With nearly $3 billion in assets, Oprah Winfrey is the richest self-made woman in America. Her great-greatgrandfather, Constantine Winfrey, was an illiterate slave in Sanford, Mississippi. On gaining his freedom in 1865, he owned little more than a strong back and a knowledge of cotton farming. But within fifteen years, he had learned to read and write and was owner of several farms and over 100 acres of land.
Whoopi Goldberg, another prominent black woman TV host and actress, is the great-great-granddaughter of William Washington and Elsa Tucker, slaves who were living in Alachua County, Florida when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Over the next decade, the couple fulfilled the demanding provisions of the Southern Homestead Act, passed by the Republican-dominated Congress in 1866. They located an eligible plot of land, tracked down a federal registrar and paid the filing fees, enclosed the land with a fence, built a house, planted and harvested a crop, and paid property taxes.
¦ In Dressing for the Carnival (1877), Winslow Homer shows a family of former slaves dressing in gaudy strips of clothing to celebrate the West African festival of Jonkonnu—an illustration of the power of family ties and cultural traditions. Source: Winslow Homer,1836-1910, (American), Dressing for the Carnival. Oil on canvas. H. 20 in. W. 30 in. (50.8 X 76.2 cm.) Signed, inscribed and dated (lower right): Winslow Homer N. A./1877. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Amelia B. Lazarus Fund, 1922. (22.220). Photograph ©1980 by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Carolina. In March 1865, a few weeks after Sherman had marched through South Carolina, Tingman joined the U. S. Colored Troops in the Union army. Three years later, at the age of twenty-four, he was elected to the "reconstructed" South Carolina legislature. The withdrawal of federal troops from the South in 1877 brought an end to Reconstruction—and to Tingman's career in politics. He, too, managed to buy a farm.
Such accounts add another dimension to the usual narrative of the Reconstruction era (1865-1877). The period began with the liberal readmission of southern states to the Union as proposed by Lincoln and his successor, Andrew Johnson. Once readmitted, southern states restricted the rights of former slaves through a series of "Black Codes." A furious Republican Congress responded by overturning white southern rule through a series of laws and constitutional amendments that empowered former slaves—and their Republican allies. A white backlash, often violent, followed Republican rule. Ultimately, white political power was restored, and a corrupt bargain secured the presidency for the Republican, Hayes. When Hayes removed Union troops from the South in 1877, Reconstruction was over.
Deprived of federal assistance, former slaves were obliged to make do on their own. Many failed. Only
10 percent of freed slaves acquired farms. But the ancestors of Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock, and many others prove that some former slaves succeeded, almost entirely through their own efforts. Harvard historian Louis Henry Gates, Jr., whose In Search of Our Roots (2009) recounted their stories and many similar ones, hoped that someday such accounts would move history "from our kitchens or parlors into the texts, ultimately changing the official narrative of American history itself." This chapter describes the era's bitter wrangles and recriminations, its political failures and disappointments, but it also shows that many survived and even flourished during these difficult years. ¦
World History
