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The University of North Carolina Press
400 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 15 illus., 2 charts, 2 maps, notes, bibl., index
The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture
Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest
Most studies of emancipation's consequences have focused on the South. Moving the discussion to the North, Leslie Schwalm enriches our understanding of the national impact of the transition from slavery to freedom. Emancipation's Diaspora follows the lives and experiences of thousands of men and women who liberated themselves from slavery, made their way to overwhelmingly white communities in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and worked to live in dignity as free women and men and as citizens.
Schwalm explores the hotly contested politics of black enfranchisement as well as collisions over segregation, civil rights, and the more informal politics of race--including how slavery and emancipation would be remembered and commemorated. She examines how gender shaped the politics of race, and how gender relations were contested and negotiated within the black community. Based on extensive archival research, Emancipation's Diaspora shows how in churches and schools, in voting booths and Masonic temples, in bustling cities and rural crossroads, black and white Midwesterners--women and men--shaped the local and national consequences of emancipation.
"Emancipation's Diaspora explores blacks' experiences of Civil War and Reconstruction in the upper Midwest, a history that has received too little scholarly attention. Schwalm's story emerges in the voices of African Americans themselves, drawing on a broad range of archival sources, from memoirs to black newspapers. This is a terrific book that makes an important contribution to the historiographies of black Reconstruction and Midwestern slavery and emancipation."
--Joanne Pope Melish, University of Kentucky
"Schwalm convincingly demonstrates that northern racial constructions and social organization drew their meaning from southern slavery and thus underwent a fundamental change in the postemancipation era. She makes excellent use of pension records to uncover details about the personal lives of people who otherwise left few records. Emancipation's Diaspora offers a valuable new perspective on the Civil War and Reconstruction."
--Louis Gerteis, University of Missouri-St. Louis
Cloth: $65.00
Paper: $24.95
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