Stony the Road Summary
Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Stony the Road Overview

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s book entitled Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow seeks to illuminate the cyclical nature of race relations in the United States over time. Using a combination of prose and visual images, Gates draws a connection between the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War and the era in which Barack Obama served as the country's first black president. Each of these periods of relative optimism in the fight for equal rights for African Americans was quickly followed, Gates points out, by years of tremendous backlash that served to erase any gains made in the previous era. After Reconstruction, came the devastating phase of Redemption, and after Obama's presidency came Trump's presidency. Gates's book wrestles with topics such as the power of imagery to warp reality, the link between oppression and brutality, and the courage it takes to fight against deeply entrenched systems of oppression.