To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War

“This book draws from a large variety of primary documents, including diaries, household account books, newspapers, municipal records, city directories, personal correspondence, oral interviews, government reports, business records, photographs, political cartoons, and organizational records.” 

Hunter identifies the sources upon which she relied to write her book. Note that these sources provide substantial information about people in aggregate but not necessarily about individuals. This particular problem is one that is common to history that focuses on ordinary people.

“The limitations of the extant evidence for the strike cautioned me about the difficulties of finding primary sources covering a broader scope. Just as the strike had yielded limited first-hand accounts by the women, finding direct testimony of black women would be my biggest challenge. The process of researching the strike also taught me how to make the most of sources that are typically used to study ordinary people but have less been frequently applied specifically to black women workers. By thinking expansively about how to find and interpret historical sources and scavenging for clues in whatever evidence was at hand, I was able to discover a great deal of relevant material about the broad dimensions of black and Southern lives.” 

Hunter addresses one of the significant challenges of finding information on African-American women of the working-class. This problem of methodology is a central one of writing history “from below,” history that focuses on ordinary people instead of great men like George Washington.

“Tillory replied, ‘To ‘joy my freedom.’” 

Hunter takes the title of her book from a Freedmen’s Bureau of ex-slave Julie Tillory, who explains why she came to Atlanta despite the severe economic challenges she was likely to encounter there. Hunter’s use of a working-class, African-American woman’s voice signals the centrality of this perspective to her historical project. It highlights her focus on leisure as a subversive activity in the lives of women like Tillory.