7 - Making Their Place on the South’s Ragged Edge

Summary

Kelly Jones explores emancipation by illuminating the intersection of several processes in wartime and the postwar decades such as Black women’s social and family networks and their struggle to claim their rights in connection to the service of their men. Using the records connected to the 54th United States Colored Infantry (the other 54th—not the 54th Massachusetts of “Glory” fame), Jones reconstruct the geography of USCT women’s family, work, and society in the post–Civil War years, paying closest attention to the twenty-five years after the war. Emphasizing Black women’s political placemaking during and after the war’s refugee crisis, Jones argues that Black women provided support for their soldiers and the US Army presence overall, but they also constituted part of the occupation force of Arkansas’s capital. They formed the backbone of Unionist Little Rock and forged alliances with White progressive allies. They fought for rootedness, gaining unprecedented control over their domestic lives, and claimed privileges via their association with Black soldiers.