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The laws which have made white men great, have degraded
us, because we were colored, and because we were reduced
to chattel slavery. But now that we are freeman, now that
we have been lifted up by the providence of God to
manhood, we have resolved to come forward and . . . speak
and act for ourselves. . . Proceedings of the Colored
People’s Convention of the State of South Carolina,
1865 The end of America’s Civil War led to the emancipation of the South’s black slaves—but also to the long and difficult period of Reconstruction. Newly freed men and women confronted numerous political, social, and economic challenges and were forced to overcome the deeply entrenched prejudices of the white southerners and the institutions of a predominantly white society. Families that had been separated during the war struggled to find lost loved ones. Black men and women organized and worked together for the right to go to school, to own property, and to vote. Black leaders emerged as the ex-slaves began slowly but steadily to reclaim mastery of their own lives after two hundred years of captivity.
The Facts of the Reconstruction period are well known, but never before have the people who lived through it told the story in their own words. John David Smith has uncovered a vast array of original documents that record the feelings, ideas, frustrations, and aspirations of the newly freed black people of the South. Smith’s narrative, and the period drawings and photographs that accompany it, bring to life the voices of the black men and women of Reconstruction—voices that resound even today.
John David Smith is Graduate Alumni Distinguished Professor of History at North Carolina State University and has written or edited six books and published over 50 scholarly articles on slavery, the Civil War, and race relations in the U.S.
1997. 192 pp. 6 X 9. ISBN 0-8130-1576-6
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"A vast array of original documents that record the feelings, ideas, frustrations and aspirations of the new freedmen. . . . [C]an serve as a supplement to the usual narratives and interpretations of Reconstruction."--Civil War Courier
"Smith has done something useful to remedy the study of 'the dark and bloody ground' at any level, collected original documents from the period and organized them under ten headings of social history. He edits without getting in the way of the voices, and uncovers the impassioned voices calling for land, for schools, for roads, for autonomous families, for the vote, for offices, for the things vouchsafed the waves of newly arriving immigrants in the same day. . . . This book should be bought and used in classes by historians, sociologists, and political scientists." -- International Social Science Review
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