Big Questions in Microhistory

Abstract

Attesting to the truth of Magnusson's comment, all three works hinge on celebrated murder or kidnapping trials where there are transcripts, police records, and lots of newspaper coverage. The most exciting moments arrive when the ordinary lives of their protagonists come into view. Since so much of the everyday lives of so many has been hidden for so long, finally seeing it explored and explained is remarkably refreshing. The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case is about the complexity of racial identity in a pivotal historical moment; Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso is about how a particular African American woman could exploit the color line and manipulate both whites and blacks for her own purposes; and Goat Castle is about how the memory of slavery continued to shape race relations seven decades after Emancipation. [...]all three use these stories to engage with the public and convince people to care about the history of race, sex, and power. ________ The earliest of these three books, chronologically, is The Great New Orleans Kidnapping Case. With the Republican-controlled national government still occupying Louisiana to ensure order and equity, African Americans "poured from plantations into its working-class neighborhoods" where they experienced a freedom like nothing before.