Browsing by Author "Smith, Bekah"
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- Freedom in the Night, Antebellum Slave Life After DarkSmith, Bekah (Virginia Tech Department of History, 2017-10-01)The movement of slaves during the night is not an area that seems to have generated much conversation among scholars. The main narrative that slaves fall into is that of the brutality and oppression they endured in the South. While that narrative is important to reconstruct, the movements and actions of slaves after their work hours is just as crucial to our understanding. Looking at slave choices during the night can speak to what male and female slaves wanted for themselves as well as their families. Stephanie Camp and Deborah White both speak at great lengths in their books of the slave’s nights, especially those of female slaves. Larry Hudson’s book, To Have and To Hold, focuses on the nuclear slave family and included descriptions of their activities during the hours of darkness. The topic of slavery brings about many questions, but observing slave movements occurring at night may answer some of those questions. What roles did men take on during the night? What were the responsibilities of women after work hours? Did night play a significant role in slaves attempting or successfully running away? What was the reaction of white Southerners to slave mobility during the dark and did this mobility threaten daytime work? What were the sleeping conditions of slaves? In the antebellum South, nighttime offered slaves more than sleep. Night for slaves allowed them greater freedom such as white men experienced during the day. A sense of freedom existed for slaves, both male and female, during the hours of darkness: freedom not just from exhaustive hours of labor, but the freedom of choice in how to spend their time without the watchful eye of overseers.
- Virginia Tech Undergraduate Historical Review, vol. 6, full issueCaprice, Kevin; Hemmingson, Grace; Stewart, Emily; Leep, Parker; Cooper, Kelly; Smith, Bekah; Urquidi, Cristina; Shank, Ian (Virginia Tech Department of History, 2017-10-01)Volume Six of the Review begins with Emily Stewart’s “Take Cover” which examines the implementation of the National Civic Defense Program in Montgomery County during the Cold War. Next, Cristina Urquidi seeks to explain American media reaction to Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s through the use of media framing theory in her essay “American Media Coverage of the Rise of Hitler.” Then, in “Roman Corbridge and the Corbridge Hoard,” Parker Leep analyzes how archaeologists and classic historians reconstruct the past through looking at the case of the Roman Corbridge. Afterwards, Bekah Smith, in her article “Freedom in the Night,” reexamines the lives of African American slaves in the Antebellum South and considers how the nighttime impacted slaves’ lives by giving them more freedom. She also questions why slave owners feared the nighttime. Kelly Cooper then looks at art conservation efforts during World War II and why some communities went to great lengths to preserve artwork from the Medieval and Renaissance Periods. Her article “Saving VanEyck and Leonardo Da Vinci” asks how the power of art influenced people to act and save it. Lastly, Ian Shank’s article “Home to Port” reflects on the experiences of Italian soldiers during the African Campaign in World War II.