A Covert From Storm: Race, Rights and Community in Nineteenth-Century Rural Michigan

This is a study of the mixed-race community of Covert, Michigan from the 1850's to the 1910's, which follows the construction of a racially harmonious integrated community during a period when Jim Crow racism was on the rise in the rest of the nation. Shared political power, shared friendships, economic equality, educational equality, equal justice, and shared worship all existed between African Americans and whites in the nineteenth-century rural township of Covert, Michigan. The primary reason for this unusual pattern of race relations was the social, political, and economic assertiveness of the Black Civil War veterans in Covert, and that the white Yankees and European immigrants in the township welcomed and encouraged this assertiveness. This equality between Blacks and whites did not result in people of African descent having to deny their unique heritage and identity. Rather, the social norms and ideologies of this co-created community made it possible for a separate African American identity to flourish.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Cox, Anna-Lisa Grace

Contributors dc:contributor

• Burton, Orville Vernon

• History, Black

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3044075

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/84628