Denmark Vesey’s Garden
Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
One of Janet Maslin’s Favorite Books of 2018, The New York Times
One of John Warner’s Favorite Books of 2018, Chicago Tribune
Named one of the “Best Civil War Books of 2018” by the Civil War Monitor
“A fascinating and important new historical study.”
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“A stunning contribution to the historiography of Civil War memory studies.”
—Civil War Times
The stunning, groundbreaking account of "the ways in which our nation has tried to come to grips with its original sin" (Providence Journal)
Hailed by the New York Times as a "fascinating and important new historical study that examines . . . the place where the ways slavery is remembered mattered most," Denmark Vesey's Garden "maps competing memories of slavery from abolition to the very recent struggle to rename or remove Confederate symbols across the country" (The New Republic). This timely book reveals the deep roots of present-day controversies and traces them to the capital of slavery in the United States: Charleston, South Carolina, where almost half of the slaves brought to the United States stepped onto our shores, where the first shot at Fort Sumter began the Civil War, and where Dylann Roof murdered nine people at Emanuel A.M.E. Church, which was co-founded by Denmark Vesey, a black revolutionary who plotted a massive slave insurrection in 1822.
As they examine public rituals, controversial monuments, and competing musical traditions, "Kytle and Roberts's combination of encyclopedic knowledge of Charleston's history and empathy with its inhabitants' past and present struggles make them ideal guides to this troubled history" (Publishers Weekly, starred review). A work the Civil War Times called "a stunning contribution, " Denmark Vesey's Garden exposes a hidden dimension of America's deep racial divide, joining the small bookshelf of major, paradigm-shifting interpretations of slavery's enduring legacy in the United States.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As historians Kytle (Romantic Reformers and the Antislavery Struggle in the Civil War Era) and Roberts (Pageants, Parlors, and Pretty Women) show in this examination of the historical memory of slavery in Charleston, S.C., the chronological length and socioeconomic depth of Charleston's commitment to slavery make it what one abolitionist called "the citadel and capital of American slavery." After slavery's end, freed people and their former owners battled over the parameters of emancipation; the former staged lavish annual pageants in celebration of liberation; the latter limited the freedoms of their ex-slaves through extremely repressive law codes, while insisting that their "Lost Cause" had been white liberty, not black slavery. From Charleston's transition in the 1920s into a mecca for tourism through the Jim Crow era and beyond, white preservationists simultaneously whitewashed the history of slavery and turned African-American culture into a quaint symbol of the "Old South." The 21st century has seen efforts in Charleston to more visibly and honestly acknowledge the local history of slavery in, for example, plantation tours and plaques but the massacre of worshipers at Charleston's Emanuel AME Church in 2015 and the resurgence of open white supremacy connected to Trumpism lead the authors to question how much progress has really been made. Kytle and Roberts's combination of encyclopedic knowledge of Charleston's history and empathy with its inhabitants' past and present struggles make them ideal guides to this troubled history. B&w illus.
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