Freedom's Children: The Passage from Emancipation to the Great Migration

Freedom's Children: The Passage from Emancipation to the Great Migration by Thomas, Velma Maia. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780609604816.

This sequel to 1998s award-winning Lest We Forget chronicles the jubilation and despair of newly freed slaves turned loose, as Frederick Douglass put it, "to the wrath of our infuriated masters." Without land, money or education, former slaves had to fend for themselves in the hostile environment of a vanquished South. Covering the period from the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation to the start of the Great Migration, Freedoms Children tells the stories of courageous African-Americans who struggled to construct schools and establish businesses while trying to reunite families scattered by slavery. Even the creation of the Freedmens Bureau could do little to provide real help. So they learned to make their own opportunities, often in other parts of the country. Extraordinary interactive elements bring the lives of these American heroes into chilling focus. Readers can examine the "Freedmans Third Reader" used to teach former slaves to read, open a change pouch and touch "script" money paid to sharecroppers for use in the company store, peruse an account book from the Freedmans Bank, and much more. Freedoms Children is an unforgettable reading -- and interactive -- experience.