Although the American Civil War is generally considered to have ended on June 2, 1865, slavery was not completely abolished in the United States until June 19th, 1865. This date marked the abolition of slavery in the state of Texas. (The 1863 Emancipation Proclamation only ended slavery in certain Confederate territories; it did not represent a complete abolition of slavery.) June 19th, known as Juneteenth, is a holiday to commemorate the ending of slavery and celebrate the accomplishments of African-Americans. Although Juneteenth is not currently a national holiday, it is observed in 45 states, including Massachusetts.
Thi year, MHL will be closed on June 19th for the holiday, but willl be hosting an educational presentation on Wednesday, June 16, 2021 with AHS teacher Ralph Bledsoe and Gabby Womack from Merrimack Valley Black and Brown Voices. The Town of Andover is also hosting a Juneteenth Celebration in the Park on June 19, 2021.
To learn more about this era, here are some books about post-Civil War Reconstruction in the United States.
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Stony the road : Reconstruction, white supremacy, and the rise of Jim Crow
by Henry Louis Gates The NAACP Image Award-winning creator of The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross chronicles America's post-Civil War struggle for racial equality and the violent counterrevolution that resubjugated black Americans throughout the 20th century. |
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Capitol men : the epic story of Reconstruction through the lives of the first Black congressmen
by Philip Dray A compelling history of the Reconstruction era is viewed from the perspective of America's first black members of Congress and their key role in promoting such reforms as public education for all children, equal rights, and protection from Klan violence in the wake of the Civil War, profiling such figures as Robert Smalls, Robert Brown Elliott, and P. B. S. PInchback. |
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The accident of color : a story of race in Reconstruction
by Daniel Brook The award-winning author of A History of Future Cities documents how the citizenship privileges of mixed-race urbanites in 19th-century New Orleans and Charleston were swept away by the political backlashes of the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. |
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Envisioning emancipation : Black Americans and the end of slavery
by Deborah Willis Envisioning Emancipation illustrates what freedom looked like for black Americans in the Civil War era. From photos of the enslaved on plantations and African American soldiers and camp workers in the Union Army to Juneteenth celebrations, slave reunions, and portraits of black families and workers in the American South, the images in this book challenge perceptions of slavery. They show not only what the subjects emphasized about themselves but also the ways Americans of all colors and genders opposed slavery and marked its end. Filled with powerful images of lives too often ignored or erased from historical records, Envisioning Emancipation provides a new perspective on American culture. |
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Freedom on trial : the first post-Civil War battle over civil rights and voter suppression
by Scott Farris Recalls a gripping story of a moment pregnant with promise when race relations in the United States might have taken a dramatically different turn, highlighting forgotten Black and white civil rights pioneers, including the story of the author's own great-grandfather's crimes as a member of the Ku Klux Klan. |
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The second founding : how the Civil War and Reconstruction remade the constitution
by Eric Foner The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Fiery Trial presents a timely history of the constitutional changes that built or compromised equality within America’s foundation, documenting alarming parallels between the Jim Crow era and the present day. Tour. |
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The thin light of freedom : the Civil War and emancipation in the heart of America
by Edward L. Ayers A ground-level narrative by the award-winning author of In the Presence of Mine Enemies traces the progress of emancipation during the American Civil War, drawing on personal correspondences to document conflicts in Virginia's Great Valley and the pivotal contributions of free black soldiers who served with the U.S. Colored Troops. |
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The long emancipation : the demise of slavery in the United States
by Ira Berlin Perhaps no event in American history arouses more impassioned debate than the abolition of slavery. Answers to basic questions about who ended slavery, how, and why remain fiercely contested more than a century and a half after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. In The Long Emancipation, Ira Berlin draws upon decades of study to offer a framework for understanding slavery's demise in the United States. Freedom was not achieved in a moment, and emancipation was not an occasion but a near-century-long process--a shifting but persistent struggle that involved thousands of men and women. |
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Reconstruction : voices from America's first great struggle for racial equality
by Brooks D. Simpson An anthology provides a first-person experience of what it was like to live through the Reconstruction and includes letters, diary entries, interviews and newspaper articles from ordinary people as well as well-known figures like Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. |
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American radicals : how nineteenth-century protest shaped the nation
by Holly Jackson A history of 19th-century activists—socialists and free-lovers, abolitionists and vigilantes—looks at the social revolution they sparked in the turbulent Civil War era. |
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River of blood : American slavery from the people who lived it : interviews & photographs of formerly enslaved African Americans
by Richard Cahan An updated edition of the Slave Narratives, collected in the 1930s by the federal government’s Works Progress Administration, incorporates hundreds of photographs that were omitted from the original interviews documenting the slave experience before and during the American Civil War. |