Raising freedom's child : : Black children and visions of the future after slavery / / Mary Niall Mitchell.

• Superior document: American history and culture
• Author: Mitchell, Mary Niall.
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: American history and culture (New York University Press)
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (336 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

The end of slavery in the United States inspired conflicting visions of the future for all Americans in the nineteenth century, black and white, slave and free. The black child became a figure upon which people projected their hopes and fears about slavery's abolition. As a member of the first generation of African Americans raised in freedom, the black child-freedom's child-offered up the possibility that blacks might soon enjoy the same privileges as whites: landownership, equality, autonomy. Yet for most white southerners, this vision was unwelcome, even frightening. Many northerners, too,

Table of Contents

Emigration : a good and delicious country -- Reading race : rosebloom and pure white, or so it seemed -- Civilizing missions : Miss Harriet W. Murray, Elsie, and Puss -- Labor : Tillie Bell's song -- Schooling : we ought to be one people -- Conclusion : some mighty morning.