After Slavery: Educator Resources
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Unit One Documents: Giving Meaning to Freedom
- 1. A White Piedmont Farmer Reflects on Black Freedom
- 2. President Johnson offers Amnesty to Former Confederates
- 3. President Andrew Johnson Appoints William W. Holden Provisional Governor of North Carolina
- 4. A Northern Military Officer Advises Former Slaves on Freedom
- 5. A Planter's Vision of Freedom and Free Labor
- 6. Two North Carolina Freedwomen Testify Against Their Former Owner
- 7. A Committee of Freedmen on Edisto Island Reveal their Expectations
- 8. Former Slaves Describe Conditions on a Georgia Plantation
- 9. A Charleston Freedwoman Opens A Bank Account
Unit Two Documents: Freed Slaves Mobilize
- 1. A Wartime Encounter Between Two South Carolina Slaves
- 2. Rev. Henry McNeal Turner Reports on Organizing among Freedpeople in Georgia
- 3. An Unnamed Black Organizer Reports on the Reception for Republican Speakers among Freedpeople in South Carolina
- 4. A Destitute Local Union League President Seeks Aid from the Governor of North Carolina
- 5. John T. Costin Reports on the Difficulties of Organizing
- 6. A Union League Organizer Seeks permission to Bargain on the Behalf of Women and Children
- 7. A Federal Officer Reports that Freedpeople are Organizing Military Companies on the South Carolina Sea Islands
- 8. White Conservatives Complain that the Union Leagues are Organizing Labor Strikes South of Charleston
- 9. A Charleston Newspaper on the 1868 Municipal Elections
Unit Three Documents: Land and Labor
- 1. Rufus Saxton Argues That Land Should Be Set Aside for Freedpeople
- 2. Freedmen's Bureau Report on the Treatment of Plantation Laborers in Gates County, North Carolina
- 3. A Freedpeople's Colony on Roanoke Island, North Carolina
- 4. Rufus Saxton's Letter to Northern Planter Edward S. Philbrick
- 5. General William T. Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15
- 6. Freedpeople React to the Restoration of Land to their Former Masters
- 7. Planter-Attorney William Whaley Wants to Exclude Blacks from the Land Board
- 8. South Carolina's 'Black Code'
- 9. A Desperate North Carolina Republican Appeals to Governor Holden for Land
- 10. White Confederate Veterans Appeal to South Carolina's Land Commission
- 11. A Freedpeople's 'Co-operative' in Colleton County, South Carolina
Unit Four Documents: Freedom, Black Soldiers, and the Union Military
- 1. General Rufus Saxton's Report on an Early Engagement by Black Troops
- 2. New Bern's Black Community Negotiates their Terms for Military Service
- 3. North Carolina's 'African Brigade' Raids the State's Interior
- 4. General Saxton Protests against the Forced Enlistment of Freed Slaves
- 5. Clashes between White and Black Union Troops in Charleston
- 6. Georgetown (S. C.) Whites Petition for the Removal of Black Troops
- 7. Contrasting Attitudes toward Union Troops in the South Carolina Upcountry
- 8. Black Troops, White Hostility, and Radicalization in the Upcountry
- 9. Petition from Union County Republicans against Removal of Troops
Unit Five Documents: Conservatives Respond to Emancipation
- 1. A White Texas Farmer Shoots a Freedman
- 2. "The War is Not Over"
- 3. D. F. Caldwell's Ideas for Economic Development in North Carolina
- 4. 1865 North Carolina Constitutional Convention Responds to Freedpeople
- 5. Wade Hampton's Advice to Confederate Veterans
- 6. Judge A. P. Aldrich Removed from the Bench
- 7. Wade Hampton's Advice to Freedpeople
- 8. A Conservative Realizes the Mistakes of Earlier Policies
- 9. Governor Jonathan Worth Argues Against 1867 Call for a Constitutional Convention
- 10. Plato Durham Argues Against the Reconstruction Acts in the 1868 Constitutional Convention
- 11. Dr. Pride Jones Agrees to Help Stop the Ku Klux Klan
Unit Six Documents: Pursuing Citizenship, Justice, and Equality
- 1. N.C. Planter Denying Schoolchildren Use of the Public Roads
- 2. Whites Reclaim an Edisto Church from Freedpeople
- 3. Report on Conditions in a North Carolina Jail
- 4. Charleston Protests against Streetcar Segregation
- 5. Harassment of Freedpeople in the Vicinity of Wilmington
- 6. Columbia Democrats Debate Black Suffrage
- 7. Sawmill Operator Tries to Prevent Employees from Voting the Radical Ticket
- 8. The Difficulty of Obtaining Justice from Local Authorities
- 9. North Carolina Conservatives Attempt to Frame a Union League Official
- 10. Freedpeople Petition for the Removal of a Trial Justice
- 11. Black Workers Petition Governor Scott against Extortion
Unit Seven Documents: Gender and the Politics of Freedom
- 1. The Social and Domestic Price of Free Labor
- 2. A Black Woman Imagines a Differently Gendered Working Class
- 3. A Virginia Freedwoman Critiques the Gendered Nature of Freedom and Free Labor
- 4. A Freedwoman's Civil and Domestic Expectations
- 5. A Husband Shoulders a New, Free-Labor Duty
- 6. The Problems of Family-based Labor
- 7. Soldiering Men
- 8. Clashing Ideas about Gender and Political Rights
- 9. Playing Politics with Gender
- 10. A Black Minister Proposes a Collective Solution to Freedom's Gendered Problems
- 11. A Southern White Woman Reflects on New Circumstances, a New Identity
Unit Eight Documents: Planters, Poor Whites and White Supremacy
- 1. Sidney Andrews on Attitudes among North Carolina's Poor Whites
- 2. J. B. Sitton's Petition for a Presidential Pardon
- 3. North Carolina Constitutional Convention Protects Homesteads
- 4. The Ku Klux Klan Attacks a White Man Assisting Blacks
- 5. Matthew C. Butler - Planters React to Being Ignored by Government
- 6. Belton O'Neall Townsend on 1876 Strategy
- 7. A Description of Wade Hampton's Campaign
- 8. T. D. Gwyn Argues Against the Fence Law
- 9. South Carolina Greenbacker Explains His Opposition to Democrats
Unit Nine Documents: Coercion, Paramilitary Terror, and Resistance
- 1. Ex-Confederate Soldiers Terrorizing Union Men and Freedpeople in North Carolina
- 2. Early Outrages against Freedpeople in South Carolina
- 3. Hostility to Freedpeople and Federal Authorities in the South Carolina Upcountry
- 4. Former Freedmen's Bureau Official Rufus B. Saxton on Freedpeople's Desire to Acquire Arms
- 5. North Carolina Freedmen Seek Protection from Governor Holden
- 6. Governor Scott is Warned of Impending Clashes in the South Carolina Upcountry
- 7. A. M. E. Pastor S. B. Williams Reports Atrocities to Governor Holden
- 8. Albion W. Tourgée Reports on KKK Violence in North Carolina
- 9. Freedpeople's Testimony on the Effects of Klan Violence
- 10. A Spartanburg Republican Offers President Grant Advice on How to Suppress Paramilitary Violence
- 11. Martin W. Gary's Plan for the Conservative Campaign of 1876
Unit Ten Documents: Freedpeople and the Republican Party
- 1. Black Charleston Reacts to News of the Confederate Surrender
- 2. An Appeal for Resources to Organize the South
- 3. A North Carolina Republican Seeks to Clear his Name
- 4. White Moderates Maneuver to Prevent Radical Domination of the Republican Party
- 5. A South Carolina Agitator Falls Foul of Military Authorities
- 6. Blacks Organize against Discrimination in the Republican Party
- 7. North Carolina Conservatives Refuse to Seat a Black Republican Appointee
- 8. Republicans in Tallyho, North Carolina, Protest against Democratic Fraud
- 9. Illiteracy, Competence and the Difficulty of Building a Bi-Racial Party
- 10. Pressures on Freedmen to Vote the Conservative Ticket
- 11. Election Day Street Confrontations in Charleston
- 12. A White Schoolteacher on the 1876 Elections in the South Carolina Lowcountry
- 13. Freedpeople Confront a Black Politician for Having 'Sold Out his Race'
South Carolina Curriculum Standards
Recommended Reading
Digital Resources
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Exhibit HomeBlack Political Mobilization and Demobilization
Books:
Cell, John W. The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: Origins of White Supremacy in South Africa and the American South. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Gaines, Kevin K. Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century.Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
Gordon, Fon Louise. Caste and Class: the Black Experience in Arkansas, 1880-1920.Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2007.
Haley, John H. Charles N. Hunter and Race Relations in North Carolina. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 1987.
Harlan, Louis B. Booker T. Washington (2 vols.). New York, New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1975 and 1986.
Litwack, Leon. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. New York, New York: Vintage, 1999.
Logan, Rayford W. The Betrayal of the Negro: from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Da Capo Press, 1997.
McMillen, Neil. Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1990.
Meier, August. Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1964.
Smith, John David. Black Judas: a Story of Racial Self-Hatred in America. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Verney, Kevern. The Art of the Possible: Booker T. Washington and Black Leadership in the United States, 1881-1925. New York, New York: Routledge, 2001.
Wharton, Vernon Lane. The Negro in Mississippi, 1865-1890. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1984.
White, Deborah Gray. Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1884-1994. New York, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999.
Articles, Reviews, Collections:
Calista, Donald J. "Booker T. Washington: Another Look," Journal of Negro History 49:4 (Oct. 1964): 240-255.
Cox, Oliver C. "Leadership among Negroes in the United States," in Alvin W. Goulder, ed. Studies in Leadership: Leadership and Democratic Action. Kent, United Kingdom: Russell & Russell Publishers, 1965. 228-271.
_____, "The Leadership of Booker T. Washington," Social Forces 30 (1951): 91-97.
Kelly, Brian. "Black Elites Confront the 'Rabid Faction': Booker T. Washington, Industrial Accommodation, and the Labor Question in the Jim Crow South," in Eric Arnesen, ed. The Black Worker: Race, Labor, and Civil Rights since Emancipation. Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
_____. "Review of Steven Hahn's A Nation under Our Feet,' Labor: Studies in the Working-Class History of the Americas3 (Fall 2004): 145-47.
Lichtenstein, Alex. "Roots of Black Nationalism?," American Quarterly 57:1 (2005) 261-269.
Meier, August. "Negro Class Structure and Ideology in the Age of Booker T. Washington," Phylon 23 (Fall 1962): 258-66.
Reed, Adolph Jr. "Romancing Jim Crow," in Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene, 14-24. New York, New York: New Press, 2001.
Stein, Judith. "'Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others': the Political Economy of Racism in the United States," Science and Society 38:4 (Winter 1974-5): 422-53.
Walker, Clarence E. Deromanticizing Black History: Critical Essays and Reappraisals. Knoxville, Tennessee: University of Tennessee Press, 1991.
Primary Source Materials and Contemporary Accounts
Fortune, Timothy Thomas. Black and White: Land, Labor and Politics in the South. New York, New York: Washington Square Press, 2007.