FREEDOM WAS IN SIGHT!

A graphic history of American Reconstruction, followed by a brief text overview, a chronology, and an appendix of primary sources.

Historians have traditionally seen Reconstruction as a set period that began at the close of the Civil War in 1865 and concluded with the start of the Hayes presidency in 1877. However, Northwestern history professor Masur suggests in the introduction that Reconstruction actually started with the Civil War and ended definitively in the 1890s after “biracial political coalitions had been systematically defeated.” Rather than using a narrative history to make her points, Masur “speaks” through Emma V. Brown, a real-life teacher and advocate for Black education who lived through both the war and Reconstruction. Co-author Clarke, a South African illustrator, brings Brown's narration to life in colorful comic book–style illustrations that capture the turbulent 19th-century world in which Brown lived. The narrator begins by referencing ex-slave Harriet Jacobs’ influential memoir, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which was published just before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. After that, she focuses primarily on the struggles the Black community faced to build new post-enslavement lives in 1865. Some, like Brown, fought to establish schools to educate Black children; others, like George T. Downing, fought to give Black men the vote. Still others, like social reformer Frederick Douglass and journalist Ida B. Wells, rose to national prominence through their efforts to fight the growing tide of racism that, by the 1890s, was manifesting as mob violence and federal laws that curbed the national government's power “to protect people’s rights when local and state authorities refused to do so.” Recalling this earlier time of profound social division in America's history, Masur and Clarke's unusual collaboration celebrates the men and women who battled the forces of white supremacy to gain their rightful place as citizens.

Engaging reading for all ages.