Jenkins, Wilbert L. 1953-

PERSONAL:

Born in 1953. Education: Winston-Salem State University, B.A., 1977; Ball State University, M.A., 1978; Michigan State University, Ph.D., 1989.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of African American Studies, Temple University, 913 Gladfelter Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19122. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, associate professor of history.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Cheikh Anta Diop Award for Outstanding Faculty Scholarship and Service in African and African-American Studies, 1991; Dr. Rocco Carzo, Jr., Award for Excellence in Teaching, Temple University Golden Key National Honor Society, 1997.

WRITINGS:

Seizing the New Day: African Americans in Post-Civil War Charleston, Indiana University Press (Bloomington, IN), 1998.

Climbing Up to Glory: A Short History of African Americans during the Civil War and Reconstruction, SR Books (Wilmington, DE), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

Wilbert L. Jenkins's work concentrates on the roles African Americans played in the history of the United States during the period of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Jenkins argues that African Americans played active roles in constructing their own history at the end of the nineteenth century, and were not victims or passive beneficiaries of white politicians' agendas. This thesis is central to his study Climbing Up to Glory: A Short History of African Americans during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Climbing Up to Glory shows blacks as a diverse community. Rather than seeing all blacks as slaves rejoicing in their newly acquired freedoms, "Jenkins's discussion of Reconstruction describes the reactions of former slaves whose newfound freedom presented dilemmas of where to go and what to do," explained Michael E. Long in the Journal of Southern History. Jenkins concludes that "'the enduring accomplishments' of Reconstruction did not go into eclipse with the Compromise of 1877," declared Thomas C. Cox in the Historian. "Racism and discrimination did not remove blacks from center stage as actors having editorial control over the plot."

In Seizing the New Day: African Americans in Post-Civil War Charleston, the historian draws on rarely used local sources to describe the ways that working-class black Americans began to define their newly won liberty in Reconstruction-era South Carolina. "Probably the most important way for newly freed African-Americans to ensure their freedom was through economic provision for themselves and their families," Labor History contributor Tim Locksley stated. "Charleston acted as a magnet for many thousands of freed slaves who migrated to the city seeking work after the end of the war, reversing a short-term decline in the city's black population evident in the 1850s. Jenkins uses the records of the Freedmen's Bureau to show the lengths to which many African-Americans were prepared to go to in order to free themselves of any reliance on whites."

The key to understanding the lives of these newly liberated African Americans, Jenkins explains, is their dedication to providing for their families' financial futures. "Like former slaves and formerly free black people elsewhere in the U.S. South," Thavolia Glymph explained in the Mississippi Quarterly, "black Charlestonians worked to reconstitute their families and to set distinguishable boundaries between slavery and freedom. Through such institutions as the church, newly established schools, and infant political organizations, they pushed forward the tasks of forging a community of literate, informed citizens and expanding the meaning of freedom." "Jenkins succeeds in engaging the reader in the milieu of the post-Civil War world of African-American Charlestonians," wrote Sandy Dwayne Martin in the Journal of Religion, "outlining clearly the diversity within the African-American community." "Jenkins does not fall into the common practice of allowing his subjects to appear as passive victims to forces beyond their control," Martin concluded. "Instead, African Americans have agency." "Seizing the New Day does very clearly demonstrate that ‘freedom was a battle’ that black Charlestonians fought and lost, but not because they were timid," declared Gregory Mixon in his Journal of Negro History review of the volume. "Blacks had a collective vision of self and pursued freedom despite the political failures of Reconstruction and the crippling obstacle of a devastatingly depressed economy. Blacks in Charleston, regardless of class, did seek to Seize the New Day."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Historian, summer, 2004, Thomas C. Cox, review of Climbing Up to Glory: A Short History of African Americans during the Civil War and Reconstruction, p. 352.

Journal of Negro History, winter, 2001, Gregory Mixon, review of Seizing the New Day: African Americans in Post-Civil War Charleston, p. 58.

Journal of Religion, October, 2004, Sandy Dwayne Martin, review of Seizing the New Day, p. 620.

Journal of Southern History, February, 2004, Michael E. Long, review of Climbing Up to Glory, p. 153.

Labor History, May, 1999, Tim Lockley, review of Seizing the New Day, p. 237.

Mississippi Quarterly, spring, 1999, Thavolia Glymph, review of Seizing the New Day, p. 342.