Description: By analyzing the actions of African American women in the urban environment of St. Louis and the surrounding areas of rural Missouri, Romeo uncovers the confluence of military events, policy changes, and black agency that shaped the gendered paths to freedom and citizenship during and after the CIvil War.
Brief description: SHARON ROMEO is an associate professor of history and classics at the University of Alberta.
Review Quotes: This is a landmark book. Rather than simply resulting from the work of lawmakers who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment during Reconstruction, the concept of 'citizenship' emerged out of the innumerable actions carried out by African Americans in the slaveholding states during the Civil War. Romeo shows that in war-torn Missouri, black women petitioned Union officers for their freedom, filed lawsuits against their former owners in military courts, and claimed widows' pensions after the deaths of their veteran husbands. By documenting black women's activism in a state where the Emancipation Proclamation did not even apply, Romeo forces us to re-examine precisely how and why constitutional and legal change occurred during this period.--Timothy Huebner, Irma O. Sternberg Professor of History, Rhodes College