“Away I Goin' to Find My Mamma”: Self-Emanicipation, Migration, and Kinship in Refugee Camps in the Civil War Era

Cooper discusses the self-emancipation, migration, and kinship in refugee camps in the Civil War era. She relates the story of 17-year-old black girl Mary Armstrong who migrates to Texas in 1863 where slave trade was still active to look for her mother with free papers. Mary's decision to move to her mother was a political act while her aspiration to stay with her mother as an independent household in Texas imagined a new order. Looking out from slavery, Mary Armstrong's migration embodies a version of black politics that put kin before nation as the integral foundation upon which black communities would navigate the route to citizenship. Moreover, Mary Armstrong's story is a critical complement to those of African American men whose Civil War migrations resonate more easily in the better-known historical narrative of emancipatory movement into Union soldiery.