Shannon Mahoney, Ph.D. Student

 

Community Building and the Black Freedom Movement:

An Anthropological Study of Charles’ Corner, 1862 – 1919

The half-century marked by the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I was a critical period of cultural, social and economic change for African Americans in the southern United States. The transition from enslavement to freedom for newly freedpeople across the South proved to be a dynamic and diverse experience rife with legal and social obstacles as well as economic hardship. Charles’ Corner, a post-bellum community on Virginia’s Lower Peninsula (see below), provides a compelling case study for African American landholders during this period. For the purpose of this study, I ask what cultural processes instigated and maintained community life from its inception, immediately following the Civil War, to its dissolution as a result of national policy during World War I. Community dynamics will be analyzed using multiple lines of evidence as sources of data including documents, oral histories, and artifacts. Through the application of anthropological theories on community building we can begin to examine social change brought about by the hopes and needs of early post-Emancipation communities and the complimentary elements of the Black freedom movement. By emphasizing this time period, I also ask what implications this analysis may have for modern American society.

I have already conducted a significant amount of documentary research at the National Archives in Washington D. C., the Library of Virginia, the Rockefeller Library, the York County Library and Swem. I have also had the honor of meeting and interviewing Charles’ Corner descendant family members as well as Mr. Sherman Hill, who runs the York County Black History Celebration Committee. We have been discussing the incorporation of the Charles’ Corner history into Mr. Hill’s already existing work with the intention of creating a public education component to the project. During the 2007 – 2008 academic year, I will be excavating test units on selected household sites and beginning laboratory analysis.

Project area outlined on a modern USGS Topographic Quadrangle