top of page

Williams, Kidada E.

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

Bloomsbury (New York)

2023



OUR SYNOPSIS: Kidada E. Williams foregrounds stories of the determined African American struggle for freedom while facing violent white resistance to Reconstruction. She amplifies the voices of Black families who survived the terror wrought by white southerners attempting to reimpose slavery’s race relations. This is an important counter-narrative to conventional accounts of Reconstruction.

BIG QUESTIONS:

  • How does Williams’s “war against Reconstruction” framing impact the way you think about the relationships between slavery and freedom or the Civil War and Reconstruction?

  • What do the characteristics of white violence against Reconstruction say about beliefs and attitudes of the assailants?

FEATURE QUOTES:

  • “Edward certainly feared having his right to vote violated, but more than that he wanted the committee to understand how the white men’s arrival at his home, and the possibility they would return, posed a far greater danger to his family’s well-being and freedom. Edward told lawmakers Black Mississippians were at the mercy of enslavers who had instigated the Civil War. Those white men were apoplectic about their defeat on the battlefield and emancipation, and they were overthrowing Reconstruction.” (xix)

  • “I Saw Death Coming seeks to immerse readers in the immediacy of Black people’s collective experience of living through the war after the Civil War. Seeing night-riding strikes through survivors’ eyes challenges misconceptions about Reconstruction and about Klan violence. The testimonies create a vivid portrait of how much Black southerners accomplished with freedom.” (xxi)

o “Black Reconstruction didn’t ‘fail,’ as so many are taught. White southerners overthrew it, and the rest of the nation let them.” (41)

PRIMARY SOURCES:

**CW RACIAL VIOLENCE**

BALTIMORE CONNECTIONS:

  • N/A

bottom of page