The experiences of African American families varied during the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. One constant, however, was the desire to legalize marriages and reconstitute families. African American women also had to contend with the forced apprenticeship of their children by former enslavers and negotiating fair compensation for their work. African American women throughout the South exerted their right to be treated equally with white women; and respectability was a core issue for African American women in the context of marriage, family, work, dress, aesthetics, politics, and rights of citizenship.
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Black Women and Emancipation
Emancipation in the United States stretched over a century from the revolutionary war to the end of the Civil War. This period was punctuated by intermediate struggles for freedom before the Civil War and more struggles to define and claim the freedom promised after the official end of slavery. Black women used the…