Introducing: Seizing Freedom

BackStory

History, Education

4.7 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2020

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Coming Feb 2021…

In most history classes, students learn that the Emancipation Proclamation and Union victories “freed the slaves.” But ending slavery in America required much more than battlefield victories and official declarations. Black people battled for their own freedom, taking incredible risks for a country that had actively denied their right to it. And after the Civil War, they made freedom real by organizing for equality and justice.

On Seizing Freedom, you’ll hear stories of freedom taking and freedom making, in the words of those who did both. Drawing on stories from diaries, newspapers, letters, and speeches, we’ll recreate voices that have been muted time and time again.

This excerpt is from the first episode of the series. It tells the story of those who escaped slavery to enlist with the Union Army—an army that wasn’t particularly interested in having them.

Subscribe to the entire series here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello backstory listeners, it airs here.
0:03.8	In this moment of upheaval and change, many of us are turning to history to understand
0:08.2	racism in this country.
0:09.6	That's why today I'm excited to bring you an excerpt from a brand new podcast from
0:15.0	VPM called Seizing Freedom.
0:18.9	Seizing freedom follows African Americans as they fight for power and dignity, when the
0:23.9	bloody battlefields of the Civil War did the political warfare of reconstruction.
0:29.9	That people are often portrayed as bystanders of the war, when in fact they were some of
0:34.1	its heroes, and the victories they earned during reconstruction need to be more widely known
0:39.8	and celebrated.
0:41.5	So this podcast uses diary entries, letters, newspapers and speeches to tell an epic story
0:48.4	from the perspectives of black people who actually lived it, and it's one that I'm proud
0:53.1	to support as executive producer.
0:55.4	I hope you find the show as urgent and as moving as I do.
1:01.0	From VPM, here is Seizing Freedom.
1:05.4	In 1863 George Washington Field was 9 years old, almost 10.
1:10.6	He lived with his mother, six of his siblings, and a boy who would become his brother-in-law.
1:15.9	They were all enslaved on a plantation and hand over Virginia.
1:20.9	It was the height of the Civil War, and they were caught in the middle of a firefight.
1:25.4	Sous and soldiers were the first to open fire, which was returned by the Yanks, and a shot
1:30.7	from a Yankee field piece struck the corner of the cabin upon the porch of which my mother
1:35.0	was standing with her children huddled about her, causing it to sag, though it did not fall.
	...

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