MSS GREEN FINAL THE REPUTATION OF ISAIAH T. MONTGOMERY An Exploratory Paper on Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Black Leaders Critiques of What Montgomery Did

THE REPUTATION OF ISAIAH T. MONTGOMERY:An Exploratory Paper on Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century

Black Leaders’ Critiques of What Montgomery Did

Matthew Holden, Jr. †

Presented to Round Table: “Political Strategies Under Extreme Adversity: Joining History and Political Science in the

Evaluation of Isaiah T. Montgomery,” National Conference of Black Political Scientists, March 18, 2016

The Reputation of Isaiah T. Montgomery and the General Problem of Reputation

In this brief paper, I will mainly deal with Isaiah T.

Montgomery (1847-1924), the sole African American delegate in the

1890 Constitutional Convention. Montgomery has been put in the

position of epitomizing the 1890 Mississippi Constitution, while

the 1890 Constitution is used to besmirch his name. The severe

criticism—besmirchment—has grown severe from 1890 until now.

Political scientists, in the National Conference of Black

Political Scientists, may well be members of any racial group,

not merely African American.‡ But they are likely to have a

strong interest in “the liberation of Black people.” In any

case, they must cope with how to evaluate Isaiah T. Montgomery

† Matthew Holden, Jr., President, Isaiah T. Montgomery Studies Project. ([email protected].) This paper is adapted from a presentation made in cooperation with the 47th Annual Meeting, National Conference of Black Political Scientists, on March 18, 2016 in the House of Representatives Chamber, Old Capitol Museum, Jackson, MS USA. Author’s hard copy mail contact: P. O. Box 14088, LeFleur Station, Jackson, MS USA 39236-4088.‡. I make this point since, by common sense observation, it seems likely that other people may make contrary assumptions. In addition, it is intellectually possible for scholars to study Black/African American politics without that commitment just as it is possible to study any other group without being identified with that group.

and the 1890 Constitution. If not they will embarrass

themselves. how to study what Montgomery did, and how then to

move on to the generic question of political strategies under

extreme adversity.

My scope is how African Americans of Isaiah T. Montgomery’s

time, and for two generations, his time and for two generations

spoke of him.

Reputation is a political equivalent to currency.

The currency gains credence only if it is circulated by

other people who are believed.

Political scientists sometimes need to study the past more

than they now do. Historians need to study systematic theory

about the data of the past. Historians, political scientists,

and others who wish to understand American politics, will do much

better if they also come to terms with Mississippi’s unique

commitment to first to chattel slavery. Mississippi was always

committed to chattel slavery,§ in contrast to Virginia which

allowed debate in favor of emancipation until the 1830s, ad in

contrast to North Carolina which allows free Black voting until

1835.**

§ . The ordinance of secession, adopted in the very room in which this symposium is conducted says so, the declarations of Jefferson Davis are unequivocal.

** . Matthew Holden, Jr., ““Counter-Emancipation: From the Death of Lincoln to the Doorsteps of Our Own Time”© 2015 Edited June 25, 2015, 5th Wepner Symposium on the Lincoln Legacy and Contemporary Scholarship, University of Illinois at Springfield.

Those who would understand Mississippi, and its role in the

American polity, have also to come to terms with the counter-

attack or the campaign of counter-emancipation that went on into

the 20th century, to pretend acceptance of the Civil War

Amendments, but all the same to exclude people of African

ancestry, as an exchange for a broad national acceptance of a

regime of white supremacy.†† White supremacy does not mean

simply racial hostility, which is probably impossible to avoid to

some degree. It means a norm that in all walks of life – public

and private -- there was the possibility for an absolute veto of

equality based upon racial identification, especially African

ancestry.

The Constitution of 1890 was a white supremacy constitution.

This point should be emphasized, especially for political

scientists, since our discipline includes the study of

constitutions, including sometimes state constitutions. A

constitution is, I offer for exploration, a political agreement

amongst those capable of exerting power about the terms on which

they will deal with each other, whom else they will admit and on

what terms, and whom they will treat mere resources, but

†† . Matthew Holden, Jr., “Exclusion, Inclusion, and the Role of Institutions,” R. A. W. Rhodes, Sarah A. Binder, and Bert A. Rckman (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions, New York:Oxford Univesity Press, 2006, 163-189. The analysis in this paper is based upon the hypothesis that counter-attack is to be expected in domestic politics as much as military engagement.

otherwise admissible all.‡‡

In 1869, with Radical Republicans still strategically

powerful in Congress and Grant’s becoming President, Mississippi

had to accept the Constitution that provided for equality of

white and black. How long did this last? It lasted just five

years.

From 1869, when the constitution mandating full Black

membership and inclusive rules that included Black voting and

officeholding, the state went through by six years. For the next

fifteen years, there was a series of counter-attacks, in 1874 in

Warren County, the county in which Jefferson Davis had lived most

of his political life, though he at the time was not living

there. The fight left to a white vs. black confrontation in arms.

The white people won. Hands down. §§ In thinking of

extreme adversity, learn to think of killing rates. In county

after county, disputes led to killings. On a deaths per thousand

of population basis, the killing rates often exceeded the killing

rates in New York on September 11, 2011.***

‡‡ . Within this definition, there are five intersecting sets of rules: (a) Membership or who is inside, who is marginal (and possibly admissible), and who is present only as a (whether respected as in the case of Green Card holders); reservoir rules (or who is potentially eligble for offices of authority); recruitment rules (or procedures for the actual choice of officeholders); substantive output rules (or what substantive decisions may or must be decided and what not, e. g. privateownership of property in the United States or marriage rules); decision process rules; and constituent rules (or rules for changing rules).§§ . Nicholas oLemann, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006. *** . Matthew Holden, Jr., Tougaloo Lecture

When the Convention assembled on August 12, 1890, it had 133

white delegates and one black delegate, Isaiah T. Montgomery.†††

Except for extreme adversity, there is way for a 61% voting

majority to 1 delegate of out of 134. When this 1890 Convention

was elected Mississippi was a Black voting majority state. The

black men theoretically entitled to vote were 189,884 or 61

percent of the total of 308, 684.

The Montgomery Presence.

On September 15 1890, Montgomery stood alone in the

Constitutional Convention.‡‡‡ Montgomery’s situation makes clear

the question in the subtitle of this paper: political strategies

under extreme adversity, not just “minority” status, but extreme

adversity.

“The white people determined that the best interests of the

State and their own protection demanded that they should rule.”

Montgomery continues. “This rule being generally fixed and

arbitrary, virtually amounts to a domination, with a fixed

purpose to repress the Negro vote. The methods adopted to

produce this result have introduced into the body politic every

††† . Matthew Holden, Jr., Isaiah T. Montgomery and Emancipation: ITM Discussion Paper 2013-3, Isaiah T. Montgomery Studies Project, P. O. Box 14088, LeFleur Station, Jackson, MS 39236

‡‡‡ . “What Answer?”: Speech in Support of Franchise Committee Report, Mississippi Constitutional Convention, 1890, by Isaiah T. Montgomery, edited by Matthew Holden, Jr.

form of demoralization - bloodshed, bribery, ballot-box stuffing.

Corruption and perjury stalk unblushingly through the land.”

The corruption and bribery that stalked unblushingly through

the land was not that of the black men, but of white men.

Proposition One: I believe we have gotten the Montgomery

reputation and performance wrong by failure to note that the

verbal African Americans, all of whom operated from outside

Mississippi, had different degrees of disagreement or agreement

Montgomery’s course of action, but all treated it with respect.

It would be desirable if I had statistically competent data

on what African Americans, and other people at the time thought

about Isaiah T. Montgomery and the course that he followed. There

were recorded opinions from President Grover Cleveland, the

editors of Harper’s Weekly, and others. But, for the time being,

all I have are some opinions from some members of the African

American elite. I use those here to show the direction of my

argument, subject to the professionally required view that if

others conduct new work in a better way, with better results that

will be highly desirable. The closer people were to the

realities of the time, the more they were willing to give

Montgomery credit, and sometimes to agree with him.

Timothy Thomas Fortune and the New York Age§§§

§§§ . “Fortune, Timothy Thomas,” by Emma Lou Thornbrough, in Rayford W. Logan and Michael E. Winston (Eds.), Dictionary of American Negro Biography, eds., New York: W. w. Norton, 1982, 236-238.

I choose Timothy T. Fortune’s paper, The New York Age, went

at the subject on at least three occasions. We begin with the

African American elite outside the South. We then switch to some

comments from African Americans from within Mississippi.

These commentators in 1890 showed a clear appreciation of the

extremity of the Mississippi situation, even while some of them

expressed disagreement with Montgomery’s action. On September

27, Fortune published an editorial, “Disfranchised” that begins:

“There was perhaps nothing left for Isaiah T. Montgomery of

Bolivar, the only member of the Mississippi Constitutional

Convention, so called, to do but make a speech on the

franchise. . .” Fortune quotes at length a crucial portion. He

continues, then, to say:

Perhaps no man was ever called upon by

the nature of his surroundings to adopt a

more radical or iniquitous measure than was

Mr. Montgomery. Perhaps he adopted the

wisest and safest course available to him.”

Fortune had some reason to know “the nature of the surroundings.”

His own father was then one of the remaining African American state

politicians in Florida. He had some sense of reality, as he also

discussed the extremity of the sacrifice, 123,000 black voters. He

concludes “Did he do right, was it wise for him sanction a measure he

did approve, binding, in a measure, not only himself, but all the race

in his State to accept in good faith and abide by a measure intended

forever to disfranchise them, to exclude them from all participation

whatsoever in the administration of the government of which they are

part? “ It may be that he did, (but) we think not.”

Some further calculation is called for. The numbers used, and

that Fortune does not challenge, say that 2/3 of the Black voters were

being removed. If 2/3 are removed, then 1/3 remain. That is not the

same as excluding African Americans from all participation whatsoever

in the administration of the government, although that was the

ultimate result.

Frederick Douglass (1817-1995) is represented under the caption,

“Mr. Montgomery’s Speech.” In that column, Frederick Douglass,

apparently preparing for his mission to Haiti, was quoted at length

Two weeks later (October 11, 1890). The Douglass commentary contains

the quotation that exists as ad nauseam cliche in contemporary

writing. “No thoughtless, flippant fool could have inflicted such a

wound upon our cause as Mr. Montgomery has done in this address.”

Douglass pays open tribute to Montgomery’s intelligence, statesmanlike

calmness, and responsibility. “Such a man is not to be dismissed by calling him

a traitor nor a self-seeking hypocrite, for he is neither the one nor the

other.” He then offers a military analogy. “Like a general on the field of

battle, he has retreated when he could no longer fight and has surrendered a

post which he thought he could no longer successfully defend.”

3. On Montgomery’s choice, then, Douglass moves in the

analytical kill. Frederick Douglass limited himself, though to

attacking the action, not the actor He said he had “no denunciation

of the man Montgomery [who] is not a conscious traitor though his act

is treason . . . to the cause of the colored people, not only of his

own State, but of the United States.” (Hill, 2005.) Montgomery’s

intention, Douglass says, is beneficent, but his action is disastrous.

It is “assassination.”

Montgomery, he said, has a position that is “deplorable, and will

eventually fill his soul with bitter reflections.” There is some

evidence that this forecast may have been right, in the end.

4. The last part of Douglass’s critique skips over all the

practical issues of the time and moves to a broad rhetorical and

philosophical level. There is no “race problem.” Nor is there an

immigrant problem. Nor is there a Catholic problem. The “solution of

the real problem is, so far as the Government of the United States is

concerned, to see that each and all the descriptions of persons and

sects under the broad wings of the American eagle should be protected

in every right, privilege, and immunity guaranteed by the Constitution

of the United States.”

In all this critique, Douglass has nothing at all to say about

what Montgomery should have done between August 12, 1890 (when the

Convention met) and November 1, 1890, when it adjourned sine die.

T. McCants Stewart (1854-1923) was then a person of some

prominence amongst the literate African American professionals.

(Contee (1982) in Logan and Wilson (1982, 571-573.) Stewart is no

longer a well-known figure. He had an interesting and complex

history, in New York, Hawaii, the West Indies, Africa, and England.

He seems to have tended toward the Democrats during the Grover

Cleveland era.

Stewart said he was reluctant to criticize Montgomery.

Montgomery was on the spot, and able to judge better than someone from

afar. He said he agreed with the educational qualification, which is

what he thought would reduce the African American franchise. But he

thought “Mr. Montgomery should have protested strongly and

emphatically against the omission of the property qualification” and

against what became “the understanding clause.” Stewart also used

his essay to criticize white Mississippians.

Frederick Douglass, Jr. ( )

Frederick Douglass, Jr. had a New York Age commentary on

October 18, 1890. Unlike his famous father, the younger

Douglass shows remarkable empathy with Montgomery, with whose

policy he said he did not agree. He speaks with the cold

comprehension of realpolitik.

Look at Douglass’s description of things Montgomery has

seen:

(1) the Negro as slave, freedman, soldier, and so-called

citizen;

(2) Government . . . turn him over to the tender mercies of

his former oppressors . . .

(3) friends counsel patience in the face of murder and

persecution;

(4) those who fought the Government given power to nullify

rights;

(5) “the whole North aroused in denunciation whenever force

was used to maintain the Negro’s rights at the ballot box”;

(6) state legislatures given into the hands of those

dedicated to a white man’s party;

(7) colored citizens driven from their homes while the

general government is helpless.

Douglass, Jr. says “He (Montgomery)

naturally turns to those who have it in their

power to better or make worse his condition

and tries to bring about a concession which

he hopes will be lasting, to better the

condition of his people.”

Of the policy itself, he adopts language very like that of his

father. Douglass the elder had spoken of the general retreating

when he could no longer fight and has surrendering what he could

no longer successfully defend. Douglass the younger extends that

language.

In speaking of Montgomery’s position, he said:

“It seems to me a full and complete surrender, admitting of no rally

hereafter. Any policy which puts us deeper into the pit on a one-sided good

faith, from which there can be no escape after a violation of confidence, is a

bad policy.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931)

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was as close in time as was Montgomery

himself. Her particular worth here is that she was always

unrelenting in her criticism of those with whom she disagreed.

At that time, she was a young woman in her twenties, publishing a

weekly newspaper in Memphis. Wells, in 1931 when Montgomery had

been dead seven years, said that she had criticized him severely

in her paper in 1890. He made the trip to Memphis to see her,

and explain his position. She said she had never agreed with

what he had done. Nonetheless, “we became the best of friends,

and he helped to increase the circulation of the paper

wonderfully by sending me all through the Delta.” [. . .]

The instructive fact is that no one of the same generation of action, no

matter how much in disagreement, could fail to recognize the harsh realities

and no one could come to the point of denunciation.

Buck Colbert Franklin ( )

Buck Colbert Franklin was a younger man, having been born in

1879. An Oklahoma attorney, Franklin was a boy in 1890 and makes

no claim of having studied what Montgomery did in 1890. But he

knew Montgomery later, and was married April 1, 1903 (Buck

Colbert Franklin, 126) in Montgomery’s living room, wrote years

after of “the great Isaiah Montgomery.” That is the language of

respect.

Proposition Two: The Five Mississippians Who Were Almost Silent

Political scientists and historians have gotten the

reputation of Isaiah T. Montgomery wrong by failure to think out

the silence of other Mississippi African American leaders as

of 1890.

The black leadership in Mississippi appears on the

record isolated from Montgomery. The question is what

support was offered at the time by any other Mississippi African American at the time? Jackson

in 1890 was not an integrated town in the 20th century sense. And it was a small town. He had

to have to go somewhere to eat and sleep. He had to have to gone somewhere to eat and sleep.

Someone had to have seen him walking down the street, or getting a haircut.

The normal thing would have been for other black leaders to attempt to talk to him. If

he had refused to talk to them, it would have been normal to report a refusal to their fellows.

What is more likely, since there is no such evidence yet, is that they had all given up. John

E. Lynch is the one exception. The criticisms from John R. Lynch

have been crucial to the reputation of Isaiah T.

Montgomery, though Lynch was careful in what he said.****

Under the caption, “The Mississippi Plan,” Lynch said he had

known Montgomery “favorably and well for a number of years,” and

believed him to be “a man of good sense, a sound Republican and

loyal to his race.”

Lynch would have been a natural leader in such a

matter if he had chosen to make a controversy within

the state. But by the time of the 1890 Convention, he

appeared already to have been shifting his life outside

the state. The “state’s Republican African American

leadership, principally former Mississippi house

speaker and U. S. representative John Roy Lynch and

former senator Blanche Bruce, traveled in Republican

circles, splitting their time between Washington and

Mississippi.”†††† Lynch had farm interests in Adams

**** . New York Age, October 18, 1890.†††† . Richard Vallely, The Two Reconstructions, Chicago?: University of Chicago Prress, 247, n. 53.

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County, but he already had a job at the Treasury

Department in Washington. Lynch said he had written

Montgomery, and gotten a letter in response. “‘You will

notice,’” Lynch said Montgomery had written him, “‘that, in the

speech, I have gone as far as possible on the lines indicated,

and supported the committee report as a choice of evils.’”

Lynch states his own view. “ I am satisfied that that the

proposition, the adoption of which Mr. Montgomery advocated, was

not what he wanted, but he seems to have been laboring under the

impression that if it were rejected, a worse proposition would be

adopted.” He continued that “It is on this point that Mr.

Montgomery, in my opinion, has made a grave, if not a fatal,

mistake.”

Lynch, unlike Douglass, did have an idea what Montgomery

should have done. Montgomery should have made an alliance with a

Judge Chrisman, who advocated an unconditional educational and

property qualification.

Lynch said he had written Montgomery, and gotten a letter in

response. “‘You will notice,’” Lynch said Montgomery had written

him, “‘that, in the speech, I have gone as far as possible on the

lines indicated, and supported the committee report as a choice

of evils.’” Lynch states his own view. “ I am satisfied that

that the proposition, the adoption of which Mr. Montgomery

advocated, was not what he wanted, but he seems to have been

15

laboring under the impression that if it were rejected, a worse

proposition would be adopted.” He continued that “It is on this

point that Mr. Montgomery, in my opinion, has made a grave, if

not a fatal, mistake.”

Lynch, unlike Douglass, did have an idea what Montgomery

should have done. Montgomery should have made an alliance with a

Judge Chrisman, who advocated an unconditional educational and

property qualification.

Hiram Revels (1822-1901)

Hiram Revels, the first black United States Senator

ever, was still alive. He had been elected to fill

Jefferson Davis’s seat. Once out of the Senate, Revels

was back in Mississippi, residing in Holly Springs. His

time in Mississippi overlapped with that of Jefferson

Davis, sometimes also back in Mississippi as he sought

to establish a new life himself.

Blanche K. Bruce (1841-1898)

Blanche K. Bruce, who once had a house in Rosedale, who had been sheriff before becoming

US Senator, and had owned land eight miles southwest of Mound Bayou, was still alive. Bruce as

a Senator had initiated an investigation of the 1875 coup. (Bruce, in McFarlin, 1976, 13-32.)

But the same factors that made Republicans unwilling to have a fight over the Hayes-Tilden

election of the next year were at work. No corrective result was forthcoming.

16

The now-controlling Democrats in the Mississippi Legislature replaced Bruce with James

Z. George. Bruce might have gone back to Mississippi, but by this time he was already

effectively a Washington resident, though he still had his farm property interests in Bolivar

County.‡‡‡‡ What, if anything, was Bruce to do to influence the situation?

James Hill had been the Secretary of State when Adelbert Ames was Governor.§§§§ Hill

was still in business and politics in Vicksburg. But he had somehow had to make his peace with

the 1875 results in Warren County. But what, if anything, was James Hill to do as of 1890, with

regard to the Constitution? What action could Hill have taken to

any useful result? Lynch said he had written Montgomery, and

gotten a letter in response. “‘You will notice,’” Lynch said

Montgomery had written him, “‘that, in the speech, I have gone as

far as possible on the lines indicated, and supported the

committee report as a choice of evils.’” Lynch states his own

view. “ I am satisfied that that the proposition, the adoption

of which Mr. Montgomery advocated, was not what he wanted, but he

seems to have been laboring under the impression that if it were

rejected, a worse proposition would be adopted.” He continued

that “It is on this point that Mr. Montgomery, in my opinion, has

‡‡‡‡ . Lawrence Otis Graham, The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty, New York: HarperCollins, 2006, Chapters 10-11, at 122-168. §§§§ . In passing, Hill was the last Republican secretary of state until the incumbent. Hill is an obscure figure in the present, though there is a statue above his grave site within one hundred yards from the Masonic temple where Medgar Evers’ office was located, on a street named for John R. Lynch within a quarter mile of a street named for Montgomery.

17

made a grave, if not a fatal, mistake.”

Lynch, unlike Douglass, did have an idea what Montgomery

should have done. Montgomery should have made an alliance with a

Judge Chrisman, who advocated an unconditional educational and

property qualification.

Hill, as I have noted, remained politics and in the state

all the while. He continued as the Republican patronage manager in Mississippi, and did

so into the early 1900s. He and Montgomery had done business with each other in getting the

deal with the railroad for the land on which Mound Bayou was settled.

Willis E. Mollison ( )

Willis E. Mollison was a Fisk graduate, who held local office in Issaqueena County.

Issaqueena, on the north side of the Yazoo from

Vicksburg, is the same county represented by the

delegate (William Farish), who led a floor challenge to

seating Montgomery in the 1890 Convention. Mollison was

to have been Republican candidate for state-wide office in 1889, the year before the

Constitutional Convention. The Republicans, out of armed harassment by the

Democrats, virtually abandoned their campaign.

As of 1890, Willis E. Mollison was still in

Mississippi, although he later left the state and moved

to Chicago. What, if anything, was Mollison say to

18

Montgomery in 1890?

Lynch, Revels, Bruce, Hill and Mollison all were

men of substance, yet they came to the point of virtual

silence in the Mississippi of 1890. These men embodied

the small, town-based, landholding African American

middle class. The problem of the Montgomery reputation

should be seen at least partly in light of that silence

by these hitherto active men.

In time, most of them left the state, but not all

and not right away. Hill remained in the state the

rest of his life, though he engaged in fights with

Bruce and others in Washington as to who would be

regarded as the leader of the Mississippi Republicans.

He continued as the Republican patronage manager in Mississippi, and did so into the

early 1900s.***** He and Montgomery had done business with each other in getting the deal with

the railroad for the land on which Mound Bayou was settled.

Mollison later decided to move to Chicago. Even

after he moved, so the historian Nan Woodruff reports,

he was a favorite for Delta planters to get to come

South during World War I and make morale-building

***** . Karl Rove, The Triumph of William McKinley.

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speeches to urging tenant farmers to buy war bonds, and

to stay on the plantations to work rather than go to

the cities. †††††

Mollison had a son Irvin C. Mollison, ultimately to become a

Federal judge. ‡‡‡‡‡ When a young person, Irvin C. Mollison

authored an article, the source notes of which refer to his

father. In that article there is detailed discussion of a

lawyer named Samuel Beadle. Beadle was associated with

the “black and tan” faction in Republican politics, and

was one of the people squeezed out when Theodore

Roosevelt decided that his Progressive party would have

room only for the “lily whites.§§§§§ Beadle was a

formidable lawyer, who did both business work and

personal work for Jackson’s most prominent cotton

merchant, until Governor Vardaman influenced the firm

††††† . Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, American Congo: The African American in the Freedom Struggle in the Delta, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. 52.

‡‡‡‡‡ . Irvin C. Mollison, practiced law in an office with William L. Dawson, who after the 1942 election became the second Black Democrat in Congress. Irvin C. Mollison was appointed to the U.S. Court of Claims by President Harry S. Truman. Truman K. Gibson, ., 2005, 36-38).

§§§§§ . Geoffrey Cowan, LET THE PEOPLE RULE: Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of the Republican Presidential Primary, New York: 2016.

20

to fire him.****** He then chose to leave the state for a

literary life in Chicago.

Sidney D. Redmond ( )

The mood of understanding Montgomery and respecting him,

even in disagreement, shifts absolutely with the testimony of

Sidney D. Redmond.†††††† Redmond minced no words. He called

Montgomery “Judas.”‡‡‡‡‡‡ He is quoted as saying “Montgomery

betrayed his people by voting for Section 240 of the infamous

Constitution of 1890 which wiped out the political liberties of

the Negro people and the vast masses of white people.”

The Redmond view, mixed in with the Lynch recital, has since

become the standard historical interpretation of Montgomery in

1890, accepted also in the civil rights movement and amongst

African American legislators.

Conclusion: The central theme of “political strategies under extreme adversity”

It is, one may note, a mere matter of convenience that that the brief

discussion above concentrates on African American elites, both outside

Mississippi and inside Mississippi. But one could as well attempt to

****** . Irvin C. Mollison, “Negro Lawyers in Mississippi,” Journal of Negro History (1930),

†††††† . Redmond was a very successful lawyer-physician, a skillful entrepreneur, in Mississippi in the 1940s. V. O. Key,

Southern Politics in State and Nation, New York: Alfred A. Knopf?, 195?, . cites his estate as having probated at $808,000

(?) which is equivalent to $xxxxxxx in 2-4 values.?‡‡‡‡‡‡. Bunche, 9, n. 12)

21

ascertain what white people thought at the time. Redmond did tell the

interviewer that “Montgomery was lionized and acclaimed by the

Bourbons for this betrayal.”

The atmosphere of mystification comes in, from the academic side, in the

writing of the Vernon Wharton, a University of North Carolina-

trained historian, who taught at Millsaps College. Wharton

states in apparent wonderment, “It is possible that he believed

the best move for his people was that of absolute surrender.”

There is a considerable amount of commentary by more recent

historians of Reconstruction, though with one or two exceptions,

notably John Willis and Stephen Cresswell, with strong views of

the pro-left quality present in recent historiography. None of

it has the intense commitment to realpolitik that I believe is

required in studies of power-in-constitution-making.

The aim here has not been to justify or decry

Montgomery, but to put the analytical question sharply

to historians and political scientists?

For the present conclusion, let me refresh the

question of political strategies under extreme

adversity.

1. At the simplest, ask the Frederick Douglass

question. Was Isaiah T. Montgomery “a traitor?” Or was

this a self-serving declaration of a symbolic leader

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with no pragmatic solution to the hard problem at hand?

2. In any case, if you set up a simulation, what

would you expect the student playing Montgomery to do?

3. What questions would political science theory

would guide us to ask some and thereby create some

data that we do not presently have?§§§§§§

4. Could the theories and methods now required in

graduate school enhance the question of political

strategies under extreme adversity?

5. If you took the role of the African Americans of

the time, what would imagine the strategy to be, under

what conditions.

6. If you and I were teaching the 1890 situation as

a case study, how would we expect students to frame the

Montgomery problem?

7. If you or I set up a simulation, what would we

expect the student playing Montgomery to do?

8. What political science theory or political

science method would adequately reproduce what we

§§§§§§ . Matthew Holden, Jr., “The Competence of Political Science: ‘Progress in Political Research’ Revisited,” American Political Sciennce Review 90:1 (2000). 1-10.

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already know?

9. If you took the role of the African Americans of

the time, what would you imagine the strategy to be,

under what conditions?

10. If we set a prize competition for the best

essay by a first-class student today, what new thinking

would we get?

11. If the American Political Science Review, the

Journal of Politics, the National Political Science

Review – or any other serious journal-- were to issue a

call for papers on “”political strategies under

adversity,” what new thinking would we get?

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