for new owners, to the failure to sign pretty much anyone, to the rash of injuries that has sidelined the club’s best players, to the on-field shambles—blind backward passes to Leeds strikers; head butts of opposition players; shots that hit the nosebleed seats; defensive lapses that just shouldn’t happen at this level. The microcosm of it all was the 3-2 defeat at the Emirates against Arsenal. Yes, Arsenal is having a great season and there’s probably no shame in losing to the likely champions. But there was lots of shame in this game as the Reds did some of the absolutely most idiotic things ever done on a football pitch within the span of about 80 minutes. Despite good performances from a few, the team handed the result to Arsenal, and Arsenal was more than happy to take it. Thanks a lot boys, I imagine Arteta said as he shook the hands of the defeated Reds after the match.
Well, that’s football, as they say. Hopefully there will at least be some half decent performances going forward. I don’t expect top 4 or even any European football next season. But it would be nice to see a few decent games.