Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction
- The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I The Blind Ruck of Event
- Part II Worlds Made and Remade
- 11 The Literature of Reconstruction and the Worlds the Civil War Might Have Made
- 12 Frederick Douglass, Andrew Johnson, and the Work of Reconstruction
- 13 African Americans, Africa, and the Long Watch Night for Freedom
- 14 Literature and the Material Cultures of Confederate Remembrance
- 15 Elmira and the Post-War Geographies of Black Monumentalizing
- 16 Charles Chesnutt and the Reconstruction of Black Education
- 17 Charles Chesnutt, The Colonel’s Dream, and The Futures of Cotton
- 18 Brown v. Board, the Civil War Centennial, and the Literature of Civil Rights
- 19 The Future of Civil War and Reconstruction Literature
- 20 Reenactment as Resistance
- Suggestions for Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
13 - African Americans, Africa, and the Long Watch Night for Freedom
from Part II - Worlds Made and Remade
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2022
- The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction
- The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I The Blind Ruck of Event
- Part II Worlds Made and Remade
- 11 The Literature of Reconstruction and the Worlds the Civil War Might Have Made
- 12 Frederick Douglass, Andrew Johnson, and the Work of Reconstruction
- 13 African Americans, Africa, and the Long Watch Night for Freedom
- 14 Literature and the Material Cultures of Confederate Remembrance
- 15 Elmira and the Post-War Geographies of Black Monumentalizing
- 16 Charles Chesnutt and the Reconstruction of Black Education
- 17 Charles Chesnutt, The Colonel’s Dream, and The Futures of Cotton
- 18 Brown v. Board, the Civil War Centennial, and the Literature of Civil Rights
- 19 The Future of Civil War and Reconstruction Literature
- 20 Reenactment as Resistance
- Suggestions for Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
Summary
Watch Night began when enslaved and free African Americans kept vigil, to sing and pray, on December 31, 1862, as they awaited news in the morning of the Emancipation Proclamation. Their optimism gave way to the nominal freedoms and rights of citizenship that African American families and communities experienced in the wake of emancipation and during Reconstruction. African American writers of these decades introduce descriptions of African landscapes, customs, values, and histories as metaphors for the uncertain status and tentative futures their people confronted after the Civil War and during Reconstruction. They associate the African continent with a variety of meanings: the brutal history of slavery; the erasure or dismissal of influential cultures and intellects; a persistent legacy of resistance to oppression and rebellion against bondage; the fugitive status of African Americans in their own country and as exiles abroad; and the precarity of racial progress even as Black schools, churches, and other self-sufficient institutions are established by formerly enslaved Black southern communities.
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- The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction , pp. 198 - 212Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022