Edited by Tatiana Seijas (NHC Fellow, 2016–17), Erica L. Ball, and Terri L. Snyder As If She Were Free brings together the biographies of twenty-four women of African descent to reveal how enslaved and recently freed women sought, imagined, and found freedom from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries in the Americas. Our biographical approach … Continued
By Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie (NHC Fellow, 2003–04) Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie’s Freedom’s Seekers offers a bold and innovative intervention into the study of emancipation as a transnational phe-nomenon and serves as an important contribution to our understanding of the remaking of the nineteenth-century Atlantic Americas. Drawing on decades of research into slave and emancipation societies, Kerr-Ritchie is attentive … Continued
The institution of slavery was central to the economy and politics of the United States from the colonial era to the Civil War, and its demise was connected to almost every significant development of the country’s history. That demise came in two broad waves of reform—one gradual, largely peaceful, in areas with relatively few slaves; … Continued
The story of African American religion between Emancipation and the northern migration that began just prior to World War I is a tale of regionally distinctive communities that found several areas of common cause, not the least of which were the advent of Jim Crow and lynching as ominous new forms of racism. But an … Continued
Did Abraham Lincoln violate the Constitution in his actions as commander-in-chief? When and why did Lincoln change his mind about making the Civil War about emancipation?
Historian Ed Ayers discusses how Richmond, Virginia’s 2015 sesquicentennial celebration drew upon the past to re-imagine the future. He emphasizes the ways in which the event’s planners sought to honor the diversity of perspectives and lived experiences in the former capital of the Confederacy.
“To be honest, I’m glad my family didn’t go to America. We ended slavery 30 years earlier. What were YOU guys thinking?” Our Bajan tour guide of St. Nicholas Abbey told us this as we walked through the sugarcane plantation house. She chuckled, and we along with her, albeit awkwardly. She was right, too; the … Continued
The title of my moment comes from a quote on page 55 of Watson and Potter’s book, Low-Cost Housing in Barbados: Evolution or Social Revolution? My humanities moment occurred in the Bajan archives while being able to view the original document that freed the enslaved people of the island. I simply sat down in the … Continued