Stolen Childhood, Second Edition: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America by Wilma King

Author:Wilma King [King, Wilma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies, Slavery, Children's Studies, Black Studies (Global)
ISBN: 9780253001078
Google: ZbnwAAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2011-06-29T00:26:36.450550+00:00

Source: Data compiled from the University of Virginia Library’s Historical Census Browser, using 1860 census data compiled by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. The Historical Census Browser is available through the University of Virginia’s Geospatial and Statistical Data Center at http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/geostat/index.html.

The intricately nuanced wording of the Emancipation Proclamation, which in actuality did not any free slaves, probably escaped the youngsters, but it kindled the hope of freedom and assured millions of slaves, 56 percent of whom were under twenty-one, that the Union no longer ignored matters related to their legal status. Despite conflicting interpretations of the Emancipation Proclamation, many slaves marveled at the coming of freedom, and repeated the same to WPA interviewers in the 1930s. As word of the proclamation spread, Susie Melton, who was a ten-year-old living in Newport News, Virginia, at the time, remembered:

We done heared dat Lincum gonna turn de niggers free. Ole missus say dey warn’t nothin’ to it. Den a Yankee soldier tole someone in Williamsburg dat Marse Lincum done signed de ’Mancipation…. Ev’ybody commence gitin’ ready to leave. Didn’t care nothin’ ’bout Missus…. An’ all dat night de niggers danced an’ sang.115

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