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A new look at the Black Virginians who defined and realized their freedom after the collapse of slavery “Verily, the work does not end with the abolition of slavery,” wrote Frederick Douglass in 1862, “but only begins.” The Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment altered a legal status; to make freedom a reality represented a different challenge altogether. Justice for Ourselves tells the stories of remarkable Black men and women in post–Civil War Virginia who persevered in the face of overwhelming barriers to seek their freedom and create a new world for themselves and future generations. Drawing on the life stories of individuals from all regions of the state—political leaders, teachers, ministers, journalists, and entrepreneurs—Justice for Ourselves recounts their quests to attain full American citizenship and economic independence before the onset of Jim Crow repression. Centering Black voices, this book includes tales of opportunities seized and opportunities lost and will reshape the narrative of Black history and the history of Virginia in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Others introduce readers to historical figures who are less familiar: freedmen schoolteacher Caroline Putnam; reformer Orra Gray Langhorne; Sadie Heath Cabaniss, the founder of professional nursing in Virginia; and Marie Kimball, an early preservationist. Essays on cotton textile workers in the late nineteenth century and home demonstration agents in the early twentieth examine women's collective experiences in these important areas. Altogether, the essays in this collection offer readers an engaging and personal window into the experiences of women in the Old Dominion. Contributors: Anna Berkes on Marie Kimball; Ray Bonis on Adèle Clark; Arica L. Coleman on Mildred Loving; Beth English on Wage-Earning Women; Warren R. Hofstra on Virginia "Patsy" Cline; Caroline E. Janney on Janet Henderson Weaver Randolph; Catherine Jones on Lucy Goode Brooks; Jodi L. Koste on Sadie Heath Cabaniss; Pamela R. Matthews on Ellen Glasgow; Ann E.
By 1865, at the age of 26, Booth had much to lose: a loving family, hosts of friends, adoring women, professional success as one of America's foremost actors, and the promise of yet more fame and fortune. Yet he formed a daring conspiracy to abduct Lincoln and barter him for Confederate prisoners of war. The Civil War ended before Booth could carry out his plan, so he assassinated the president, believing him to be a tyrant who had turned the once-proud Union into an engine of oppression that had devastated the South. This book gives a day-by-day account of Booth's complex life--from his birth May 10, 1838, to his death April 26, 1865, and the aftermath--and offers a new understanding of the crime that shocked a nation.
Highlights the significant historical contributions of some of Louisiana's most noteworthy and also overlooked women from the eighteenth century to the present. This volume underscores the cultural, social, and political distinctiveness of the state and showcases how these women affected its history.
In 1920, Virginia's General Assembly refused to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to grant women the vote. Virginia's suffragists lost. Or did they? When the thirty-sixth state ratified the amendment, women gained voting rights across the nation. Virginia suffragists were a part of that victory, although their role has been nearly forgotten. They marched in parades, rallied at the state capitol, spoke to crowds on street corners, staffed booths at fairs, lobbied legislators, picketed the White House and even went to jail. The Campaign for Woman Suffrage in Virginia reveals how women created two statewide organizations to win the right to vote. At the centenary of the movement, these remarkable women can at last be recognized for their important contributions.
Richmond's culinary history spans more than four hundred years and includes forgotten cooks and makers who paved the way for Richmond's vibrant modern food scene. The foodways of local Indian tribes were pivotal to the nation. Unconventional characters such as Mary Randolph, Jasper Crouch, Ellen Kidd, Virginia Randolph and John Dabney used food and drink to break barriers. Family businesses like C.F. Sauer and Sally Bell's Kitchen, recipient of a James Beard America's Classic Award, shaped the local community. Virginia Union University students and two family-run department stores paved the way for restaurant desegregation. Local journalists Maureen Egan and Susan Winiecki, founders of Fire, Flour & Fork, offer an engaging social history complete with classic Richmond recipes.
Drawn from new sources, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian presents a gripping narrative that recreates the events that inspired hundreds of slaves to pressure British admirals into becoming liberators by using their intimate knowledge of the countryside to transform the war.
“Brilliant . . . really gives one a sense of what it took to both lead and run an army in the Civil War. . . . Superb.” —Chris Kolakowski, author of The Virginia Campaigns: March–August 1862 In From Arlington to Appomattox, Charles Knight does for Robert E. Lee and students of the Civil War what E. B. Long’s Civil War Day by Day did for our understanding of the conflict as a whole. This is not another Lee biography, but it is every bit as valuable as one. We know Lee rode out to meet the survivors of Pickett’s Charge and accept blame for the defeat, that he tried to lead the Texas Brigade in a counterattack to save the day at the Wilderness, and took a tearful ride from Wilmer Mc...
Histories of Virginia have traditionally traced the same significant but narrow lines, overlooking whole swathes of human experience crucial to an understanding of the commonwealth. With Virginians and Their Histories, Brent Tarter presents a fresh, new interpretive narrative that incorporates the experiences of all residents of Virginia from the earliest times to the first decades of the twenty-first century, affording readers the most comprehensive and wide-ranging account of Virginia’s story. Tarter draws on primary resources for every decade of the Old Dominion's English-language history, as well as a wealth of recent scholarship that illuminates in new ways how demographic changes, ec...
In the lead-up to the Civil War, Virginia, like other southern states, amassed a large public debt while striving to improve transportation infrastructure and stimulate economic development. A Saga of the New South delves into the largely untold story of the decades-long postwar controversies over the repayment of that debt. The result is a major reinterpretation of late-nineteenth-century Virginia political history. The post–Civil War public debt controversy in Virginia reshaped the state’s political landscape twice. First it created the conditions under which the Readjuster Party, a biracial coalition of radical reformers, seized control of the state government in 1879 and successfully...