Category: Women and Gender
The Woman Who Published “The Reconstructionist” Was a Firebrand and an Arson Target
I recently read the new book The Impeachers and I came across a newspaper that I never heard of before, The Reconstructionist. Here is what…
Frederick Douglass Tells Women’s Convention that Republicans Should Not Drop “Manhood Suffrage” Nov. 1868
On November 19, 1868 Frederick Douglass addressed the New England Women’s Rights Convention in Boston. Douglass had attended the the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention in…
Georgia Supreme Court: Marriage Between People of Different Races “Is Always Productive of Deplorable Results” 1869
Anti-miscegenation laws sought to criminalize marriage and sexual relations between whites and African Americans. While white men had forced enslaved women to have sex with…
NY Times Looks Back at Reconstruction Era “Troll” & Anti-Sex Crusader Anthony Comstock
Today’s New York Times has an interesting article on Civil War veteran Anthony Comstock‘s post-war career as a national scold. While I was raised on…
Freedom After Slavery: The Black Experience and the Freedmen’s Bureau in Reconstruction Texas by Lavonne Jackson Leslie
Freedom After Slavery: The Black Experience and the Freedmen’s Bureau in Reconstruction Texas by Lavonne Jackson Leslie (2012) $26.95 Hardcover, $16.96 Paper, $3.99 Kindle. I…
Some Southern Women Wanted to Change the Words to Confederate National Anthem “Dixie”
We sometimes hear Confederate Heritage groups claim that moving a monument or taking down a Confederate Battle Flag amounts to “changing history.” What they don’t…
“Who wrote women out of Civil War history?” An Essay by Brenda Wineapple
Brenda Wineapple has an interesting essay in The New Republic on why historians long ignored the roles of women in the American Civil War. As…
Democrat Explains Why Southern Whites Resist “Black Rule” July 16, 1868
Allen Granberry Thurman (November 13, 1813 – December 12, 1895) is hardly a household name today, but in the mid-19th Century he was a well-known…
Anna Dickinson: Don’t Hide Principles of Equality Behind Grant’s Cigar Smoke on Votes for Blacks June 1868
Anna Dickinson was a teen sensation as an abolitionist public speaker in the late 1850s. During the Civil War she became the first woman to…
Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom by Heather Andrea Williams
Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom by Heather Andrea Williams published by University of North Carolina Press (2007) $29.95 Paperback $18.83 Kindle. Self-Taught:…