Community Care: Black Women During Reconstruction

INTRO

Hey everyone. Welcome back.

Thus far in our journey through Reconstruction, we’ve explored the political violence faced by Black Americans, the passage of life altering amendments to the Constitution, and the economic impacts of losing unpaid labor throughout the south. It was a complex undertaking that required leaders to try to anticipate and plan for a whole host of issues that were the inevitable consequence of emancipation: housing, voting rights, and economic stability were just some of the many topics under consideration for Black Americans and their allies. 

But what did it mean to be a Black woman during Reconstruction? It should not surprise you that their lives were as unique as they were. And while their individualized experiences no doubt varied, the collective picture they paint is one of agency. Not quite achieving the same freedom as the men in their lives, Black women sought community and built networks of support that could help in a time of need. Black women also pushed for recognition as citizens - in ways both public and private. So this week, I am diving into Black women during Reconstruction. What hurdles did they face? How did they assert their claims to citizenship? And what legacies did their work leave behind?

Grab your cup of coffee, peeps. Let’s do this. 

Location held a significant impact on anyone’s lived experience after the Civil War and Black women were no different. Those living in the south had a vastly different experience than someone in the north. For the purposes of this episode, however, I am going to focus on free and formerly enslaved women living in the South. In some ways, women living in the south were not all that dissimilar to their neighbors living throughout the country. They had families to care for and children to raise. Yet for all their similarities Black women faced significant and unique challenges such as trying to understand what their definition of citizenship meant, or what home life looked like post slavery. Black women also had to wrestle with the economic insecurity that came with emancipation and how their gender would impact and influence their opportunities.  

Like their fathers and husbands, Black women understood that emancipation was the start of something new – access to this thing called citizenship and the protections – and rights – that came with it. Women’s quest for and assertions of citizenship started long before the Emancipation Proclamation. Even during the war - when families fled to Union lines to live in contraband or refugee camps, Black women demanded to be viewed and treated as deserving citizens. Historian Kelly Houston Jones argues that Black women’s decision to officially request soldiers' benefits quote “demonstrated that they saw themselves as true worthy citizens,” end quote. 

Expressions of citizenship came in a variety of ways including engaging with lawyers to demand lost wages, pushing for bureaucratic acknowledgment of their marriages, buying land, and seeking recognition as free wage laborers. As the historians of the Remedial Herstory Project outline quote, “Black women often found themselves in a convoluted web of expectations and realities that left them focused on food, shelter, and protection for themselves and their children, but left them forced to deal with label of dependency, laziness, ‘sassiness’, and situations involving beatings and rape,” end quote. Faced with a new reality, Black women of the south frequently turned toward building community. 

Analyzing the experiences of USCT families during the war, historian Kelly Houstin Jones argues that women quote “both created and reacted to political realities in relation to home and neighborhood,” end quote. Black women understood on a deeper level that the personal is political and they worked tirelessly to build systems and neighborhoods that could be mechanisms of support. These efforts started during the war when women sought access to soldiers’ benefits and put in work to ensure the refugee camps where they lived felt like home. These women banded together, creating a distinct community and establishing avenues of care such as benevolent societies that provided, among other things, financial help for those in need. 

As historian Tera Hunter described, Black women created a quote “web of social services and institutions” end quote that sought to help the economic and social needs of their community that went unanswered by those in power. Before and after the war, women did the community care work. They took care of each other in times of illness, they helped their neighbors bury their fallen soldiers, and assisted in delivering the next generation of babies. As their men went off to war, it was often the women who took on the responsibility of providing for their children. Thus, many relied on the mutual aid provided by these support networks until women could access other means of support - such as soldiers' benefits and pensions. 

After the war, women were essential in building and sustaining local black communities. Denied the franchise, and by extension an ability to have a say in how resources were spent, Black women campaigned for voting rights and worked to reunite families separated due to slavery and the Civil War. Women worked hard in their quest for reunification, frequently putting ads in the local paper and sending word with travelers to keep an eye out for their loved ones. Unwilling to risk missing the reunion, many women stayed in the towns and neighborhoods of their former captors. Although no doubt desperate to flee from the area that held them in bondage, women realized that leaving meant risking never reconnecting with their loved ones. This incredibly difficult decision to stay was often misinterpreted as women’s refusal to migrate elsewhere to find gainful employment to care for their families. 

Like their white counterparts, many Black women became the sole providers of their household and struggled to find a balance between societal expectations of what was considered proper for their gender and what was needed to support their families. In another demonstration of their claims on citizenship, Black women demanded recognition of their status as free workers and pushed for safe working conditions and a fair wage. When their demands went unanswered in Jackson, Mississippi in 1866, women working as laundresses banded together. They issued a letter to the mayor indicating that moving forward, they would all charge a set rate for their services and anyone found undercutting their pricing would be fined. In articulating their new policy, they requested the mayor come out in public support of their demands. While the results of their efforts are unknown, the simple act of coming together and supporting the push for a fair wage speaks to Black women’s commitment to racial and economic justice. 

These women - who faced a double burden of gender and race - refused to accept unfair treatment without a fight. Rosanna Henson wrote to President Lincoln in July of 1864 writing partially quote, “I have four children to support and I find this a great struggle. A hard life this [is]! I being a col [sic] woman do not get any state pay. Yet my husband is fighting for this country,” end quote. Despite the call for Black men to join the army in the fight to preserve the union, there were no plans in place to ensure their families were cared for either during or after the war. Thus, Black women responded to the situation by creating their own avenues of support while holding the government accountable by seeking access to monetary benefits. 

Adding to the load they carried, Black women who lost husbands during the war also had to navigate what it meant to be a widow. As historian Brandi Brimmer highlights quote, “military officials did not view Black soldiers’ wives and widows as allies or noncombatants, nor did they remain shielded from the violence and brutality of war,” end quote. I’ve covered in previous episodes how Black families were at risk for violent attacks as members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups sought to achieve domination through intimidation throughout the south – and widowed Black women remained at a high risk of attack. But these women did not shy away from the challenge and fought back in the best ways they knew how - including keeping guns by the nightstand in case of a midnight raid. 

Compounding the problem was the issue of economic insecurity. While white widows could provide sufficient evidence in their pension applications to prove their marriages, freedwomen often lacked the requisite documentation. The pension system - as rudimentary as it was - failed to initially recognize the issue of slave marriages. This created an economic hardship on black families who had little to no money to pay for the necessities of life including housing and food. 

This bureaucratic nightmare often put an additional burden on Black widows who were forced to depend on other men - whether it be attorneys or freedmen’s bureau agents - to help them navigate the complex process of submitting a claim and furnishing the proper evidence. Again from historian Brandi Brimmer quote: “black soldiers’ widows and their descendants asserted their status as citizens and simultaneously sought to alter their relationship to the federal government as poor Black women, mothers, and citizens,” end quote. Accessing benefit payments for children proved even more cumbersome as there was no definitive way to prove paternity. This put freedwomen in the awful situation of relying on their former enslavers - who were known to keep meticulous records of their human property - to furnish the requisite paperwork to aid in the application process. This of course was not a full proof strategy and many women simply gave up trying to claim benefits for their children due to the cumbersome bureaucracy. And for those with children conceived as a product of the pervasive sexual violence of slavery? They had zero recourse to seek payment or support for their children as former white owners and sexual predators simply refused to acknowledge paternity. Yet when they were successful, pensions and widows' benefits were critical sources of income for women and helped to provide a peace of mind to those who had small children to raise. The money received from the pension bureau went a long way in helping black women establish economic independence and creating avenues where they could create opportunities for intergenerational wealth through purchasing property. 

Black widows were both self supporting and dependent. As mentioned, they worked tirelessly in creating community and trying to establish avenues of support but they were also boxed in by the limitations of their gender and race. They struggled financially - even if they were successful in securing pension or widows’ benefits. Black women were frequently stuck in extreme poverty, forced to work low wages occupations until they physically could not work anymore. Even when they lacked the typical male breadwinner, many widows chose to enroll their children into the local school - when available - opting to try to piece together a living through a series of low wage jobs. This too, historians argue, was a demonstration of citizenship. These women were extremely poor yet they chose to forego the economic advantage they’d enjoy by putting their children - especially their sons - to work in exchange for creating a sense of normalcy for themselves and their children. 

As I’ve covered before, education was a major part of the Reconstruction experience for Black Americans. Black male politicians lobbied for and secured the public infrastructure to build schools - money, schoolhouses and the like - but Black women also played their part and worked to ensure their children received a proper education. They did the quiet but necessary work of building a school system by serving as teachers - such as Charlotte Forten who helped run the Penn School which taught both traditional subjects such as history and literacy as well as practical skills like carpentry. Black women also helped fundraise when public money proved too little to fully accomplish the educational dreams of the community. 

As historian Katherine Hicks illustrates, Black women quote “developed a lived politics” end quote. They challenged the stereotypes and rejected any attempts at commodifying quote “their bodies, labor, and families" end quote that was dominant in the era of slavery. They engaged with the government and the legal system to assert their claims to citizenship - filing for widows benefits and suing former employers for back pay. Women built communities and networks of support to provide the benefits that were often missing from the federal government. They did this despite the excessive and pervasive threats of violence they faced daily. And women pushed to establish a sense of normalcy for their children, often to their disadvantage. As historian Kidada Williams observed, the quote “communal ethic was essential to African Americans remaking themselves into a new people,” end quote and it was frequently the women who paved the way in remaking Black communities in the aftermath of the Civil War. 

To close out this episode, I wanted to recite a portion of a poem written by former episode topic Frances Harper. Her poem, titled The Deliverance, explores the experiences and disappointments facing Black families during and after the Civil War. The full poem is a little long - over 700 words - so I leave you with its closing stanza. 

“I've heard, before election came
They tried to buy John Slade;
But he gave them all to understand
That he wasn't in that trade.

And we've got lots of other men
Who rally round the cause,
And go for holding up the hands
That gave us equal laws

Who know their freedom cost too much
Of blood and pain and treasure,
For them to fool away their votes
For profit or for pleasure.

 Thanks, peeps. I will see you next week.

OUTRO