| Popis: |
The book’s final chapter studies the myriad obstacles the Shenandoah Valley’s African Americans confronted in the years following the Civil War and highlights the ways which they attempted to overcome those impediments and realize freedom’s potential. In addition to examinations of the Freedmen’s Bureau’s role in aiding formerly enslaved individuals to find employment and the challenges those labor contracts presented, this chapter also explores the establishment of freedmen’s schools throughout the Valley. Although former Confederates lashed out violently at students and teachers, this chapter illustrates that African Americans stood firm in the face of adversity and worked hard not only to learn but to increase the number of schools throughout the region. This chapter also analyzes the ways the Valley’s African Americans practiced political activism not only through voting in elections but in attempting to have Judge Richard Parker, the man who presided over John Brown’s trial in the autumn of 1859, removed from the bench. Finally, the chapter surveys Emancipation Day celebrations throughout the Valley and how African Americans used those commemorations of slavery’s annihilation to combat the mythology of the Lost Cause. |
