Freedom Was in Sight: A Graphic History of Reconstruction in the Washington, D.C., Region by Kate Masur and Elizabeth Clarke published by University of North Carolina Press (2024)
When I was a young man in the 1980s I spent an unusual amount of time reading scholarly works on the Spanish Civil War. One day I came across a graphic history of that conflict told through the eyes of working class syndicalist militants fighting against Franco. I had grown up reading comics, something I had set aside in my teens, but I found this graphic history a rewarding way to feel the immediacy of the revolution and counterrevolution of 1930s Spain. In scholarly works, there was very little immediacy about how ordinary folks were effected by world-changing events, but the drawings of ordinary people in extraordinary times gave me a “you are there” immersive experience. I feel the same way about Kate Masur and Elizabeth Clarke’s new graphic history of the Washington D.C. region during Reconstruction.
Washington is an interesting place to look at Reconstruction. During the 1850s it was typically referred to as the “Northernmost Southern City.” Slavery had been legal in the District of Columbia from its founding in 1790 until it was abolished by Congress and President Lincoln on April 16, 1862. While many African Americans were enslaved in earlier times, by 1860, there were 3,185 enslaved people living in the District versus 11,131 Free Blacks. This was a sharp reversal of the 1800 Census where enslaved Blacks outnumbered Free Blacks by a four-to-one margin. So, while Washington had the same slavery background as other Southern cities, its Black population at the start of the Civil War was predominantly free and within a year of the firing on Fort Sumter all of its population was free. Unlike its Southern neighbors, African American Washingtonians had already begun to develop their own institutions before the Civil War and Reconstruction started.
When I opened the new Freedom Was In Sight book, I was troubled by the thought that it might place Frederick Douglass as its main character. Frederick Douglass was the most photographed man of his era and the most famous Black man in America. We all know that he lobbied Congress and President Lincoln to end slavery and give civil equality to Blacks after Emancipation. I was happy to see that, while there is some space devoted to Douglass in the later chapters, he is virtually absent from the earlier ones. Douglass was based in Rochester, New York during much of the time covered here, only moving to D.C. in the 1870s. Putting him in his proper timeframe allows the reader to become familiar with the locally homegrown activists from Washington and its environs who risked their lives for freedom and whose contributions have largely been forgotten.
I was also happy to find out that, while the book is focused on Washington, it also includes the stories of surrounding villages and cities which supplied increased population to D.C. after Emancipation, and where some organizing and social service ideas were tested out before coming to the nation’s capital. You will find short histories of African Americans in Alexandria and Manassas in Virginia, Harpers Ferry and Charles Town in West Virginia, and Sharpsburg and Bladensburg in Maryland. For those of you who have visited Sharpsburg, there is the story of Tolson Church, erected the year after the war ended on ground fought over by Union and Confederate forces in the Battle of Antietam.
The book leads off with a “lesson” taught by African American schoolteacher Emma Brown. Like many of the people depicted in the book, she was a real person and a real hero. She introduces each chapter and makes occasional appearances to bring the modern reader up to speed on what is occurring.
Emma Brown tells us about the Black community during the Civil War. After the emancipation of Blacks in the District of Columbia in 1862, African American men were recruited into what became the United States Colored Troops. Even more importantly, Black women, who had some chance at an education in D.C., went South with the Union Army to provide relief for Blacks taking advantage of Emancipation. Black ministers also began working with congregants to form early independent social structures that could advocate for their communities. These were important in making Washington a focus for escaped enslaved people coming to freedom. “Contraband Camps,” really refugee settlements, helped the Black population grow by nearly a third over the next decade.
After the Civil War, Blacks were free, but not on equal terms with whites. While the hurdles were intimidating, Emma Brown wrote that “I don’t think that women have ever before had so glorious an opportunity to do something.” She and her sisters organized education for both children and freed slaves, who had been barred from learning to read.
There were some advances towards political and legal equality, but Black achievement was met with white backlash. Blacks were able to vote for the mayor in the late 1860s, but by 1871 there were moves to reduce the power of the African American community. By 1878, the Congress had taken away a popularly elected mayor and city council governing the District and put governance into white hands.
There is some underrepresentation of politics in the book. One party is introduced as the Republicans without much background. The opponents of Black empowerment does not really have any political background at all. There are two scenes in which President Andrew Johnson refuses to sign onto civil rights legislation, but no background on why or even how he got into his position. Did the authors think that as a former president, Andrew Johnson would be known to all their readers? During a recent hospital stay, we heard nurses not sure whom the recently deceased Jimmy Carter was-“Wasn’t he a president?”-so I am not sure how many non-historians know who Johnson was.
The book ends with the victory of anti-Reconstruction forces. Like many recent historians, the story continues beyond 1877. As the authors point out, in nearby Virginia former Confederate General William Mahone and his Readjuster Party formed an alliance with African American voters to protect their rights and supply them with patronage even as late and the 1880s. And Blacks in the District did not give up their institutions just because a conservative trend came to dominate national politics.
The book consists of 80 pages of intriguing illustrations drawn by Liz Clarke. It is preceded by an introduction which introduces the method of the art and narrative. The authors tell us that most of the dialogue came from primary source documents. After the graphic pages there is a short history of Reconstruction constructed by Kate Masur, a leading historian of the era. Following that is a chronology of events in District of Columbia (which is expertly executed). Finally there are several primary source documents in which the voices of Black people from Reconstruction tell us about their experiences as builders and defenders of Black freedom.
At the end of the book is a very good bibliographic essay with good recommendations for people looking to do more reading.
My one concern was the placing of a link to additional online materials prepared by the authors of the book and two teachers which includes a link to teaching materials for those instructing high school and middle school students. The link is on page 148(!) without even a headline announcing that these Teaching Materials even exist. There is a QR Code linking to the materials, but nothing that a casual readers would even see. The linked materials include how to use graphic history to teach students and a way to assess student learning. There are also eight guides to lessons that a teacher may use. All very useful, Just wish it was easier to find.
While Freedom Was In Sight has these resources for using it as a teaching source, it will also be very interesting to anyone who wants to look at the revolutionary change that Reconstruction had on a discrete region and its impact on the national advancement towards (and sometimes away from) equal rights.
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