Israel on the Appomattox
Author: Ely, Melvin Patrick
ISBN: 9780679768722
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE US
Year first published: 15 Jan 2006
Pages: 656
Format: Paperback / softback
WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE
A New York Times Book Review and Atlantic Monthly Editors' Choice
Thomas Jefferson denied that whites and freed blacks could live together in harmony. His cousin, Richard Randolph, not only disagreed, but made it possible for ninety African Americans to prove Jefferson wrong.
Israel on the Appomattox tells the story of these liberated blacks and the community they formed, called Israel Hill, in Prince Edward County, Virginia. There, ex-slaves established farms, navigated the Appomattox River, and became entrepreneurs. Free blacks and whites did business with one another, sued each other, worked side by side for equal wages, joined forces to found a Baptist congregation, moved west together, and occasionally settled down as man and wife.
Slavery cast its grim shadow, even over the lives of the free, yet on Israel Hill we discover a moving story of hardship and hope that defies our expectations of the Old South.
ISBN: 9780679768722
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE US
Year first published: 15 Jan 2006
Pages: 656
Format: Paperback / softback
WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE
A New York Times Book Review and Atlantic Monthly Editors' Choice
Thomas Jefferson denied that whites and freed blacks could live together in harmony. His cousin, Richard Randolph, not only disagreed, but made it possible for ninety African Americans to prove Jefferson wrong.
Israel on the Appomattox tells the story of these liberated blacks and the community they formed, called Israel Hill, in Prince Edward County, Virginia. There, ex-slaves established farms, navigated the Appomattox River, and became entrepreneurs. Free blacks and whites did business with one another, sued each other, worked side by side for equal wages, joined forces to found a Baptist congregation, moved west together, and occasionally settled down as man and wife.
Slavery cast its grim shadow, even over the lives of the free, yet on Israel Hill we discover a moving story of hardship and hope that defies our expectations of the Old South.
