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Introduction a world discovered The history of how the free and enslaved black communities were able to both survive and prosper within a slave society is both engaging and fraught with confusion, half-truths, and in some cases, unsubstantiated claims. Sifting through the history is particularly difficult for anyone who is attempting to understand how the social and political climatic shift that occurred in the nation on January 1, 1863, affected both of these communities. We now know that for a variety of reasons “freedom” for some did not actually mean freedom for all; and in both cases, there was not a clear definition of what freedom meant, how it could be negotiated, and how it translated into tangible rewards. Though there have been a number of books and articles that have attempted to answer these questions, many remain, and more research still needs to be done. Slavery and freedom are complicated terms that involve an understanding of how race, class, and gender were socially constructed in this country and how this social construction still continues to inform how these issues are viewed today. This book cannot possibly answer all these questions and instead seeks only to tell the narrow story of one woman’s life through an intensive reading of her pocket diaries from 1863 to 1865. It is easy to overlook the life of Emilie F. Davis, a freeborn woman who worked as both a domestic and a modiste (a dressmaker), as her name is unknown; her contributions to history are undetermined; and outside of her pocket diaries the details of her life would not exist. What sets Emilie apart is that her pocket diaries are one of only a few primary sources written by a black woman during this time period. Her ordinary has been rendered extraordinary simply because it has survived; and therein lies the dilemma and, of course, the interest. Because of Emilie’s choice to keep a personal diary—her conscious act of identity assertion—she has moved from invisibility to visibility and been added to the literature on everyday, working-class free black American women.1 Since her handwriting is difficult to read and her story had to be reconstructed, I viewed her diaries as a code that needed to be broken so that I could discover who she was. Code Breaking My earliest experience with code breaking happened when I was eight years old and I stumbled upon my father’s fraternal ritual books. They were written in a 2 Introduction coded language, and though I knew it was forbidden (family members were not allowed to touch or read the sacred books), I committed myself to finding a way to break the code. I remember holding the books and slowly looking through the pages hoping that the letters would right themselves and become the words that I was familiar with. I would sit for hours studying the words, writing them over and over again. There were days when I would just open up the book and lay it across my forehead thinking that the meaning would simply come to me. I wanted to know (I had to, really) what was hidden behind the code. I remember how excited and satisfied and pleased I felt when I had finally broken it. It was that moment, that feeling of being inside rather than outside of the text, which has informed my research. Since then I have had an ongoing desire to break codes in an effort to try to understand the writer’s meaning behind the text. Writing, even in a diary, is not a private act. It is a public act, where the writer is attempting to share himself or herself with others. It is part of a larger discourse that shapes how and what we remember. Writing our memories down separates the chaff of our emotional experience from the wheat of the actual experience by informing how and what we remember. The moment you record something on paper; that record has the potential to find its way into the hands of others—even if it takes years to get there. The pocket diaries of Emilie F. Davis are over 150 years old, and it is not known why or how her diaries (her memories) have been preserved. Perhaps they were passed from one family member to another as a way of maintaining the family ’s story, or perhaps they were packed away in an heirloom box that sat for years in someone...

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