The Emancipation Circuit

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The book offers a comprehensive reevaluation of Reconstruction, focusing on how four million newly freed individuals forged political organizations and community connections throughout the South. By leveraging their experiences during enslavement, they established new settlements and created networks that facilitated the exchange of ideas about freedom. This interdisciplinary history highlights the interplay between rural and urban activism, labor movements, and education, ultimately tracing the roots of the first mass Black political movement in the U.S. and the ongoing struggle for equality.