Skip to content
University of Maryland LibrariesDigital Repository at the University of Maryland
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Dying Free: African Americans, Death, and the New Birth of Freedom, 1863-1877

    View/Open
    Towle_umd_0117E_17972.pdf (8.950Mb)
    (RESTRICTED ACCESS)
    No. of downloads: 0

    Date
    2017
    Author
    Towle, Ashley
    Advisor
    Bell, Richard J
    DRUM DOI
    https://doi.org/10.13016/M2QP1F
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    This dissertation explores the ways in which African Americans in the South used death to stake claims to citizenship and equality in the years following emancipation. The death and destruction the Civil War wrought did not end at Appomattox Courthouse. After the war, freedpeople in the South continued to die from disease, starvation, and exposure and former bondspeople became the targets of racial violence by white Southerners. By recasting emancipation as a struggle for power over life and death, “Dying Free” provides a new framework for examining the fraught power relations between former masters, ex-slaves, and the federal government in the postwar South. This dissertation asserts that African Americans used the murders of their loved ones and community members as opportunities to protest the injustices they faced as they tried to forge new lives in freedom. By harnessing the power of the dead in a variety of arenas, freedpeople strengthened their bonds with relatives and communities, denounced their unjust treatment at the hands of white Southerners, and demanded equality and the rights of citizenship from the federal government.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1903/19463
    Collections
    • History Theses and Dissertations
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility
     

     

    Browse

    All of DRUMCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    LoginRegister
    Pages
    About DRUMAbout Download Statistics

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility