10/24/2022
The Ku Klux Klan was at the forefront of “a shadow army of paramilitary gangs” launched in the post–Civil War South in “the pursuit of the Confederate cause by other means,” according to this gripping debut from historian Williams. Basing her study on eyewitness testimonies given in congressional hearings during the early 1870s and recollections gathered by the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s, Williams documents how formerly enslaved people worked to reunite scattered families, find homes and employment, and exercise their new political rights, while facing constant threats of violence from white Southerners who sought to prevent these advances. Among other horrors, Williams documents the whipping of Black children by “night riders,” campaigns of intimidation and torture waged against Black landowners by their white neighbors, and a father witnessing his son’s stabbing death in Limestone County, Ala. Along the way, Williams also pays tribute to Black families’ resilience and determination to fight back against harassment, details federal efforts to stop the terror campaign and the forces that undermined them, and examines how the trauma of racialized violence is passed down through generations. This harrowing report hits home. (Jan.)
"Powerful and deeply moving ... I Saw Death Coming bears witness to a dark malignancy in American history, one we have never fully excised. '" - The Los Angeles Times
"Williams’ painstakingly researched book centers firsthand testimony . . . a timely, incisive read." - Smithsonian Magazine, 10 Best History Books of 2023
"I Saw Death Coming is an unflinching and deeply compassionate account of what Black people accomplished, lost and fought for in resisting the war on freedom. It is about what it meant not just to live through, but live with, the violence and its traumatic effects on individuals, families and communities. This is what will stay with you when you put down this book. As will the question of what is owed to survivors and their descendants, as the author put it: what ‘Americans who claim to believe in liberty owe them today." - The Washington Post
"Wrenching and urgent … from the moment slavery ended, through the era of segregation, and up to today, racial terrorism has been, for most Black Americans, too real to ignore. But rather than sink into despair, many Black Americans have leaned on forms of Black cultural expression—call it the blues—to find a way out of no way." - New Republic
"Extraordinary ... Williams offers an insightful reexamination of the Reconstruction period and the African American people who lived through it. By centering formerly enslaved peoples’ experiences, Williams challenges previous exclusion, misrepresented understandings and disputed legacies." - Ms. Magazine
"[Williams'] ability to trace select families through the decades truly reveals the lasting negative effect of Reconstruction-era terror on those who had hope snatched away. She reveals the seeds of social racism from the past, which sadly remain firmly planted. A recommended heart-wrenching read that provides significant insight into the historical basis of racial conflict in the United States." - Library Journal (starred review)
"Gripping … [Williams] pays tribute to Black families’ resilience and determination … This harrowing report hits home." - Publishers Weekly
"Altogether timely … A deeply researched work that exposes the shameful legacy of the neo-Confederacy, one that lingers to this day." - Kirkus Reviews
"Adds depth and nuance to our understanding about what life was like for Black people during this critical period of American history." - California Review of Books
"Reading these survivors’ words, even from a distance of time and place, is excruciating. Untold numbers of men, women, and children suffered sadistic abuse during the time America was allegedly healing from the Civil War. Yet ‘this history faded from national memory,’ Williams writes. By focusing on the people she ensures that their heroism is no longer forgotten and our country’s history is accurately portrayed." - Washington Independent Review of Books
"Intimate, inspiring, and heart-wrenching … Williams has amplified the voices of survivors and taught us that their stories are ‘essential to understanding why, more than a century and a half later, our struggle continues." - Florida Courier
"Williams demonstrates that, far from dying a natural death, Reconstruction was destroyed in a not-so-secret war waged against Black citizens … [she] lays out her case with forensic precision. But her most compelling evidence comes from the victims themselves … Williams honors these testifiers’ suffering by placing them at the center of this important, overdue correction to the historical record." - BookPage (starred review)
"A fascinating book, perfect for historians and Civil War buffs." - Bookworm Sez
"In this powerful and haunting account of the war on Black families and communities that followed the Civil War, Kidada Williams shows that she is one of the nation's most essential historians. With painstaking care, she looks unflinchingly at the accounts that survivors and witnesses of racist attacks gave in their own words. The result is a shattering narrative of Reconstruction that attends both to what formerly enslaved people managed to build after emancipation and to all that was taken away from them in the maelstrom of violence that followed." - W. Caleb McDaniel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sweet Taste of Liberty
"Writing with both great insight and passion, Kidada E. Williams shows how Black southerners navigated the hardships of their lives in freedom in I Saw Death Coming. Their hope and determination provoked the ire of white supremacists who attacked Black homes and families, launching a second civil war to overthrow Reconstruction. The stories of these men and women who endured tremendous violence, persevered, and gave voice to their experiences will remain with you long after you finish this powerful and heart-wrenching book." - Megan Kate Nelson, author of The Three-Cornered War and Saving Yellowstone
"In sharing the eloquent testimony, much previously unseen, of the freedmen and -women who lived and struggled through the overthrow of Reconstruction, Kidada Williams has given us a landmark work that will enlarge our understanding of U.S. history." - Philip Dray, ulitzer Prize finalist, author of At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America
"In this fascinating study, Kidada Williams employs superb scholarship to reveal what freedpeople did for themselves and their communities in the wake of the Civil War, just as she exposes the brutal campaign of terror waged by white southerners who sought to reimpose a lost antebellum world. Williams artfully allows her readers to see these struggles through the eyes of those who built schools and churches and forged political campaigns in hopes of transforming their region. A profound work of the utmost importance for anyone who wishes to understand the Reconstruction era." - Douglas Egerton, author of The Wars of Reconstruction
"Kidada Williams demands that we listen to the Black Americans who, after the Civil War, testified that violent white supremacists derailed their plans for freedom, shattered their families, and left them emotionally traumatized. This book is a powerful act of moral witnessing that invites us to think anew about whose voices and experiences are valued, both in the past and in the present. What we do next is up to us." - Kate Masur, author of Until Justice Be Done
"Unflinching . . . a stark reminder of the heavy toll that resulted from the failure to intervene locally or nationally on behalf of Black people or other disinherited peoples when violence was perpetrated upon them. It is also a warning not to repeat the mistakes of the past." - Bowling Green Daily News
★ 01/01/2023
U.S. constitutional amendments—the 13th abolishing slavery, the 14th guaranteeing legal protections, and the 15th awarding voting rights—were intended to bring about a new era of freedom for Black Americans. However, the Reconstruction Era in the South remained fraught with danger and legal subversion. Masked Ku Klux Klan members terrorized, attacked, maimed, and murdered Black people with little to no repercussions. The failure to properly enforce laws occurred at the local, state, and federal levels, which left the Black population still subjected to disenfranchisement and effectively barred from achieving basic human rights. Williams (history, Wayne State Univ.; They Left Great Marks on Me) excels at transforming exhaustive research and maps, notes, and an appendix, into an accessible narrative with appeal for a scholarly or general reader. Her ability to trace select families through the decades truly reveals the lasting negative effect of Reconstruction-era terror on those who had hope snatched away. She reveals the seeds of social racism from the past, which sadly remain firmly planted. VERDICT A recommended heart-wrenching read that provides significant insight into the historical basis of racial conflict in the United States.—Jessica A. Bushore
2022-11-16
A broad-ranging study of anti-Black violence in the Reconstruction era.
Reconstruction was not so much a failure as an effort that was sabotaged from the outset. The administration of Andrew Johnson was committed to White supremacy, and the Confederates, though militarily defeated, never really surrendered. Immediately after the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan was founded, and “night riders” began visiting violence on Black Americans who dared press for civil and economic rights. As historian Williams shows, these visits were carefully coordinated, indicating some sort of central organization as opposed to the commonly held belief that they were impromptu and rare attacks. The attacks “frequently targeted prosperous Black people,” seizing income-producing tools and even whole crops. In some instances, as Williams chronicles, Black people organized resistance, and the night riders tended accordingly to steer clear of situations where they were likely to face gunfire. “Yet even within a limited space to operate, right-wingers committed extensive atrocities,” she adds. Because they demanded total domination over Southern society, another understandable Black response was to move, as happened in the Deep South in 1879, “a hurried, mass movement of significant numbers in months” on the part of people called Exodusters, with Kansas gaining 30,000 Black migrants almost overnight. A combination of anti-Black violence, economic disenfranchisement, and voter suppression—all of which lend this book an altogether timely feel—doomed efforts to make Black Southerners equal citizens. Too many historians, Williams observes, have brushed such matters aside, blaming the failure of Reconstruction on its Northern champions, but Black Southerners did not forget, and many of the testimonials and eyewitness accounts that she draws on come from field recordings from the 1930s—even though, as she concludes, “Black counter-histories of atrocity and betrayal were no match for the machinery of the Lost Cause.” Pair this book with Margaret A. Burnham’s By Hands Now Known.
A deeply researched work that exposes the shameful legacy of the neo-Confederacy, one that lingers to this day.
