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To Walk About in Freedom: The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner
Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the truth about her parentage. She grew up isolated and unsure of who she was and where she belonged—feelings that no emancipation proclamation could assuage.
Her life story—candidly recounted in an oral history for the Federal Writers’ Project—captures the intimate nature of freedom. Using Joyner’s interview and the interviews of other formerly enslaved people, historian Carole Emberton uncovers the deeply personal, emotional journeys of freedom’s charter generation—the people born into slavery who walked into a new world of freedom during the Civil War. From the seemingly mundane to the most vital, emancipation opened up a myriad of new possibilities: what to wear and where to live, what jobs to take and who to love.
Although Joyner was educated at a Freedmen’s Bureau school and married a man she loved, slavery cast a long shadow. Uncertainty about her parentage haunted her life, and as Jim Crow took hold throughout the South, segregation, disfranchisement, and racial violence threatened the loving home she made for her family. But through it all, she found beauty in the world and added to it where she could.
Weaving together illuminating voices from the charter generation, To Walk About in Freedom gives us a kaleidoscopic look at the lived experiences of emancipation and challenges us to think anew about the consequences of failing to reckon with the afterlife of slavery.
Her life story—candidly recounted in an oral history for the Federal Writers’ Project—captures the intimate nature of freedom. Using Joyner’s interview and the interviews of other formerly enslaved people, historian Carole Emberton uncovers the deeply personal, emotional journeys of freedom’s charter generation—the people born into slavery who walked into a new world of freedom during the Civil War. From the seemingly mundane to the most vital, emancipation opened up a myriad of new possibilities: what to wear and where to live, what jobs to take and who to love.
Although Joyner was educated at a Freedmen’s Bureau school and married a man she loved, slavery cast a long shadow. Uncertainty about her parentage haunted her life, and as Jim Crow took hold throughout the South, segregation, disfranchisement, and racial violence threatened the loving home she made for her family. But through it all, she found beauty in the world and added to it where she could.
Weaving together illuminating voices from the charter generation, To Walk About in Freedom gives us a kaleidoscopic look at the lived experiences of emancipation and challenges us to think anew about the consequences of failing to reckon with the afterlife of slavery.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published March 8, 2022
20 people are currently reading
288 people want to read
About the author
Carole Emberton
5 books8 followersHistorian & writer. Kentucky born, Buffalo livin'. Lover of historical fiction, mysteries, and southern lit.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
April 25, 2022
The journey from slavery to freedom is complex. This book pulled me into that journey that still goes on today.
March 6, 2022
A fascinating account of history, detective work, and cultural preservation. I Have read some of the WPA’s interviews Of former enslaved people and Emberton’s focus on one Of the accounts, Priscilla Joyner, presents interesting reading. Emberton also had to sleuth through data, records, archives and the like to fill in the gaps and also provide context for the story.
I love these types of books because they are rich in detail and bring a new story to the table of history, even if I don’t agree with every assertion the author made.
Thanks to WW Norton, NetGalley, and Edelweiss for the advance read.
I love these types of books because they are rich in detail and bring a new story to the table of history, even if I don’t agree with every assertion the author made.
Thanks to WW Norton, NetGalley, and Edelweiss for the advance read.
October 18, 2022
My review on Washington Independent Review of Books: https://www.washingtonindependentrevi...
January 3, 2022
To Walk About in Freedom is a very useful and informative book. Focusing on the experience of one woman, Carole Emberton traces, as the subtitle says, “The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner.” The starting point for the narrative is an interview Joyner gave as part of the Great Depression Federal Writers’ Program (FWP) oral history project, which captured histories of everyday Americans, including formerly enslaved Americans. Emberton vividly reconstructs Joyner’s life and experience, while walking the reader through a crucial continuum in U.S. history: enslavement, Emancipation, and Reconstruction, as well as the backlashes progress engendered (the plight of sharecroppers, Black migration patterns, Lost Cause mythology, “Redeemer” coups of local and state governments, white supremacist violence, Jim Crow restrictions and disenfranchisement, etc.).
Though published by an academic press, the book is extremely accessible; indeed, it deeply invests the readers in the life, accomplishments, setbacks, and sorrows of Joyner and others navigating freedom. Emberton pauses at key moments in Joyner’s life, filling in the broader context on many topics, such as the devastating effects of TB among Blacks, causing the deaths of at least four (possibly five) of Joyner’s children and one grandchild. That segues into a sketch of the role of Black funeral homes in Black entrepreneurial success. At times, the departures feel more like distractions, though—for example, when Emberton imagines how the white doctor behaved toward the Joyner family’s TB victims and what Priscilla might have thought of him. That leap of imagination is actually not needed to convey the tragedy of the situation or to elicit deep empathy for Joyner and her family. Emberton also conveys the disorienting and dislocating effects of Joyner’s inability to obtain the truth about her parentage. Joyner was raised “neither slave nor free” in a white household by a white woman that she was never quite certain was her mother and who would never reveal the identity of her father, whom Priscilla believed to be Black.
The book also has a fascinating and revealing subplot about the FWP, and particularly the Virginia Writers’ Project (VWP) that led to Joyner’s interview in the first place. The effort by Black VWP field workers to collect the lives of oral histories of former slaves in Virginia led to the publication of The Negro in Virginia, which was the only book of its kind to arise from the FWP. But that book reflects the heavy-handedness of the Virginia project’s state director, Eudora Ramsay Richardson, who rewrote much of the volume to cast whites in a more favorable light and very nearly wrote Joyner out of the story all together. Emberton has written Joyner back in to history.
Though published by an academic press, the book is extremely accessible; indeed, it deeply invests the readers in the life, accomplishments, setbacks, and sorrows of Joyner and others navigating freedom. Emberton pauses at key moments in Joyner’s life, filling in the broader context on many topics, such as the devastating effects of TB among Blacks, causing the deaths of at least four (possibly five) of Joyner’s children and one grandchild. That segues into a sketch of the role of Black funeral homes in Black entrepreneurial success. At times, the departures feel more like distractions, though—for example, when Emberton imagines how the white doctor behaved toward the Joyner family’s TB victims and what Priscilla might have thought of him. That leap of imagination is actually not needed to convey the tragedy of the situation or to elicit deep empathy for Joyner and her family. Emberton also conveys the disorienting and dislocating effects of Joyner’s inability to obtain the truth about her parentage. Joyner was raised “neither slave nor free” in a white household by a white woman that she was never quite certain was her mother and who would never reveal the identity of her father, whom Priscilla believed to be Black.
The book also has a fascinating and revealing subplot about the FWP, and particularly the Virginia Writers’ Project (VWP) that led to Joyner’s interview in the first place. The effort by Black VWP field workers to collect the lives of oral histories of former slaves in Virginia led to the publication of The Negro in Virginia, which was the only book of its kind to arise from the FWP. But that book reflects the heavy-handedness of the Virginia project’s state director, Eudora Ramsay Richardson, who rewrote much of the volume to cast whites in a more favorable light and very nearly wrote Joyner out of the story all together. Emberton has written Joyner back in to history.
February 27, 2022
To Walk About in Freedom
The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner
by Carole Emberton
Pub Date 08 Mar 2022 | Archive Date 28 Feb 2022
W. W. Norton & Company
Biographies & Memoirs | History | Nonfiction (Adult)
I am reviewing a copy of To Walk About In Freedom through W.W Norton & Company and Netgalley:
To Walk About In Freedom highlights the remarkable life of Priscilla Joyner and her quest—along with other formerly enslaved people to define freedom after the Civil War.
Born in 1858 in North Carolina Priscilla Joyner came to age at at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the truth about her parentage. She grew up isolated and unsure of who she was and where she belonged, feelings that no emancipation proclamation could ease.
Priscilla Joyner’s story was candidly recounted in an oral history for the Federal Writers’ Project, captures the intimate nature of freedom. Using Joyner’s interview and the interviews of other formerly enslaved people, historian Carole Emberton uncovers the deeply personal, emotional journeys of freedom’s charter generation, the people born into slavery who walked into a new world of freedom during the Civil War. From the seemingly mundane to the most vital, emancipation opened up a myriad of new possibilities: what to wear and where to live, what jobs to take and who to love.
Despite being educated at a Freedmen’s Bureau school and married a man she loved, slavery cast a long shadow. Uncertainty about her parentage haunted her life, and as Jim Crow took hold throughout the South, segregation, disfranchisement, and racial violence threatened the loving home she made for her family. But through it all, she found beauty in the world and added to it where she could.
To Walk About in Freedom weaves together illuminating voices from the charter generation, giving us a kaleidoscopic look at the lived experiences of emancipation and challenges us to think anew about the consequences of failing to reckon with the afterlife of slavery.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a realistic recounting of what it was like to live through the Emancipation Proclamation, the struggles, as well as the joys.
I give To Walk About In Freedom five out of five stars!
The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner
by Carole Emberton
Pub Date 08 Mar 2022 | Archive Date 28 Feb 2022
W. W. Norton & Company
Biographies & Memoirs | History | Nonfiction (Adult)
I am reviewing a copy of To Walk About In Freedom through W.W Norton & Company and Netgalley:
To Walk About In Freedom highlights the remarkable life of Priscilla Joyner and her quest—along with other formerly enslaved people to define freedom after the Civil War.
Born in 1858 in North Carolina Priscilla Joyner came to age at at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the truth about her parentage. She grew up isolated and unsure of who she was and where she belonged, feelings that no emancipation proclamation could ease.
Priscilla Joyner’s story was candidly recounted in an oral history for the Federal Writers’ Project, captures the intimate nature of freedom. Using Joyner’s interview and the interviews of other formerly enslaved people, historian Carole Emberton uncovers the deeply personal, emotional journeys of freedom’s charter generation, the people born into slavery who walked into a new world of freedom during the Civil War. From the seemingly mundane to the most vital, emancipation opened up a myriad of new possibilities: what to wear and where to live, what jobs to take and who to love.
Despite being educated at a Freedmen’s Bureau school and married a man she loved, slavery cast a long shadow. Uncertainty about her parentage haunted her life, and as Jim Crow took hold throughout the South, segregation, disfranchisement, and racial violence threatened the loving home she made for her family. But through it all, she found beauty in the world and added to it where she could.
To Walk About in Freedom weaves together illuminating voices from the charter generation, giving us a kaleidoscopic look at the lived experiences of emancipation and challenges us to think anew about the consequences of failing to reckon with the afterlife of slavery.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a realistic recounting of what it was like to live through the Emancipation Proclamation, the struggles, as well as the joys.
I give To Walk About In Freedom five out of five stars!
February 5, 2023
This was a really enjoyable nonfiction read. I first came across Priscilla Joyner during the course of family research - I thought she could be a relative, and though it turns out she is not, I was so fascinated by the article I read about her life online that I decided to purchase this book and learn more. The author does a very good job of contextualizing the life of Priscilla Joyner within broader American history. She includes quotes and information about others of the charter generation to help readers understand what life was like for Black Americans immediately following the Civil War, though reconstruction, and into the Jim Crow South and the Great Migration. This book does a great deal of work against many decades of white Southern revisionism. It left me with a sense of awe and great respect for the challenges that Priscilla had to overcome in order to build her identity, support a large family, and come to terms with her personal background as the biracial daughter of a white, female enslaver. This book is important not just for history buffs and family researchers, but for anyone who wants to understand more about how slavery's lingering consequences immediately impacted emancipated people and continue to reverberate today in the American South and beyond.
June 27, 2022
Well written and researched -- extensive Notes section. While the author bases her book on the "slave narrative" of Priscilla Joyner, she also utilizes other "slave narratives" to provide a more complete feel of the people who experienced enslavement and emancipation. The journey of emancipation may have started on a given day, but it wasn't a cut and dry occurrence; emancipation was/is a continuum. I highly recommend this book to better understand the complexities of emancipation.
August 4, 2024
The story of a Priscilla Joyner, born in 1849. Her mother was white -- and never told who the father was. She rasied Priscilla as her daughter in the main house, but eventually sent her to a black settlement after the Civil War ended. The book tells Priscilla's story along with that of others who were freed from slavery and lived into freedom during their lives. I found it interesting to see similarities to attitudes of white persons today who want to believe slavery wasn't so bad....
June 5, 2022
Great show of black excellence
Excellent book and give you a more holistic view of slavery and black agency. Not helpless victims Black people were survivors and not all white people were sadistic monsters. The book presents the gray areas of slavery. However slavery was atrocious. I am African-American This book is a masterpiece excellent work.
Excellent book and give you a more holistic view of slavery and black agency. Not helpless victims Black people were survivors and not all white people were sadistic monsters. The book presents the gray areas of slavery. However slavery was atrocious. I am African-American This book is a masterpiece excellent work.
April 28, 2022
Well worth the read. The book raises many questions about what emancipation was really like for former slaves. It also points out how interviews with former slaves in the 1930's were distorted by white interviewers and editors. Well written and researched.
May 21, 2023
I loved this book. The author tells the story of woman of color living in North Carolina (during the Civil War) and Virginia but uses it as a base for describing the experiences of African Americans during reconstruction and beyond.
Read
May 6, 2022Fabulous. An intelligent, smart, insightful history of emancipation, told through the life of a Black woman, Priscilla Joyner.
February 27, 2023
Interesting story, but I felt the author took too many liberties at inferring things (even with qualifiers).
August 1, 2023
Great book!!! I understood things and earned knowledge of things that I didn't know. A must read!!
June 7, 2022
A very capable handling of the story of a formerly enslaved woman whose narrative is part of the problematic WPA slave narratives; Emberton supplements that source with many others and helpfully contextualizes this and other WPA narratives.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews