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I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War against Reconstruction

byKidada Williams

Kidada E. Williams retells Reconstruction through Black families who faced organized white terror after emancipation. Testimony from survivors reveals murders, assaults, expulsions, property destruction, and threats designed to overturn citizenship and restore racial control. Rather than centering only politicians and constitutional amendments, the book follows people struggling to protect relatives, homes, schools, churches, land, and political participation. Williams shows that Reconstruction's defeat was not an abstract policy failure but a violent war against ordinary freedom. The survivors' words preserve both the scale of loss and the determination to build new lives.

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Publication date

2022

Format

Print edition

Pages

352

ISBN

9781635576634