From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom

From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom PDF Author: Randy Finley
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 9781610751667
Category : Arkansas
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
As black Arkansans emerged from chattel slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, they were supported in their efforts to redefine their lives by the work of the Freedmen's Bureau, a federal agency monitoring the South to ensure that at least a modicum of freedom was granted to the new citizens. In this account of the gains made by Arkansas freedmen during this period, Randy Finley takes a fresh approach by telling the story from the perspective of the blacks and whites who directly benefited from the Bureau, rather than from the perspective of the government bureaucrats, as found in reports from other states. Freedpersons tested their freedom in many ways - by assuming new names, searching for lost family members, moving to new residences, working to provide for their families, learning to read and write, forming and attending their own churches, creating thier own histories and myths, struggling to obtain land, and establishing different, nuances in race, gender, and class. As they built a bridge from slavery into freedom in these early years, African Americans learned for themselves that genuine psychological freedom is not granted by others.

From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom

From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom PDF Author: Randy Finley
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 9781610751667
Category : Arkansas
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
As black Arkansans emerged from chattel slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, they were supported in their efforts to redefine their lives by the work of the Freedmen's Bureau, a federal agency monitoring the South to ensure that at least a modicum of freedom was granted to the new citizens. In this account of the gains made by Arkansas freedmen during this period, Randy Finley takes a fresh approach by telling the story from the perspective of the blacks and whites who directly benefited from the Bureau, rather than from the perspective of the government bureaucrats, as found in reports from other states. Freedpersons tested their freedom in many ways - by assuming new names, searching for lost family members, moving to new residences, working to provide for their families, learning to read and write, forming and attending their own churches, creating thier own histories and myths, struggling to obtain land, and establishing different, nuances in race, gender, and class. As they built a bridge from slavery into freedom in these early years, African Americans learned for themselves that genuine psychological freedom is not granted by others.

From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom

From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom PDF Author: Randy Finley
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 9781557288905
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Elites have shaped southern life and communities, argues the distinguished historian Willard Gatewood. These essays--written by Gatewood's colleagues and former students in his honor--explore the influence of particular elites in the South from the American Revolution to the Little Rock integration crisis. They discuss not only the power of elites to shape the experiences of the ordinary people, but the tensions and negotiations between elites in a particular locale, whether those elites were white or black, urban or rural, or male or female. Subjects include the particular kinds of power available to black elites in Savannah, Georgia, during the American Revolution; the transformation of a southern secessionist into an anti-slavery activist during the Civil War; a Tennessee "aristocrat of color" active in politics from Reconstruction to World War II; middle-class Southern women, both black and white, in the New Deal and the Little Rock integration crisis; and the different brands of paternalism in Arkansas plantations during the Jacksonian and Jim Crow eras and in the postwar Georgia carpet industry. Willard B. Gatewood's published works span political, intellectual, social, cultural, economic, military, ethnic, and even environmental history. His focus on the impact of the elite in history began with his first published monograph about a North Carolina educator, Eugene Clyde Brooks, and culminated in Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880--1920, first published by Indiana University Press in 1991 and reprinted by the University of Arkansas Press in 2000.

Under the Flags of Freedom

Under the Flags of Freedom PDF Author: Peter Blanchard
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 9780822973423
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
During the wars for independence in Spanish South America (1808-1826), thousands of slaves enlisted under the promise of personal freedom and, in some cases, freedom for other family members. Blacks were recruited by opposing sides in these conflicts and their loyalties rested with whomever they believed would emerge victorious. The prospect of freedom was worth risking one's life for, and wars against Spain presented unprecedented opportunities to attain it.Much hedging over the slavery issue continued, however, even after the patriots came to power. The prospect of abolition threatened existing political, economic, and social structures, and the new leaders would not encroach upon what were still considered the property rights of powerful slave owners. The patriots attacked the institution of slavery in their rhetoric, yet maintained the status quo in the new nations. It was not until a generation later that slavery would be declared illegal in all of Spain's former mainland colonies.Through extensive archival research, Blanchard assembles an accessible, comprehensive, and broadly based study to investigate this issue from the perspectives of Royalists, patriots, and slaves. He examines the wartime political, ideological, and social dynamics that led to slave recruitment, and the subsequent repercussions in the immediate postindependence era. Under the Flags of Freedom sheds new light on the vital contribution of slaves to the wars for Latin American independence, which, up until now, has been largely ignored in the histories and collective memories of these nations.

A Slave No More

A Slave No More PDF Author: David W. Blight
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156034517
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Shares the stories of Wallace Turnage and John Washington, former slaves who, in the midst of chaos during the Civil War, escaped to the North and lived to tell about their experiences.

FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM.

FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM. PDF Author: JOHN HOPE. FRANKLIN
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 622

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Book Description


The Chaneysville Incident

The Chaneysville Incident PDF Author: David Bradley
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480438529
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 655

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Book Description
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner: “Rivals Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon as the best novel about the black experience in America since Ellison’s Invisible Man” (The Christian Science Monitor). Brilliant but troubled historian John Washington has left Philadelphia, where he is employed by a major university, to return to his hometown just north of the Mason–Dixon Line. He is there to care for Old Jack, one of the men who helped raise him when he was growing up on the Hill, an old black neighborhood in the little Pennsylvania town—but he also wants to learn more about the death of his father. What John discovers is that his father, Moses Washington, left behind extensive notes on a mystery he was researching: why thirteen escaped slaves reached freedom in Chaneysville only to die there, for reasons forgotten or never known at all. Based on meticulous historical research, The Chaneysville Incident explores the power of our pasts, and paints a vivid portrait of realities such as the Underground Railroad’s activity in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, and the phenomenon of enslaved people committing suicide to escape their fate. This extraordinary novel, a finalist for the National Book Award, was described by the Los Angeles Times as “perhaps the most significant work by a new black male author since James Baldwin dazzled in the early ’60s with his fine fury,” and placed David Bradley in the front ranks of contemporary American authors.

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery PDF Author: Eric Foner
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393080827
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
“A masterwork [by] the preeminent historian of the Civil War era.”—Boston Globe Selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, this landmark work gives us a definitive account of Lincoln's lifelong engagement with the nation's critical issue: American slavery. A master historian, Eric Foner draws Lincoln and the broader history of the period into perfect balance. We see Lincoln, a pragmatic politician grounded in principle, deftly navigating the dynamic politics of antislavery, secession, and civil war. Lincoln's greatness emerges from his capacity for moral and political growth.

Freedom: Volume 1, Series 1: The Destruction of Slavery

Freedom: Volume 1, Series 1: The Destruction of Slavery PDF Author: Ira Berlin
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521229791
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 906

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Book Description
Contains primary source material.

The Long Walk to Freedom

The Long Walk to Freedom PDF Author: Devon W. Carbado
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807069132
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
In this groundbreaking compilation of first-person accounts of the runaway slave phenomenon, editors Devon Carbado and Donald Weise have recovered twelve narratives spanning eight decades—more than half of which have been long out of print. Told in the voices of the runaway slaves themselves, these narratives reveal the extraordinary and often innovative ways that these men and women sought freedom and demanded citizenship.

The Price of Freedom

The Price of Freedom PDF Author: T. Stephen Whitman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The stereotypical image of manumission involves a benign plantation owner freeing his slaves on his deathbed. But as Stephen Whitman demonstrates, the truth was far more complex, especially in the border states where manumission was much more common. Paradoxically, in the decades following the Revolution, slavery in Baltimore gained strength even as slaves were being freed in record numbers. The vigorous growth of the city required the exploitation of rural slaves with craft skills. To prevent them from escaping and to spur higher production, owners entered into arrangements with their slaves, promising eventual freedom in return for many years of hard work. This practice of term slavery created a labor force affordable to small craftsmen and manufacturers and directly contributed to the urban development of the country's third largest city. A significant book that illuminates an important subject with unprecedented depth. -- Eugene D. Genovese The Price of Freedom reveals how blacks played a critical role in freeing themselves from slavery, both by striking bargains with their owners and by assisting those still enslaved after their own manumission. Yet it was an imperfect victory. Freed blacks were virtually excluded from craft apprenticeships, and European immigrants supplanted them as a trained labor force in the 1830s. When former slaves began to be perceived as an economic threat, the racism implicit in slavery became explicit.