Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African American Kinship in the Civil War Era

Through the dramatic and moving letters and testimony of freed slaves, Families and Freedom tells the story of the remaking of the black family during the tumultuous years of the Civil War era. Former slaves, free blacks, and their contemporaries recount the elation accompanying the reunion of brothers and sisters separated for half a lifetime and the anguished realization that time lost could never be made up.