We’re about finished with the semester, and my students are now writing either on how much the Civil War and Reconstruction changed life for African Americans or on the influence of slavery on US society in the decades before the war. I use these assignments for a number of reasons, but one of them is because I want to hammer home the importance of where sources come from. One of the finest examples is from the Ku Klux Klan hearings of the early 1870s. Lucy McMillan’s testimony (which can be found online at books.google, in Going to the Source, and in Major Problems) is a case in point. A former slave, she discussed vicious attacks from local whites – burning homes, threatening violence, and murdering anyone who stood in their way. The Klan was especially angry with her for mentioning that she was going to try and buy land. If we simply read the words on the page, we could conclude that life may have gotten worse with freedom. Violence and more violence was the lot for slaves and now freed people.

But this is where paying attention to where the document came from matters so much. McMillan was testifying as part of a wide federal investigation into Klan activity. The United States government was listening to African Americans and their experiences. Not only listening, government officials had called her to the stand. In less than two decades from Chief Justice Roger Taney’s decision in Dred Scott that neither slave, nor free blacks had rights that white men were “bound to respect,” the government now respected the words and experiences of Lucy McMillan.

And when we think of where the source comes from, we also have a new take on the woman herself. She was willing to speak, in public with her name associated to her testimony, against men who had threatened and bullied her. This took guts, and the courage of Reconstruction should never be forgotten.