About a Month After She Was Here I Got a Letter From Her

Guest Post by Kristine Schwartzman

​Like others who helped enslaved people on their journey for freedom, Nancy Kendall rarely knew what happened to the freedom seekers after they left her home. But she did hear from one woman she helped. She’d made it to safety. 

We often speak about the Emancipation Proclamation as a happy ending. But, for many freed people, the end of slavery was far from the storybook ending many imagine. 

An excerpt from the Library of Congress collection of recordings of former slaves, Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories, Laura Smalley describes what happened:

“We didn't know where to go. Mom and them didn't know where to go. You see, after freedom broke, they started just, like, to turn some of them out, you know? We didn't know where to go. They turned us out just like, you know, you turn out cattle (laughter), I'd say.”

Smalley was a child in Texas when her parents and the rest of the enslaved were told they were free. It was not the “master” who told them. He’d kept their freedom a secret. 

​She explains:

“No, he didn't tell. They went there and turned them loose on the 19 of June. That's why, you know, we celebrate that day — colored folks celebrates that day — celebrates that day.”

Photo Courtesy Library of Congress

​Jim Downs' book, “Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and Reconstruction” outlines how the war and its aftermath led to the largest biological crises of the 19th century. Hundreds of thousands of freed people died.

While the Emancipation Proclamation served as the catalyst for freeing people, no programs or services were offered to help them in the immediate aftermath.

Some continued to work on plantations, some fled to lives of uncertainty, some starved to death, and many died of disease. The government finally established the Freedmen’s Bureau, which provided medical care, food, and other supplies to those in the South who needed help.

Out of the chaos came demonstrations by the freed people themselves. Demanding civil rights, the vote, education, reunions with family, and opportunities for economic health, former slaves became advocates to improve their lives. It’s a battle still being fought today.