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“The End Of One Shall Be The End Of All”: Solidarity In 19th Century African American Texts, David Puthoff

English Language and Literature ETDs

This project examines how African American authors imagined solidarity through documents before, during, and after the Civil War. While solidarity as a framework has yet to be elucidated for literary studies, I draw on political theory and especially the works of the authors themselves to examine how solidarity as a strategy operates to facilitate cooperation between people of different or similar races or occupations in the periods of abolitionism, war, Reconstruction, and Redemption. I argue that these authors remember, imagine, and articulate small scale acts such as listening, organizing, making material aid, promoting literacy, and fundraising in the pursuit of …