What Scholars are Saying About the After Slavery Website
"This engaging website combines the most up-to-date scholarship on the aftermath of
slavery with a set of provocative and fascinating documents and other materials ideal for
classroom use. It will allow a broad online readership to understand where our thinking
now stands on this pivotal moment in American history."
Eric Foner
Dewitt Clinton Professor of History, Columbia University
Author of Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
"After Slavery makes readily available to professional historians, students, and whoever
else is interested a rich collection of both original sources and insightful books and
articles dealing with the efforts of working people both black and white to reshape
their own lives during and after the defeat of slavery. Its focus on the adjacent but
very different worlds of South and North Carolina reveals the variety of efforts and
experiences involved in this decisive chapter of the history of American working men and
women."
David Montgomery
Farnam Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University
author of Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862-1872
"This turning point in our history, explored in such detail at afterslavery.com is, sadly,
mostly absent from the high school classroom. The stories of transformation and the
long and arduous struggle for equality of 4 million former slaves–their struggle for
recognition, freedom, and basic human rights–is rarely even touched on. After Slavery
helps to fill this void in the American history curriculum by introducing cutting edge
scholarship and well-chosen primary sources to bring voice to this untold story."
Ann Claunch
Director of Curriculum, U. S. National History Day
Professor Emeritus in the History of Education, University of New Mexico
"The After Slavery website explores the multiple meanings of the era of emancipation
and conveys the very essence of the often tenuous struggle for freedom in starkly
human terms."
Bernard E. Powers, Jr.
Director of African American Studies, College of Charleston
author of Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822-1885
"This is an exciting, well-conceived, and very valuable project. It promises to be a great
resource for scholars, teachers, and students. The history of the Carolinas can capture
the variety of experiences in the period after slavery and also reveal the depth of the
challenges faced as African Americans sought to realize the promise of freedom."
Paul D. Escott
Reynolds Professor of History, Wake Forest University
author of North Carolinians in the Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction
"An invaluable resource, rich in insight and immensely helpful for those who seek
guidance on the topic. Afterslavery.com will be used with profit by students, teachers,
and scholars."
Walter Edgar
Director of the Institute for Southern Studies, University of South Carolina
author of South Carolina: A History
"Given the lamentable shortage of online sources, anyone teaching Reconstruction
will welcome this new website concentrating on race and the evolution of labor in the
Carolinas, two contiguous states that nicely encapsulate the range of freedpeople’s
experience after the Civil War. After Slavery should find a wide audience among college
instructors and their students."
Michael W. Fitzgerald
Professor of History, St. Olaf College
author of Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in the American South
