Untimely Democracy

Untimely Democracy tells the surprising story of how American authors and activists defined the path of racial progress after the abolition of slavery. Conventional narratives of democracy stretching from Thomas Jefferson’s America to the present day posit a purposeful break between past and present as the key to the viability of this political form—the only way to ensure its continual development. But for Pauline E. Hopkins, Frederick Douglass, Stephen Crane, W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles W. Chesnutt, Sutton E. Griggs, Callie House, and the other figures examined in this book, the campaign to secure liberty and equality for all citizens proceeds most potently when it refuses the precepts of progressive time. Placing these authors’ post–Civil War writings into dialogue with debates about racial optimism and pessimism, tracts on progress, and accounts of ex-slave pension activism, and extending their insights into our contemporary moment, the book recovers late nineteenth-century literature as a vibrant site for doing political theory. Untimely Democracy ultimately shows how one of the bleakest periods in American racial history provided fertile terrain for a radical reconstruction of some of the foundational elements of the nation’s political system. Offering resources for moments when the march of progress seems to slow, stutter, and even cease, the book invites readers to reconsider just what democracy can make possible.