The Materiality of Belonging: Black Property Claims after the Civil War

The Civil War opened a floodgate of property claims that debated the very meaning of American citizenship. In one notable act during Reconstruction, the United States government established the Southern Claims Commission in 1871 to address southerners’ petitions of compensation for provisions, livestock, and other supplies taken by Union soldiers during wartime. Bridget Kelly enters a well-established conversation about the war’s effect on American citizenship and property claims but with much-needed precision by focusing on the material losses of Black claimants in South Carolina’s port cities. Her article examines how formerly enslaved people experienced the “materiality of belonging” after their long-awaited and hard-fought emancipation moment in 1865 as well as often painful and contingent relationships between race, political belonging, property ownership, and social loss. How did Black people experience material loss attendant on their moment of liberation?