Knowing Him by Heart: African Americans on Abraham Lincoln ed. by Fred Lee Hord and Matthew D. Norman (review)

Reviewed by: Knowing Him by Heart: African Americans on Abraham Lincoln ed. by Fred Lee Hord and Matthew D. Norman Christopher J. Olsen Knowing Him by Heart: African Americans on Abraham Lincoln Edited by Fred Lee Hord and Matthew D. Norman (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2023. Pp. 537. Index. Clothbound, 39. 95; e-book, 14. 95. ) This outstanding volume brings together a rich and comprehensive collection of writings, speeches, and thoughts from African Americans across 150 years of U. S. history regarding Abraham Lincoln and his legacy. Chronologically it begins with Frederick Douglass and concludes with President Barack Obama, a fitting frame that encompasses a wide range of opinions on the sixteenth president. The central thesis of editors Fred Lee Hord and Matthew D. Norman holds that African Americans' opinions and attitudes regarding Lincoln were complex and changing: "This persistent ambivalence indicates an intricately evolving historical tension between apprehending Lincoln by heart and head. " African Americans articulated "a variety of hopes, fears, aspirations, frustrations, memories, and assessments" when they considered Lincoln and his impact on their lives and on American culture and society. These opinions evolved as African Americans experienced "faltering progress toward full equality and a growing sense of self-determination" (p. 2). The range of authors is impressive and includes all the usual suspects, but also lesser-known activists such as Jesse Max Barber, Aaron Payne, and Thomas Liverpool. These voices— disproportionately male, as the editors discuss—make a welcome and instructive addition to those of Douglass, Obama, DuBois, and Bethune Cookman. The volume comprises selections from a wide range of sources, mostly public, and a diverse mixture of people: politicians; reformers, particularly civil rights activists; ministers; and various educators, lawyers, and artists. This variety allows the editors to consider the impact of events from the Civil War to the twenty-first century, while also tracing the changing ways African Americans deployed the image of Lincoln to support a variety of causes. For example, Lincoln's image among African Americans (and all Americans) evolved dramatically in the years between Emancipation and the First World War. White people increasingly emphasized his wartime leadership and advocacy of national reconciliation, while downplaying the centrality of slavery and his work for emancipation. As the nation's white leaders turned against racial equality, many African Americans brought greater scrutiny to Lincoln's antebellum and wartime statements on race, inevitably drawing a more complex picture. The editors note how commentaries from Archibald Grimke, Sylvanie Williams, and John Gandy, all writing in 1909, crafted "nuanced interpretations" of Lincoln similar to the conclusions of most modern academic historians. End Page 162 Hord and Norman provide significant biographical and analytical context to introduce each selection, making the collection invaluable for scholars but also those teaching a wide range of courses in African American and general U. S. history. They identify six major themes in Black Americans' responses to Lincoln: enslavement, emancipation, colonization, the use of Black troops, social and political equality, and "personal relationships or exchanges" with Lincoln (p. 11). The editors touch on these themes throughout the book's notes and provide a welcome organizing structure to such a diverse set of documents. Ultimately, though, most readers will probably pick and choose those selections that speak to them most directly and meaningfully. In sum, this is an incredibly useful collection that provides concise but sophisticated analysis to contextualize the subject matter. Christopher J. Olsen Indiana State University Copyright © 2024 Trustees of Indiana University