Claiming union widowhood : race, respectability, and poverty in the post-emancipation South

Author(s)

    • Brimmer, Brandi Clay

Bibliographic Information

Claiming union widowhood : race, respectability, and poverty in the post-emancipation South

Brandi Clay Brimmer

Duke University Press, 2020

  • : [pbk.]

Available at  / 1 libraries

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Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

ISBN for paperback appears on t.p. verso (CIP data) as: 9781478011323. -- hardcover as: 9781478010258

Description and Table of Contents

Description

In Claiming Union Widowhood, Brandi Clay Brimmer analyzes the US pension system from the perspective of poor black women during and after the Civil War. Reconstructing the grassroots pension network in New Bern, North Carolina, through a broad range of historical sources, she outlines how the mothers, wives, and widows of black Union soldiers struggled to claim pensions in the face of evidentiary obstacles and personal scrutiny. Brimmer exposes and examines the numerous attempts by the federal government to exclude black women from receiving the federal pensions that they had been promised. Her analyses illustrate the complexities of social policy and law administration and the interconnectedness of race, gender, and class formation. Expanding on previous analyses of pension records, Brimmer offers an interpretive framework of emancipation and the freedom narrative that places black women at the forefront of demands for black citizenship.

Table of Contents

Cast of Principal Characters ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 Part I. A People and a Place 1. Black Life and Labor in New Bern, North Carolina, 1850-1865 23 2. The Black Community in New Bern, 1865-1920 46 Part II. Encountering the State 3. Her Claim is Lawful and Just: Black Women's Petitions for Survivors' Benefits 77 4. Black Women, Claims Agents, and the Pension Network 101 5. Encounters with the State: Black Women and Special Examiners 123 6. Marriage and the Expansion of the Pension System in 1890 144 7. Black Women and Suspensions for "Open and Notorious Cohabitation" 163 8. The Personal Consequences of Union Widowhood 184 Conclusion 205 Notes 217 Bibliography 277 Index 299

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