The Legacy of Emancipation Today

Following the Civil War, newly emancipated Black Americans faced the immense challenge of building independent lives after centuries of enslavement. They had to navigate a world where they were legally free but still faced widespread racism, violence, and economic hardship. 

They faced a wide range of decisions that ranged from practical to metaphysical. Reuniting with families who had been sold away during slavery; finding work and educational opportunity; and establishing homes, communities, and institutions like churches and schools was vital to pushing forward with life. 

At the same time, they experienced autonomy of their bodies for the first time and likely grappled with how to exist in a reality where they could exercise physical independence.

The process that these Americans underwent has long-lasting impacts and manifests in the America we see today.

In this webinar, three experts on emancipation discuss the journey of Black Americans post-Civil War and highlight how their resilience shows up today. 

Eliza Jane Franklin, PhD(c) is a self-proclaimed "Southern Belle Radical” whose work focuses "heritage lynching" and "heritage lynching sites" and provides a framework for understanding the systematic erasure and control of cultural heritage across landscapes, artifacts, cultural forms. Eliza Jane has a B.A. in African-American Studies and a Master's in Urban Planning from UCLA, a Master's in Heritage Conservation from USC, and a forthcoming History PhD from Auburn University.

Dr. Elijah Gaddis is the Hollifield Associate Professor of Southern History and co-director of the Community Histories Workshop at Auburn University, where he is also affiliate faculty in African American  Studies. His work focuses on the spatial, material and cultural histories of the 19th- and 20th-century South. Gaddis’ first book, Gruesome Looking Objects: A New History of Lynching and Everyday Things, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. This work looks at the souvenirs, mementos, and relics collected and created to preserve the memory of lynchings over the course of a century. Rooted in interdisciplinary methods - material culture, ethnography, spatial and landscape studies - the book examines the lingering attachments to objects of racial violence and collective accountability for the afterlives of these fraught objects.

Dr. Rinaldo Walcott is a Professor, Carl V. Granger Chair in Africana and American Studies, and Chair of the Department of Africana and American Studies at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). He researches the cultural expression of Black life, focusing on transnational, diasporic, and national crosscurrents of Black creativities. Rinaldo is the author of several books, including The Long Emancipation: Moving Toward Black Freedom (2021) and On Property: Policing, Prisons, and the Call for Abolition (2021), which was short-listed for the Toronto Book Award. Rinaldo was born in Barbados and splits his time between Buffalo and Toronto.