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

RECIPIENT OF THE 2023 BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD FROM THE MISSISSIPPI HISTORICAL SOCIETY RECIPIENT OF THE ANNA JULIA COOPER AND C. L. R. JAMES AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING SCHOLARLY PUBLICATION IN AFRICANA STUDIES FROM THE NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR BLACK STUDIES 2 023 ASALH BOOK PRIZE FINALIST From lesser-known state figures to the ancestors of Oprah Winfrey, Morgan Freeman, and James Meredith , Mississippi Zion: The Struggle for Liberation in Attala County, 1865–1915 brings the voices and experiences of everyday people to the forefront and reveals a history dictated by people rather than eras. Author Evan Howard Ashford, a native of the county, examines how African Americans in Attala County, after the Civil War, shaped economic and social politics as a nonmajority racial group. At the same time, Ashford provides a broader view of Black life occurring throughout the state during the same period. 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. Ashford salvages Attala County from this historical misconception to give Mississippi a new history. He examines African Americans as autonomous citizens whose liberation agenda paralleled and intersected the vicious redemption agenda, and he shows the struggle between Black and white citizens for societal control. 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. The use of photographs provides an accurate aesthetic of rural African Americans and their connection to the historical moment. This in-depth perspective captures the spectrum of African American experiences that contradict and refine how historians write, analyze, and interpret southern African American life in the post-slavery era. "From lesser-known state figures to the ancestors of Oprah Winfrey, Morgan Freeman, and James Meredith, Mississippi Zion: The Struggle for Liberation in Attala County, 1865-1915 brings the voices and experiences of everyday people to the forefront and reveals a history dictated by people rather than eras. Author Evan Howard Ashford, a native of the county, examines how African Americans in Attala County, after the Civil War, shaped economic, social, and political politics as a nonmajority racial group. At the same time, Ashford provides a broader view of Black life occurring throughout the state during the same period. 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. Ashford salvages Attala County from this historical misconception to give Mississippi a new history. He examines African Americans as autonomous citizens whose liberation agenda paralleled and intersected the vicious redemption agenda, and he shows the struggle between Black and white citizens for societal control. 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. The use of photographs provides an accurate aesthetic of rural African Americans and their connection to the historical moment. This in-depth perspective captures the spectrum of African American experiences that contradict and nuance how historians write, analyze, and interpret southern African American life in the postslavery era"-- Provided by publisher Mississippi Zion: The Struggle for Liberation in Attala County, 1865-1915 uses Attala County as its focal point to provide an in-depth examination of Mississippi as a struggle between concurring and intersecting liberation and redemption agendas between its African American and White citizens that resulted as African Americans asserting themselves as equals to their white counterparts. The book's six chapters detail how African American liberation efforts prompted the need for anti-Black apparatuses to thwart the race's individual and collective black power. The book asserts that the emergence of the county's 20^th^ century Jim Crow society, and to a more considerable degree, the state itself resulted from the need to control and curtail African American power in the interconnected areas such as land, labor, education, voting, and progressive race relations. Rather than segmenting history into the typical Reconstruction, Nadir, and Jim Crow periods, the book frames the post-Civil War era as a Liberation Era that spanned from emancipation to the commencement of the 20^th^ century, thus examining history through the African American agent, a continued and active presence, that shaped Southern society beyond federal occupation. Introduction -- A new dawn: embarking on the liberation journey -- Pick yo' own damn cotton: building the foundations of Zion -- Taking flight: moving towards a liberated Zion -- United we stand: organizing in the decade of white supremacy -- There shall be blood: the price of liberation -- Unfinished business: liberation and Jim Crow -- Epilogue