"Powerful and deeply moving."--Los Angeles Times
From a groundbreaking scholar, a heart-wrenching reexamination of the
struggle for survival in the Reconstruction-era South, and what it
cost.
The story of Reconstruction is often told from the perspective of the
politicians, generals, and journalists whose accounts claim an outsized
place in collective memory. But this pivotal era looked very different
to African Americans in the South transitioning from bondage to freedom
after 1865. They were besieged by a campaign of white supremacist
violence that persisted through the 1880s and beyond. For too long,
their lived experiences have been sidelined, impoverishing our
understanding of the obstacles post-Civil War Black families faced,
their inspiring determination to survive, and the physical and emotional
scars they bore because of it.
In I Saw Death Coming, Kidada E. Williams offers a breakthrough
account of the much-debated Reconstruction period, transporting readers
into the daily existence of formerly enslaved people building
hope-filled new lives. Drawing on overlooked sources and bold new
readings of the archives, Williams offers a revelatory and, in some
cases, minute-by-minute record of nighttime raids and Ku Klux Klan
strikes. And she deploys cutting-edge scholarship on trauma to consider
how the effects of these attacks would linger for decades--indeed,
generations--to come.
For readers of Carol Anderson, Tiya Miles, and Clint Smith, I Saw Death
Coming is an indelible and essential book that speaks to some of the
most pressing questions of our times.
