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The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery
The University of North Carolina Press
June 2012
On Sale: June 1, 2012
272 pages
ISBN: 0807835544
EAN: 9780807835548
Kindle: B0081TOOIQ
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction History
After the Civil War, African Americans placed poignant
"information wanted" advertisements in newspapers, searching
for missing family members. Inspired by the power of these
ads, Heather Andrea Williams uses slave narratives, letters,
interviews, public records, and diaries to guide readers
back to devastating moments of family separation during
slavery when people were sold away from parents, siblings,
spouses, and children. Williams explores the heartbreaking
stories of separation and the long, usually unsuccessful
journeys toward reunification. Examining the interior lives
of the enslaved and freedpeople as they tried to come to
terms with great loss, Williams grounds their grief, fear,
anger, longing, frustration, and hope in the history of
American slavery and the domestic slave trade.
Williams follows those who were separated, chronicles their
searches, and documents the rare experience of reunion. She
also explores the sympathy, indifference, hostility, or
empathy expressed by whites about sundered black families.
Williams shows how searches for family members in the
post-Civil War era continue to reverberate in African
American culture in the ongoing search for family history
and connection across generations.
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