Library Resources for Celebrating Juneteenth - College of Charleston Libraries

On Fridays, we have been trying to highlight electronic resources from the College Libraries collection for users to explore during e-learning, and today, in celebration of Juneteenth, we are featuring the Freedoms Gained and Lost: Forging Citizenship, Transforming Labors, and Negotiating Solidarity in Reconstruction Era South Carolina digital exhibit.

This digital exhibit showcases the documentary heritage of Reconstruction and the post-emancipation era in South Carolina and the Atlantic world and is informed by cultural heritage objects from repositories across the region. Freedoms Gained and Lost offers the public an opportunity to engage with sources that inform the (re)interpretation of the freedoms gained and lost by African descended peoples during the Reconstruction era(s) in the United States. Below are links to key objects relating to Juneteenth Celebrations:

• Freedoms Gained: Emancipation in 1865
• [Freedwomen] Photograph of a Woman Gesturing in Front of a Rice Granary, Wantoot plantation
• The Constitutional Convention of 1868
• The South Carolina Constitution of 1868
• The Civil Rights Act of 1875
• Expanding Knowledge and Awareness: A Preliminary Reading List

From the exhibit’s conclusion: “The freedoms gained during the First Reconstruction era from 1866-1891 set the basis for the work of activists and scholars during the Second Reconstruction or the Civil Rights Movement between 1945 -1969. Scholars and activists now argue that the “turmoil we are witnessing around us today is in fact the birth pangs of a Third Reconstruction.”* Each cycle of political, social, and cultural progress and the subsequent backlash challenges us live up to the rhetoric and ideology outlined in the Bill of Rights and the federal constitution. To quote President Barack Obama, “When Everybody Is Equal, We Are All More Free”. We need to move forward together to create a more perfect union.

*Barber, William J. and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics, and the Rise of a New Justice Movement. Boston: Beacon Press, 2016.

Special thanks to Mary Jo Fairchild, Manager of Research Services, in the Special Collections Department of Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library for her help in curating these resources in an informed and respectful manner.