A Nation Under Our Feet Summary

A Nation Under Our Feet is about the black political struggles in the rural south from the final decades of slavery to the Great Migration. The purpose of this book is to show how African Americans from their earliest days in the South attempted to assert control over their own lives, shape and protect their communities, and gain political power.

The first part of this book looks into African American political activity during the pre-Civil War and Civil War periods. He uses this part of the book to show that blacks, even while in slavery, used their position to gain rights from their slaveholders. These rights included the right to farm their own plots, sale of their produce, and to visit neighboring plantations. This was also the period

where there was a growth of an informational network, a commitment to education, and the beginnings of political organization. Slave political activity included building kinship networks, gaining information about broader political events, protecting themselves from violence, and eventually rebelling against their masters during the Civil War. Slaves fought for the basic rights they did not have, and the victories won and kinship networks founded here were foundational for their future political action.
The second part of A Nation Under Our Feet, covers the difficulties of the Reconstruction period form the end of the War through 1877. Hahn Talks about how African Americans made strong efforts to take control of their own destinies and to make active contributions to society. Hahn emphasizes that blacks were willing to pursue many strategies to achieve their goals of rights, dignity, prosperity, and community. An example, Hahn shows was the willingness of many southern blacks to show interest in emigrating to the North or to Liberia to escape the violence and persecution of the postwar South. Although few actually emigrating, the widespread interest in leaving the South demonstrates a powerful non-integrationist trend in black political history.
Hahn also uses this part of the book to study about black political struggles.

Hahn discusses both the well-known struggle against white supremacy and the less examined conflicts within the black community. He tells of the remarkable rise of Southern blacks to local and state power and the white campaign to restore their version of racial order, disenfranchise blacks, and exclude them from politics. Blacks built many political and social structures to pursue their political goals, including organizations such as Union Leagues, the Colored Farmers’ Alliance, chapters of the Republican Party, and emigration organizations. Hahn used this part of the book to successfully recover the importance of black political action shaping their own history.

The final part of A Nation Under Our Feet covers the years following the end of Reconstruction. Even with the end of Reconstruction, African Americans made effort to empower themselves by forging alliances to gain leverage and power for the black community.

Hahn’s most important point is his idea that a large number of black activists put forth multi-racial and democratic vision of the nation in which birth and loyalty determined rights and citizenship rather than race. Because African Americans put forth this remarkably modern view of America, it brings up the question of who built and defined this great

nation.