Richmond, Virginia: pride of the founding fathers, doomed capital of the Confederate States of America. Unlike other Southern cities, Richmond boasted a vibrant, urban industrial complex capable of producing crucial ammunition and military supplies. Despite its northern position, Richmond became the Confederacy's beating heart—its capital, second-largest city, and impenetrable citadel. As long as the city endured, the Confederacy remained a well-supplied and formidable force. But when Ulysses S. Grant broke its defenses in 1865, the Confederates fled, burned Richmond to the ground, and surrendered within the week. Confederate Citadel: Richmond and Its People at War offers a detailed portrait of life's daily hardships in the rebel capital during the Civil War. Here, barricaded against a siege, staunch Unionists became a dangerous fifth column, refugees flooded the streets, and women organized a bread riot in the city. Drawing on personal correspondence, private diaries, and newspapers, author Mary A. DeCredico spotlights the human elements of Richmond's economic rise and fall, uncovering its significance as the South's industrial powerhouse throughout the Civil War.

Richmond was not only the capital of Virginia and of the Confederacy, it was also one of the most industrialized cities south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Boasting ironworks, tobacco-processing plants, and flour mills, the city by 1860 drew half of its male workforce from the local slave population. "Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction" examines this unusual urban labor system from 1782 until the end of the Civil War.

RICHMOND WAS NOT only the capital of Virginia and of the Confederacy; it was also one of the most industrialized cities south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Boasting ironworks, tobacco processing plants, and flour mills, the city by 1860 drew half of its male workforce from the local slave population. Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction examines this unusual urban labor system from 1782 until the end of the Civil War. Many urban bondsmen and women were hired to businesses rather than working directly for their owners. As a result, they frequently had the opportunity to negotiate their own contracts, to live alone, and to keep a portion of their wages in cash. Working conditions in industrial Richmond enabled African-American men and women to build a community organized around family networks, black churches, segregated neighborhoods, secret societies, and aid organizations. Through these institutions, Takagi demonstrates, slaves were able to educate themselves and to develop their political awareness. They also came to expect a degree of control over their labor and lives. Richmond's urban slave system offered blacks a level of economic and emotional support not usually available to plantation slaves. Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction offers a valuable portrait of urban slavery in an individual city that raises questions about the adaptability of slavery as an institution to an urban setting and, more importantly, the ways in which slaves were able to turn urban working conditions to their own advantage.

In Brothers of a Vow, Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch examines secret fraternal organizations in antebellum Virginia to offer fresh insight into masculinity and the redefinition of social and political roles of white men in the South. Young Virginians who came of age during the antebellum era lived through a time of tremendous economic, cultural, and political upheaval. In a state increasingly pulled between the demands of the growing market and the long-established tradition of unfree labor, Pflugrad-Jackisch argues that groups like the Freemasons, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and the Sons of Temperance promoted market-oriented values and created bonds among white men that softened class distinctions. At the same time, these groups sought to stabilize social hierarchies that subordinated blacks and women. Pflugrad-Jackisch examines all aspects of the secret orders--including their bylaws and proceedings, their material culture and regalia, and their participation in a wide array of festivals, parades, and civic celebrations. Regarding gender, she shows how fraternal orders helped reinforce an alternative definition of southern white manhood that emphasized self-discipline, moral character, temperance, and success at work. These groups ultimately established a civic brotherhood among white men that marginalized the role of women in the public sphere and bolstered the respectability of white men regardless of class status. Brothers of a Vow is a nuanced look at how dominant groups craft collective identities, and it adds to our understanding of citizenship and political culture during a period of rapid change.

A new way of seeing Black history—the sweeping story of how American cities as we know them developed from the vision, aspirations, and actions of the Black poor. Building the Black City shows how African Americans built and rebuilt thriving cities for themselves, even as their unpaid and underpaid labor enriched the nation's economic, political, and cultural elites. Covering an incredible range of cities from the North to the South, the East to the West, Joe William Trotter, Jr., traces the growth of Black cities and political power from the preindustrial era to the present. Trotter defines the Black city as a complicated socioeconomic, spiritual, political, and spatial process, unfolding time and again as Black communities carved out urban space against the violent backdrop of recurring assaults on their civil and human rights—including the right to the city. As we illuminate the destructive depths of racial capitalism and how Black people have shaped American culture, politics, and democracy, Building the Black City reminds us that the case for reparations must also include a profound appreciation for the creativity and productivity of African Americans on their own behalf. Cities covered: Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Richmond, Birmingham, Durham, Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Tulsa, early New York (New Amsterdam), Philadelphia, Boston Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Seattle

From the colonial period onward, black artisans in southern cities--thousands of free and enslaved carpenters, coopers, dressmakers, blacksmiths, saddlers, shoemakers, bricklayers, shipwrights, cabinetmakers, tailors, and others--played vital roles in their communities. Yet only a very few black craftspeople have gained popular and scholarly attention. Catherine W. Bishir remedies this oversight by offering an in-depth portrayal of urban African American artisans in the small but important port city of New Bern. In so doing, she highlights the community's often unrecognized importance in the history of nineteenth-century black life. Drawing upon myriad sources, Bishir brings to life men and women who employed their trade skills, sense of purpose, and community relationships to work for liberty and self-sufficiency, to establish and protect their families, and to assume leadership in churches and associations and in New Bern's dynamic political life during and after the Civil War. Focusing on their words and actions, Crafting Lives provides a new understanding of urban southern black artisans' unique place in the larger picture of American artisan identity.

Once the capital of the Confederacy and the industrial hub of slave-based tobacco production, Richmond, Virginia has been largely overlooked in the context of twentieth century urban and political history. By the early 1960s, the city served as an important center for integrated politics, as African Americans fought for fair representation and mobilized voters in order to overcome discriminatory policies. Richmond's African Americans struggled to serve their growing communities in the face of unyielding discrimination. Yet, due to their dedication to strengthening the Voting Rights Act of 1965, African American politicians held a city council majority by the late 1970s. In The Dream Is Lost, Julian Maxwell Hayter describes more than three decades of national and local racial politics in Richmond and illuminates the unintended consequences of civil rights legislation. He uses the city's experience to explain the political abuses that often accompany American electoral reforms and explores the arc of mid-twentieth-century urban history. In so doing, Hayter not only reexamines the civil rights movement's origins, but also seeks to explain the political, economic, and social implications of the freedom struggle following the major legislation of the 1960s. Hayter concludes his study in the 1980s and follows black voter mobilization to its rational conclusion—black empowerment and governance. However, he also outlines how Richmond's black majority council struggled to the meet the challenges of economic forces beyond the realm of politics. The Dream Is Lost vividly illustrates the limits of political power, offering an important view of an underexplored aspect of the post–civil rights era.