Set amidst lush, rolling hills, Louisa County was once home to religious dissenters, emancipationists and some of Virginias first families. Its epicenter was Louisa Courthouse, where all the countys residents managed their business affairs. From Patrick Henrys seminal speech for Louisa against tyranny, to a county chief justice too fat to ride horseback, Louisa has a rich and fascinating heritage. Historian and longtime Louisa County resident Pattie G.P. Cooke chronicles the countys coming of age as part of the new United States of America, retaining its small, tightly knit communities while embracing inevitable progress.
"But what is less well known are the many important examples of other architectural idioms built in this Piedmont Virginia county, many by nationally renowned architects.".
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
An exploration of the political and social experiences of African Americans in transition from enslaved to citizen Claiming Freedom is a noteworthy and dynamic analysis of the transition African Americans experienced as they emerged from Civil War slavery, struggled through emancipation, and then forged on to become landowners during the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction period in the Georgia lowcountry. Karen Cook Bell's work is a bold study of the political and social strife of these individuals as they strived for and claimed freedom during the nineteenth century. Bell begins by examining the meaning of freedom through the delineation of acts of self-emancipation prior to the Civil War. Consistent with the autonomy that they experienced as slaves, the emancipated African Americans from the rice region understood citizenship and rights in economic terms and sought them not simply as individuals for the sake of individualism, but as a community for the sake of a shared destiny. Bell also examines the role of women and gender issues, topics she believes are understudied but essential to understanding all facets of the emancipation experience. It is well established that women were intricately involved in rice production, a culture steeped in African traditions, but the influence that culture had on their autonomy within the community has yet to be determined. A former archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, Bell has wielded her expertise in correlating federal, state, and local records to expand the story of the all-black town of 1898 Burroughs, Georgia, into one that holds true for all the American South. By humanizing the African American experience, Bell demonstrates how men and women leveraged their community networks with resources that enabled them to purchase land and establish a social, political, and economic foundation in the rural and urban post-war era.
"This two-volume work ... with its almost 8,900 abstracts and annotations of articles drawn from an international list of over 500 periodicals dealing with history and related disciplines published between 1974 and 1984 ... "Introduction, p. viii.
