The Dance of Freedom: Texas African Americans during Reconstruction

POSTSCRIPT TO PART II

Barry Crouch was one of the pioneer social historians who used primary sources to study how ordinary people lived. His main focus was on the African American community in Reconstruction Texas. He mined Record Group 105 of the Texas Freedmen’s Bureau’s reports and letters to the local agents and gave a view of Reconstruction from the point of view of the newly freed slaves. Professional historians refer to this approach as history from the bottom up. The three essays in this selection were influenced by the iconoclastic and sprawling view Herbert Gutman presents in The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750 –1925 (Pantheon, 1976), which argues that the slave family was more stable—and that former slaves were less promiscuous—than previously thought. Crouch himself lent his notes on the Texas Freedmen’s Bureau to Gutman for his chapters on Reconstruction. Each of the essays illustrates how the newly freed African Americans attempted to reconstitute their families and negotiate fair labor contracts for themselves and humane apprenticeship agreements for their children. Much more research needs to be done in these areas. Did Gutman, for example, exaggerate the stability of the slave family to play down the idea of a matriarchy? How well did the former slaves negotiate labor contracts? How forceful and successful were black women in achieving a stable community ? A good starting point for the reader is the essays by James Smallwood cited in Crouch’s footnotes. His book Time of Hope, Time of Despair: Black Texans during Reconstruction (Kennikat Press, 1981) remains the best overview on the subject. Unfortunately, it is out of print, though it deserves a second edition. Both Smallwood and Randolph B. Campbell in GrassRoots Reconstruction in Texas, 1865–1880 (Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1997) deny that a black matriarchal family developed in the years following slavery. For a comparison with African American women’s responses to POSTSCRIPT TO PART II Reconstruction in other states, see Leslie A. Schwalm, A Hard Fight for We: Women’s Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1997); and Mary J. Farmer, “‘Because They Are Women’: Gender and the Virginia Freedmen’s Bureau’s ‘War on Dependency,’” in The Freedmen’s Bureau and Reconstruction: Reconsiderations (Fordham Univ. Press, 1999), edited by Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller. An important overview can be found in Women’s Radical Reconstruction: The Freedmen’s Aid Movement by Carol Faulkner (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), which analyzes the role of black and white abolitionist-feminists and their conflicts with male counterparts. For the struggle of blacks to achieve economic independence, see Nancy Cohen-Lack, “A Struggle for Sovereignty: National Consolidation, Emancipation, and Free Labor in Texas, 1865,” Journal of Southern History (1992). Postscript to Part II 91 THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK ...