A01=Leonne M. Hudson
African
Andrew Johnson
Author_Leonne M. Hudson
Black Convention Movement
Category=JHBZ
Category=NHK
Christian
citizenship rights
civil rights
Committee on Arrangements
Elizabeth Keckley
Emancipation Proclamation
encomium
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eq_history
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Ford's Theatre
formerly enslaved
Frederick Douglass
Freedmen's Monument
freedom
funeral train
John Wilkes Booth
loss of a friend
Martin R. Delany
martyred leader
Moses
procession
Promised Land
public viewing
Sage of Springfield
slain president
slavery
spectators
symbolic figure
tribute
United States Colored Troops
unveiling
William Florville
Product details
- ISBN 9780809339549
- Weight: 54g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Oct 2024
- Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Centering Black grief in the aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination
On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth carried out the first presidential assassination in United States history. The euphoria resulting from General Lee’s surrender evaporated at the news of Abraham Lincoln’s murder. The nation—excepting many white Southerners—found itself consumed with grief, and no group mourned Lincoln more deeply than people of color. African Americans did not speak with a monolithic voice on social or political issues, but even Lincoln’s Black contemporaries who may not have approved of him while he was alive mourned his death, understanding its implications for their future.
Beginning with the assassination itself and chronicling Lincoln’s three-week-long national funeral, historian Leonne M. Hudson captures the profound sadness of Black Americans as they mourned the crafter of the Emancipation Proclamation and the man they thought of as their earthly Moses, father, friend, and benefactor. Hudson continues the narrative by detailing the postwar efforts of African Americans to gain citizenship and voting rights.
Black Americans in Mourning includes the tributes of prominent figures such as Frederick Douglass, Martin R. Delany, and Elizabeth Keckley, who raised their voices to honor Lincoln, as well as formal expressions of grief by institutions and organizations such as the United States Colored Troops. In a triumph of research, Hudson also features the voices of lesser-known Black people who mourned Lincoln across the country, showing that the outpouring of individual and collective grief helped set the stage for his enduring glorification.
On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth carried out the first presidential assassination in United States history. The euphoria resulting from General Lee’s surrender evaporated at the news of Abraham Lincoln’s murder. The nation—excepting many white Southerners—found itself consumed with grief, and no group mourned Lincoln more deeply than people of color. African Americans did not speak with a monolithic voice on social or political issues, but even Lincoln’s Black contemporaries who may not have approved of him while he was alive mourned his death, understanding its implications for their future.
Beginning with the assassination itself and chronicling Lincoln’s three-week-long national funeral, historian Leonne M. Hudson captures the profound sadness of Black Americans as they mourned the crafter of the Emancipation Proclamation and the man they thought of as their earthly Moses, father, friend, and benefactor. Hudson continues the narrative by detailing the postwar efforts of African Americans to gain citizenship and voting rights.
Black Americans in Mourning includes the tributes of prominent figures such as Frederick Douglass, Martin R. Delany, and Elizabeth Keckley, who raised their voices to honor Lincoln, as well as formal expressions of grief by institutions and organizations such as the United States Colored Troops. In a triumph of research, Hudson also features the voices of lesser-known Black people who mourned Lincoln across the country, showing that the outpouring of individual and collective grief helped set the stage for his enduring glorification.
Leonne M. Hudson, associate professor emeritus at Kent State University, is the author of The Odyssey of a Southerner: The Life and Times of Gustavus Woodson Smith, the editor of Company “A” Corps of Engineers, U.S.A., 1846-1848, in the Mexican War, and the coeditor of Democracy and the American Civil War: Race and African Americans in the Nineteenth Century.
