Historical Context of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
by Elleza Kelley, Postdoctoral Associate in African American Studies and English, Yale University
Dr Kelley writes on the University of Columbia website:
‘[Morrison’s] 1977 novel Song of Solomon engages deeply with the trouble, the beauty, the love and the complexity of black life in the wake of that ’peculiar institution’ so integral to the histories and cultures of the Americas. In keeping with what feels like a general philosophical principle, Morrison’s Song of Solomon doesn’t take place on an active plantation, on a slave ship or even within the temporal boundaries of American slavery’s legal existence. Rather, like most of Morrison’s novels, Song of Solomon surveys the aftermath of formal emancipation in 1865.
Immediately following the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, the South experienced a period of rebuilding from the ruins of the old order. This period, called Reconstruction, saw black people assuming political power for the first time in American history. It saw the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau, black primary schools and historically black colleges and universities. During the war, many enslaved people left their plantations, in what W.E.B. Du Bois called a ’general strike’, seeking protection from the Union Army. In this fashion, they became ’contraband’ of war. Once the Union claimed victory over the Confederacy, however, the former slaves believed they would have a chance to become citizens, or at least be guaranteed the formal rights outlined in the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.
These hopes were not realized. Aided by the political power and protection of state governments in the former Confederacy, white supremacists – whether in terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan or as regular citizens – responded to Reconstruction with extreme state-sanctioned and vigilante violence. Historian Rayford Logan has dubbed this period, which began in 1877 with the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, as the ’nadir of race relations’.
While Logan dates the end of this nadir to 1901, other scholars have argued for later dates, such as 1923. And more contemporary scholars have extended that period even further to include the ’post-slavery’ society of today. Regardless of periodization, between 1880 and 1930, thousands of black people were lynched. Morrison’s own father, George Wofford, witnessed a man lynched in his home state of Georgia, and shortly thereafter fled the South for the integrated town of Lorain, Ohio, where Morrison was born. In addition to lynching and other acts of terror, black southerners experienced a multitude of obstacles as they strove to claim the civil rights, financial security and everyday freedoms promised in the emancipation. In addition to state-sponsored and private violence and intimidation, a wide variety of legal techniques – including poll taxes, residency rules, literacy tests and grandfather clauses – were instituted throughout the South to ensure that African Americans would never again possess the political power they had briefly wielded in the Civil War's immediate wake.’
_________________
• You can read the full article on the Columbia University website.
• Biographical note on Morrison by Elleza Kelly.
• We have studied Morrison’s Beloved in the past, and hope to study Song of Solomon and other works in the future.
