The Testimony of Henry Adams, Freedman: Hope, Terror, and Exodus in the Post-Civil War South

In March 1880 a committee of the U.S. Senate investigating the ongoing "Negro Exodus" from the South heard two days of testimony from an extraordinary American. A freedman, former soldier, laborer, faith healer, political activist, and sometime undercover government operative, Henry Adams was one of the leaders of the exodus movement in Louisiana. In his exchanges with the senators and his written testimony, Adams chronicles:

• the nightmarish violence and insidious economic exploitation inflicted upon the freedpeople by "the very men who held us slaves"
• the defiant Black resistance of voters determined to go to the polls in the face of systemic terrorism
• his work with "the committee," a secret group of workingmen who sought to learn "the true condition of our race" throughout the South.

This fascinating, never-before-available text provides an illuminating perspective on Reconstruction as it was experienced "from below," far removed from Washington and the major cities of the South. Adams's remarkable testimony is a tribute to Black determination and self-reliance that looks forward to the Great Migration of the twentieth century. It is also a terrifying and timely reminder of the fragility of democracy in the face of unrestrained lawlessness.