The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom

Thulani Davis' book "The Emancipation Circuit" rethinks Reconstruction by tracing how four million freed people created political organizations and connections that mobilized communities across the South. It shows how these circuits linked rural and urban organizations, labor struggles, and political culture with news, strategies, education, and mutual aid, becoming the basis for the first mass Black political movement for equal citizenship.

Format: Hardback
Length: 464 pages
Publication date: 14 June 2022
Publisher: Duke University Press

Thulani Davis offers a groundbreaking reinterpretation of Reconstruction by delving into the remarkable story of the four million newly liberated individuals who forged political organizations and connections that galvanized communities throughout the South. Drawing upon the practices they cultivated while enslaved, freedpeople established new settlements and established a network of circuits, enabling them to envision, enact, and defend freedom. This interdisciplinary history reveals that these circuits interconnected rural and urban organizations, labor struggles, and political culture with news, strategies, education, and mutual aid. By mapping the emancipation circuits, Davis unveils the geographical spread of ideas of freedom, which circulated through shipping routes, army maneuvers, and the itinerant activism of activists. This work not only reconfigures our understanding of the evolution of southern Black political agendas but also provides a profound exploration of the origins of the enduring Black freedom struggle, spanning from the Jim Crow era to the present.

Weight: 816g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781478015567