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Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North
Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a
white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the truth about her
parentage. She grew up isolated and unsure of who she was and where
she belonged—feelings that no emancipation proclamation could
assuage. Her life story—candidly recounted in an oral history for
the Federal Writers’ Project—captures the intimate nature of
freedom. Using Joyner’s interview and the interviews of other
formerly enslaved people, historian Carole Emberton uncovers the
deeply personal, emotional journeys of freedom’s charter
generation—the people born into slavery who walked into a new
world of freedom during the Civil War. From the seemingly mundane
to the most vital, emancipation opened up a myriad of new
possibilities: what to wear and where to live, what jobs to take
and who to love. Although Joyner was educated at a Freedmen’s
Bureau school and married a man she loved, slavery cast a long
shadow. Uncertainty about her parentage haunted her life, and as
Jim Crow took hold throughout the South, segregation,
disfranchisement and racial violence threatened the loving home she
made for her family. But through it all, she found beauty in the
world and added to it where she could. Weaving together
illuminating voices from the charter generation, To Walk About in
Freedom gives us a kaleidoscopic look at the lived experiences of
emancipation and challenges us to think anew about the consequences
of failing to reckon with the afterlife of slavery.
Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858. Her
life story, which she recounted in an oral history decades later,
captures the complexity of emancipation. Based on interviews that
Joyner and formerly enslaved people had with the Depression-era
Federal Writers Project, historian Carole Emberton draws a portrait
of the steps they took in order to feel free, something no legal
mandate could instill. Joyner's life exemplifies the deeply
personal, highly emotional nature of freedom and the decisions
people made, from the seemingly mundane to the formidable: what to
wear, where to live, what work to do and who to love. Joyner's
story reveals the many paths forged by freedmen and freedwomen to
find joy and belonging during Reconstruction, despite the long
shadow slavery cast on their lives.
Academic studies of the Civil War and historical memory abound,
ensuring a deeper understanding of how the war's meaning has
shifted over time and the implications of those changes for
concepts of race, citizenship, and nationhood. The Reconstruction
era, by contrast, has yet to receive similar attention from
scholars. Remembering Reconstruction ably fills this void,
assembling a prestigious lineup of Reconstruction historians to
examine the competing social and historical memories of this
pivotal and violent period in American history. Many consider the
period from 1863 (beginning with slave emancipation) to 1877 (when
the last federal troops were withdrawn from South Carolina and
Louisiana) an ""unfinished revolution"" for civil rights,
racial-identity formation, and social reform. Despite the
cataclysmic aftermath of the war, the memory of Reconstruction in
American consciousness and its impact on the country's fraught
history of identity, race, and reparation has been largely
neglected. The essays in Remembering Reconstruction advance and
broaden our perceptions of the complex revisions in the nation's
collective memory. Notably, the authors uncover the impetus behind
the creation of black counter-memories of Reconstruction and the
narrative of the ""tragic era"" that dominated white memory of the
period. Furthermore, by questioning how Americans have remembered
Reconstruction and how those memories have shaped the nation's
social and political history throughout the twentieth century, this
volume places memory at the heart of historical inquiry.
In the months after the end of the Civil War, there was one word on
everyone's lips: redemption. From the fiery language of Radical
Republicans calling for a reconstruction of the former Confederacy
to the petitions of those individuals who had worked the land as
slaves to the white supremacists who would bring an end to
Reconstruction in the late 1870s, this crucial concept informed the
ways in which many people - both black and white, northerner and
southerner - imagined the transformation of the American South.
Beyond Redemption explores how the violence of a protracted civil
war shaped the meaning of freedom and citizenship in the new South.
Here, Carole Emberton traces the competing meanings that redemption
held for Americans as they tried to come to terms with the war and
the changing social landscape. While some imagined redemption from
the brutality of slavery and war, others - like the infamous Ku
Klux Klan - sought political and racial redemption for their losses
through violence. Beyond Redemption merges studies of race and
American manhood with an analysis of post-Civil War American
politics to offer unconventional and challenging insight into the
violence of Reconstruction.
In the months after the end of the Civil War, there was one word on
everyone's lips: redemption. From the fiery language of Radical
Republicans calling for a reconstruction of the former Confederacy
to the petitions of those individuals who had worked the land as
slaves to the white supremacists who would bring an end to
Reconstruction in the late 1870s, this crucial concept informed the
ways in which many people--both black and white, northerner and
southerner--imagined the transformation of the American
South.
"Beyond Redemption" explores how the violence of a protracted civil
war shaped the meaning of freedom and citizenship in the new South.
Here, Carole Emberton traces the competing meanings that redemption
held for Americans as they tried to come to terms with the war and
the changing social landscape. While some imagined redemption from
the brutality of slavery and war, others--like the infamous Ku Klux
Klan--sought political and racial redemption for their losses
through violence. "Beyond Redemption" merges studies of race and
American manhood with an analysis of post-Civil War American
politics to offer unconventional and challenging insight into the
violence of Reconstruction.
On May 1, 1866, a minor exchange between white Memphis city police
and a group of black Union soldiers quickly escalated into murder
and mayhem. Changes wrought by the Civil War and African American
emancipation sent long-standing racial, economic, cultural, class,
and gender tensions rocketing to new heights. For three days, a mob
of white men roamed through South Memphis, leaving a trail of
blood, rubble, and terror in their wake. By May 3, at least
forty-six African American men, women, and children and two white
men lay dead. An unknown number of black people had been driven out
of the city. Every African American church and schoolhouse lay in
ruins, homes and businesses burglarized and burned, and at least
five women had been raped. As a federal military commander noted in
the days following, "what [was] called the 'riot'" was "in reality
[a] massacre" of extended proportions. It was also a massacre whose
effects spread far beyond Memphis, Tennessee. As the essays in this
collection reveal, the massacre at Memphis changed the trajectory
of the post-Civil War nation. Led by recently freed slaves who
refused to be cowed and federal officials who took their concerns
seriously, the national response to the horror that ripped through
the city in May 1866 helped to shape the nation we know today.
Remembering the Memphis Massacre brings this pivotal moment and its
players, long hidden from all but specialists in the field, to a
public that continues to feel the effects of those three days and
the history that made them possible.
On May 1, 1866, a minor exchange between white Memphis city police
and a group of black Union soldiers quickly escalated into murder
and mayhem. Changes wrought by the Civil War and African American
emancipation sent long-standing racial, economic, cultural, class,
and gender tensions rocketing to new heights. For three days, a mob
of white men roamed through South Memphis, leaving a trail of
blood, rubble, and terror in their wake. By May 3, at least
forty-six African American men, women, and children and two white
men lay dead. An unknown number of black people had been driven out
of the city. Every African American church and schoolhouse lay in
ruins, homes and businesses burglarized and burned, and at least
five women had been raped. As a federal military commander noted in
the days following, "what [was] called the 'riot'" was "in reality
[a] massacre" of extended proportions. It was also a massacre whose
effects spread far beyond Memphis, Tennessee. As the essays in this
collection reveal, the massacre at Memphis changed the trajectory
of the post-Civil War nation. Led by recently freed slaves who
refused to be cowed and federal officials who took their concerns
seriously, the national response to the horror that ripped through
the city in May 1866 helped to shape the nation we know today.
Remembering the Memphis Massacre brings this pivotal moment and its
players, long hidden from all but specialists in the field, to a
public that continues to feel the effects of those three days and
the history that made them possible.
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