Why read The Essence of Liberty?

Book cover of The Essence of Liberty: Free Black Women During the Slave Era

Book description

Before 1865, slavery and freedom coexisted tenuously in America in an environment that made it possible not only for enslaved women to become free but also for emancipated women to suddenly lose their independence. Wilma King now examines a wide-ranging body of literature to show that, even in the face…

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Black history

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Essence of Liberty as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Jerry Mikorenda

Author

What I found most rewarding about this book by Wilma King is the way she widened the research net to include the ways women communicated with each other through diaries, letters, and various church records. This makes sense and creates tremendous value because newspaper reporters of this period weren’t knocking on the doors of Maria Stewart or other black female leaders for their opinions.

Thanks to King's diligent work, I got a much better sense of the important role these underrepresented women played in the antislavery and early civil rights movement.

From Jerry's list on history of the Civil Rights Movement.