ABSTRACT
Black Franklin County residents’ collective memories of the free blacks seized and enslaved during the Civil War reveal the real limits of reconciliation embraced by many Civil War memory scholars. Using contemporary accounts of white and black residents and newspaper coverage, the chapter examines the effects of Confederate military policy and civilian trauma in shaping African American Civil War memory. Some residents experienced the war as free individuals whose very freedom was threatened and in some instances taken by Confederate soldiers. Others experienced the war as soldiers and even as self-emancipated individuals. Therefore, African Americans developed a usable past that honored the diversity of wartime experiences to advance communal notions of patriotism, democracy, and their full inclusion as American citizens. After discussing the events of the seizure and enslavement of free African Americans, the chapter shows how black residents sought reparations, played a role in establishing the truth of the Confederate military policy for local reconciliation, and developed several memorialization traditions. Their proto-transitional justice efforts contributed to a Civil War memory that was sometimes shared with the wider dominant white Civil War memory while at other times it remained distinct. As a result, the chapter argues that African Americans have embraced a complex collective memory of the Civil War that acknowledges those removed and enslaved during the raids, the trauma experienced by the civilians who remained, and the individuals who eventually served in the US Army and Navy. Ultimately, their efforts at a proto-transitional justice model allowed for the persistence of memory as a political act essential to defining black Franklin County identity.
