Newsmaker

Challenging Assumptions

A 1973 graduate wins the Pulitzer Prize for history for his exploration of black political struggles. By Jayne Denker

STORYTELLER: “I wrote stories— narratives of people who will evaporate very quickly, as we all will,” says Hahn.

Steven Hahn ’73 has always been interested in political and social issues—enough to attend anti-Vietnam War rallies in downtown Rochester while he was an undergraduate history major at the University.

“I was arrested at least once,” says Hahn, now the Roy F. and Jeanette P. Nichols Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.

Also a proponent of the civil rights movement as an undergraduate in the College, Hahn says he gravitated toward the history department in his junior year because he was looking for a major that would complement his interests.

“I was floundering, trying to find something that would make clear what was happening around me and would resonate with my political interests,” he says. “The history department was very political and challenging, and the level of thinking and teaching was very high.”

Thirty years later, Hahn joined a highly regarded group of historians himself when his book, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration, won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for history last April.

He’s the seventh alumnus to win a Pulitzer and the 12th prizewinner with Rochester ties.

Reviewed in Publishers Weekly as a “compelling portrait of rural Southern blacks fighting for political and economic power despite entrenched and often violent obstacles,” and praised for its scholarly yet accessible narrative, the book—which also won the Bancroft Prize from Columbia University and the Merle Curti Prize from the Organization of American Historians—shines a different light on the social and political aspects of blacks in the South during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

“Imagining slaves and freedmen as political people challenges assumptions about them, from the past and the present,” says Hahn. “‘How can they practice politics?’ people ask, assuming they were all ignorant.”

African Americans couldn’t exercise their involvement in politics as soon as they were freed from slavery, Hahn argues. Instead, the engagement developed gradually, while blacks were still slaves, and they fought for their rights during Reconstruction.

“Public representation of their politics was repressed,” he says. “But they had a sophisticated understanding of what was going on, and they had an extensive communication network.”

Hahn credits Herbert Gutman, a Rochester history professor who specialized in the study of slavery, with first sparking his interest in the history of African Americans in the United States.

After graduation, while working on his doctorate at Yale University, Hahn first uncovered evidence of political activity by slaves, an intriguing notion that would ultimately form the foundation of A Nation Under Our Feet. After earning his Ph.D., he taught at the University of Delaware, the University of California at San Diego, and Northwestern before joining the faculty at Penn last fall.

Hahn’s focus—grassroots politics in the rural South and the stories of common black individuals rather than historically significant figures—usually is not covered in scholarly history books.

“I wrote stories—narratives of people who evaporated very quickly, as we all will,” he says.

Those personal stories and Hahn’s efforts to makes the book accessible to the general public seem to be striking a chord with readers. Since winning the Pulitzer, the book has broken into the top 300 “bestsellers” on Amazon.com—quite a feat for a scholarly volume that hasn’t been reviewed by many mainstream publications.

As for what the Pulitzer means for his future, Hahn hopes the book can continue to offer important lessons.

“I understand that my public presence has changed, and more is available to me, but I’m not sure what, yet,” he says. “I do know that I want to do some good now that I have a public voice. I don’t think I’ll be on Oprah anytime soon, though.

“I just hope people give the book a shot and that they’ll find it interesting.”