Enslavement in Memphis

Enslavement in Memphis PDF Author: G. Wayne Dowdy
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1467150142
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
During the first forty-five years of the city's existence, slavery dominated the cultural and economic life of Memphis. The lives of enslaved people reveal the brutality, and their perseverance contributed greatly to the city's growth. Henry Davidson played a crucial role in the development of the city's first Methodist church and worship services for slaves. Mary Herndon was purchased by Nathan Bedford Forrest and sold to Louis Fortner, for whom she was put to work in the field, where she "chopped cotton, plowed it and did everything any other slave done." Thomas Bland secretly learned to read and write from a skilled slave and later used that knowledge to escape to Canada. Author G. Wayne Dowdy uncovers the forgotten people who built Memphis and the American South.

Enslavement in Memphis

Enslavement in Memphis PDF Author: G. Wayne Dowdy
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1467150142
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 128

Get Book Here

Book Description
During the first forty-five years of the city's existence, slavery dominated the cultural and economic life of Memphis. The lives of enslaved people reveal the brutality, and their perseverance contributed greatly to the city's growth. Henry Davidson played a crucial role in the development of the city's first Methodist church and worship services for slaves. Mary Herndon was purchased by Nathan Bedford Forrest and sold to Louis Fortner, for whom she was put to work in the field, where she "chopped cotton, plowed it and did everything any other slave done." Thomas Bland secretly learned to read and write from a skilled slave and later used that knowledge to escape to Canada. Author G. Wayne Dowdy uncovers the forgotten people who built Memphis and the American South.

A Massacre in Memphis

A Massacre in Memphis PDF Author: Stephen V. Ash
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0809067986
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
An unprecedented account of one of the bloodiest and most significant racial clashes in American history In May 1866, just a year after the Civil War ended, Memphis erupted in a three-day spasm of racial violence that saw whites rampage through the city's black neighborhoods. By the time the fires consuming black churches and schools were put out, forty-six freed slaves had been murdered. Congress, furious at this and other evidence of white resistance in the conquered South, launched what is now called Radical Reconstruction, policies to ensure the freedom of the region's four million blacks-and one of the most remarkable experiments in American history. Stephen V. Ash's A Massacre in Memphis is a portrait of a Southern city that opens an entirely new view onto the Civil War, slavery, and its aftermath. A momentous national event, the riot is also remarkable for being "one of the best-documented episodes of the American nineteenth century." Yet Ash is the first to mine the sources available to full effect. Bringing postwar Memphis, Tennessee to vivid life, he takes us among newly arrived Yankees, former Rebels, boisterous Irish immigrants, and striving freed people, and shows how Americans of the period worked, prayed, expressed their politics, and imagined the future. And how they died: Ash's harrowing and profoundly moving present-tense narration of the riot has the immediacy of the best journalism. Told with nuance, grace, and a quiet moral passion, A Massacre in Memphis is Civil War-era history like no other.

American Slavery as it is

American Slavery as it is PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Antigua
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description


Birthing a Slave

Birthing a Slave PDF Author: Marie Jenkins Schwartz
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674034929
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
The deprivations and cruelty of slavery have overshadowed our understanding of the institution's most human dimension: birth. We often don't realize that after the United States stopped importing slaves in 1808, births were more important than ever; slavery and the southern way of life could continue only through babies born in bondage. In the antebellum South, slaveholders' interest in slave women was matched by physicians struggling to assert their own professional authority over childbirth, and the two began to work together to increase the number of infants born in the slave quarter. In unprecedented ways, doctors tried to manage the health of enslaved women from puberty through the reproductive years, attempting to foster pregnancy, cure infertility, and resolve gynecological problems, including cancer. Black women, however, proved an unruly force, distrustful of both the slaveholders and their doctors. With their own healing traditions, emphasizing the power of roots and herbs and the critical roles of family and community, enslaved women struggled to take charge of their own health in a system that did not respect their social circumstances, customs, or values. Birthing a Slave depicts the competing approaches to reproductive health that evolved on plantations, as both black women and white men sought to enhance the health of enslaved mothers--in very different ways and for entirely different reasons. Birthing a Slave is the first book to focus exclusively on the health care of enslaved women, and it argues convincingly for the critical role of reproductive medicine in the slave system of antebellum America.

The Negro

The Negro PDF Author: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description


The Slave Trade

The Slave Trade PDF Author: Hugh Thomas
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476737452
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 916

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Book Description
After many years of research, award-winning historian Hugh Thomas portrays, in a balanced account, the complete history of the slave trade. Beginning with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, Hugh Thomas describes and analyzes the rise of one of the largest and most elaborate maritime and commercial ventures in all of history. Between 1492 and 1870, approximately eleven million black slaves were carried from Africa to the Americas to work on plantations, in mines, or as servants in houses. The Slave Trade is alive with villains and heroes and illuminated by eyewitness accounts. Hugh Thomas's achievement is not only to present a compelling history of the time, but to answer controversial questions as who the traders were, the extent of the profits, and why so many African rulers and peoples willingly collaborated.

Hidden History of Memphis

Hidden History of Memphis PDF Author: G. Wayne Dowdy
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 161423194X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
A tour of the Tennessee city filled with famous faces, fascinating trivia, and forgotten lore—plus a former mayor’s previously unpublished private papers. Step inside the fascinating annals of the Bluff City's history and discover the Memphis that only few know. G. Wayne Dowdy, longtime archivist for the Memphis Public Library, examines the history and culture of the Mid-South during its most important decades. Well-known faces like Clarence Saunders, Elvis Presley, and W.C. Handy are joined by some of the more obscure characters from the past, like the Memphis gangster who inspired one of William Faulkner's most famous novels; the local Boy Scout who captured German spies during World War I; the Memphis radio station that pioneered wireless broadcasting; and so many more. Also included are the previously unpublished private papers and correspondence of former mayor E.H. Crump, giving us new insight and a front-row seat to the machine that shaped Tennessee politics in the twentieth century. Includes photos

The Realms of Oblivion

The Realms of Oblivion PDF Author: Andrew C. Ross
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
ISBN: 0826506828
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 509

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Book Description
The Realms of Oblivion explores the complexities involved in reconciling competing versions of history, channeled through Davies Manor, a historic site near Memphis that once centered a wealthy slave-owning family’s sprawling cotton plantation. Interrogating the forces of memorialization that often go unquestioned in the stories we believe about ourselves and our communities, this book simultaneously tells an informative and engrossing bottom-up history—of the Davies family, of the Black families they enslaved and exploited across generations, and of Memphis and Shelby County—while challenging readers to consider just what upholds the survival of that history into the present day. Written in an engaging and critical style, The Realms of Oblivion is grounded in a rich source base, ranging from nineteenth-century legal records to the personal papers of the Davies family to twentieth-century African American oral histories. Author Andrew C. Ross uses these sources to unearth the stark contrast between the version of Davies Manor’s history that was built out of nostalgia, and the version that records have proven to actually be true. As a result, Ross illuminates the ongoing need for a deep and honest reckoning with the history of the South and of the United States, on the part of both individuals and community institutions such as local historic sites and small museums.

How the Word Is Passed

How the Word Is Passed PDF Author: Clint Smith
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316492914
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
This “important and timely” (Drew Faust, Harvard Magazine) #1 New York Times bestseller examines the legacy of slavery in America—and how both history and memory continue to shape our everyday lives. Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves. It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving more than four hundred people. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation-turned-maximum-security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers. A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view—whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted. Informed by scholarship and brought to life by the story of people living today, Smith's debut work of nonfiction is a landmark of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country and how it has come to be. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Winner of the Stowe Prize Winner of 2022 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism A New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021

Terror in the Heart of Freedom

Terror in the Heart of Freedom PDF Author: Hannah Rosen
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807888567
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
The meaning of race in the antebellum southern United States was anchored in the racial exclusivity of slavery (coded as black) and full citizenship (coded as white as well as male). These traditional definitions of race were radically disrupted after emancipation, when citizenship was granted to all persons born in the United States and suffrage was extended to all men. Hannah Rosen persuasively argues that in this critical moment of Reconstruction, contests over the future meaning of race were often fought on the terrain of gender. Sexual violence--specifically, white-on-black rape--emerged as a critical arena in postemancipation struggles over African American citizenship. Analyzing the testimony of rape survivors, Rosen finds that white men often staged elaborate attacks meant to enact prior racial hierarchy. Through their testimony, black women defiantly rejected such hierarchy and claimed their new and equal rights. Rosen explains how heated debates over interracial marriage were also attempts by whites to undermine African American men's demands for suffrage and a voice in public affairs. By connecting histories of rape and discourses of "social equality" with struggles over citizenship, Rosen shows how gendered violence and gendered rhetorics of race together produced a climate of terror for black men and women seeking to exercise their new rights as citizens. Linking political events at the city, state, and regional levels, Rosen places gender and sexual violence at the heart of understanding the reconsolidation of race and racism in the postemancipation United States.