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Book Cover
E-book
Author Sitton, Thad, 1941-

Title Freedom colonies : independent Black Texans in the time of Jim Crow / by Thad Sitton and James H. Conrad ; with research assistance and photographs by Richard Orton
Edition 1st ed
Published Austin : University of Texas Press, 2005

Copies

Description 1 online resource (248 pages) : illustrations
Series Jack and Doris Smothers series in Texas history, life, and culture ; no. 15
Jack and Doris Smothers series in Texas history, life, and culture ; no. 15.
Contents A terrible freedom -- Making do, getting by -- Saturday nights and Sunday mornings -- School days -- Working for the man -- Decline and remembrance
Summary In the decades following the Civil War, nearly a quarter of African Americans achieved a remarkable victory-they got their own land. While other ex-slaves and many poor whites became trapped in the exploitative sharecropping system, these independence-seeking individuals settled on pockets of unclaimed land that had been deemed too poor for farming and turned them into successful family farms. In these self-sufficient rural communities, often known as "freedom colonies," African Americans created a refuge from the discrimination and violence that routinely limited the opportunities of blacks in the Jim Crow South. Freedom Colonies is the first book to tell the story of these independent African American settlements. Thad Sitton and James Conrad focus on communities in Texas, where blacks achieved a higher percentage of land ownership than in any other state of the Deep South. The authors draw on a vast reservoir of ex-slave narratives, oral histories, written memoirs, and public records to describe how the freedom colonies formed and to recreate the lifeways of African Americans who made their living by farming or in skilled trades such as milling and blacksmithing. They also uncover the forces that led to the decline of the communities from the 1930s onward, including economic hard times and the greed of whites who found legal and illegal means of taking black-owned land. And they visit some of the remaining communities to discover how their independent way of life endures into the twenty-first century
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-237) and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
English
Print version record
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Subject Freed persons -- Texas -- History
African American farmers -- Texas -- History
African Americans -- Land tenure -- Texas -- History
African Americans -- Texas -- Economic conditions
Agricultural colonies -- Texas -- History
Land settlement -- Texas -- History
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Real Estate -- General.
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies
African American farmers
African Americans -- Economic conditions
African Americans -- Land tenure
Agricultural colonies
Economic history
Freed persons
Land settlement
Race relations
Ethnische Beziehungen
Freigelassener
Landnahme
Schwarze
Wirtschaftliche Lage
Soziale Situation
SUBJECT Texas -- History -- 1846-1950. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85134269
Texas -- Race relations
Texas -- Economic conditions
Subject Texas
Texas
Schwärze
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
Author Conrad, James H
LC no. 2004009477
ISBN 0292797125
9780292797123