Forever free
Subtitle: the story of emancipation and Reconstruction
By: Eric Foner ; illustrations edited and with commentary by Joshua Brown.
Contributors: Brown, Joshua, 1949-; Forever Free, Inc.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2005
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 268
Subjects: Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877); Slaves -- Emancipation -- United States; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- African Americans; United States -- Race relations -- History -- 19th century; United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1900
Description: This new examination of the years of Emancipation and Reconstruction during and immediately following the Civil War emphasizes the era's political and cultural meaning for today's America. Historian Foner overturns numerous assumptions growing out of the traditional understanding of the period, which is based almost exclusively on white sources and shaped by (often unconscious) racism. He presents the period as a time of determination, especially on the part of recently emancipated black Americans, to put into effect the principles of equal rights and citizenship for all. He makes clear how, by war's end, freed slaves built on networks of church and family in order to exercise their right of suffrage as well as gain access to education, land, and employment, and shows that the birth of the Ku Klux Klan and renewed acts of racial violence were retaliation for the progress made by blacks soon after the war.--From publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-244) and index.
"Forever Free project : Stephen B. Brier, Peter O. Almond, executive editors/producers ; Christine Doudna, editor."