goodwin2012

@InCollection{ goodwin2012,
	crossref = {howell2012},
	author = {Ronald E. Goodwin},
	title = {Into Freedom's Abyss: Reflections of {R}econstruction Violence in {T}exas},
	pages = {286--303},
	year = 2012,
}

Goodwin notes that few scholars of Reconstruction violence have been discussed “from the perspective of the freedmen themselves” (286). His own attempt to do so, however, relies exclusively on WPA Narratives.

Goodwin also seems to focus on psychological challenges and physical threats of violence freedpeople faced, rather than on their own politics or political organizations. E.g.:

• “they faced the daunting task of altering their own mind-sets from thinking and acting as dependent chattel slaves to succeeding in a free society” (p. 286)
• “many blacks were just not prepared emotionally to leave their former owners” (p. 289) - !!
• “political power within the black population in Reconstruction Texas was more an illusion than a reality” (p. 290)

These generalizations may be a function of the limited source base and its nature, but either way reveal the chapter’s tendency to see freedpeople primarily as victims rather than political agents or as a group with any sort of collective political ideology (a la hahn2003).