A Fight for Visibility: Black Memphis Confronts the Lost Cause (Making the Modern South)

In A Fight for Visibility, Donna E. Reeves explores how Black Memphians fought to maintain dignity and self-respect during the post-Reconstruction period and Jim Crow era by challenging the negative images of African Americans produced by Confederate loyalists as part of the Lost Cause narrative. After the Civil War, Black Memphians actively struggled against the white Memphis establishment, which tried to shackle the movement and development of various Black communities.The more white Memphians tried to contain African Americans, the more African American residents stood against those efforts.Reeves surveys the history of Memphis in the postwar era, uncovering the motivations behind the Confederate monument-building frenzy at the end of the nineteenth century.She argues that the ceremonies and narratives of this period served to freeze Black people in deferential roles in the minds of white southerners.In response, through subtle and not-so-subtle avenues, Black residents challenged t