Overview

Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858. Her life story, which she recounted in an oral history decades later, captures the complexity of emancipation. Based on interviews that Joyner and formerly enslaved people had with the Depression-era Federal Writers Project, historian Carole Emberton draws a portrait of the steps they took in order to feel free, something no legal mandate could instill. Joyner's life exemplifies the deeply personal, highly emotional nature of freedom and the decisions people made, from the seemingly mundane to the formidable: what to wear, where to live, what work to do, and who to love. Joyner's story reveals the many paths forged by freedmen and freedwomen to find joy and belonging during Reconstruction, despite the long shadow slavery cast on their lives.

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9781324001829

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To Walk About in Freedom is an unsettling but moving story of an African American woman's quest for familial love and the truth of her birth told with elegant tenderness. In it, Carole Emberton uses the tools of her trade to offer a model for excavating the precious and deeply personal complexities of formerly enslaved people's lives, including accounting for the multiple possibilities of family histories that are often shrouded in mystery. This is an important contribution to the history of families and freedom in post-Civil War America -- Kidada E. Williams, author of They Left Great Marks on Me In To Walk About in Freedom, Carole Emberton gives us a powerful new history of emancipation, one anchored in the inner life of an ordinary woman. A member of the charter generation of freedom, Priscilla Joyner chose to tell her story to Federal Writers Project interviewers, and her testimony reveals how a single life can illuminate larger historical moments. Beautifully written using overlooked archival sources, To Walk About in Freedom is essential reading, reminding us that freedom was and is a lived experience with deep emotional resonance. -- Megan Kate Nelson, author of Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America

To Walk About in Freedom is an unsettling but moving story of an African American woman's quest for familial love and the truth of her birth told with elegant tenderness. In it, Carole Emberton uses the tools of her trade to offer a model for excavating the precious and deeply personal complexities of formerly enslaved people's lives, including accounting for the multiple possibilities of family histories that are often shrouded in mystery. This is an important contribution to the history of families and freedom in post-Civil War America -- Kidada E. Williams, author of They Left Great Marks on Me

Author Information

Carole Emberton is professor of history at the University at Buffalo. An NEH public scholar, she is the author of the prize-winning Beyond Redemption. She has written for the New York Times and Washington Post.

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