The end of slavery in the United States inspired conflicting
visions of the future for all Americans in the nineteenth century,
black and white, slave and free. The black child became a figure
upon which people projected their hopes and fears about slavery’s
abolition. As a member of the first generation of African Americans
raised in freedom, the black child—freedom’s child—offered up
the possibility that blacks might soon enjoy the same privileges as
whites: landownership, equality, autonomy. Yet for most white
southerners, this vision was unwelcome, even frightening. Many
northerners, too, expressed doubts about the consequences of
abolition for the nation and its identity as a white republic. From
the 1850s and the Civil War to emancipation and the official end of
Reconstruction in 1877, Raising Freedom’s Child examines slave
emancipation and opposition to it as a far-reaching, national event
with profound social, political, and cultural consequences. Mary
Niall Mitchell analyzes multiple views of the black child—in
letters, photographs, newspapers, novels, and court cases—to
demonstrate how Americans contested and defended slavery and its
abolition. With each chapter, Mitchell narrates an episode in the
lives of freedom’s children, from debates over their education
and labor to the future of racial classification and American
citizenship.Raising Freedom’s Child illustrates how intensely the
image of the black child captured the imaginations of many
Americans during the upheavals of the Civil War era. Through public
struggles over the black child, Mitchell argues, Americans by turns
challenged and reinforced the racial inequality fostered under
slavery in the United States. Only with the triumph of segregation
in public schools in 1877 did the black child lose her central role
in the national debate over civil rights, a role she would not play
again until the 1950s.
General
Imprint: |
New York University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
American History and Culture |
Release date: |
April 2008 |
First published: |
April 2008 |
Authors: |
Mary Niall Mitchell
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 26mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover
|
Pages: |
336 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8147-5719-2 |
Categories: |
Books >
Humanities >
History >
General
Books >
History >
General
|
LSN: |
0-8147-5719-7 |
Barcode: |
9780814757192 |
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