Welcome to the Online Library

We are working to build over the medium term a fully searchable, interactive bibliography with links to archives and special collections. In the meantime you will find listed below a number of reading lists that might be helpful in trying to understand the issues addressed elsewhere on the After Slavery site.

Books:
Anderson, Eric and Alfred A. Moss, Jr, eds. Facts of Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of John Hope Franklin
Berlin, Ira and Phillip Morgan, eds. Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas
Brown, Thomas W., ed. Reconstructions: New Perspectives on the Postbellum United States
Camejo, Peter. Racism, Revolution, Reaction, 1861-1877
Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880
Edwards, Laura F. Gendered Strife and Confusion: the Political Culture of Reconstruction
Fitzgerald, Michael W. The Union League Movement in the Deep South: Politics and Agricultural Change during Reconstruction
Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
_____. Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy
Frey, Silvia and Betty Woods, eds. From Slavery to Emancipation in the Atlantic World
Genovese, Eugene. Roll Jordan Roll: the World the Slaves Made
Gillette, William. Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879
Hahn, Steven. A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration
_____. The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom
Litwack, Leon. Been in the Storm So Long: the Aftermath of Slavery
Mohr, Clarence. On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves in Civil War Georgia
Montgomery, David. Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862-1872
O’Donovan, Susan E. Becoming Free in the Cotton South
Olsen, Otto, ed. Reconstruction and Redemption in the South
Perman, Michael. Reunion without Compromise: the South & Reconstruction, 1865-1868
Rabinowitz, Howard N. Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era
Richardson, Heather Cox. The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901
____. West From Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War
Rodrigue, John C. Reconstruction in the Cane Fields: From Slavery to Free Labor in Louisiana's Sugar Parishes, 1862-1880
Rose, Willie Lee. Rehearsal for Reconstruction: the Port Royal Experiment
Saville, Julie. The Work of Reconstruction: From Slave to Wage Laborer in South Carolina, 1860-1870
Shachtman, Max. Race and Revolution: a Lost Chapter in American Radicalism, Christopher Phelps, ed.
Singletary, Otis. Negro Militia and Reconstruction
Trelease, Allen W. White Terror: the Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Reconstruction
Tunnell, Ted. Crucible of Reconstruction: War, Radicalism and Race in Louisiana, 1862-1877
Woodward, C. Vann. Reunion and Reaction; the Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction

Articles:
Barkley Brown, Elsa. “Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom,” Public Culture (Fall 1994), 107-46
Berlin, Ira. “Who Freed the Slaves? Emancipation and Its Meaning,” in David W. Blight and Brooks D. Simpson, eds. Union & Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era, 105-122
_____. “Writing Freedom's History: The Destruction of Slavery,” Prologue 17:4 (Winter1985): 211-27
Callinicos, Alex. “Marxism and the Crisis in Social History,” in John Rees, ed. Essays on Historical Materialism
Dunning, William A. “The Undoing of Reconstruction,” in David H. Donald, ed. Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction
Genovese, Eugene and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. “The Political Crisis of Social History: Class Struggle as Subject and Object,” in Fruits of Merchant Capital, 179-212
Johnson, Walter. “On Agency,” Journal of Social History 37 (Fall 2003): 113-124
Limerick, Patricia Nelson. “Has ‘Minority History’ Transformed the Historical Discourse?” Perspectives: Newsletter of the American Historical Association 35:8 (Nov. 1997)
Miller, Steven et al. “Between Emancipation and Enfranchisement: Law and the Political Mobilization of Black Southerners, 1865-1867,” Chicago-Kent Law Review 70: 3 (1995): 1059-77
Novick, Peter. “Divergence and Dissent,” in That Noble Dream: the ‘Objectivity Question’ and the American Historical Profession, 206-249
Oakes, James. “The Political Significance of Slave Resistance, History Workshop,” 22 (Autumn, 1986): 89-107
Robinson, Armstead L. “Beyond the Realm of Social Consensus: New Meanings of Reconstruction for American History,” Journal of American History 68:2 (Sept. 1981): 276-97
_____. “The Difference Freedom Made: the Emancipation of Afro-Americans,” with comments from Eric Foner and Nell Painter, in Darlene Clark Hine, ed. The State of Afro-American History, 51-88

Primary Source Materials & Contemporary Accounts:
Andrews, Sidney. The South Since the War
Aptheker, Herbert. Documentary History of the Negro People of the United States, v. 1
Berlin, Ira et. al. Free at Last: a Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom and the Civil War
De Forest, J. W. A Union Officer in the Reconstruction
Dennett, John R. The South as It Is, 1865-1866
Hahn, Steven et. al. Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867: Series 3, Volume 1: Land and Labor, 1865
Harris, David Golightly. Piedmont Farmer: The Journals of David Golightly Harris, 1855-1870
Leigh, Frances Butler. Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation
Schurz, Carl. Report on the Condition of the South
Sterling, Dorothy, ed. The Trouble They Seen: Black People Tell the Story of Reconstruction
US Congress. Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy Report of the Joint Select Committee (13 vols.)

Books:
Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: the Civil War in American Memory
Dailey, Jane. Before Jim Crow: the Politics of Race in Postemancipation Virginia
Daniel, Pete. The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901-1969
Fitzgerald, Michael F. Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860-1890
Hunter, Tera. To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War
Kousser, J. Morgan. The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restrictions and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910
Lebsock, Suzanne. A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial
Lemann, Nicholas. Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War
Letwin, Daniel. The Challenge of Interracial Unionism: Alabama Coal Miners, 1878-1921
Lichtenstein, Alex. Twice the Work of Free Labor: the Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South
Mandle, Jay R. The Roots of Black Poverty: the Southern Plantation Economy after the Civil War
Montgomery, David. Citizen Worker: The Experience of Workers in the United States with Democracy and the Free Market during the Nineteenth Century
Ortiz, Paul. Emancipation Betrayed: the Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida
Rosengarten, Theodore. All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw
Tolnay, Stewart E. and E. M. Beck, A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930
Waldrep, Christopher. Roots of Disorder: Race and Criminal Justice in the American South, 1817-80
Williamson, Joel. The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South since Emancipation
Woodward, C, Vann. The Origins of the New South, 1877-1913

Articles, Reviews, Collections:
Arnesen, Eric, “Following the Color Line of Labor: Black Worker and the Labor Movement before 1930,” Radical History Review 55 (1993): 53-87
_____, “Up from Exclusion: Black and White Workers, Race ,and the State of Labor History,” Reviews in American History 26:2 (March 1998): 146-174
_____, ed. The Black Worker: Race, Labor, and Civil Rights since Emancipation
Goodwyn, Lawrence C. “Populist Dreams and Negro Rights: East Texas as a Case Study,” American Historical Review 76 (December 1971), 1435-56
Halpern, Rick, “Organized Labor, Black Workers, and the Twentieth-Century South: the Emerging Revision,” in Melvyn Stokes and Halpern, eds. Race and Class in the American South since 1890, 43-76
Green, James R. and Paul B. Worthman, “Black Workers in the New South, 1865-1915,” in Nathan I. Huggins, ed. Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience, 47-69
Guterl, Matthew P. “After Slavery: Asian Labor, the American South, and the Age of Emancipation,” Journal of World History 14:2 (June 2003): 209-242
Lichtenstein, Alex. “Racial Conflict and Racial Solidarity in the Alabama Coal Strike of 1894: New Evidence for the Gutman-Hill Debate,” Labor History 36 (Winter 1995): 63-76
Payne, Charles M. and Adam Green, eds. Time Longer than Rope: a Century of African American Activism, 1850-1950
Painter, Nell Irvin. “ ‘Social Equality,’ Miscegenation, Labor and Power,” in Numan V. Bartley, ed. The Evolution of Southern Culture, 47-67

Primary Source Materials & Contemporary Accounts:
Lewis, R. and Phillip Foner, eds. The Black Worker: a Documentary History from Colonial Times to the Present, vols. 1 and 2

Books:
Alexander, Roberta S. North Carolina Faces the Freedmen: Race Relations during Presidential Reconstruction, 1865-67
Allen, Walter. Governor Chamberlain’s Administration in South Carolina
Baker, Bruce. What Reconstruction Meant: Social Memory of Reconstruction in South Carolina, 1890-1957
Cecelski, David S. The Waterman’s Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina
Click, Patricia. Time Full of Trial: the Roanoke Island Freedmen’s Colony, 1862-1867
Cooper, William J. The Conservative Regime: South Carolina, 1877-1890
Drago, Edmund L. Hurrah for Hampton: Black Red Shirts in South Carolina during Reconstruction
Edmonds, Helen G. The Negro and Fusion Politics in North Carolina, 1894-1901
Hall, Jacqueline et al. Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World
Hadden, Sally E. Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas
Haley, John H. Charles N. Hunter and Race Relations in North Carolina
Holden, Charles J. In the Great Maelstrom: Conservatives in Post-Civil War South Carolina
Holt, Sharon Ann. Making Freedom Pay: North Carolina Freedpeople Working for Themselves, 1864-1900
Holt, Thomas. Black Over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina during Reconstruction
Kantrowitz, Stephen. Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy
Logan, Frenise A. The Negro in North Carolina, 1876-1894
McKinney, Gordon B. Southern Mountain Republicans, 1865-1900: Politics and the Appalachian Community
Mobley, Joe A. James City, A Black Community in North Carolina, 1863-1900
Nelson, Scott. Iron Confederacies: Southern Railways, Klan Violence, and Reconstruction
Powers, Bernard E. Jr. Black Charlestonians: a Social History, 1822-1885
Simkins, Francis B. Pitchfork Ben Tillman, South Carolinian
_____ and Robert H. Woody, South Carolina during Reconstruction
Tindall, George B. South Carolina Negroes, 1877-1900
Williamson, Joel. After Slavery: the Negro in South Carolina during Reconstruction, 1861-1877
Zuscek, Richard. State of Rebellion: Reconstruction in South Carolina

Articles, Reviews, Collections:
Baker, Bruce. “The ‘Hoover Scare’ in South Carolina, 1887: an Attempt to Organize Black Farm Labor,” Labor History 40:3 (August 1999): 261-82
Cecelski, David S. and Timothy B. Tyson,. eds. Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy
Crow, Jeffrey J. “‘‘Fusion, Confusion, and Negroism': Schisms Among Negro Republicans in the North Carolina Election of 1896." North Carolina Historical Review 53:4 (1976): 364-384.
Hine, William C. “Black Organized Labor in Reconstruction Charleston,” Labor History 25 (1984): 504-517
Kelly, Brian. “Black Laborers, the Republican Party and the Crisis of Reconstruction in Lowcountry South Carolina,” International Review of Social History 51:3 (Dec. 2006): 375-414
_____. “Labor and Place: The Contours of Grassroots Black Mobilization in Reconstruction South Carolina,” Journal of Peasant Studies 35: 4 (October 2008): 653-687.
_____. “Emancipations and Reversals: Labor, Race and the Boundaries of American Freedom in the Age of Capital," International Labor and Working Class History 75: 1 (Spring 2009): 1-15.
Kirshenbaum, Andrea Meryl. “‘The Vampire That Hovers Over North Carolina’: Gender, White Supremacy, and the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898." Southern Cultures 4:3 (1998): 6-30
Kremm, Thomas W. and Diane Neal. “Challenges to Subordination: Organized Black Agrarian Protest in South Carolina, 1886-1895,” South Atlantic Quarterly 77:1 (1978): 98-112
Lockley, T. “Review of Olwell’s Masters, Slaves and Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1740-1790 and Jenkins’ Seizing the New Day: African Americans in Post-Civil War Charleston,” Labor History (May 1999)
Mabry, William Alexander. The Negro in North Carolina Politics Since Reconstruction
_____. "Negro Suffrage and Fusion Rule in North Carolina." North Carolina Historical Review 12 (April 1935): 79-102
Morgan, Philip. “Work and Culture: the Task System and the World of Lowcountry Blacks, 1700-1880,” William and Mary Quarterly, 39:4 (Oct. 1982), 563-599.
Strickland, John C. “Traditional Culture and Moral Economy: Social and Economic Change in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1865-1910,” in Steven Hahn and Jonathan Prude, eds. The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation
Saville, Julie. “Grassroots Reconstruction: Agricultural Laborers and Collective Action in South Carolina, 1860-1868,” Slavery and Abolition 12:3 (Dec. 1991): 173-82
Schwalm, Leslie A. “‘Sweet Dreams of Freedom’: Freedwomen's Reconstruction of Life and Labor in Lowcountry South Carolina,” Journal of Women's History 9:1 (Spring 1997) 9-39
Tindall, George B. “The Campaign for the Disfranchisement of Negroes in South Carolina,” Journal of Southern History 15:2 (May 1949): 212-34

Primary Source Materials & Contemporary Accounts:
Moore, John Hamond, ed. The Juhl Letters to the Charleston Courier: a View of the South, 1865-1871
Pike, James S. The Prostrate State: South Carolina under Negro Government
Towles, Louis P. ed. The World Turned Upside Down: the Palmers of Santee, 1818-1881
Towne, Laura. Letters and Diaries of Laura M. Towne; Written from the Sea Islands of South Carolina, 1862-1884
Williams, Alfred B. Hampton and His Red Shirts: South Carolina’s Deliverance in 1876

Books:
Cell, John W. The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: Origins of White Supremacy in South Africa and the American South
Gaines, Kevin K. Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century
Gordon, Fon Louise. Caste and Class: the Black Experience in Arkansas, 1880-1920
Harlan, Louis B. Booker T. Washington (2 vols.)
Haley, John H. Charles N. Hunter and Race Relations in North Carolina
Litwack, Leon. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow
Logan, Rayford W. The Betrayal of the Negro: from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson
McMillen, Neil. Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow
Meier, August. Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915
Smith, John David. Black Judas: a Story of Racial Self-Hatred in America
Verney, Kevern. The Art of the Possible: Booker T. Washington and Black Leadership in the United States, 1881-1925
Wharton, Vernon Lane. The Negro in Mississippi, 1865-1890
White, Deborah Gray. Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1884-1994

Articles, Reviews, Collections:
Calista, Donald J. “Booker T. Washington: Another Look,” Journal of Negro History 49:4 (Oct. 1964): 240-255
Cox, Oliver C. “Leadership among Negroes in the United States,” in Alvin W. Goulder, ed. Studies in Leadership: Leadership and Democratic Action, 228-271
_____, “The Leadership of Booker T. Washington,” Social Forces 30 (1951): 91-97
Kelly, Brian. “Black Elites Confront the ‘Rabid Faction’: Booker T. Washington, Industrial Accommodation, and the Labor Question in the Jim Crow South,” in Eric Arnesen, ed. The Black Worker: Race and Labor Activism since Emancipation
_____. “Review of Steven Hahn’s A Nation under Our Feet,” Labor: Studies in the Working-Class History of the Americas 1:3 (Fall 2004): 145-47
Lichtenstein, Alex. “Roots of Black Nationalism?,” American Quarterly 57:1 (2005) 261-269
Meier, August. “Negro Class Structure and Ideology in the Age of Booker T. Washington,” Phylon 23 (Fall 1962): 258-66
Reed, Adolph Jr. “Romancing Jim Crow,” in Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene, 14-24
Stein, Judith. “ ‘Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others’: the Political Economy of Racism in the United States,” Science and Society 38:4 (Winter 1974-5): 422-53
Walker, Clarence E. Deromanticizing Black History: Critical Essays and Reappraisals

Primary Source Materials & Contemporary Accounts:
Fortune, Timothy Thomas. Black and White: Land, Labor and Politics in the South
Thomas, William Hannibal. Land and Labor