Charleston. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.

The end of the Civil War may have ended the institution of slavery, but this emancipation did not necessarily mean that African Americans in post-Civil War Charleston, South Carolina, experienced an unrivalled freedom. Actually, Wilbert Jenkins shows that the black community's experience was far from certain in the aftermath of the Civil War. In Seizing the New Day: African Americans in Post Civil War Charleston, Jenkins asserts that Charleston blacks, using their wits and their determination, "took an active role in the new social order, attempting to shape it to their own needs and purposes" (xv-xvi). Ultimately

The primary strength of Jenkins's analysis lies in his ability to demonstrate the agency with which the African American community in Charleston actively sought their freedom-socially, politically, and economically. Relying on newspapers, travelogues, census data, and church records, he clearly illustrates, with example after example, the ways in which blacks asserted their freedom. After a brief discussion of an African American experience of slavery, he attempts to describe their participation in the new social order throughout the entirety of the Reconstruction period. Whether celebrating emancipation, striving for economic independence, struggling for an education comparable to that of whites, endeavoring to build a united black community, creating

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Approximate Word count = 510
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)