Mississippi Zion: The Struggle for Liberation in Attala County, 1865-1915

Author: Evan Howard Ashford

Mississippi Zion: The Struggle for Liberation in Attala County, 1865–1915 examines how African Americans in Attala County shaped economic and social politics as a nonmajority racial group. By examining southern African American life mainly through Reconstruction and the civil rights movement, historians have long mischaracterized African Americans in Mississippi by linking their empowerment and progression solely to periods of federal assistance. This book shatters that model and reframes the postslavery era as a Liberation Era to examine how African Americans pursued land, labor, education, politics, community building, and progressive race relations to position themselves as societal equals. Mississippi Zion provides a fresh examination into the impact of Black politics on creating the anti-Black apparatuses that grounded the state’s infamous Jim Crow society.

Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Language: English