The lifelong link between a formerly enslaved woman and her childhood mistress provides a unique view of life in Reconstruction era Louisville. Born into slavery, Cecelia Reynolds was presented as a birthday gift to her nine-year-old mistress, Frances "Fanny" Thruston Ballard. Years later, Cecelia escaped to join the free black population of Canada. But what might have been the end of her connection to Fanny appears to be only the beginning. A cache of letters from Fanny to Cecelia tells of a rare link between two urban families over several decades. Cecelia and Fanny is a fascinating look at race relations in mid-nineteenth-century Louisville, Kentucky, focusing on the experiences of these two families during the seismic social upheaval wrought by the emancipation of four million African Americans. Far more than the story of two families, Cecelia and Fanny delves into the history of Civil War-era Louisville. Author Brad Asher details the cultural roles assigned to the two women and provides a unique view of slavery in an urban context, as opposed to the rural plantations more often examined by historians.
Historian Asher (Beyond the Reservation: Indians, Settlers, and the Law in Washington Territory, 1853 1889) tells a remarkable story here that focuses on the experiences of two women, Fanny Thurston Ballard, a privileged daughter of a Louisville, KY, merchant, and her childhood personal slave, Cecelia. When the opportunity for freedom came on a visit to Niagara Falls with her mistress, Cecelia escaped to Canada. --Publisher.
For most women who came of age in the 1950s, and particularly for a smart, attractive, and ambitious girl from Houston, life as a single woman was unthinkable. Marriage was a woman's destiny, and everyone expected her to choose well and live happily ever after. For Celia Morris and many women like her, this set of assumptions proved to be misguided. In this wrenching but ultimately uplifting memoir, she describes how marriage and conformity to received notions of "woman's place" ate away at the selfrespect, dignity, and even sanity of her generation. Busy, bright, and athletic, young Celia Buchan had a hectic schedule that masked an emotional void at home, where an adored father dominated and a depressed but dutiful mother drank. As a star student at the University of Texas, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and crowned University Sweetheart, she studied hard and eagerly supported fights against injustice. A year after graduating, she took what seemed the logical next step by marrying fellow student Willie Morris, a hardhitting, controversial campus newspaper editor and Rhodes scholar. In the years that followed, amidst exhilarating intellectual circles at Oxford, graduate studies in California and New York City, and the heady life she shared with Morris during his celebrated tenure as editorinchief of Harper's magazine, her life was a baffling mixture of high times and misery. During these years, through psychoanalysis, she began a journey that strengthened her emotionally even as it made the inequities of marriage harder to tolerate. As tumultuous events and fundamental changes transformed American society, she divorced Morris, went to work while raising their son David, and eight years later married Texas Congressman Bob Eckhardt, another liberal hero. Deepening friendships and her immersion in professional work that she believed in and could do well sustained her when, after ten years, that marriage, too, foundered. In Finding Celia's Place, Morris unflinchingly weighs her own experiences and the unconventional lives of several close college friends and reflects on the tangled relationships of women and men in their generation. Coming to terms with what their sixtysomething years have taught them, she offers four defining principles they hope to pass on to a younger generation. Finding Celia's Place is a candid, gripping story that will ring true to everyone in this bridge generation. It should also appeal to their children and grandchildren, who can learn how hard the fight has been for the precarious freedoms women now enjoy.
Since the start of the 20th Century, the Italians and Chinese in the Little Italy/Chinatown area in New York City have endured an uneasy truce. In the first three quarters of the century, the Italians ruled the neighborhood with an iron fist. But starting in the 1970's, the dynamics began to change, as more Italians moved out and droves of Chinese began flowing into Chinatown from China. This did not bode well for Italian mob boss Tony Bentimova (Tony B), so he enlisted the help of his most trusted killer, Big Fat Fanny Fanelli, all six foot six inches and six hundred and sixty pounds of her, to ensure the Italians maintained control of all the illegal rackets in Little Italy, which was slowly, but surely being transformed into Chinatown.
For the last third of the nineteenth century, Union General Stephen Gano Burbridge enjoyed the unenviable distinction of being the most hated man in Kentucky. From mid-1864, just months into his reign as the military commander of the state, until his death in December 1894, the mere mention of his name triggered a firestorm of curses from editorialists and politicians. By the end of Burbridge's tenure, Governor Thomas E. Bramlette concluded that he was an "imbecile commander" whose actions represented nothing but the "blundering of a weak intellect and an overwhelming vanity." In this revealing biography, Brad Asher explores how Burbridge earned his infamous reputation and adds an important new layer to the ongoing reexamination of Kentucky during and after the Civil War. Asher illuminates how Burbridge—as both a Kentuckian and the local architect of the destruction of slavery—became the scapegoat for white Kentuckians, including many in the Unionist political elite, who were unshakably opposed to emancipation. Beyond successfully recalibrating history's understanding of Burbridge, Asher's biography adds administrative and military context to the state's reaction to emancipation and sheds new light on its postwar pro-Confederacy shift.
Class, race, and gender collide in this insightful examination of the life of Susanna (Susan) Preston Shelby Grigsby (1830–1891)—a white plantation mistress and slaveholder who struggled to participate in the economic modernization of antebellum Kentucky. Drawing on Grigsby's correspondence, author Susanna Delfino uses Grigsby's story to explore the complex cultural and social issues at play in the state's economy before, during, and after the Civil War. Delfino demonstrates that Grigsby engaged in certain kinds of antislavery activism, such as hiring white servants as a way of conveying her support for free labor and avoiding ever selling a slave. Despite her beliefs, however, Grigsby failed to hold to her moral compass when faced with her husband's patriarchal authority or when she experienced serious economic trouble. This compelling study not only illuminates how white women participated in the South's nineteenth-century economy, but also offers new perspectives on their complicity in slavery.
