Established by congress in early 1865; the Bureau of Refugees; Freedmen; and Abandoned Lands―more commonly known as “the Freedmen’s Bureauâ€â€•assumed the Herculean task of overseeing the transition from slavery to freedom in the post–Civil War South. Although it was called the Freedmen’s Bureau; the agency profoundly affected African-American women. Until now remarkably little has been written about the relationship between black women and this federal government agency. As Mary Farmer-Kaiser clearly demonstrates in this revealing work; by failing to recognize freedwomen as active agents of change and overlooking the gendered assumptions at work in Bureau efforts; scholars have ultimately failed to understand fully the Bureau’s relationships with freedwomen; freedmen; and black communities in this pivotal era of American history.
#652475 in Books 2015-12-04Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x .80 x 6.00l; .0 #File Name: 0822360071336 pages
Review
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Enlightening Contribution to Scholarship on EmancipationBy KEWLightfoot's analysis of Antigua's history of slave emancipation joins a wide body of work examining African-descended people's efforts to make their visions of freedom real. Across the Americas; these freedom struggles were met by systematic efforts to deny freedpeople opportunities to control their own destinies and partake in the varied joys of free life. Antigua's black working men and women continued to fight for the right to property; housing; and to live as they saw fit; even resorting to strikes and uprisings to achieve those results. Troubling Freedom is an important contribution to our understandings of what freedom meant to ex-slaves throughout the Americas.
