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To Walk About in Freedom
- The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner
- Narrated by: Karen Murray, Carole Emberton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
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Publisher's summary
The extraordinary life of Priscilla Joyner and her quest—along with other formerly enslaved people—to define freedom after the Civil War.
Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the truth about her parentage. She grew up isolated and unsure of who she was and where she belonged—feelings that no emancipation proclamation could assuage.
Her life story—candidly recounted in an oral history for the Federal Writers’ Project—captures the intimate nature of freedom. Using Joyner’s interview and the interviews of other formerly enslaved people, historian Carole Emberton uncovers the deeply personal, emotional journeys of freedom’s charter generation—the people born into slavery who walked into a new world of freedom during the Civil War. From the seemingly mundane to the most vital, emancipation opened up a myriad of new possibilities: what to wear and where to live, what jobs to take and who to love.
Although Joyner was educated at a Freedmen’s Bureau school and married a man she loved, slavery cast a long shadow. Uncertainty about her parentage haunted her life, and as Jim Crow took hold throughout the South, segregation, disfranchisement, and racial violence threatened the loving home she made for her family. But through it all, she found beauty in the world and added to it where she could.
Weaving together illuminating voices from the charter generation, To Walk About in Freedom gives us a kaleidoscopic look at the lived experiences of emancipation and challenges us to think anew about the consequences of failing to reckon with the afterlife of slavery.
Cover image of Sterling Brown: Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
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"Emberton creates an illuminating view of the daily struggles and triumphs that characterized African Americans’ 'long emancipation'…. An insightful, poignant consideration of a representative figure’s negotiation of liberty in the decades after Emancipation." (Kirkus Reviews)
"To Walk About in Freedom is truly a must read for anyone interested in seeing not only the nation’s racial past in a fresh light thanks to Emberton's brilliant re-mining, re-excavation, re-reading, and re-interpretation of the lives of the newly freed, but also in being able to come to all previous renderings of it better informed and to view them with a far more critical gaze." (Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water)
"For Priscilla Joyner’s unsettling but moving story, Carole Emberton uses the historian’s tools to excavate the precious and deeply personal complexities of formerly enslaved people’s lives, including accounting for the multiple possibilities of family histories often shrouded in mystery. This is an important contribution to the history of families and freedom in post-Civil War America." (Kidada E. Williams, author of They Left Great Marks on Me)
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Story
New York Times best-selling author Kristen Green draws on years of research to tell the extraordinary and little-known story of young Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who blazed a path of liberation for thousands. She was forced to have the children of a brutal slave trader and live on the premises of his slave jail, known as the “Devil’s Half Acre”. When she inherited the jail after the death of her slaveholder, she transformed it into “God’s Half Acre”, a school where Black men could fulfill their dreams.
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Preachy
- By Elizabeth Combs on 09-13-22
By: Kristen Green
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Jefferson's Daughters
- Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America
- By: Catherine Kerrison
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 17 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas Jefferson had three daughters: Martha and Maria by his wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, and Harriet by his slave Sally Hemings. Although the three women shared a father, the similarities end there. Martha and Maria received a fine convent school education while they lived with their father during his diplomatic posting in Paris. Once they returned home, however, the sisters found their options limited by the laws and customs of early America. Harriet Hemings followed a different path. She escaped slavery — apparently with the assistance of Jefferson himself.
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Don't waste money on this book.
- By Amazon Customer on 02-17-18
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Harriet Tubman
- The Road to Freedom
- By: Catherine Clinton
- Narrated by: Shayna Small
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Celebrated for her courageous exploits as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman has entered history as one of 19th-century America's most enduring and important figures. But just who was this remarkable woman?
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Returning this book
- By KMS on 07-11-18
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Never Caught
- By: Erica Armstrong Dunbar
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation's capital. In setting up his household, he took Tobias Lear, his celebrated secretary, and eight slaves, including Ona Judge, about which little has been written. As he grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn't get his arms around: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Washington decided to circumvent the law.
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Wonderful audiobook
- By Brad Turner on 03-07-17
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Passing Strange
- A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
- By: Martha A. Sandweiss
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Brilliant scientist and witty conversationalist, best-selling author and architect of the great surveys that mapped the West after the Civil War, Clarence King was named by John Hay "the best and brightest of his generation". But King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent family in Newport: for 13 years he lived a double life - as the celebrated White explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a Black Pullman porter and steelworker named James Todd.
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Race and Identity
- By Roy on 03-22-10
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A Different Mirror
- A History of Multicultural America
- By: Ronald Takaki
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 18 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Upon its first publication, A Different Mirror was hailed by critics and academics everywhere as a dramatic new retelling of our nation's past. Beginning with the colonization of the New World, it recounts the history of America in the voice of the non-Anglo peoples of the United States---Native Americans, African Americans, Jews, Irish Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and others---groups who helped create this country's rich mosaic culture.
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All mirrors distort
- By Michael on 04-02-17
By: Ronald Takaki
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In Search of Our Roots
- How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past
- By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Most African Americans, in tracing their family’s past, encounter a series of daunting obstacles. Slavery was a brutally efficient nullifier of identity, willfully denying Black men and women even their names. Here, scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., backed by an elite team of geneticists and researchers, takes 19 extraordinary African Americans on a once unimaginable journey, tracing family sagas through US history and back to Africa.
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Amazing
- By Placeholder on 04-17-19
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The Road to Dawn: Josiah Henson and the Story That Sparked the Civil War
- By: Jared A. Brock
- Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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This sweeping biography about the man who was the inspiration for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is an epic tale of courage and bravery in the face of unimaginable trials. The Road to Dawn tells the improbable story of Josiah Henson - a dynamic, driven man with exceptional intelligence and unyielding principles, who overcame incredible odds to escape from slavery and improve the lives of hundreds of freedmen throughout his long life. He was immortalized by Harriet Beecher Stowe in her 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.
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Great book and very informative
- By plcd22 on 07-04-18
By: Jared A. Brock
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Women of the Blue & Gray
- By: Marianne Monson
- Narrated by: Caroline Shaffer
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Hidden among the photographs, uniforms, revolvers, and war medals of the Civil War are the remarkable stories of some of the most unlikely heroes: women. This audiobook brings to light the incredible stories of women from the Civil War that remain relevant to our nation today. Each woman's experience helps us see a truer, fuller, richer version of what really happened in this country during this time period.
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Style kills the stories
- By KHdeB on 01-12-21
By: Marianne Monson
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America's Women
- 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Gail Collins
- Narrated by: Jane Alexander
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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America's Women tells the story of more than four centuries of history. It features a stunning array of personalities, from the women peering worriedly over the side of the Mayflower to feminists having a grand old time protesting beauty pageants and bridal fairs. Courageous, silly, funny, and heartbreaking, these women shaped the nation and our vision of what it means to be female in America.
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Not all there
- By Dirk Williams on 04-02-12
By: Gail Collins
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The Invisibles
- The Untold Story of African American Slaves in the White House
- By: Jesse Holland
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Jesse J. Holland's The Invisibles is the first book to tell the story of the executive mansion's most unexpected residents: the African American slaves who lived with the US presidents who owned them. Interest in African Americans and the White House are at an all-time high due to the historic presidency of Barack Obama and the soon-to-be-opened Smithsonian National Museum of African American Culture and History.
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Riveting Book
- By Jean on 02-13-16
By: Jesse Holland
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Strangers from a Different Shore
- A History of Asian Americans
- By: Ronald Takaki
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 24 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In an extraordinary blend of narrative history, personal recollection, and oral testimony, the author presents a sweeping history of Asian Americans. This is a powerful and moving work that will resonate for all Americans, who together make up a nation of immigrants from other shores.
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Eye opening to the way immigrants are treated
- By Amazon Customer on 10-06-20
By: Ronald Takaki
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Enemies in Love
- A German POW, a Black Nurse, and an Unlikely Romance
- By: Alexis Clark
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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This is a love story like no other: Elinor Powell was an African-American nurse in the US military during World War II; Frederick Albert was a soldier in Hitler’s army, captured by the Allies and shipped to a prisoner-of-war camp in the Arizona desert. Like most other black nurses, Eleanor pulled a second-class assignment, in a dusty, sun-baked - and segregated - Western town. Brought together by unlikely circumstances and racist assumptions, Elinor and Frederick should have been bitter enemies; but instead, at the height of World War II, they fell in love.
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A Unique Previously Untold Story
- By Avid listener LK on 09-17-18
By: Alexis Clark