I Saw Death Coming A History of Terror and Survival in the War against Reconstruction

Kidada E. Williams

eBook - 2023

Longlisted for the National Book Award in NonfictionShortlisted for the Museum of African American History's Stone Book Award * National Council on Public History Book Award Honorable MentionA "powerful and deeply moving" (LA Times) reexamination of the struggle for survival in the Reconstruction-era South, and what it cost. The story of Reconstruction is often told from the perspective of the politicians, generals, and journalists whose accounts claim an outsized place in collective memory. But this pivotal era looked very different to African Americans in the South transitioning from bondage to freedom after 1865. They were besieged by a campaign of white supremacist violence that persisted through the 1880s and beyond. Fo...r too long, their lived experiences have been sidelined, impoverishing our understanding of the obstacles post-Civil War Black families faced, their inspiring determination to... more