In Claiming Union Widowhood, Brandi Clay Brimmer analyzes the US pension system from the perspective of poor black women during and after the Civil War. Reconstructing the grassroots pension network in New Bern, North Carolina, through a broad range of historical sources, she outlines how the mothers, wives, and widows of black Union soldiers struggled to claim pensions in the face of evidentiary obstacles and personal scrutiny. Brimmer exposes and examines the numerous attempts by the federal government to exclude black women from receiving the federal pensions that they had been promised. Her analyses illustrate the complexities of social policy and law administration and the interconnectedness of race, gender, and class formation. Expanding on previous analyses of pension records, Brimmer offers an interpretive framework of emancipation and the freedom narrative that places black women at the forefront of demands for black citizenship.
- Cover
- Contents
- Cast of Principal Characters
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I. A People and a Place
- 1. Black Life and Labor in New Bern, North Carolina, 1850–1865
- 2. The Black Community in New Bern, 1865–1920
- Part II. Encountering the State
- 3. Her Claim Is Lawful and Just: Black Women’s Petitions for Survivors’ Benefits
- 4. Black Women, Claims Agents, and the Pension Network
- 5. Encounters with the State: Black Women and Special Examiners
- 6. Marriage and the Expansion of the Pension System in 1890
- 7. Black Women and Suspensions for “Open and Notorious Cohabitation”
- 8. The Personal Consequences of Union Widowhood
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
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