Insurrection

Starred review from November 22, 2021
Legal scholar Allan frames this incisive discussion of “the ongoing and often bloody battle to fully incorporate black Americans into the citizenry of the United States” around the history the 1807 Insurrection Act. Noting that there is “no record of any congressional debate on Congress’s intent in introducing and passing the law,” Allan recounts cases when it has been invoked, or nearly invoked, by president to deploy federal troops to suppress civil unrest, including Franklin Pierce’s 1856 response to violent clashes between pro- and anti-slavery forces in Kansas, John F. Kennedy’s 1963 deployment of the National Guard to enforce the court-ordered desegregation of Alabama’s public schools, and George W. Bush’s political decision not to invoke the act in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In every case, Allan finds that the “insurrections” the government sought to quell had their roots in the struggle for racial equality. Allan weaves the perspectives of W.E.B. Du Bois, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and other key thinkers on racial justice issues with her own experiences, such as learning from her parents that some of their white neighbors on Long Island had conspired to expel Black families from the community. Eloquently mixing history, autobiography, and philosophy, this powerful account sheds new light on the Black experience in America.