After Freedom: A Cultural Study In The Deep South: New Directions in Anthropological Writing

“Powdermaker’s work provides us with what is still a unique look at how African American men and women struggled to build families, develop capital, and create a community under conditions which made it necessary for both subjects and the observer to refer to their moment in time as ‘after freedom,’ though it was almost three-quarters of a century after emancipation.  Her work offers us perspectives that foreshadowed contemporary ethnography’s efforts to ‘bring anthropology back home,’ Afrocentric research’s focus on Africa in America, and feminist theory’s attempt to incorporate race and class into constructions of white-woman gender studies.”—Brackette F. Williams and Drexel G. Woodson, University of Arizona

“After Freedom is not only a classic of African American history.  It is also a model case study in how to do ethnographic field work, how to listen deeply to one’s informants, how to write with rich detail and a keen analytical eye.”—Paul R. Spickard, Brigham Young University

First published in 1939, After Freedom is the first complete ethnography of an African American community in the United States.