Last Seen: Searching for Missing Loved Ones after the Civil War

In this talk, professor Judith Giesberg from Villanova University will discuss her new book, Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People for their Lost Families, that follows ten freed people searching for the loved ones who they were sold away from in the domestic slave trade. There was no missing persons department dedicated to this work, such as the one Clara Barton spearheaded, no congressional funding allocations, or help from powerful politicians. So, members of Freedom Generation relied on Black institutions to help them find their families. How did freed people search for mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and kin that had been scattered to the four corners of the country by slave traders? Where did they begin? And, did they find each other? The separation of enslaved people’s families is an often unacknowledged and misunderstood aspect of U.S. history, and the legacy of these separations has largely been ignored. Giesberg’s talk, and the book on which it is based, tells this story.