Black Rights and the Failure of Democracy in Civil War-Era Washington

FAIN: FA-53434-07

Kate Masur
Northwestern University (Evanston, IL 60208-0001)

A social history of public life in the national capital during the Civil War and Reconstruction, UNWORTHY OF THE NATION will investigate Washingtonians’ everyday struggles to determine which people would hold which rights—and in which spaces. Challenging received ideas about citizenship and about post-emancipation political culture, it will offer interconnected arguments about the national significance of African Americans’ political activism, the mobilization of anti-democratic politics in the name of progress, and the importance of ideas about public and private space to the redefinition of American democracy following the Civil War.

Associated Products

An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C. (Book)
Title: An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C.
Author: Kate Masur
Abstract: An Example for All the Land reveals Washington, D.C. as a laboratory for social policy in the era of emancipation and the Civil War. In this panoramic study, Kate Masur provides a nuanced account of African Americans' grassroots activism, municipal politics, and the U.S. Congress. She tells the provocative story of how black men's right to vote transformed local affairs, and how, in short order, city reformers made that right virtually meaningless. Bringing the question of equality to the forefront of Reconstruction scholarship, this widely praised study explores how concerns about public and private space, civilization, and dependency informed the period's debate over rights and citizenship.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807872666/an-example-for-all-the-land/
ISBN: 978-0-8078-726

Prizes

Honorable Mention, 2011 Lincoln Prize
Date: 1/1/2011
Organization: Lincoln and Soldiers Institute, Gettysburg College

Honorable Mention, 2011 Avery O. Craven Award
Date: 1/1/2011
Organization: Organization of American Historians

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