Description
Book SynopsisFrom the 1850s and the Civil War to emancipation and the official end of Reconstruction in 1877, this work examines slave emancipation and opposition to it as a national event with social, political, and cultural consequences. It analyzes multiple views of black child to demonstrate how Americans contested and defended slavery and its abolition.
Trade ReviewA nuanced and multilayered narrative illuminating the key role African American children played in the fight to end slavery and in the struggle to survive during Reconstruction. * American Historical Review *
Raising Freedom's Child provides an exceptional analysis of the centrality of African American children to the major historical debates of Reconstruction...Mitchell effectively connects the nation's failures to integrate public schools, to invalidate the apprenticeship system, and to acknowledge black parental authority to the dimming of Reconstruction's birght promises and to the coming of the sobering years of Jim Crow. -- Allyson Hobbs * Journal of American Ethnic History *
Raising Freedoms Child demonstrates the importance of childhood studies for understanding the nations political, economic, and social history. In this carefully researched book, Mitchell keeps the black child at the center of the struggle to define freedom in the aftermath of Civil War and emancipation. -- Marie Jenkins Schwartz,University of Rhode Island
Effective and eloquent examination of an understudied era. -- James Marten,Marquette University
Mitchells sophisticated, nuanced reading of a wealth of previously untapped documents and period photographs casts a dazzling, fresh light on the way that abolitionists, educators, missionaries, planters, politicians, and free children of color envisioned the status of African Americans after emancipation. -- Steven Mintz,University of Houston
An engaging and informative history of the Reconstruction era. * Journal of American History *
Mary Niall Mitchell achieves a singular feat, setting herself apart from other historians of childhood. * Journal of Southern History *
Raising Freedoms Child is an extensively researched account with perceptive insights and fresh information. * Louisiana History Review *
Like the best writing on the history of children, Raising Freedoms Child uses children and youth to suggest new paradigms for thinking about the past and for getting at the ways in which historical actors thought about the present.Mitchell has succeeded in making original contributions to several fields.. * The North Carolina Historical Review *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction Portrait of Isaac and Rosa 1 Emigration A Good and Delicious Country 2 Reading Race Rosebloom and Pure White, Or So It Seemed3 Civilizing Missions Miss Harriet W. Murray, Elsie, and Puss 4 Labor Tillie Bell's Song5 Schooling We Ought to Be One PeopleConclusion Some Mighty Morning Notes Index About the Author
