Tracing the Intimate Histories of Poor Black Women in the Late-Nineteenth-Century US South

This article explores the dynamics of separation among Black veterans and their spouses in the post-emancipation South through an analysis of pension records. Few archival sources provide descriptions of Black working-class women and their relationships with their estranged husbands. Pension files offer a glimpse into the intimate lives of the Black poor and the legal communities they participated in as they navigated the US Pension bureaucracy. This essay tells the story of a North Carolina freedwoman, Jamsey Green, and my effort to trace the intimate histories of poor Black women using a combination of digital research tools, military records, and manuscript sources.