Spanning the eight decades between the American Revolution and the Civil War, Bethel focuses on the lives of African Americans living in the nominally free northern and western states. Examining race and the construction of a politicized racial identity, this book explores how a group of fundamentally marginalized people crafted a uniquely New World ethnic identity which informed popular African American historical consciousness. The vision of freedom and historical consciousness this population crafted shaped post-1865 African American participation in Reconstruction, formed the spiritual and ideological foundation for the modern Pan-African movement and provided the historical legacy for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

A portrait of a dynamic African American community in the rural South Promiseland chronicles the intergenerational story of fifty African American families living in the rural community of Promised Land, South Carolina. From the newly emancipated slaves who established the settlement in 1870 to the third- and fourth-generation descendants who remain a part of the community, Elizabeth Rauh Bethel describes the personal strength, cooperative spirit, family integrity, and gender equality that have united residents in the face of unyielding racial abuse.