In her essay “Freedwomen’s Reconstruction of Life and Labor in Lowcountry South Carolina,” Leslie Schwalm describes land as critical to freedpeople’s freedom. She wrote, “land was critical to the freedom and independence they sought for themselves, their families, and their communities…freedom as their right not to simply survive, but to work and thrive without white intervention on the land they had worked as slaves.”19 Land, historically a prerequisite to voting, now became a symbol for independence and freedom. Mattie Curtis, a freedwoman, recalls her struggle after Emancipation, wrote, “De white folks hated de nigger den, ‘specially de nigger what was makin’ something, so I daren’t ax nobody whar de market wus.”20 Curtis exemplifies the ambition and desire to be able to have land and work for oneself, and the freedom it provides. The ability to work the land one owns without intervention of white people—that was
In her essay “Freedwomen’s Reconstruction of Life and Labor in Lowcountry South Carolina,” Leslie Schwalm describes land as critical to freedpeople’s freedom. She wrote, “land was critical to the freedom and independence they sought for themselves, their families, and their communities…freedom as their right not to simply survive, but to work and thrive without white intervention on the land they had worked as slaves.”19 Land, historically a prerequisite to voting, now became a symbol for independence and freedom. Mattie Curtis, a freedwoman, recalls her struggle after Emancipation, wrote, “De white folks hated de nigger den, ‘specially de nigger what was makin’ something, so I daren’t ax nobody whar de market wus.”20 Curtis exemplifies the ambition and desire to be able to have land and work for oneself, and the freedom it provides. The ability to work the land one owns without intervention of white people—that was