A full realization of the barbarities of slavery -- A time of scattering -- Overrun with free Negroes: the politics of wartime emancipation and -- Migration in the upper Midwest -- To go and help be free: migration and the black military experience -- The building up of our race: creating a life in freedom -- Freedom was all they had: civil rights and northern reconstruction -- Agonizing groans of mothers and slave-scarred veterans: history -- Commemoration, and memoir in the aftermath of slavery
Summary
Most studies of emancipation's consequences have focused on the South. This book follows the lives and experiences of thousands of men and women who liberated themselves from slavery; made their way to overwhelmingly white communities in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin; and worked to live in dignity as free women and men, and as citizens. It explores the hotly contested politics of black enfranchisement as well as collisions over segregation, civil rights, and the more informal politics of race - including how slavery and emancipation would be remembered and commemorated
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 339-373) and index
Notes
Online resource (HeinOnline, viewed July 26, 2021)