Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Risen Phoenix
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.lynchburg.edu/academics/majors-and-minors/history/faculty-and-staff/luis-alejandro-dinnella-borrego/ *
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Dartmouth College, A.B., 2007, Saint John’s Seminary, B.Phil., 2014; University of Virginia, M.A., 2008; Rutgers University, Ph.D., 2013.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Dominican College, lecturer, 2009; St. Thomas Aquinas College, Sparkill, NY, adjunct professor of history, 2008-09; Warwick Valley Central School District, substitute and teacher’s aide, 2015-16; Union County College, Cranford, NJ, adjunct professor of history, 2015-16; Homestead Middle School, social studies instructor, 2016-17; Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, VA, assistant professor of history, 2017-.
MEMBER:American Historical Association, Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Organization of American Historians, Southern Historical Association, Virginia Historical Society.
AWARDS:University of Virginia, Graduate Fellowship, 2007-08; Rutgers University, Excellence Fellowship, 2009-10, Pre-ABD Graduate Fellow, 2010-11; Social Science Research Council Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program, Graduate Studies Enhancement Grant, 2010, 2011, Predoctoral Research Development Grant, 2012; U.S. Department of Education, Jacob K. Javits Fellow, 2010-13.
WRITINGS
Contributor to anthologies, including Before Obama: A Reappraisal of Black Reconstruction Era Politicians, Volume 1: Legacies Lost: The Life and Times of John Roy Lynch and His Political Contemporaries, edited by Matthew D. Lynch, Praeger, 2012, and Encyclopedia Virginia, 2015.
SIDELIGHTS
Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego is an educator and historian who holds a Ph.D. from Rutgers University and a master’s degree from the University of Virginia. He has taught various subjects in middle school and is assistant professor of history at Lynchburg College in Virginia. In his writings about the American South, he has contributed to Virginia Magazine, the Encyclopedia of Virginia, and the book Before Obama: A Reappraisal of Black Reconstruction Era Politicians.
In 2016 Dinnella-Borrego published his first book, The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post-Civil War South, part of “The American South Series.” The book highlights contributions by black political leaders after the Civil War and up to the beginning of the twentieth century. In describing Reconstruction election campaigns during this period, the author discusses six Southern black congressmen: John Mercer Langston of Virginia, James Thomas Rapier of Alabama, Robert Smalls of South Carolina, John Roy Lynch of Mississippi, Josiah Thomas Walls of Florida, and George Henry White of North Carolina. Dinnella-Borrego provides context and history of the congressmen’s constituents and policy agenda that involved civil rights protections, economic issues, and access to education. Along the way these men inevitably confronted white supremacy, disenfranchisement, segregation, and the terror of lynching. According to J.P. Sanson in Choice, Dinnella-Borrego makes an important contribution to postbellum history and calls his work “a study of the shared struggles of all African Americans to find a meaningful place in the New South.”
Additionally, Dinnella-Borrego discusses the violence encountered during the electoral contests, the decision to support amnesty for ex-Confederates, the support black congressmen gave to all African Americans, even those outside their districts, and the interaction between Southern and Northern black communities. Writing in Journal of Southern History, Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie noted: “The Risen Phoenix succeeds in demonstrating the range of strategies employed by these politicians and how these changed over time and place. One is also struck by the tremendous courage of these representatives as they confronted serious physical dangers.”
To rectify the minimal information on Reconstruction-era black leaders, Dinella-Borrego focuses on their effectiveness as politicians by researching useful and valuable resources like unfamiliar speeches and other documents, said Benjamin R. Justesen in North Carolina Historical Review. Justesen commented that Dinella-Borrego has written fresh, thoughtful individual profiles of the congressmen and that “He has also created a highly textured and nuanced portrait of American political life before 1900, when Jim Crow politics essentially ended political participation by black Americans for at least a generation.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, February, 2017, J.P. Sanson, review of The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post-Civil War South, p. 918.
Journal of Southern History, August, 2017, Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie, review of The Risen Phoenix, p. 708.
North Carolina Historical Review, January, 2017, Benjamin R. Justesen, review of The Risen Phoenix, p. 117.
ONLINE
Lynchburg College Website, https://www.lynchburg.edu/ (January 22, 2018), author faculty profile.
Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego, PhD
Assistant Professor of History
Luis Dinnella Borrego
434.544.8685
Dinnellaborrego_l@lynchburg.edu
Carnegie 404
Experience
Aug. 2017 – Present, Assistant Professor of History, Lynchburg College
Aug. 2016 – June 2017, Social Studies Instructor, Homestead Middle School
Jan. 2016 – May 2016, Adjunct Professor of History, Union County College
Nov. 2015 – June 2016, Substitute/ Teachers Aide, Warwick Valley Central School District
Sept. 2008 – Dec. 2009, Adjunct Professor of History, St. Thomas Aquinas College
Spring 2009, Lecturer, Dominican College
Education
PhD – Rutgers University, 2013
MA – University of Virginia, 2008
B.Phil – Saint John’s Seminary, 2014
AB, Graduated Magna Cum Laude – Dartmouth College, 2007
Publications
“Black Political Officeholders” and “Accommodationism” in Steven A. Reich, ed., The World of Jim Crow: A Daily Life Encyclopedia (forthcoming Greenwood Press)
Patria: Exile, Nation, and War in Cuba and the United States, 1848-1895 (Manuscript in Progress)
The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post-Civil War South (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, July 11, 2016).
Written with the Dictionary of Virginia Biography, “John Mercer Langston (1829– 1897),” Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, First Published May 26, 2015, http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Langston_John_Mercer_1829-1897.
“Manhood and Freedom in the Sunshine State: Josiah Thomas Walls and Reconstruction Florida,” in Matthew D. Lynch, ed., Before Obama: A Reappraisal of Black Reconstruction Era Politicians, Volume 1: Legacies Lost: The Life and Times of John Roy Lynch and His Political Contemporaries (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012), 47-68.
“From the Ashes of the Old Dominion: Accommodation, Immediacy, and Progressive Pragmatism in John Mercer Langston’s Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 117, No. 3 (2009): 214-49.
Presentations
“The Politics of Uncertainty: Emigration and Fusion in the New South,” Emancipations, Reconstructions, Revolutions: African American Politics and U.S. History in the Long 19th Century, 1776-1920, February 11, 2017, McNeil Center for Early American Studies. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
“The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post-Civil War South,” A History Club Event in Celebration of Black History Month, February 23, 2016, Union County College, Cranford, NJ.
“‘That Our Government May Stand’: African American Politics in the Postbellum South, 1865-1918,” Center for Legislative Archives, Brown Bag Series, February 19, 2012, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
“Why the Beat Generation Matters: Some Preliminary Thoughts on Post-World War II Countercultures,” 33rd Annual Warren I. Susman Graduate History Conference, March 26, 2011, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
“The Veteran-as-Politician: Robert Smalls and Reconstruction South Carolina,”Narratives of Power: New Articulations of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Class, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, March 22, 2011, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.
“Trickster Politicians and Pragmatic Rabbits: African-American Congressmen and the Political Culture of the Post-Bellum South,” 32nd Annual Warren I. Susman Graduate History Conference, March 27, 2010, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
“From the Ashes of the Old Dominion: Accommodation, Immediacy, and Progressive Pragmatism in John Mercer Langston’s Virginia,” Social Science Research Council Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Annual Summer Conference, June 18, 2009, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH.
Awards, Fellowships, Grants, and Honors
Jacob K. Javits Fellow, U.S. Department of Education, Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Program, 2010-2013.
Predoctoral Research Development Grant, Social Science Research Council Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program, 2012.
Graduate Studies Enhancement Grant, Social Science Research Council Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program, 2011.
Pre-ABD Graduate Fellow, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, 2010-2011.
Graduate Studies Enhancement Grant, Social Science Research Council Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program, 2010.
Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, Honorable Mention, 2010.
Excellence Fellowship, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2009-2010.
Graduate Fellowship, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 2007-2008.
Professional Affiliations
American Historical Association (AHA)
American Studies Association (ASA)
Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)
Organization of American Historians (OAH)
Southern Historical Association (SHA)
Virginia Historical Society (VHS)
The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the
Post-Civil War South
Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie
Journal of Southern History.
83.3 (Aug. 2017): p708+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Full Text:
The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post--Civil War South. By Luis Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego. The
American South Series. (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2016. Pp. xvi, 281.
$49.50, ISBN 978-0-8139-3874-5.)
The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post-Civil War South by Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego
examines the political lives of six prominent black U.S. congressmen from the South in the four decades
after the Civil War: Virginia's John Mercer Langston, Alabama's James Thomas Rapier, North Carolina's
George Henry White, South Carolina's Robert Smalls, Florida's Josiah Thomas Walls, and Mississippi's
John Roy Lynch. The book seeks to describe their individual struggles as well as the collective struggles of
all African Americans. Specifically, The Risen Phoenix explores the "strategies employed by black
congressmen and how they meshed" with popular aspirations (p. I I). Dinnella-Borrego aims to fill the gap
between two views of black politics. One is of African Americans as U.S. citizens, as represented by Eric
Foner's work. The other views African Americans as protonationalists, as represented in the work of Steven
Hahn. Dinnella-Borrego focuses on these six politicians' strategies as a series of compromises and prudent
choices to achieve the "best result possible for their constituents" (p. 8).
The book is organized into three parts and seven chapters. Part 1 follows the rise of black politics out of the
American Civil War. The first chapter examines the relationship between Unionism and the service of black
leaders in what the author calls the "democracy of the dead" (p. 22). Chapter 2 focuses on the Southern
States Convention of Colored Men of October 1871; its "interracial approach" figured prominently in the
subsequent political work of black congressmen (p. 54). Part 2 examines the role of these legislators in
pursuing an interracial democracy. Drawing on the Congressional Globe and the Congressional Record,
chapter 3 examines four legislative issues--private legislation, internal improvements, civil rights, and larger
national issues--pursued by these black congressmen during the Forty-First through the Forty-Third
Congresses. The fourth chapter looks at black representatives' rhetorical strategies within the context of
violence, amnesty, and civil rights that culminated in the 1875 Civil Rights Act. Chapter 5 explores
violence, legislative failure, and so-called Redemption as impulses toward alternatives to Republican
politics, including supporting the Democrats and fusion voting. Chapter 6 examines new strategies of
emigration and fusion. Chapter 7 narrates the demise of black politics and the rise of the one-party South.
The work draws on numerous manuscript collections in major southern state archives and Washington,
D.C., together with government publications, prominent federal court cases, newspapers and periodicals,
and published primary sources. The eleven-page bibliography of secondary sources underrepresents six
decades of rich historical scholarship.
12/24/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1514148615567 2/3
The Risen Phoenix succeeds in demonstrating the range of strategies employed by these politicians and how
these changed over time and place. One is also struck by the tremendous courage of these representatives as
they confronted serious physical dangers. These congressmen also led very interesting political lives. But
there are questions. What more do we learn about these black leaders that we cannot extract from either
more detailed monographs by others or from prosopography? Why invoke gender and comparative
emancipation studies when these are not pursued in depth and actually refute the definition of politics as
purely institutional representation displayed here? What gets lost when politics equals strategies, successful
or otherwise? Since human nature--and by extension political behavior--means little outside of culture, then
what about values, mores, and principles? Why was congressional representation necessarily more
significant than grassroots politics? Surely fusion voting, emigration, and third-party movements from the
1870s through 1890s assumed more vital roles in the political lives of black men and women. Were not
they, rather than congressmen, the risen phoenix in the book's title, and perhaps it is they, rather than
President Barack Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus, who return with renewed vigor and youth?
Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie
Howard University
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Kerr-Ritchie, Jeffrey R. "The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post-Civil War South." Journal of
Southern History, vol. 83, no. 3, 2017, p. 708+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501078157/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=bfa69a93.
Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A501078157
12/24/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1514148615567 3/3
Dinnella-Borrego, Luis-Alejandro. The risen
phoenix: black politics in the post-Civil War
South
J.P. Sanson
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
54.6 (Feb. 2017): p918.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
Dinnella-Borrego, Luis-Alejandro. The risen phoenix: black politics in the post-Civil War South. Virginia,
2016. 281 p bibl index afp ISBN 9780813938745 cloth, $49.50; ISBN 9780813938738 ebook, contact
publisher for price
(cc) 54-2904
E185
2016-1877 CIP
The story of African American voters' entry into Southern politics is an important component of postbellum
history, and Dinnella-Borrego (Union County College) makes an important contribution to that story with
this book. The story focuses on the lives and political careers of six Southern, African American members
of the US House of Representatives during the postwar years but uses their experiences to tell a larger story
of the intricacies of Reconstruction election campaigns, the role of violence in postbellum politics, and
regional changes that affected the political landscape of the South. The result is a study of the shared
struggles of all African Americans to find a meaningful place in the New South. The representatives were
all Republicans who represented rural, formerly enslaved constituents. Each worked to create an equal place
in society for his voters based on African American service in the Civil War, echoing an issue as old as the
Revolution and presaging arguments made after World Wars I and II. The author also incorporates
influences from the changed ways of interpreting gender the Civil War caused and the interaction between
leaders of the politically experienced Northern black community and the emerging Southern black political
class. Summing Up: ** Recommended. All levels/libraries.--J. P. Sanson, Louisiana State University at
Alexandria
Sanson, J.P.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Sanson, J.P. "Dinnella-Borrego, Luis-Alejandro. The risen phoenix: black politics in the post-Civil War
South." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Feb. 2017, p. 918. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A479868292/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=84a01d82.
Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479868292
Justesen, Benjamin R.1
North Carolina Historical Review. Jan2017, Vol. 94 Issue 1, p117-118. 2p.
Book Review
RISEN Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post-Civil War South, The (Book)
DINNELLA-Borrego, Luis-Alejandro
The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post-Civil War South. By Luis-Alejandro Dinella-Borrego. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016. Acknowledgments, introduction, illustrations, conclusion, notes, bibliography, index. Pp. xiv, 281. $49.50.) The six African Americans profiled in The Risen Phoenix were well-known symbols of post-Civil War achievement, yet more than a century after their service, surprisingly little is known about the substance and historical legacy of their terms in Congress or their effectiveness as politicians during the turbulent eras of Reconstruction and its aftermath. Much of what has been written about them during that century has concentrated instead on the surface and their symbolic appearance. To remedy that deficit, rising scholar Luis-Alejandro Dinella-Borrego has mined a rich layer of unfamiliar speeches and other documents, refining the usual ore of history into a far more useful and valuable resource. The m en Dinella-Borrego profiles made surprisingly meaningful contributions to contemporary political dialogue as members of the U.S. House. Robert Smalls (South Carolina), James T. Rapier (Alabama), Josiah T. Walls (Florida), and John Roy Lynch (Mississippi) were elected in the first wave of postwar victories after 1870. John Mercer Langston (Virginia) and George Henry W hite (North Carolina) had careers that lasted into the 1890s. For Lynch and Smalls, both federal appointees after leaving Congress, and Langston and W hite, who continued to be active in Republican politics until their deaths, service in Congress was only one of many high points in their careers. They were by no means the only African American Republicans who rose to such high posts between 1870 and 1898—twenty-two were elected to Congress from southern states during that period—but they were arguably the most effective of the group, and certainly the best known on the national scene. By carefully analyzing these men’s public words and private actions—in both victory and inevitable defeat—Dinella-Borrego has crafted a series of fresh, thoughtful individual profiles. He has also created a highly textured and nuanced portrait of American political life before 1900, when Jim Crow politics essentially ended political participatioir by black Americans for at least a generation. The Risen Phoenix is a highly creditable contribution by a talented scholar, and one for which other historians of the era will certainly be grateful. Benjamin R. Justesen