Thursday, March 11th
Registration Location: ECTR Lobby
8:15 am
College of Charleston Campus
Lunch Option: Tour Special Collections Library
Thursday Session One: 9-10:30am
1. “Land enough to lay our Fathers’ bones upon”: Land Ownership and Property Accumulation after Emancipation
Location: ECTR 116
Chair: Lisa Randle, (Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program) College of Charleston
Comment: Edmund L. Drago, College of Charleston
- Matt Harper, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill:
Jubilee Riots and Promised Land: Religious Narratives and Black Land Aspirations in the Post-Emancipation South [Paper Available, click here] - Bruce Mactavish and Sherrita Camp, Washburn University:
African-American Families, Farms and Autonomy in Northern Mississippi, 1880 [Paper Available, click here] - Story Matkin-Rawn, University of Central Arkansas:
From Land Ownership to Legal Defense: The World War I Watershed in Black Arkansan Organizing [Paper Available, click here]
2. New Religious and Political Communities in the Reconstruction South
Location: ECTR 118
Chair: Clarence Taylor, Baruch College (CUNY)
Comment: Clarence Taylor, Baruch College (CUNY) and Charles F. Irons, Elon University
- Otis Pickett, University of Mississippi:
Rev. John Lafayette Girardeau and the Ecclesiastical Equality of Freedmen in Charleston, 1866-1877 [Paper Available, click here] - Luke Harlow, Oakland University:
The Religion of Racial Separatism: the White Evangelical Response to Emancipation in Kentucky [Paper Available, click here] - Krystal D. Frazier, West Virginia University:
‘Faith Without Works is Dead’: African American Church Work, Adoptive Kinship and Mediating Repression in the Post-War South [Paper Available, click here]
Thursday Session Two: 10:45-12:15pm
3. Contextualizing Reconstruction-Era Racial Violence: New Approaches to Interpreting the Rise, Popularity, and Representation of Vigilantism
(extended session)
Location: ECTR 116
Chair: O. Vernon Burton, Coastal Carolina University
Comment:
Margaret Storey, DePaul University and
Hannah Rosen, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
- Elaine Parsons, Duquesne University:
Klan Violence/Local Violence in Reconstruction-era Union County: A Social Network Analysis [Paper Available, click here] - Tsekani Browne, Duquesne University:
Race & Reconstruction: Collective Violence & the (Political) Use of History in Turn-of-the-Century Black Intellectual Discourse [Paper Available, click here] - Mitchell Snay, Denison University:
The White League of Louisiana: Race & Democracy in the Late Reconstruction South
4. New Dawn in the Lowcountry?: Continuity and Change in Coastal Georgia and South Carolina
Location: ECTR 118
(extended session)
Chair: Paul Ortiz, University of Florida
Comment: Paul Ortiz, University of Florida
- Dana Byrd, Yale University:
Picturing Emancipation: Henry P. Moore, Photographer - Janet G. Hudson, University of South Carolina:
A Rice Planter Faces the ‘Complications’ of Free Black Labor [Paper Available, click here] - Jeff Strickland, Montclair State University:
Race, Labor, and Occupational Mobility in Charleston, South Carolina, 1850-1880 [Paper Available, click here] - John M. Bryant, Georgia Southern University:
“Surrounded on All Sides by an Armed and Brutal Mob”: Labor, Politics, and Newspapers Shape the Ogeechee Insurrection, 1868-1869 [Paper Available, click here]
Thursday Session Three: 1:30-3:00pm
5. Creating a Free Labor Regime: Violence and the State in the Post-Emancipation South
Location: ECTR 116
Chair: Clarence Taylor, Baruch College (CUNY)
Comment: Susan O’Donovan, (After Slavery Project) University of Memphis
- William A. Link, University of Florida:
Wage Labor and Slave Emancipation in North Georgia, 1865-1870 [Paper Available, click here] - Max Grivno, University of Southern Mississippi:
Riots and Railroads, Race and Class: Interpreting the Meridian Riots of 1871 - J. Michael Rhyne, Urbana University:
“The Negroes Are No Longer Slaves”: Free Black Families, Free Labor, and Racial Violence in Post-Emancipation Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region [Paper Available, click here]
14. Reconstructing Race in North Carolina, 1865-1872
(extended session)
Location: ECTR 116
Chair: Scott Reynolds Nelson, College of William and Mary
Comment: Scott Reynolds Nelson, College of William and Mary
- David C. Williard, University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill:
Confederate Veterans and Race in Postwar North Carolina [Paper Available, click here] - Daniel Brown, Queen’s University Belfast:
The Freedmen's Bureau Remit in Postwar Eastern North Carolina [Paper Available, click here] - Carole Watterson Troxler, Elon University (Emeritus):
Labor Supply and Reconstruction Violence in a North Carolina Piedmont County [Paper Available, click here] - Gregory P. Downs, City College of New York:
Anarchy at the Circumference: Statelessness and the Reconstruction of Authority in Emancipation North Carolina [Paper Available, click here]
Thursday Session Four: 3:15-5:00pm
7. Policing the Lives and Labors of Migrants and Poor Women in the Reconstruction Era
Location: ECTR 116
(extended session)
Chair: Simon K. Lewis, College of Charleston
Comment:
- Brian D. Page, Ohio State University:
“Like the Oncoming of Cities”: Wartime Migrations and Vagrancy in Civil War-Era Memphis [Paper Available, click here] - Elizabeth Parish Smith, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill:
“The accused is the woman that robbed me”: Convicting Domestic Servants and Prostitutes in New Orleans [Paper Available, click here] - Felicity Turner, Duke University:
Prosecutions for Infanticide in Post-Emancipation North Carolina: Embedding New Ideas of Race and Gender in the Law - Ann Holder, Pratt Institute:
The Sexual Politics of Citizenship in Post-Emancipation Richmond
8. From the Border & Beyond: Rewriting Southern and African American History from Outside the Confederacy
(extended session)
Location: ECTR 118
Chair: Deirdre Cooper Owens, University of Mississippi
Comment: Stephen Kantrowitz, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Kate Masur, Northwestern University:
George T. Downing and the Effort to Establish an African American Lobby during Reconstruction - John W. McKerley, Freedmen and Southern Society Project:
The Balance of Political Power: Migration and Independent Black Politics in the Urban Border South, 1877-1908 [Paper Available, click here] - Jesse T. Schreier, Freedmen and Southern Society Project:
“If we do not work for ourselves, who will?”: Black Mobilization in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, 1866-1898 [Paper Available, click here] - Leslie A. Schwalm, University of Iowa
“Emancipation’s Diaspora” [Paper Available, click here]
Thursday Evening: Public Session—7:30pm
9. Race and Public Memory in Post-Emancipation Charleston
Location: Physician’s Auditorium, College of Charleston
Chair: Bernard E. Powers, Jr., College of Charleston
Comment: Douglas R. Egerton, Le Moyne College and Bernard E. Powers, Jr., College of Charleston
- Stephanie E. Yuhl, College of the Holy Cross:
Remapping the Tourist Trade: Confronting Slavery’s Commercial Core at the Old Slave Mart Museum [Paper Available, click here] - Blain Roberts, California State University, Fresno:
A Statue in the Square and a Bench by the Road: The Public Landscape of Race in Charleston [Paper Available, click here] - Ethan J. Kytle, California State University, Fresno:
“Is It Okay to Talk About Slavery?”: Race and Historical Tourism in Charleston [Paper Available, click here]
Friday, March 12th
Registration Location: Maybank Lobby
College of Charleston Campus
Lunch Option: Tour Special Collections Library
Friday Session One: 9-10:30am
10. Race, Working-Class Activism, and Repression in the Free Labor South
Location: MYBK 100
Chair: Beth Sherouse, University of South Carolina
Comment: Steven A. Reich, James Madison University
- Robert Cassanello, University of Central Florida:
“Maintaining the Public Peace”: Black Workers, Labor Strikes and the Public Space in Florida, 1867-1882 [Paper Available, click here] - Robert S. Shelton, Cleveland State University:
Labor, Race, and Political Reform in Galveston, Texas, in the 1880s [Paper Available, click here] - Chad Pearson, University of Alabama-Huntsville:
“The South wants to be free”: N. F. Thompson, the KKK, and the Origins of the Southern Open Shop Movement [Paper Available, click here]
11. Taking the Measure of Grassroots Resistance to the Klan and White Paramilitaries
Location: RSS 002
Chair: Talitha L. LeFlouria, Florida Atlantic University
Comment: Kwando M. Kinshasa, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) and Christopher B. Strain, Florida Atlantic University (tentative)
- Aaron Astor, Maryville College:
“Fully Equipped and Prepared to Fight”: Black Politics and Armed Citizenship in Postwar Kentucky [Paper Available, click here] - Joseph Moore, University of North Carolina-Greensboro:
Brick Masons, Methodists, and Republicans: Armed Self-Defense in Wimbushville, Abbeville District, in 1877 [Paper Available, click here] - Thomas F. Brown, Northeast Lakeview College:
Paramilitary Violence and Resistance in Reconstruction-Era North Carolina [not attending] [Paper Available, click here]
12. Reconsidering the Black Military Experience
Location: RSS 006
Chair: Lewie Reece, Anderson University
Comment: Kimberly Phillips, College of William and Mary
- Carole Emberton, SUNY Buffalo:
“Only Murder Makes Men”: The Role of Violence in Emancipationist Discourse [Paper Available, click here] - Jim Downs, Connecticut College:
“In Sickness and in Health”: Freedwomen’s Health Conditions and the Problems of Enlistment - Nancy Bercaw, University of Mississippi:
Human Remains and the Measure of Freedom: Military Museums in Post-emancipation America
Friday Session Two: 10:45-12:15pm
13. Solving the South’s “Negro Problem”: Southern Whites and Immigrant Labor in the Early Twentieth Century
Location: MYBK 100
Chair: David Gleeson, Northumbria University
Comment: Jon Wells, Temple University
- J. Vincent Lowery, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay:
Redesigning the Southern Labor Force: Immigration Policy and Questions of Desirability in the Early Twentieth Century Carolinas [Paper Available, click here] - Sarah Cornell, University of New Mexico:
“We Have No Rights Because We Have No Vote”: Mexican Workers in Louisiana and Mississippi, 1901-1906 - Lauren H. Braun, University of Illinois-Chicago/Temple University:
Confronting the ‘Planter Mentality’: What a Little-Known Experiment in Italian Colonization Tells Us about Labor Relations in the Post-Emancipation South [Paper Available, click here]
6. Upheaval and Change in the Piedmont and Upcountry South
Location: RSS 002
Chair: Valinda Littlefield, University of South Carolina-Columbia
Comment: John C. Inscoe, University of Georgia
- Steven E. Nash, East Tennessee State University:
Mountain Masters Without Slaves: The Aftermath of Slavery in North Carolina’s Mountains, 1865-1867 [Paper Available, click here] - Bradley Proctor, University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill:
Ku Klux Klan Violence, Race, and Citizenship in Rutherford County, North Carolina [Paper Available, click here] - Evan P. Bennett, Florida Atlantic University:
Does the Crop Matter?: Connecting Fields and Ballot Boxes in the Virginia-North Carolina Piedmont [Paper Available, click here]
15. Southern Populism and the Color Line: New Research and Interpretations
Location: RSS 006
Chair: Cindy Hahamovitch, College of William and Mary
Comment: James M. Beeby, Indiana University Southeast
- Omar H. Ali, Towson University:
The Making of Black Populism in the New South: A Regional Study of Post-Emancipation Independent Political Struggle [Paper Available, click here] - Joel Sipress, University of Wisconsin-Superior:
“The Interests of the White and Colored People of the South Are Identical”: Populism and Race in Grant Parish, Louisiana [Paper Available, click here] - David Silkenat, North Dakota State University:
“Nothing Less than a Question of Slavery or Freedom”: Debt, Race, and Populism in North Carolina [Paper Available, click here]
Friday Lunchtime: 12:30-1:15pm
FILM: I Am Somebody
Location: MYBK 100
Introduced by Mary Moultrie, Local 1199 Organizer, 1969 strike leader
In 1969, 400 poorly paid black women– Charleston hospital workers–went on strike to demand union recognition and a wage increase, only to find themselves in a confrontation with the National Guard and the state government. Supported by such notables as Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy, and Coretta Scott King, the women nonetheless conducted a strike under the guidance of District 1199, the New York-based union, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. A testament to the courage of these women who would not be humbled, I AM SOMEBODY is both an inspiring film and an important historical record.
Friday Session Three: 1:30-3:00pm
16. Race Polarization, Activist Traditions and the Labor Question in the Post-‘Redemption’ South
Location: MYBK 100
Chair: Kimberley Phillips, College of William and Mary
Comment: Eric Arnesen, George Washington University
- Deborah Beckel, Independent Scholar:
Cultural Dissidence: Relationships Between North Carolina and Northern Political and Labor Activists in the Post-Emancipation Era [Paper Available, click here] - Aaron Reynolds, University of Texas-Austin:
“If I had known it was an Island, I would not have gone.” Life and Labor in Florida’s East Coast Railroad Work Camps, 1905-1906 [Paper Available, click here] - Robert H. Woodrum, Clark Atlanta University:
“History Has Taught Us a Lesson”: The International Longshoremen’s Association and Black Working Class Activism in Mobile, Alabama, 1900-1913 [Paper Available, click here]
17. The ‘Feasible Limits’ of Resistance: Negotiation, Accommodation and Black Politics at the Nadir
Location: RSS 002
Chair: Janette Thomas Greenwood, Clark University
Comment: Janette Thomas Greenwood, Clark University
- Dorothy Pratt, University of South Carolina-Columbia:
The Conundrum of Isaiah Montgomery [Paper Available, click here] - Nikki Taylor, University of Cincinnati:
The Democratic Machine as a Vehicle for African- American Civil Rights?: The Politics of Peter H. Clark, 1882-1888 [Paper Available, click here] - Hilary N. Green, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill:
“Colored Teachers for Colored Schools”: Richmond Colored Normal Graduates Struggle for Employment [Paper Available, click here]
18. Political Economy and Historical Possibility after the End of Slavery
Location: RSS 006
Chair: Bruce Baker, (After Slavery Project) University of London-Royal Holloway
Comment: Alex Lichtenstein, Florida International University
- Scott Reynolds Nelson, College of William and Mary:
Scapegoats and Scapegraces: Black Southerners, Redemptionist Violence, and the Economic Fate of the Postwar South - William McKee Evans, California State Polytechnic University (Emeritus):
Why the Half-Century Delay between Emancipation and the Great Migration? - Cindy Hahamovitch, College of William and Mary:
The Cuban Revolution, Jamaican Guestworkers, and the Making of Florida's Sugar Industry
Friday Session Four: 3:15-5pm
19. Freedom on Trial: The Role of the Courts in Protecting African American Rights, 1870-1900
Location: RSS 002
Chair: Felicity Turner, Duke University
Comment: William C. Hine, South Carolina State University at Orangeburg
- Lou Falkner Williams, Kansas State University:
“A Wearisome and almost thankless work”: David Corbin, William Stone, and the Black Franchise [Paper Available, click here] - Christopher Waldrep, San Francisco State University:
The Supreme Court and African-American Jury Service, 1875-1900 [Paper Available, click here] - William Lewis Burke, Jr., University of South Carolina-Columbia
Troubled Fields: The Pink Franklin Case [Paper Available, click here]
20. Vision, Agency, and Constraint: Parameters of Political Mobilization in the Reconstruction South
Location: MYBK 100
Chair: Ken Riley, ILA Local 1422 (Charleston)
Comment: Leslie S. Rowland, (Freedmen and Southern Society Project) University of Maryland and
Bob Korstad, (Duke University)
- James Illingworth, University of California Santa Cruz:
Urban Unrest and the Origins of Radical Reconstruction in New Orleans, 1865-67 [Paper Available, click here] - Brian Kelly, (After Slavery Project) Queen’s University Belfast:
‘Storm Beyond Control’: Freedpeople and the Republican Party in Reconstruction South Carolina [Paper Available, click here] - Justin Behrend, SUNY Geneseo:
The Problem of Black Democrats: Allegiances, Elections, and Competing Visions of Political Community during Reconstruction [Paper Available, click here]
Friday Evening Keynote: 7:30pm
Location: ILA Union Hall, 1142 Morrison Drive
Steven Hahn, Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania:“Reconstruction and the American Political Tradition”
Co-Chairs:
Ken Riley, ILA Local 1422
Brian Kelly, After Slavery Project
Reception to Before and Following
Saturday, March 13th
Registration Location: Avery Research Center & ECTR Lobby
College of Charleston Campus
Saturday Session 1: 10:00-11:30
21. Teachers’ Workshop: Reconstructing Lives, 1865 and Beyond: Exploring Race, Labor, and Political Change after Slavery
Location: Avery Research Center
Chair: Donald Stewart, SC Department of Archives and History
Comment: Audience
- Susan O’Donovan, (After Slavery Project) University of Memphis:
Online Resources: Using the After Slavery Website in the History Classroom - Thomas Riddle and Michael Weeks (Social Studies Coordinators, Greenville County [SC] Public Schools):
If Walls Could Speak: Discovering the African-American History of Greenville through Historic Preservation - Ann Claunch, U. S. National History Day:
Supporting Secondary Students Engaged in Historical Research
22. Roundtable: Forced Labor in the South after Slavery: the Longue Durée
(Sponsored by the Southern Labor Studies Association and the Labor and Working Class History Association)
ECTR 118
Chair: Heather Ann Thompson, Temple University
Comment: Heather Ann Thompson, Temple University
- Alex Lichtenstein, Florida International University:
What Made the South Different? - Talitha L. LeFlouria, Florida Atlantic University:
Exploring Black Women’s Lives and Labor in Georgia’s Convict Lease and Chain Gang Systems - Douglas Blackmon, Author and Journalist, Wall Street Journal:
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II - Robert Chase, Case Western University:
Slaves of the State Revolt: How a Divided System of Southern Prison Labor Created a Prison-Made Civil Rights Movement
Saturday Session 2: 1-2:30pm
23. Emancipation, Memory, and Commemorative Landscape in the New New South
Location: Avery Research Center
Chair: Georgette Mayo, Avery Center for African-American History and Culture
Comment: Audience
- James W. Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me
- Bernard E. Powers, Jr., College of Charleston
- Michael Allen, (Gullah-Geechee Heritage Corridor) National Parks Service
- Thomas J. Brown, (Historic Columbia Foundation/Woodrow Wilson Project) University of South Carolina-Columbia
- David Blight, (Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition) Yale University
24. Roundtable: Civil Rights Unionism in the South Carolina Lowcountry
Location: ECTR 118
Comment: Audience
- Kerry Taylor, (After Slavery Project) The Citadel Oral History Project
- Mary Moultrie, Organizer, Local 1199 (Charleston Public Service Workers), leader of 1969 hospital workers strike
- Ken Riley, President, Local 1422, International Longshoremen’s Association.
William Saunders, Committee for Better Racial Assurance, leader of 1969 hospital workers strike
Option: Tour/Lecture at McLeod Plantation: 3-5:00pm
Location: McLeod Plantation, James Island
Valerie Perry, Historic Charleston Foundation
