First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction

by Peter Kolchin

Overview

Crucial changes occurred during the years following the Civil War as blacks manifested their desire to live as independently as possible and to reject every social relation reminiscent of slavery. This classic study of the history of post-slave societies helped to initiate historiographic trends that remain central to the study of emancipation.

About the Author:
Peter Kolchin is Henry Clay Reed Professor of History at the University of Delaware

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780837163857
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/29/1972
Series:	Contributions in American History , #20
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Peter Kolchin, the Henry Clay Reed Professor of History at the University of Delaware, is the author of numerous books, most recently A Sphinx on the American Land: The Nineteenth Century South in Comparative Perspective (2003).

Table of Contents

List of Tables     vii
List of Maps     ix
Preface     xi
Acknowledgments     xxi
Introduction     xxiii
Black Migration     3
Free Plantation Labor     30
Strengthening the Black Family     56
The Coming of Black Education     79
The Establishment of the Black Churches     107
Black Social Structure     128
The Awakening of Black Political Consciousness     151
Black Reconstruction in Perspective     184
Bibliographical Essay     199
Index     205

Editorial Reviews

Kolchin has written a fresh and valuable study of black history. He is persuasive in suggesting that as far as blacks were concerned, ‘the new social order took shape and virtually all of the significant new developments of Reconstruction occurred in the immediate postwar years.’ [By] concentrating as much as possible on the black community itself rather than on the actions and attitudes of whites, he finds the principal development to have been [their] insistence ‘on behaving as they understood free men to behave.’ Convincing, well-buttressed arguments.”—The Journal of American History

“[In] this concise history of Alabama blacks in the Reconstruction era, author Peter Kolchin suggests that a review of the black response to freedom ‘casts light upon the previous history of Southern blacks and the nature of American slavery.’ Quite true: Kolchin’s judiciously proffered conclusions prove it. Especially good is Kolchin’s compassionate discussion of the plight of the deposed antebellum black elite . . . by describing class tensions that arose to complicate racial conflict. Kolchin  makes a special contribution to our understanding of the black community in a turbulent period.”—Journal of Southern History

From the Publisher