Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston by Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood

Abstract

Reviewed by: Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston by Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood Joshua D. Farrington (bio) Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston. By Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. 262. $90.00 cloth; $29.95 paper; $22.99 ebook) Millington Bergeson-Lockwood offers a much-needed challenge to the dominant historical narrative of Black partisanship in the late-nineteenth century that tends to reduce Black politics to an unwavering support of "the Party of Lincoln." Bergeson-Lockwood's case study of Boston, however, reveals a far more nuanced and fluid partisanship in a city that produced some of the nation's staunchest, most racially progressive "Radical Republicans." By the 1870s, a sizeable segment of Black Bostonians, led by Edwin Garrison Walker (one of the first Black men elected to Massachusetts's state legislature), became vocally critical of the growing apathy of the local and national Republicans towards protecting Black rights. Over the next two decades, these criticisms would morph into a new brand of independent politics that "rejected the idea that they owed any party loyalty or unanimity based on past deeds" (p. 5). Instead, they sought to push the Republican Party back in the direction of civil rights by supporting responsive Democratic candidates, or by creating their own slate of Black independents. While this strategy of political independence held moments of promise for Black Bostonians in the 1880s and 1890s, it ultimately failed to push either party in the direction of Black civil rights and instead pushed the city's Black activists to turn toward new approaches, such as the Niagara Movement, outside of the sphere of partisan politics in their fight for racial justice and equality. One particularly fascinating chapter in Bergeson-Lockwood's narrative is the brief moment of interracial cooperation between Boston's Irish and Black independents. Both Irish immigrants and African Americans had for too long been ignored by the city's political establishment, and rallied behind the Democratic Party in the 1880s to elect the city's first Irish-born mayor. This interracial partisan cooperation led to the erection of a statue in Boston Common honoring Black [End Page 367] patriot Crispus Attucks, which appealed to strong anti-British sentiment among Irish immigrants and rightfully acknowledged the role of African Americans in Boston's history. Many Black independents also rallied behind the cause of Irish nationalism as part of their broader support for transnational civil rights. This moment of interracial promise, too, would end in failure, as Irish allies to African Americans lost to more conservative Protestants in the elections of the 1890s. By focusing on Boston, Race Over Party offers a geographic counterbalance to the recent plethora of books focused on the failures of Reconstruction in the Deep South. It also adds a needed perspective to urban histories of the Gilded Age, which tend to prioritize white ethnic mobilization over Black political activity. While Boston provides an interesting case study, the author should have done more to connect the Northeastern city to a larger, national context of Black independence. The reader is left wondering if this partisan independence was unique to Boston or reflective of trends in other urban areas. Even a cursory example of Louisville, Kentucky, for instance, which was mentioned twice in passing by Bergeson-Lockwood, would have revealed an equally independent brand of Black partisanship that eschews simplistic narratives of Black Republican partisanship. Apart from needing more national context, the book also lacks in placing Boston's Black independent politics in larger chronological context as well. While the final chapter attempts to assess the "legacy of independent politics," it fails to extend its analysis beyond the early twentieth century, thereby minimizing its lasting importance (p. 182). Ironically, it would be Black Republicans of the 1960s and 1970s in Boston who would take up the banner of "independent politics" and elect the north's first African American to the U.S. Senate, Edward Brooke. This legacy of Black partisan independence, and other examples after 1910, are left out of the book's analysis. [End Page 368] Joshua D. Farrington JOSHUA...