Reviews

Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era by Leslie S. Rowland, Hawkins Wilson, Ira Berlin

petermedeiros1988's review

5.0

An accessible and well-constructed portrait of Black people struggling during and immediately after the Civil War. I think it illustrates very well the way we can sugar-coat the efforts of the past. The letters capture love and hope, but also frustration and disappointment with the limited freedom that newly-freed slaves endured. Also, while this isn't a main goal of the editors, the collection also puts the lie to the idea that the Civil War wasn't about slavery; the Black writers collected in this volume document the rage and abuse that white southerners heaped upon them, clearly motivated by an anger specifically around Black people's new freedom. They also detail the efforts, during and after the war, to curtail that freedom, often trying to using their states' legislatures. Overall, though, the main thing that recommends the piece is the way it makes these abstract ideas we have about slavery and the Civil War immediate and human. Reading the letters between family members, especially, was deeply moving and informative.