Event

The Death and Times of Eliza Pinkston: Social Action and Collective Violence during Reconstruction

Thursday, June 27, 2019
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Radmacher Meeting Room

Learn about Eliza Pinkston, a woman born enslaved. During Reconstruction, she tried to establish a family farm in the cotton country of northern Louisiana.

Historian Julie Saville presents Pinkston's fascinating story. She was born about 1857 and died in 1883. As a woman, she was not enfranchised under the Reconstruction Acts or Louisiana's new state constitution. Yet, her efforts to be a self-sufficient family farmer became linked to conflicts between an emerging political movement by former slaves and their allies, and a new Ku Klux Klan regional organization. In the shadow of slavery, grassroots political action and collective violence made electoral politics into a "blood sport" that included family life, murder, and sexual assault in struggles for and against democracy.

Online registration is closed.