After
Freedom
A Cultural Study in the
Deep South
Hortense Powdermaker
With a new Introduction by Brackette P. Williams and Drexel Woodson
New
Directions in Anthropological Writing
First published in 1939, After Freedom is the first complete ethnography of an African American community
in the United States.
"Powdermaker's work provides us with what is still a unique
look at how African American men and women struggled to build
families, develop capital, and create a community under conditions
which made it necessary for both subjects and the observer to
refer to their moment in time as 'after freedom,' though it was
almost three-quarters of a century after emancipation. Her work
offers us perspectives that foreshadowed contemporary ethnography's
efforts to 'bring anthropology back home,' Afrocentric research's
focus on Africa in America, and feminist theory's attempt to
incorporate race and class into constructions of white-woman
gender studies."—Brackette F. Williams and Drexel G.
Woodson, University of Arizona
"After Freedom is not only
a classic of African American history. It is also a model case
study in how to do ethnographic field work, how to listen deeply
to one's informants, how to write with rich detail and a keen
analytical eye."—Paul R. Spickard, Brigham Young University
Hortense Powdermaker (1900–1970) in 1938 joined the
newly established Queens College in New York City and founded
its department of anthropology and sociology. Holding many distinguished
positions in the field, she served as president of the American
Ethnological Society from 1946–1947. In 1968 she retired
from Queens College as professor emeritus and moved to California.
She became a research associate of the Department of Anthropology
at Berkeley and began a study of youth culture on the Berkeley
campus. Her many books include Hollywood, the Dream Factory:
An Anthropologist Looks at the Movie-Makers and Stranger
and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist. Brackette F. Williams is professor of anthropology and director of the
African American Studies Program at the University of Arizona
and an editorial associate for American Ethnologist. Drexel
Glenn Woodson is assistant research anthropologist, Bureau
of Applied Research in Anthropology, University of Arizona.
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July 1993
LC: 92-056923 E
462 pp. 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
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