FREED PEOPLE’S FAITH

DIGGING THROUGH official war records and narratives of former slaves recorded during the Works Progress Administration, Abigail Cooper, assistant professor of history at Brandeis University, has begun to uncover the powerful culture of faith and community-building forged by freed people in refugee camps during and after the Civil War. Her research will appear in Pierced Dimes and Placenta Fires, forthcoming in 2021. A job directing theater in Port Gibson, Miss., when she was fresh out of college helped her reconceive the way she saw history and who narrated it.

CWT: How did you become interested in this topic?

I have an unusual path. I was a theater major, and after I graduated, I went to Port Gibson, Miss., right near Vicksburg, to work as a theater teacher, director, and community programmer. That was a watershed moment: to be taught by this majority-black rural community in the south. It was still in the midst of civil rights battles that according to history were kind of