A Fight for Visibility

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 the notion that they were second-class citizens and sought to show that they were just as worthy of citizenship as their white counterparts. Reeves focuses on two themes emblematic of the city's racial struggles. The first was the decades-long presence of a statue depicting the infamous Confederate general, slave trader, and first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest, in the downtown area. The second was the hosting, beginning in the 1930s, of the Cotton Carnival, an event at which white residents and tourists, greeted by Black women dressed as plantation "mammies," celebrated the role of cotton in Memphis's history. When Black Memphians challenged depictions of their race at this annual event, they were not just rejecting demeaning stereotypes; they were also rejecting the white southern mindset that saw Black people in the role of servant and entertainer. Reeves examines the myriad ways that Black Memphians protested both the continued presence of the Forrest statue and the Cotton Carnival. Black residents, she suggests, wanted more than simply to demand the removal of the statue (which eventually occurred) and to correct the powerful, mythologized memory of slavery. They saw these sites of protest as an opportunity to take control of the image of Black citizens and to challenge the widespread belief that only white people could lead the city in politics and business.