SSLH Bursary Report – Carin Peller Semmens
My doctoral work examines the ideological, political, economic and
behavioral legacies of slavery in North Louisiana’s Red River region from the early
entrenchment of slavery in the 1820s through the violent and charged 1870s and
1880s. It investigates the foundation and significance of white dominated power
structures in the shaping of black and white relations. The rigid power dynamic
established by slavery proved particularly resilient in this region and ensured narrow
pathways out of slavery for freedpeople throughout northern Louisiana. From the
onset of Reconstruction, these narrow passages out of enslavement coupled with
white desire to retain powercreated a clash of values and expectations that made
northern Louisiana a breading ground forviolent racial conflict. Violence against
freedpeople wasconstant and brazen, finally surging into historical memory with the
Colfax Massacre. The indicted white participants of the Colfax Massacre were found
innocent in three individual court cases that included the United States Supreme Court
ruling in U.S. v. Cruikshank,a decision thatfurther underscored the acceptability of
white supremacist violence in this region. Freedpeople reacted to this bloody and
resilient racial order by fleeing the state through migrations such as the 1879 Kansas
Exoduster movement.
The Society for the Study of Labour History’s travel bursary was critical to
my doctoral research asit enabled me to spend seven extraordinarily fruitful weeks at
the archives at Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana. Archival research is fundamental to understanding the events and the
people that have shaped a region’s way of life. To illuminate the region’s past, and
find new perspectives on national movements, it is vital physically to explore the
traces left to us by its people. No dissertation can be effectively written without
archival research, but this is very challenging when archives are located in other
countries and resources are limited. The generous funding of the Society helped to
cover the cost of my on-campus housing.
During my seven weeks at Hill Memorial Library – a truly wonderful
repository for any student of Southern history – I mined more than one hundred and
fifty collections, acquiring materials spanning from pre-1820 to the 1880s. I built a
relationship with the kind and knowledgeable archivists, who generously granted me
access to a recently donated and as yet unprocessed acquisition. These items, which
will become part of the collected family papers of a prominent North Louisiana
family, had not previously been seen by any historian and will serve as key primary
sources for my fresh investigation of the Civil War and early Reconstruction era. The
material I was able to collect at Hill Memorial has profoundly shaped and enhanced
the core argument of my dissertation and enabled me to understand –with greater
depth and nuance – the driving forces behind the violence in the Red River
region.This funded trip will always stand as one of the critical pillars of my successful
doctoral research. Even the final title for my work, “Unreconstructed: From Slavery
to Freedom in the New Cotton South, 1820-1880,” was selected in the evocative
atmosphere of the Hill Memorial Library.
Carin Peller Semmens
Ph.D. candidate in American History
University of Sussex