And so, for today were going to be talking about what did freedom mean and in particular, well be thinking about what did freedom mean to the free people, right. And in january of 1865, secretary of war, Edwin Stanton and Union GeneralWilliam Sherman had a meeting with 20 preachers in savannah, georgia, they were preachers, teachers, lay persons, and they wanted to find out from these preachers basically what is it that free people wanted from freedom . What did they expect and particularly wanted to know what did they expect in the aftermath of the emancipation proclamation. The group of 20 people, who was representative of free black folks in the community, selected one person, garrison frazier, a 67yearold man, to be the representative of the community. And to speak for them. And so, general sherman asked them or asked him, basically, what did he understand freedom to mean, especially in light of the emancipation proclamation. He said taking us from under the yolk of bondage to where we can reap the fruit of our labor and take care of ourselves and assist the government in maintaining our freedom. You can hear some of the language from the emancipation proclamation. Assisting the government in maintaining our freedom. He talked about sort of having the people who were emancipated serve in the military, go to work, and do that diligently. Hes reflecting that. But hes also reflecting, you know, the ability to reap the fruits of their labor so theyre going to get the benefit of their labor, right. The secretary and the general asks other questions like could black people take care of themselves . Yes, they could. What did they need . Land. Did they want to live among white people . Some did, but garrison frazier did not. So in this discussion we can start to see what it is that free people wanted from their lives, even as its couched in this sort of governmental exploration of what was freedom going to mean for the free people. They were already asserting what it is they wanted freedom to mean, what they wanted freedom to be. Im saying this is building on our conversations of freedom and free black life and how precarious it was. We were moving to a moment where freedom could mean something more. Were going to think about what did that freedom mean when we think about it from the perspective of the free people. One of the other things were connecting into from the earlier part of the term has to do with the question of how do black people appear on the landscape of the United States, right. We started at the very beginning of the term talking about whether or not black peoples experience in the United States is something about black people, identity formation or about pushing the nation as people have said to live out the true meaning of its creed. Well think about the question whether or not free people were pushing the meaning of what this nation was supposed to be and what its founding documents sort of claimed for it. In the process of doing that well start to see how it is when people talk about, historians write about emancipation and the moment of reconstruction that sometimes the question is framed the way that sherman and stanton framed it, which is basically what can the free people do for the country. And then theres this question of what did the free people want for themselves . And when we think about the sort of longer process, well talk about over the remaining weeks over reconstruction and what happened, a lot of times what is it free people wanted for themselves gets crowded out by the question of what could they do for the nation. Im hoping today we can keep both of those questions in balance here to think about the relationship of free people to the nation in the project of building and more prominently what it is free people wanted for themselves. One of the a couple of ways well get at that is thinking about the first sites of freedom. The first places where free people lived, where they went to, basically these they were called contraband camps. Ill get into the language and why. But then really spending a majority of our time thinking about how free people define freedom and its many aspects of their lives. I wanted to start out with some of the what i call sort of the first phalanx of freedom. Thats the black soldiers, right. And when we think about sort of black soldiers, many of them were free black men who enlisted to support the union effort. Some of them were selfemancipating men who liberated themselves from slavery and went and joined the union ranks. But it was a real debate about whether or not enslaved men, free black men should support the war effort. And you can think about reasons why. If you think about what the experience of African People was in the American Revolution, for example, and sort of thinking about what happened after the American Revolution. Did they realize the freedom that the American Revolution promised . No. Thats why we have the graphic of freedom with a line through it. They had freedom but it wasnt a full freedom or complete freedom. So it was a debate whether black men should support the war effort. And eventually they do. They enlist after the emancipation proclamation because it becomes a war measure to enlist black men and support the union effort but they do it anyway, believing they could again demonstrate the commitment to the union, the principles of the nation, and that would reflect well on African People that they were participating in this process. Some refused, right. Some black men refused to enlist and others were pressed and forced into the army, even on the union side. It wasnt all soldiers who participated were sort of ready to jump in for the war effort. But many did. And, in fact, they made up about 10 of the union army. About 25 of the union navy. So there was a significant buy in for black soldiers. And when they participated in the war, they often times, in terms of leadership, didnt get competent leadership because they were laboring under the systems of racism and oppression that kept them from getting the primary sort of leaders. And they were sometimes denied the ability to hold the commissioned positions as leaders. But eventually they were allowed to gain some commissions. So they had some leadership role. They were oftentimes placed at the forefront. Sometimes called like cannon fodder. Sort of put in the front lines of different battles so they suffered the greatest numbers of casualties as a result of the service. They suffered casualties because of them being placed on the front lines, but also the tenor of the war was so charged at points that they would sort of experience extreme violence because they were free black men or free black men but they were viewed as being sort of runaway slaves or Something Like that. So at fort pillow in tennessee, there were sort of a group of black soldiers and it basically ends up as a massacre of union troops trying to surrender. The black soldiers were oftentimes on the front lines, thats what happened at fort pillow in tennessee where they were basically hold up in a fort and they the Union Soldiers were trying to escape. And when they tried to escape from the fort, they believed that there was going to be sort of transport waiting for them. It turned out there wasnt. As theyre trying to escape and surrender, they were basically massacred and shot as they were fleeing from the fort. And a similar situation happened in the battle of the crater where there were black soldiers on the front of the union effort and as they rushed into what was a sort of blown up sort of mine area, they were massacred as the confederate soldiers were shouting no quarter. No quarter. They would not be allowed to surrender. That they would only sort of end they could have would be death. So we can see how black soldiers were leading the cause of the war by sort of articulating how they could be supportive of the union. We can see how they were sort of thinking through and struggling under some of the limitations, including being denied pay. That was something that happened relatively early on, they were denied pay and some of them refused to be paid until they were getting paid the same amount as white soldiers, the same in terms of compensation in terms of wages and clothing and things like that. But the other thing they did in the leadership in the war effort was helping to secure freedom for their families. Ill talk about the contraband camps and how enslaved people were liberating themselves but one of the things that happened for the men who served in the military, they were able to gain freedom for their wives and for their children. Right. So they were able to figure out that by serving in the union they could also gain freedom for their families and children. We also know that when it comes to pursuing freedom, its not always sometimes its viewed as an individual sort of moment and we talked about that where people make choices for themselves, but also people make choices for their families and their communities. And so, when we start to think about some of the first freedoms and the places where enslaved people started to find their first freedoms it was in the contraband camps. It was the places where enslaved people ran to the union lines when they heard there was a union army in the area. They would go because they knew that there could be they could find freedom there. They knew what the significance of the war was. This is significant because sometimes people think enslaved people didnt know what was going on, but they did. They had a robust Communication Network that shared messages about what was happening in the lead up to the war so when the union came to their areas they understood what it meant. So one of the first places of freedom was fortress monroe, in virginia, near hampton virginia, in 1861. We find the first freedoms were both this moment of a political crisis for the nation and a humanitarian crisis and its at the hands of enslaved people who were liberating themselves into freedom. The second place is port royal, South Carolina, which was viewed as a rehearsal of reconstruction, the first moment of figuring out what the reconstruction process would look like. So in fortress monroe, virginia, there were three enslaved men who ran they ran from the person who was enslaving them, he was a colonel in the confederate army, they ran to fortress monroe and said they didnt want to work anymore for the confederate colonel who was their enslaver. When they got there, general butler had no plan exactly for a what to do in a situation like that. What was he going to do with these men liberating themselves coming from slavery. He thought quickly how to handle their situation and determined these men should be treated like contraband. Contraband was an idea he pulled from International Law that said basically any goods are being transported by any neutral parties could be for the benefit of the enemy could be confiscated as contraband. So he decided he would deem these men as contraband but also recognized quickly that that idea of treating these human beings like property wasnt really a workable idea and also realized it was a conflict what was the union going to do with these people now that theyre deeming them as property as well but they didnt want to hold formerly enslaved people as property. But in this moment it starts to lay out, right, the landscape for by which the union can start to think about these selfemancipating men as potential laborers for the war and eventually as soldiers. He started by putting the men to work in the union camps. Good work around for the time being. They had to figure out what that was going to mean much later. But what ends up happening is not only are men coming to camps like it, but there are also women coming, there are children coming, there are elderly people coming. They couldnt imagine how they could easily absorb that labor into the war project so it becomes a question what do we do with these people, how do we navigate . He starts to create a work camp, essentially, and under the union guard, and have these people work for the union. Have women doing laundry, cooking and things like that, taking care of the elderly they brought with them. He didnt see that he could let the families what else was he going to do with them . So that starts to push the sort of Political Landscape of emancipation. And in port royal, South Carolina we can see how the contraband camps pushed the social and culture aspects of emancipation. So there too you have sort of union presence. You have selfemancipating enslaved people, but you have the influence of religious communities that start to set up basically what a humanitarian crisis response. How do we take care of, add resources to the people who are emancipating themselves in South Carolina. They envisioned, right, these northern missionaries, called themselves gideons band. They were made of missionaries from a variety of nominations, including the congressionalist and others and they imagined themselves going down to help people in need of resources. They imagined themselves going down to teach formerly enslaved people how to become citizens, how to labor diligently, reproduce families, and imagine themselves creating religious community and they were shocked to find that they were Robust Networks already for education. There was already robust education for churches and people have been taking care of their own spiritual lives they were already pushing the landscape of what it meant to be free in terms of their families. But nevertheless they set up what could look like other elements of reconstruction. In terms of establishing the establishing some of the landscape for what how the government would interact with free people, which later becomes the freemans bureau. Or which is the freemans bureau at this point and other elements. In these first moments you have the contraband camps created by the free people running to union lines and the union army having to sort of adapt and figure out politically what are we going to do . Socially, culturally, what are we going to do, how do we support these communities even if they initially thought they would be leading these communities. But if we turn and look a little bit more deeply at this question of sort of what did it mean to be free from the perspective of selfemancipating folks, theres a pretty robust landscape of information to start thinking about. But if we turn and look a little bit more deeply at this question of sort of what did it mean to be free from the perspective of selfemancipating folks, theres a pretty robust landscape of information to start thinking about. What did it mean in terms of labor, their mental, intellectual pursuits, their personal goals for their families, themselves, their own bodies, their political goals, in terms of government, Office Holding all those things, religious community and even geography and movement. So what did it mean to be free . One of the key areas, so we already heard from garrison frazier what the free people wanted was land. They wanted to be able to be independent, but land was an important part of it, and they wanted control of their labor. They wanted to be able to get the fruits of their own labor. One of the ways we sort of get a picture of what it is that free people wanted was from the now pretty famous letter of a formerly enslaved man named Jordan Anderson, writing to his former enslaver about his response really to his enslavers request that he return to the plantation that he left from and return to work. And one of the things that jordan, he basically, very memorably challenges the former enslaver about the ways he treated him, the violence he visited upon him and his family, and then he says basically in dayton, ohio where he is, hes able to work, get paid every week. His wife is sort of able to be respected and called by her name, as mrs. Anderson. He calculates, you know, how much money he would get in back pay if his former enslaver were to basically, you know, pay him the hourly wage that he gets now for the years of service he had done without pay, if he would compensate mandy for her labor as well. And then if we subtract the amounts for any care that was meted out for them while they were enslaved, he estimated the amount owed to them would be about 11,680, in 19th century dollars. Right. So a pretty significant amount. Hes like if youre willing to pay me that and guarantee other things well come back. Hes having this moment of im not doing that but letting his former enslaver know this is what the wages are, i want to be compensated for the work i do. In another instance, in terms of labor and sort of controlling labor and getting the fruits of their labor, there was an enslaved woman down in georgia, in 1860s and she was sort of known for and disciplined a few times for going and putting on her the enslaving womans perfume. And sort of going into the vanity and sort of, you know, putting on a little bit of makeup and, you know, looking at herself in the mirror, take a side profile or whatever. So shes known for doing this and was disciplined for it a few times. For her thats what freedom was going to mean, the ability to do that and not policed in that way. She may have responded after emancipation the same way another enslaved woman did when she was sort of disciplined for not responding appropriately or quickly enough, she said bells is played out. Thats over. That time is over. So theres a sense of like im going to control my labor and im going to sort of push back against those systems of sort of disciplining black labor that had been existent at the time. Some people wanted to not labor at all. They didnt want to have to work for anybody, they didnt want anybody to control their labor. One of the ways it manifested itself, not to labor but control the labor of the family, the children or the wives that wanted to be home, so this idea of choosing not to labor was another choice that free people wanted, or to labor for themselves, right. And to be able to gain the fruits of their labor from the plows of their own hands and what they were able to produce for themselves. That manifested itself because as garrison frazier pointed out and as we know, enslaved people were liberated without land. So they had to secure land from their secure land from the landowners and engage in sharecropper where they gain a portion of the crop and sort of profit from that, or from having crop liens where they own their own land, right, they would sort of grown their own crops and have a portion of that crop they have to give to the landowner or to the person who was assisting them. But all this was not on the best terms for the formerly enslaved people, right. And Harriet Jacobs in the letter we read today pointed this out. When she says the free men but with few exceptions were cheated out of the crop of their cotton. Shes indicating theres a system where people are being sort of manipulated in the process and not getting their full full amounts. And then lastly they wanted land and they had good reasons, right, to want it and believe they would get it, because when general sherman i think as part of the conversation he was having with the ministers of savannah, was thinking about what to do with all of these free people liberating themselves and following the union army. It was actually sort of creating a drag but like having all these people following behind because they realized the meaning of the union armys presence and it could liberate them was pulling people to the army union. So he figured he could take a swath of land on the eastern sea board of georgia and South Carolina and promise to deliver it to the selfemancipating folks and free people to lay labor on themselves and take care of themselves because that was what was needed. And thats what people did. He apportioned some land, they moved to these basically you could call them like homesteads and labored there. But ultimately, that wasnt able to be fulfilled. Well talk that some more at a later point in terms of the limitations of the freedoms bureau in distributing land. But they wanted paid for their own labor, respect for their labor and land on which to work to take care of themselves and their families. What did it mean to be free in terms of mental and intellectual processes . This was one of the areas where the pursuit of literacy was robust. It was incredibly robust. Booker t. Washington described it as being like a whole nation trying to go to school, right. Imagine everybody trying to get into the schoolhouse to get education and to learn to read, learn math, learn all the elements of what education afforded. So, some of what emerges during this time are missionary and common schools. So in places like port royal, a lot of missionaries go and set up schools but find there are a lot of schools there. People like mary peek, whos pictured here up in the corner, a free black woman in hampton, had already been running a free school in hampton for free black folks before the war. So theres already sort of this infrastructure for education of a sort among free black folks to educate other black folks. So that continues on during the period of emancipation and on educate other black folks. So that just continues on during the period of emancipation and on. Theres already these sort of places where people are sort of creating schools. And then you have people like charlotte and heriot jacobs who go to the south and help establish schools and teach in the schools. Charlotte forton, excuse me, you will remember shes the granddaughter of james forten who fought in the American Revolution from philadelphia. She goes down as part of gideons band in South Carolina. And she is shocked at the exuberant energy the students bring to the classroom space and the passion they have. Shes shocked about the diskrs that theyre not capable of learning and they have to be forced to work and learn and all these things. What she finds is the kids are actually desiring to learn, they catch on really quick. And she writes about how, you know, its really a discredit to the people who have all the resources and have opportunities and then look down upon the enslaved people and the formerly enslaved people for their lack of education when the system was built and shes writing and sort of really reflecting theres a robust engagement of education going on in these areas. So these moments where the expectations of what enslaved people wanted or what they were doing is being turned and challenged, and this is one of those places. So in this way you have these teachers and black administrators of schools is Something Else free people wanted. They wanted to have their schools led by people who looked like them, people who understood what their experiences were and would not look down upon them, wouldnt come with these preconceived notions about their capacity but instead would, you know, reflect what their experience was. They knew they wanted an education, they knew they wanted these resource and they were capeal of doing that kind of work. And so they sought that. That led to the formation of historically black colleges and universities that were sort of rooted in this moment of emancipation. And the whole sort of language around education is also fraught about what kind of education freed people would need. You found the colleges were broken into these two models which, you know, i would say is a false dichotomy in a few ways about Industrial Education and teaching people to lead with their hands verse teaching people the liberal arts, the romance language and geography and all those elements. And they also have religious institutions like the richmond thelogical institute, which becomes Virginia Union which is right down the street from us. There are all these places where formerly enslaved people, selfemancipating people are being educated. And part of the mission of these schools was could be educating the head, hands and hearts. What are they trying to do . Get you involved but not just sitting at a desk. Education could be getting people involved, getting them involved in the community. What else . Teaching them the tools theyre going to need in the professional world i would say. The professional world. So it might be teaching them what they need in a professional world. Anybody else what educating heads, hands and heart might mean . Is it kind of like the each one teach one philosophy where like you educate people and they educate others . Like each one, teach one, using what you learned to teach other people. So it was a little bit of all those things, in terms of educating the head. Having something in their minds they could do, so you need to know something about math and geography and history and all these things. Educating the hands, right, for labor, right, so you know how to do things then world that need doing. You know how to take care of your house. You know how to build a building. You know how to make a Printing Press and make a newspaper. You have real practical skills you can do something with. And educating the heart, right . Educating folks for thinking about the community engagement, for being involved with the people around them. So its a multilayered process of education. Its all these things. Not just either, or. Its a holistic form of education they sought. And they viewed it as manufacturing levers. E education was a process of manufacturing levers, something you might use to lift something up. People who wanted to work in the community, help the community to evolve, and again it was a very communal sense what education was for. It wasnt for like the job you have to have down the road but what you can do to help other people, to help the community. In all those ways it disrupted this false dichotomy of liberal and also disrupted in the way the people who ran the schools had to negotiate. Because sometimes they had to deal with funding issues and who was going to give them money for Industrial Education. Pursuing literacy, pursuing education from people who were supportive of what their mission was and then having an education that could help them and help the community at large. What it meant to be free. It was a personal freedom. It had to do with whats my name, what are they calling themselves. They changed their names. We saw that in Harriet Tubman who went to call herself heriot. They took off their names of their enslavers and chose new names, names like freeman, right, recognizing their new sfat s. Changed first names. They didnt want to be called something, and they changed it to something they did want to be called. They changed their names to reflect their family groupings and who they were akin to. They also sought security of the body against violence. Because security of the body against violence, against policing that was happening in the communities, right . So in the immediate sort of aftermath of emancipation there were riots, so memphis has a riot of three days where the assailants where policemen and Small Business owners and killed about 48 black people and 70 to 80 more were injured. And black women were raped because of their connections to soldiers. And this was in part the reflection of how Southern Society and southern communities were processing the presence of a black man in uniform in the south, right, and how they were reflecting the complete transformation of what Slave Society had been. So theres this riot where these people are killed. One of the things and one of the ways that freed people respond to this is by sort of pushing back against this culture of dissemblance is an idea that was put forth by a historian, right, where women, black women in particular would not talk about certain aspects of their live said particularly around sexuality because they have been so because their bodies and their sexuality had been so debased. They would rather not talk about it so they wouldnt be reflected in that way. In this instance black women testified to congressional committees, and we have some testimonies going on now. So you may have a sense what it means to testify in front of a big body of people who, you know, may or may not be trying to support the story you tell. They wanted their stories to be told. They wanted to have justice for what they experienced. And so they had this culture of testimony as well to develop stories and telling so that they could pursue the personal freedoms of protections for their bodies, protection for their families and themselves and then also sort of recognizing themselves and their own names and sort of who they want to be reflected upon as. What did it mean to be free . It meant having their marriages recognized by the federal government. There were instances of mass weddings. So we had talked earlier in the semester about how families were used as tools to discipline and to disrupt the lives of enslaved people. Well, emancipation is like, oh, we can have our union solemnized and formally recognized by the government. Whats interesting here is they pursued mass weddings and weddings in recognition, although this wasnt the only form of forming family and i want to acknowledge that. But they also had these ideas well in advance theres a good a example of a woman in South Carolina who eventually petitions to get her husbands pay. Hes a soldier in the army and its 1861 and she is petitioning to get recognition as his wife so she can also claim his pay so she can support the family. This is before the federal government is recognizing families and marriage and those relationships. So we can take from that that enslaved people had their own ideas what it meant to be responsible to one another and these sort of covenant relationships and they lived it out in emancipation. They had their marriages recognized by the federal government. Reconnecting with family was like a key, key element of what it meant to be free. Some people traveled hundreds of miles to try to find family members, to reconnect with family members. They placed ads in newspapers to find their people, and they placed ads in these newspapers for decades, up until the trial of the 20th century people were still placing ads in newspapers like the christian reporter and others saying i am soandso. I lost saw my wife, husband, daughter, cousin, son, auntie here. They were owned by soandso. They were providing all the information they could ipthese ads to try to reconnect their families and did this, again, for decades. Up until the turn of the 20th century to try to find their family members. They also suffered the ravages of time and distance. And not every story meant people were able to reconnect and they were able to find their people. They also had extended kinship networks they wanted to remain and strengthen. So we find instances of grandparents trying to take care of their grandchildren, you know, networks of people who had been living together but not necessarily married or biological families were traying to sort of gain control and support children and other people. So they had these extended kinship networks. And they also had single female head of households. They had places where women were taking care of their children. And this was a particular challenge for freed women because the federal government didnt always sort of recognize women as heads of household, and so they had to sort of navigate those elements, but they sometimes wanted that. And they used resolutions to deal with any challenges in their families and that happened too. People wanted divorces and be separated from people. So again a really robust picture of what freedom meant in terms of family. Reconnecting but it could also mean reconfiguring, right . What did it mean to be free . It was Political Freedom that we can see through places like the National Freedman conventions which we had talked about in the sort of antebellum period. They had started around the time of colonization and immigration debates in the 1830s. These were freedman conventions in the 1830s were at the post emancipation period theyre still having these meetings talking about what it means to be free. A lot of times they talked about voting, serving on juries, Holding Political offices. These were spaces they started to craft out what freedom could mean. And they talked about constitutional conventions and participating in them because one of the things that happened as a result of the civil war and a resolution was a reconstruction act that broke the south into military districts and made it so that the states had tree write their constitutions to reflect the end of slavery and to grant suffrage to freedman. And in these conventions black men were elect today hold office in these conventions. In some places, in a majority of the conventions like in louisiana and South Carolina, in places like virginia they werent a majority, but they did participate actively in the conversations about emancipation. And they focused on education, race relations, but they also talked about, you know, what it was that free people wanted that didnt necessarily coincide with the legislative landscape of emancipation im sorry, the landscape of voting and suffrage. And they also talked about issues around gender and sexuality. And so they talked about marriage and interracial marriage. But many of them articulated an idea of trying to protect black women, right, from being violated and by being raped or by just not having control of their bodies or being viewed in violent ways. So what it meant to be free was to participate in the Political Landscape and to shape what the definition of rights would be. What it meant to be free was religious. It meant exodus. It meant this idea of sort of having independent freedom. But it also meant this moment of liberation that god brought about, right . So folks who were christian at this time they believed this was a moment of god acting on their behalf to liberate them from enslavement. Which is not to say they sort of were sort of passively waiting for freedom but they understood god was sort of acting in their lives to bring about a transformation. And that led actually to a surge of black folks being converted to christianity and the formation of independent churches. So we talked earlier even with the second awakening there was not this large scale conversion experience among enslaved people but certainly by the time of emancipation those numbers really start to climb, right, in independent churches. And you find there are hundreds of churches created during the period of emancipation in the first sort of 5 to 10 years after emancipation, and a lot of them were rural churches, and so they create these independent churches. They create independent associations. They create independent denominations. So we know in the antebellum period theres an ame church, but in the south you have the zion and apostolic church. Do you think or do you know in people converted to christianity because they were free or because before they were emancipated you said there wasnt a large amount of slaves who were christian. I was just asking do you think that because they were free they saw that as, okay, well, someone had to do it and then they converted . I mean, look, i dont know that they necessarily saw it i havent seen sort of documentation saying well because god sort of liberated us were going to convert, but i definitely think it was certainly a good representation, right, of what faith could do. People could convert for that reason. I also think it was in some ways maybe a more practical element of people being able to move about and make choices of their own where to worship, who to worship with, how to worship. Some people had not been catechized in a religious community at all. So the work of the independent associations to actually carry out mission work among black folks is also probably a significant component of that. Thats one of the things the independent association said, we are the people best qualified to help the freed people. Who better than us . We know were black people ourselves and we know what black people need so we should be able to sort of carry out this work, and they do that. So i think all of those elements both sort of realizing this is a moment of sort of god acting and people seeing that, people having the opportunity to choose for themselves and also responding to the work of the conventions and churches. Is that okay. So, yes, so theres this sort of moment of what it means to be free as independent religious worship. Something we see based on one of the readings today sort of thinking about how women were actually playing key roles in forming religious communities. So much so that some of the planters were complaining about one of the women and what she was the Worship Services she was holding. So there were women sort of playing Important Roles in the religious community. And that goes through some changes over the period of emancipation. But in the immediate emancipation you have women playing key roles. We see that in places like petersburg, virginia, with the st. Stevens Episcopal Church which is one of the first black Episcopal Churches in virginia, and its founded in part by a formerly enslaved black woman from north carolina, kerry bragg, she works with one of the ministers there in st. Petersburg to start this church for formerly enslaved black folks. So women are playing an Important Role in the religious landscape of freedom as well. Which ultimately emerges at the end of the 19th century. And then lastly sort of thinking on this question of what the meant to be free is it meant geography and movement, right . Heriot jacobs said theres no need of hiding places to conseal mothers. Hiding in her grandmothers attic in that small crawlspace where she could barely stand. Theres no more need for that, right . No freed people can go where they want, right . And many do. Many migrate to cities in search of their family members, in search of just freedom, to be able to move their bodies and go where they please. Some of them stayed on the plantations where they have labored as enslaved people. Some of them were waiting it out and figuring out what did it mean this transformation to emancipation, waiting to see what would happen and then some of them start to move from the plantations. And for other folks so what did emancipation or freedom mean to the black individuals who were, i guess, homosexual how do they where are they represented in history where its not, you know, the 1900s where its more acceptable . Thats a good question. How were and i think thats an area of research because we talked about the sort of issues around forced mating among enslaved men. This is another one of those areas that is sort of at the leading edge of scholarship where people are now doing research. So theres a whole project called clearing slavery working group. And a few of the scholars there are working on projects to uncover these stories. So i think thats a scenario thats still unfolding, but i also think in terms of the broader landscape of rights and responsibilities the landscape of freedom didnt sort of allow for Family Structures to be organized around same gender loving people. That said there were lots of Family Structures that differed from that sort of victorian model of, you know, hetero normative of father and mother and their biological children. Freed people had a myriad they sometimes had, you know, units of women and children who lived together and formed community. They sometimes had single parent households and that could be a father and children or mother and children, right . So there were all these different ways of forming family, which is one of the ways you can see that. Marriage, again, was an institution that, you know, had its sort of christian sort of normative ideals about men and women, and thats kind of how it was structured. But even within that framework free people were sort of disrupting what it meant to be families and be married. They had all kinds of ways of partnering. Trying out relationships, and there was a myriad of ways. I think theres a lot of places we can start to look for what that experience may have been and try to uncover if we read carefully and thoughtfully and ask that question, and i think that, again, is the frontier. So thank you for the question. Yeah, the frontier of the research, ill say. And then lastly sort of return migration. Theyre returning to the places of enslavement as free people, and thats what we get a sense of from heriot jacobs letter writing saying im sitting here in my grandmothers house reflecting on what it meant to be free what it means to be free. Shes writing about, you know, returning to the place where her family was buried. There are some people who, you know, sort of fled and were able to emancipate themselves into freedom who then came back to the places where their families were buried. So places where they found their roots. And in a lot of ways this return to the places of emancipation, the places of enslavement was often the way they help today make freedom meaningful and helped it to stay was by returning to those places as freed people to shape the landscape of freedom. So the meaning of freedom as you can see was robust, right . And enslaved people and freed people had a very robust sense of what it meant to be free and a lot of different ways of constructing it. But they laid the foundations for making that freedom meaningful. They laid the foundations in the conversations they had and the exchange between Jordan Anderson and his former enslaver. They laid the foundations in their letters about the schools and in their pursuit of schools and it formation of schools. They laid the foundations for making freedom meaningful in so many ways through their activities and through their exchanges with various folks around that process. And in this moment we can say that emancipation marked a new cultural moment religiously, socially, culturally that there were things that were imaginable at this moment that have been, you know, complicated in the antebellum period before the war. And so with freedom, with this idea of freedom freed people were able to go forward and start to create a new engagement with the institutions of this country in such a way that it started to challenge some of those framework and try to sort of reconfigure them which would be the next sort of questions to consider. Now we know what freedom meant how do they make that freedom meaningful . So that will be the next question to take up in our next session, so ill leave it there today unless there are questions. I can take questions if there are any questions. Ill leave it there for today and ill see you next time. Tonight on American History tv a look at western history beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern with the university of arkansas professor elliott west lecturing about the impact of the California Gold rush. It led to deforitation, mercury contamination and sediment clogged rivers. Watch American History tv tonight and over the weekend on cspan 3. Every saturday night American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures in history. Why do you all know who liz ae borden is and raise your hand if youd ever heard of this murder, the gene harris murder trial before the class . The deepest cause where well find the true meaning of the revolution was this transformation that took place in the minds of the american people. Were going to talk about both of the sides of the story here. It tools and techniques of slave owner power and well also talk about the tools and techniques of power that were practiced by so enslaved people. Watch mystery professors talking about the American Revolution to september 11th. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv and lectures in history is available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Cspan has unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court and Public Policy events from the president ial primaries through the impeachment process. And now the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online, or listen on our free radio app and be part of the National Conversation through cspans daily washington journal program. Or through our social media feeds. Cspan, created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. With the federal government at work in d. C. And throughout the country use the congressional directory for Contact Information for members of congress, governor and federal agencies. Order your copy online today at cspanstore. Org. Next on lectures in history, University Professor teaches a class about laws and policies regarding abortion starting in the 19th century she tracks changes in medical practice and Public Opinion through court cases and newspaper coverage. She also describes abortion restrictions, access to illegal abortions, costs and health risks in different time periods and states. All right, everyone. Welcome back. This week were looking at the topic of abortion, and in class on tuesday we watched the film abortion stories Womens Health and that was looking at the more current debates about abortion now. It was looking at abortion in states that had begun to legislate abortion restriction. So today were actually going to go back in time a little bit. Were going to give some historical context