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Historian Janette Greenwood and her students investigate the lives of black and white Americans in both the North and the South during Reconstruction. |
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Meet the researchers:
A sense of who and where you are
Interview with Professor Janette Greenwood, Bob Andrejczyk and Stephanie Martinez
Professor Janette Greenwood is researching the migration of ex-slaves into
Worcester County during and after the Civil War. We interviewed her along
with Bob Andrejczyk ’01 and Stephanie Martinez ’01, both of whom were juniors
when they participated in Professor Greenwood’s seminar on Reconstruction. Bob
is a history major and Stephanie is a psychology major completing a minor in
history.
Janette, can you tell us about your research project
and how undergraduates have been involved?
One of the courses that I
teach here at Clark is a research seminar on Reconstruction in the United States
after the Civil War. I was particularly interested in organizing it as a
research seminar for a couple of reasons. It’s directly related to a book
I’m working on about the migration of former slaves—southern Blacks –to
New England, using Worcester County as a case study. I was also interested in a
book by historian Eric Foner [Reconstruction : America's Unfinished Revolution,
1863-1877 where in one
chapter he explores the impact of
Reconstruction on the North. Most studies have been about the impact of
Reconstruction on the South when the federal government was working with the
southern states to reconstruct a new society after slavery. But how were federal
policies and thinking about free labor affecting the North? It’s a fresh area
for research.
In class we read Foner’s book and
those of other authors about Reconstruction to get an overview of the period.
Then I have students choose a research topic—most students will focus on
various dimensions of Massachusetts or Worcester County during the
Reconstruction. Topics might include the suffrage movement--women almost get the
right to vote in Massachusetts right after the Civil War, or Native American rights and
how they were impacted, especially by the passage of the 14th and 15th
amendments. Native Americans were actually made citizens of the state for the
first time. There was a lot going on in Worcester in terms of unionization and
labor, capital, and management conflict. White workers in the North began to
appropriate theories about free labor that were initially applied to
African-Americans. Some white workers maintained that they were “wage
slaves” and their rights also needed to be addressed.
There are lots of different
dimensions to Reconstruction in the North. Worcester provides an excellent case
study. We have wonderful resources here—the American
Antiquarian Society, Worcester
Historical Museum, Worcester Public
Library—lots of places where students can go to do original research, and
study Reconstruction and its ramifications.
So how did you use your classes to extend your own
research and get your students involved?
It struck me when I was
doing my own research that there were a lot of things I didn’t know about, and
when I tried to find out, there was nothing there in secondary sources. Some examples were
information on the general composition of the Black community in Worcester, the
relationship between white patrons and the Black community, Black institutions,
churches, and veterans groups, etc. I realized many of these were related to
Reconstruction. I could compile a list of questions that could be areas of
investigation for students.
Also, from my own research I
became familiar with local historical sources. That knowledge lets me point
students to the sources relevant to their particular questions. I can say to
them: I know about these sermons, or these records are available, or these court
documents or real estate records, things like that.
So in other words, you and your students are working
as a group, focusing on a particular time and place. Each person’s research
can provide a context for what the others are doing.
Yes. And then the course itself
provides them with a sense of historiography; that is, what other historians have
said about this subject. So each student’s research also gives him or her a
chance to evaluate other historians—do they agree with them, do they disagree.
It’s not just about doing Worcester research, although that’s important, but
about placing information about the Worcester area in a larger context.
Stephanie and Bob, you were both in this
Reconstruction course. Stephanie, what did you focus your research on?
I was looking at the Black
church in Worcester, specifically the AME
Zion Church. (The church is still in existence.) I was examining records at
the church and the Worcester Public Library.
Bob, what were you investigating?
I was researching
Nahum Gardner
Hazard, a member of the Massachusetts
54th Voluntary Infantry Regiment, the first Black regiment
recruited in the North. [The movie Glory was based on this regiment.] The
Hazards were an African-American family prominent in Central Massachusetts. I
was trying to piece together his life.
My sense is that Massachusetts is a good place for
historical records.
In some ways, but Black history has often been given less consideration,
especially in terms of archival sources. Bob has gone out and done some
incredible digging, even interviewing people to get a sense of the man he
studied. He went all over the county.
Bob:
I drove to Fitchburg, Townsend, historical societies where you’d see some old
man who hasn’t seen a face in five years, and he’ll talk to you for
hours--everything you want to know.
Were there any particular sources about Hazard that
you were especially excited to find?
Bob:
Well, I actually got started by reading a book about the history of the town of
Shirley, Mass. That told Hazard’s story, how he was kidnapped when he was nine
years old and sold into slavery. My interest came from that story. I’m
interested in the people.
Janette:
What Bob did so effectively was to take a fairly ordinary person—not someone
famous- and tease out what life must have been like for an African-American in
Massachusetts around the time of the Civil War, and the implications of that.
Bob:
You’re actually going out, you’re going places, you’re digging around in
library basements finding all these documents and records. It was fun, it was
different, it was definitely active learning.
Janette,
can you comment on the benefit of having students becoming involved in research?
If you can allow students to
be historians themselves, that is an extremely valuable thing for them to learn. Like
Stephanie said earlier, the process holds both frustrations and rewards. It’s
like detective work, you have a question, you have clues or hints, you’re
looking for something you think should be there and find out it’s not, or
quite different than you thought it would be. You learn to squeeze out as much
as you can from just a few sources, but try not to go too far beyond your
sources. It also teaches you larger skills, about analyzing, about being
persistent. You end by writing a narrative about what you think happened.
Another reward about local
historical research is that it connects students to the community. Once having
had that experience, students seem to think about themselves in a different way
in regard to the larger community. They appreciate the historical context in
which they’re living. Maybe that’s something you can take wherever you go,
the sense that every place has a history, and it’s worth seeking that out.
Every place has the potential to give you a sense of who you are and where you are.
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Additional Resources
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Left to right: Bob Andrejczyk ’01, Stephanie Martinez ’01 and Professor Janette Greenwood
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See a video clip