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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Many Voices, Similar Concerns: Traditional Methods Of African-American Political Activity In Norfolk, Virginia, 1865-1875, Michael Hucles
Many Voices, Similar Concerns: Traditional Methods Of African-American Political Activity In Norfolk, Virginia, 1865-1875, Michael Hucles
History Faculty Publications
African-Americans in postbellum Norfolk, Virginia, as elsewhere, knew that merely gaining freedom through government action--the Confiscation Acts, Emancipation Proclamation, and Thirteenth Amendment--did not guarantee that they would be fairly treated. They therefore attempted to gain control of their lives through a vigorous affirmation of their rights. They began to record their antebellum marriages and normalize family relations, obtain an education, establish a base for economic prosperity, and participate in the political process. Through these actions they hoped to give true meaning to their freedom. Unfortunately, they were not always successful in their attempts.
W.J. Cash, The New South And The Rhetoric Of History, Edward L. Ayers
W.J. Cash, The New South And The Rhetoric Of History, Edward L. Ayers
History Faculty Publications
Despite the attention devoted to the fiery early chapters of The Mind of the South, where Cash's language and audacity take us by surprise, the heart of the book lies in the New South. Cash wrote above all, I think, to explain why the white Southerners he knew--those in the cotton mill country of the Carolina Piedmont--behaved the way they did. The years after Reconstruction consume two-thirds of Cash's book because those are the years that troubled him, that posed the problems he felt most acutely.