National Humanities Center EMANCIPATION A Live, Online Professional Development Seminar

1. National Humanities Center EMANCIPATION A Live, Online Professional Development Seminar Framing Questions What did freedom actually mean to the nearly 4 million people who were emancipated by the Civil War?   How did they experience it and express it?   How did they attempt to pursue and secure it? What did they discover to be its limitations? Was emancipation a failure, a partial success, or a complete success?  

2. Reginald F. Hildebrand Associate Professor of History African and Afro-American Studies University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Emancipation in the American South The Times Were Strange and Stirring: Methodist Preachers and the Crisis of Emancipation (1995) Currently working on a study of the life and times of Richard Harvey Cain (1825-87), a black religious and political leader in South Carolina.

3. THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, 1863 "That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free . . .

4. WPA SLAVE NARRATIVES I think -- now I don’t know, but I think I was bout six or seven when they surrendered. . . . When we went down to the gate to see the soldiers, I heard Miss Judy say (she was old mistress’ sister), I heard her say, “Well, you let em beat you” and started cryin’. I cried too and mama said, “What you cryin’ for?” I said, “Miss Judy’s cryin’.” Mama said, “You fool, you is free!” I didn’t know what freedom was, but I know the soldiers did a lot of devilment. Had guards but they just run over them guards.         I think Abraham Lincoln wanted to give the people some land after they was free, but they didn’t give em nothin’ -- just turned em loose.         Course we ought to be free -- you know privilege is worth everything. Susa Lagrone, 79, emancipated in Mississippi I ’lieve they ought to have gived us somethin’ when we was freed, but they turned us out to graze or starve. Most of the white people turned the Negroes slam loose. We stayed a year with missis and then she married and her husband had his own workers and told us to git out. We worked for twenty and thirty cents a day then, and I fin’ly got a place with Dr. L. J. Conroe. But after the war the Negro had a hard struggle, ’cause he was turned loose jus’ like he came into the world and no education or ’sperience. Tom Holland, 97, emancipated in Texas

5. Edmonia Lewis, Forever Free, 1867 Marble, 411/4 x 11 x 17 in.

6. A JUBILEE OF FREEDOM FREED SLAVES MARCH IN CHARLESTON, SC, MARCH, 1865 The most original feature of the procession was a large cart, drawn by two dilapidated horses with the worst harness that could be got to hold out, which followed the trades. On this cart there was an auctioneer’s block, and a black man, with a bell, represented a negro trader, a red flag waving over his head; recalling the days so near and yet so far off, when human beings were made merchandise of in South Carolina. This man had himself been bought and sold several times and two women and a child who sat on the block had also been knocked down at public auction in Charleston. As the cart moved along, the mock-auctioneer rang his bell and cried out: "How much am I offered for this good cook?“ "She is an 'xlent cook, ge’men.” “She can make four kinds of mock-turtle soup, from beef, fish or fowls.” “200’s bid.” "Two hundred?“ ”200’s bid.“ "250,” "300,“ ”350,“ "400,” "450,“ "Who bids? who bids? 500.” And so he went on imitating in sport the infernal traffic of which many of the spectators had been the living victims. Old women burst into tears as they saw this tableau, and forgetting that it was a mimic scene, shouted wildly, Give me back my children! Give me back my children!

7. Equal Suffrage. Address from the Colored Citizens of Norfolk, Va., to the People of the United States, 1865, excerpt Fellow citizens, the performance of a simple act of justice on your part will reverse all this; we ask for no expensive aid from military forces, stationed throughout the South, overbearing State action, and rendering our government republican only in name; give us the suffrage, and you may rely upon us to secure justice for ourselves, and all Union men, and to keep the State forever in the Union. . . .         . . . The surest guarantee for the independence and ultimate elevation of the colored people will be found in their becoming the owners of the soil on which they live and labor. To this end, let them form Land Associations, in which, by the regular payment of small installments, a fund may be created for the purchase at all land sales, of land on behalf of any investing member, in the name of the Association, the Association holding a mortgage on the land until, by the continued payment of a regular subscription, the sum advanced by the Association and the interest upon it are paid off, when the occupier gets a clear title. . . .

8. The First Vote, Alfred R. Waud, Harper’s Weekly Nov. 16, 1867

9. TESTIMONY OF BENJAMIN SINGLETON Washington, D. C., April 17, 1880before the Senate Select Committee Investigatingthe "Negro Exodus from the Southern States" Q. Yes; What was the cause of your going out, and in the first place how did you happen to go there, or to send these people there?A. Well, my people, for the want of land -- we needed land for our children -- and their disadvantages -- that caused my heart to grieve and sorrow; pity for my race, sir, that was coming down, instead of going up -- that caused me to go to work for them. I sent out there perhaps in '66 -- perhaps so; or in '65, any way -- my memory don't recollect which; and they brought back tolerable favorable reports; then I jacked up three or four hundred, and went into Southern Kansas, and found it was a good country, and I though Southern Kansas was congenial to our nature, sir; and I formed a colony there, and bought about a thousand acres of ground -- the colony did -- my people.

10. Final Slide Thank You