Choice Review
Thousands of African Americans joined the Great Migration of the 20th century; what of those who stayed in the South? That is a key question. Using a rich collection of letters and records from the Cameron family of North Carolina, key sources from Alabama, and the oral histories of those who remained anchored on a Greene and Hart County (Alabama) plantation, Nathans (Duke) concludes that the power of land ownership, facilitated by the sale of former plantation lands to former slaves, brought the autonomy and community connections that enabled generations to remain. Those individuals worked through the challenges of post-Reconstruction violence, the emergence of Jim Crow laws, the boll weevil, the economic tragedies of the Depression, and, with strong community and family pride, helped foster the civil rights movement. Although hampered by an often-disjointed narrative, too much attention to the prewar saga of absentee plantation owners, and too little attention to the historiography of the post-Civil War South and African American history, the story is important, and it is a significant contribution that should be welcome on the reading lists of undergraduates and graduates. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries. --Thomas F. Armstrong, Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, UAE
Library Journal Review
In 1844, North Carolina planter Paul Cameron sent a group of slaves to work on newly acquired land in Alabama. Descendants of some of those slaves have remained in the area ever since. In this book, Nathans (history, Duke Univ.) makes a direct connection between the actions of antebellum slaveholders and the lives and fates of contemporary African Americans. He draws from the extensive documentation left by the Cameron family to unravel the experience of the people they enslaved. He writes about the hardships of enforced agricultural labor, the celebration and uncertainty following the Civil War and emancipation, and the unusual decision by Cameron to sell property to his former slaves. In 1978, Nathans first met and interviewed some of the descendants who originally came to Alabama. Their accounts, many of which were passed down through generations, describe the struggle for African Americans to work, own land, and vote in the Jim Crow South. VERDICT By tracing the story of a single plantation through generations, Nathans ably demonstrates how the legacy of slavery and oppression continues to profoundly affect the people throughout the South today. Recommended for all readers interested in Southern history or African American history.-Nicholas Graham, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
