In this Book

buy this book Buy This Book in Print
summary
In 2007, while researching mountain culture in upstate South Carolina, anthropologist John M. Coggeshall stumbled upon the small community of Liberia in the Blue Ridge foothills. There he met Mable Owens Clarke and her family, the remaining members of a small African American community still living on land obtained immediately after the Civil War. This intimate history tells the story of five generations of the Owens family and their friends and neighbors, chronicling their struggles through slavery, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, and the desegregation of the state. Through hours of interviews with Mable and her relatives, as well as friends and neighbors, Coggeshall presents an ethnographic history that allows members of a largely ignored community to speak and record their own history for the first time. This story sheds new light on the African American experience in Appalachia, and in it Coggeshall documents the community's 150-year history of resistance to white oppression, while offering a new way to understand the symbolic relationship between residents and the land they occupy, tying together family, memory, and narratives to explain this connection.

Table of Contents

restricted access Download Full Book
  1. Cover
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Half Title, Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Contents
  2. p. vii
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Preface
  2. pp. ix-x
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. xi-xiv
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 1. Shifting Paradigms: Understanding the Liberia Community
  2. pp. 1-24
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 2. You Zip Your Lips: Life in Slavery
  2. pp. 25-45
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 3. The Times Ahead Are Fearful: The Late Nineteenth Century
  2. pp. 46-80
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 4. The Whites Got the Best: The Early Twentieth Century
  2. pp. 81-121
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 5. It Really Wasn’t a Bad Life: The Mid-Twentieth Century
  2. pp. 121-167
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 6. Because Hatred Is All It Was: Death and Resurrection
  2. pp. 168-177
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 7. This Is My Home: Into the Twenty-First Century
  2. pp. 178-200
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 8. It’s Sacred Ground: The Cultural Meaning of Land
  2. pp. 201-210
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Appendix 1. Soapstone Baptist Church Cemetery Grave Names
  2. pp. 211-214
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Appendix 2. Partial Kinship Chart of Mable Owens Clarke
  2. pp. 215-216
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Appendix 3. Names of Contemporary Informants
  2. pp. 217-218
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Notes
  2. pp. 219-248
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Bibliography
  2. pp. 249-260
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Index
  2. pp. 261-270
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Further Series Titles
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Image Plates
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
Back To Top

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless.