Photograph of five generations on Smith’s Plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina, 1863. For so many, “freedom meant the reestablishment of lost family connections, the achievement of literacy, the exercise of political rights, and the security of a decent livelihood without the sacrifice of human dignity or self-determination.”*
* Tera W. Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the Civil War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 43.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
