Free to Be

As the Union navy levels the Confederate forts intended to protect the Port Royal shoreline, South Carolina plantation owners flee, abandoning their homes, animals, equipment, and Sea Island cotton worth millions of dollars. They also leave behind 8,000 slaves. The Negroes recognize the attack as a chance for freedom and take to the woods. But the main character, Crecie, harboring beliefs instilled by four generations of enslavement, doesn't hide. The psychology of slavery has buried her true nature so deeply she measures her worth by the amount of work she produces for the master. Relying on him for shelter, food, and clothing, she fails to realize that it is her labor that allows him to provide these meager necessities. The army lands and classifies the abandoned property, including the Negroes, as contraband of war. Though the people are not legally free, they are no longer considered slaves. Now employed under a system of free-labor, most work on the government-managed cotton plantations, receiving sporadic wages and army rations. The slaves mark November 7, 1861, as the Day the Big Gun shoot and become the first of 4 million enslaved people to work as freed men and women. A new group of whites bring swift changes to the islands. As Crecie combats generations of inferior thinking, she is overwhelmed by the demands of the U.S. government agents, the military, and abolitionists sent to prepare the Negroes for freedom. Gullible and illiterate, she is terrified by the thought of making independent decisions and, confounded over her relationship with the new white authority, she longs for the paternalistic structure of slavery times. The new white order provides schools, teachers, and religious freedom, but it also brings murder, mayhem, and deception. When the unorganized turmoil brings personal tragedy, Crecie becomes the family's sole provider, yet continues to grapple with the strange notion of self-ownership, emotionally unable to claim her own labor. But as events of the war unfold, she reaches a crossroad, realizing she has to make a choice: continue to work for slave-wages in order to survive, or seek land ownership in order to produce her own sustenance.

Dettagli